The Rise of Clan Haftar: Is Western Myopia Creating a Much Worse Version of Gaddafi in Libya?

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Today, Libya is in a state of stalemate and an unsettling calm as Russia expands its presence in the region.

Libya is quietly decaying and there are growing signs that rival governments are regrouping for something bigger.

Recently, Italian authorities intercepted a cargo ship believed to be carrying Russian weapons to General Khalifa Haftar in eastern Libya.

The reason for this is that Russia is arming Haftar in exchange for Moscow allowing him to build a port on the Mediterranean coast, which would give it a base with Italy on its territory.

The country remains compromised, not least by its self-assured ruling elites, but also by the futile policy decisions and changing rules of the game in Western capitals. I fear the consequences will likely see the birth of the country’s next, and probably Muammar Gaddafi.

Changing Western policies

Looking back, the Western approach to Libya has undergone remarkable changes, shifting from strict security-oriented strategies to facilitating inclusive political solutions.

And when that failed to produce meaningful progress in rebuilding Libya’s state, the West resorted to a messy strategy of seeking agreements between Libya’s various parties.

This new strategy wrongly viewed negotiations between Libya’s divided and unelected elites as a makeshift bridge to the ultimate goal: peace and stability.

This is a serious miscalculation and a deliberate misinterpretation of the fairly obvious dynamics at play in Libya.

By prioritizing exclusive agreements, the West has inadvertently sponsored the entrenchment of the kleptocratic governance model in Libya, which has successfully thwarted key institution-building and security sector reforms.

At the heart of this ill-informed shift in strategy was a serious underestimation of the underlying causes of Libya’s endemic instability and the scapegoating of the political impasse for a stalled state-building process. It also enabled the meteoric rise of “Clan Haftar.”

Little CIA agent becomes Libya’s biggest strongman

Khalifa Haftar rose to fame in Libya thanks to his military background and happy alliances.

Haftar was a former officer in Gaddafi’s army and commander of Gaddafi’s armies. He attempted to invade Chad but failed miserably. He later became an opponent and took part in a failed coup. He then spent years in exile in the United States, where he served as a small-time CIA agent.

His return in 2011, followed by a series of events and foreign sponsorship, saw Haftar emerge as the figure he has become in eastern Libya today.

After a failed and humiliating attempt to take Tripoli with direct support from the UAE, Haftar’s stronghold remained in the east. There he managed to seize power through his Libyan Arab Forces (LAAF), a network of alliances with tribal leaders, radical Islamists and other local armed factions with foreign support. He consolidated his influence through both military and political maneuvers.

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A combination of strong anti-Islamic rhetoric, sheer brutality, control of significant oil reserves and positioning itself as a bastion of stability in a chaotic region further cemented its dominance in eastern Libya – much to the delight of an international community frustrated by increasing policy failures in the country.

Despite a controversial background, problematic record of human rights violations and an increasing kleptocracy, Haftar continues to receive covert and open support from several Western countries, including a recent visit by US officials.

For example, France valued Haftar’s promise to fight terrorism, stem migrant flows and potentially insure Paris’s diminishing control over the Sahel.

Furthermore, countries like Italy are keen to secure uninterrupted access to Libyan oil, seeking to position Rome in a favourable position post-conflict and bolster their ambitions to become an energy hub in the Mediterranean. Libya also plays a key role in the UAE’s ongoing agenda to gain influence in North Africa and the Sahel.

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Meanwhile, in Brussels, generous economic incentives for Libyan rulers to control migration have changed the balance of power in the country.

By offering financial incentives to stem migrant flows, the EU inadvertently subsidises the higher operational costs associated with keeping smuggling routes open, funds the management of Clan Hafar detention facilities and security operations essential to trafficking, and increases its control over these illicit markets.

‘Haftar & Sons, Inc’

Beyond Libya’s borders, Clan Haftar is making money from more lucrative criminal activities, such as fuel and drug trafficking. At the same time, the group maintains the appearance of working with Europe to ensure a steady flow of money.

To date, there is no credible accountability mechanism or other way to track where the profits from illegal activities go and who or what is ultimately funded by them.

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Meanwhile, Haftar and his sons continue to amass resources through the capture of Libyan state spending, and their power and influence grow. This leads to an increasingly strong personality cult around Clan Haftar.

In a sense, the strategy of Europe and the US to increase the very instability and crime they claim to reduce is not just an end in itself for their own policy objectives.

It also perfectly captures the paradox of supposed defenders of democracy, human rights and the rule of law openly crowding behind the contradiction of human rights protection, political pluralism and consensus government, at the expense of Libya’s democratisation prospects.

This trend reinforces the authoritarian rule of Clan Haftar. Before its fall in 2011, the Gaddafi regime was characterized by unbridled power concentrated in the hands of one individual, with the systematic suppression of dissent and political pluralism, while maintaining at least a level of normal statehood with public services and security for the population.

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Clan Haftar has already replicated this model in its control of the East. If left unchecked, Libya risks becoming a far worse version of a previous era of personalist rule, suppressed civil liberties, vanishing political opposition, and a monolithic, mafia-like power structure that has no regard for anything other than Haftar & Sons Inc. while pretending to be a national army.

The implications are serious

Politically, while some order can be established in the areas under Haftar’s control, undermining an inclusive and legitimate central government could cause instability and rampant violence, especially in contested areas.

Socio-economically, control over resources may provide short-term benefits to certain groups, but the lack of a unified national vision can hinder long-term development and equitable economic growth.

Citizens, especially in contested or ‘forgotten’ regions, may still face challenges in accessing basic services, employment and infrastructure investment.

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Outside of Libya, the power of figures like Haftar, with documented links to criminal networks and a history of human rights abuses, is deeply worrying. It signals a worrying precedence for short-term thinking.

In short, Western policy toward Libya, marked by a preference for making deals with controversial actors such as the Haftar clan, is a short-sighted and dangerous approach.

It is necessary to recalibrate this strategy, giving priority to the establishment of legitimate political institutions and to respecting human rights.

If we do not prevent Libya from becoming a mafia state, this trend will not stop at Libya’s borders, but will become the norm in the region, especially in the Sahel.

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Hafed Al-Ghwell is Director of the North Africa Initiative (NAI) and Senior Fellow at the SAIS Foreign Policy Institute (FPI) at Johns Hopkins University.

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