We light half of Italy and we have power outages here. This is more than a failure. However, the Libyan public is not used to reading this American newspaper. The message was addressed to a foreign audience and particularly to countries most likely to accept a return to business for his clan. Indeed Saif al-Islam remains a political option that may still interest some foreign actors in the Libyan conflict, including Russia.
However, apart from the complications that may arise from his conviction by a Libyan court and the ICC arrest warrant, the prospect of seeing a Gaddafi back in business is far from decided. The Gaddafis have many enemies who will do everything to prevent him from returning to politics.
This article was translated from the original in French. Daily newsletter Receive essential international news every morning. Take international news everywhere with you! Due to his pedigree, there is reason to fear that he will not pay much attention to the electoral process initiated by the UN and the new Libyan government. Especially since his international legal problems could prevent him from exercising responsibilities. He also reiterates that the Gaddafi movement presented candidates during the Libyan forum that designated the new government of national unity in February.
Moscow, which keeps reminding us that the UN mission to which it had given its consent in had exceeded its prerogatives by eliminating Muammar Gaddafi, has maintained contact with the family. Since , the Russians have provided financial and technical assistance to the TV channel, which now broadcasts almost continuously. We believe that Africa is poorly represented, and badly under-estimated. Beyond the vast opportunity manifest in African markets, we highlight people who make a difference; leaders turning the tide, youth driving change, and an indefatigable business community.
That is what we believe will change the continent, and that is what we report on. With hard-hitting investigations, innovative analysis and deep dives into countries and sectors, The Africa Report delivers the insight you need. The LIA may well end up losing several hundred million euros. Ten years after his death, conspiracy theories are flourishing about the former Libyan leader.
Give yourself a headstart: Get full access to The Africa Report on all your devices. His rule saw him go from revolutionary hero to international pariah, to valued strategic partner and back to pariah again. Gaddafi developed his own political philosophy, writing a book so influential - in the eyes of its author, at least - that it eclipsed anything dreamt up by Plato, Locke or Marx. He made countless show-stopping appearances at Arab and international gatherings, standing out not just with his outlandish clothing, but also his blunt speeches and unconventional behaviour.
He spent his life reinventing himself and his revolution: one Arab commentator called him the "Picasso of Middle East politics", although instead of Blue, Rose or Cubist periods, he had his pan-Arab period, his Islamist period, his pan-African period, and so on. But even Gaddafi was not able to withstand the tide of popular feeling that had already swept away his two authoritarian neighbours in a momentous year for the Arab world.
In the heady days of - when he seized power in a bloodless military coup - and the early s, Muammar Gaddafi was a handsome and charismatic young army officer.
An eager disciple of President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt he even adopted the same military rank, promoting himself from captain to colonel after the coup , Gaddafi first set about tackling the unfair economic legacy of foreign domination.
For Nasser, it was the Suez Canal. For Gaddafi, it was oil. Significant reserves had been discovered in Libya in the late s, but the extraction was controlled by foreign petroleum companies, which set prices to the advantage of their own domestic consumers and benefited from a half share in the revenue. Gaddafi demanded renegotiation of the contracts, threatening to shut off production if the oil companies refused.
He memorably challenged foreign oil executives by telling them "people who have lived without oil for 5, years can live without it again for a few years in order to attain their legitimate rights". The gambit succeeded and Libya became the first developing country to secure a majority share of the revenues from its own oil production. Other nations soon followed this precedent and the s Arab petro-boom began. Libya was in a prime position to reap the benefits.
With production levels matching the Gulf states, and one of the smallest populations in Africa less than 3m at the time , the black gold made it rich quickly. Rather than persevering with the doctrines of Arab Nationalism, or following the glittering excesses of Gulf consumerism, Gaddafi's innately mercurial character led him and Libya on a new path. Born to nomadic Bedouin parents in , Muammar Gaddafi was certainly an intelligent, resourceful man, but he did not receive a thorough education, apart from learning to read the Koran and his military training.
Nevertheless, in the early s he set out to prove himself a leading political philosopher, developing something called the third universal theory, outlined in his famous Green Book.
The theory claims to solve the contradictions inherent in capitalism and communism the first and second theories , in order to put the world on a path of political, economic and social revolution and set oppressed peoples free everywhere.
In fact, it is little more than a series of fatuous diatribes, and it is bitterly ironic that a text whose professed objective is to break the shackles imposed by the vested interests dominating political systems was used instead to subjugate an entire population. The result of Gaddafi's theory, underlined with absolute intolerance of dissent or alternative voices, was the hollowing out of Libyan society, with all vestiges of constitutionality, civil society and authentic political participation eradicated.
The solution to society's woes, the book maintains, is not electoral representation - described by Gaddafi as "dictatorship" by the biggest party - or any other existing political system, but the establishment of people's committees to run all aspects of existence.
This new system is presented diagrammatically in the Green Book as an elegant wagon wheel, with basic popular congresses around the rim electing people's committees that send influence along the spokes to a responsive and truly democratic people's general secretariat at the centre.
The model that was created in reality was an ultra-hierarchical pyramid - with the Gaddafi family and close allies at the top wielding power unchecked, protected by a brutal security apparatus. In the parallel world of the Green Book, the system is called a Jamahiriyya - a neologism that plays on the Arabic word for a republic, Jumhuriyya, implying "rule by the masses".
So the long-suffering Libyan masses were dragooned into attending popular congresses vested with no power, authority or budgets, with the knowledge that anyone who spoke out of turn and criticised the regime could be carted off to prison.
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