The assassination of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi does not mark a return to order in Libya. It marks the end of a particular form of political ambiguity. For years, Libya functioned as a system of suspended outcomes — fragmented, yet operational; divided, yet partially coherent through shared oil and financial mechanisms. Saif embodied one of the last remaining alternative pathways within that system. His removal narrows the field. What emerges is not a unified state, but a more controlled equilibrium in which power consolidates without fully legitimising itself, and where the country’s strategic value increasingly lies in its role as a corridor rather than a polity.
