Libya in Chaos

Seif al-Islam Qaddafi has a painful tooth abscess. But that’s the least of his problems.

Since his capture last November, the flamboyant, jet-setting son of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi has been in the hands of one of the numerous militias that dot post-Qaddafi Libya. The International Criminal Court (ICC) says that Seif is being held in isolation, beaten, and denied access to friends and relatives—and dentists. The plight of Qaddafi fils won’t elicit much pity, certainly among Libyans, but it does illustrate postrevolutionary Libya’s principal problem: an ineffectual central government that has neither the power nor the legitimacy to rein in the country’s rampant localism. The localism pits militia against militia, East against West, tribe against tribe and ethnic group against ethnic group, giving a new, though pernicious, meaning to former House Speaker Tip O’Neill’s quip that “all politics is local.”