Saif's reforming record to date
is certainly impressive. He is said to have persuaded his father to end their
country's nuclear weapons programme, prompting Tony Blair to herald a "new
relationship" with Libya and the west as far back as 2004. Since then, Saif has
become the figurehead of the hugely influential Gaddafi Foundation, which is
involved in numerous activities ranging from charitable initiatives to human
rights work. An extraordinary national reconciliation effort saw hundreds of
alleged terrorists – some with links to al-Qaida – released. Abroad, he has been
at the centre of many foreign policy breakthroughs, including formulating a
recent roadmap for peace in Kashmir. -- Nabila
RamdaniStepping out of Gaddafi's shadow
By Nabila
Ramdani
Coming out of an infamous father's
shadow is difficult at the best of times, but especially so when your surname is
Gaddafi and you're frequently tipped as the next ruler of Libya. The crude
caricature of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the so-called "Brother Leader", as tribal
warrior turned unsmiling despot is certainly one which has dominated the entire
life of his second son, Saif al-Islam. Despite recent reforms, which have seen
his oil-rich state largely ditching its pariah status, many in Britain still
associate it with past horrors. These have ranged from the funding of IRA
terrorism and the Lockerbie bombing abroad, to human rights violations at
home.
Intriguing then, that Saif
should have mentioned a "special relationship" between his country and the UK
when I interviewed him in London last week. The affable 37-year-old's clean cut,
corporate image could not have been more different from the desert chic look
still adopted by his father. Instead of flowing robes and revolutionary stubble,
Saif wore a can-do designer suit and described London as the place to live up to
it. Rather than a tent – Colonel Gaddafi's preferred choice of accommodation –
Saif received me in a private suite in Mayfair's Connaught Hotel. Describing
London as the world's foremost financial centre, he praised it as a place where
you could find representatives of almost every community in the world and,
indeed, do business with them.
While the millions in oil
profits being invested in London by the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) may be
an entirely pragmatic move (the LIA currently appears to be buying up half of
the spare office space in the City and Mayfair), Saif's Anglophile views should
not be discounted as a stunt cooked up by his newly hired PR firm. It was only
last year that he completed his doctorate in Governance at London School of
Economics. He is imbued with unremittingly liberal ideas about the future of his
country and the redistribution of its estimated £65bn in energy-wealth profits.
A desire to turn Libya into a modern democracy based on the rule of law is
expressed at every opportunity, with Saif always highlighting economic progress
over dogma.
Saif's reforming record to date
is certainly impressive. He is said to have persuaded his father to end their
country's nuclear weapons programme, prompting Tony Blair to herald a "new
relationship" with Libya and the west as far back as 2004. Since then, Saif has
become the figurehead of the hugely influential Gaddafi Foundation, which is
involved in numerous activities ranging from charitable initiatives to human
rights work. An extraordinary national reconciliation effort saw hundreds of
alleged terrorists – some with links to al-Qaida – released. Abroad, he has been
at the centre of many foreign policy breakthroughs, including formulating a
recent roadmap for peace in Kashmir.
An especially controversial
success was the freeing of alleged Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi – a
move that caused widespread anger in America and Britain, but massively
increased Saif's popularity among his own people. Defending the release of the
former intelligence officer on compassionate grounds because of cancer, Saif
told me: "I made it a personal issue because he is Libyan, innocent and very
sick. It's very simple."
Such honesty is typical of Saif,
who appears to be more interested in conveying the image of a bright,
well-trained technocrat than an heir apparent. Perhaps the most impressive
aspect of his profile is that he has no official position in his father's
government whatsoever. Instead he dabbles in almost every policy sphere,
overseeing the complex system of allegedly democratic peoples' congresses the
colonel set up after the 1969 revolution that brought him to power. Saif
diplomatically concedes there is much work to be done with all of them, without
once mentioning, let alone criticising, the current Father of the nation. As a
means of becoming his own man, this is undoubtedly Saif's best way out of the
formidable shadow, which has loomed over him since childhood.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/10/saif-al-islam-gaddafi-libya
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Sultan Shahin
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