The situation across the Middle East is spinning out of control, throwing off the promise and hopes of the Arab Spring. Most Americans, even sophisticated observers among them, are confused about exactly who is doing what to whom as factions struggle and clash in a half-dozen countries. Nowhere is the region’s tragedy more exposed than in Libya, where the facts have been obfuscated by the fog of war and the manipulations of a media disinformation campaign by a former Qaddafi loyalist who calls himself General Haftar.
Africans by the thousands, their belongings in wheelbarrows or on their backs, have been scrambling to get to Europe through Libya, a country now shattered by a confusing and dangerous civil war after 42 years of harsh control by the socialist dictator Muammar Qaddafi who was ousted in 2011 by a NATO coalition forged under Obama and Clinton with promises of democracy. Nothing of the sort has happened.
These days Libya is a divided country engaged in a civil war between two governing bodies and numerous tribes and militias, all striving to maintain control over their areas of influence. As the United Nations endeavors to find common ground through negotiations, only one of the actual governing bodies, Tripoli’s National Salvation Government (NSG), represents hope for the country. The NSG, formed by Libyan legislators, in-country business owners and Libyan student leaders, continues to negotiate in good faith with the UN. The other side, the HoR, based in Tobruk and dancing to a tune played by an autocratic 71-year old former Qaddafi military man, Khalifa Haftar, does not.
A colonel under Qadaffi, Haftar now calls himself a general and presents himself accordingly, frequently adorned with medals and insignia. Haftar fled the region twenty years ago and settled in Virginia with help from the CIA, for which he was a long-time informant. He is suspected of continued ties to the agency. He returned to Libya in 2014 and muscled his way to leadership of the HoR’s military arm. He is now paying a Washington public relations firm more than one million dollars a year to spin media coverage and manipulate members of Congress into ignoring facts and favoring the HoR. Many Libyans, including some members of the HoR, believe Haftar is anti-democratic and aspires to personal dictatorship.
Ironically, press reports quote Haftar as saying the only solution to the civil war that he will support will be a military one. He said this even as NSG representatives boarded planes to fly to the UN sponsored talks last month, and he bombed the airport as they were waiting to depart.
On a daily basis, Haftar’s forces are focused on fighting the Tripoli-based government which, while defending itself, has focused its own efforts on waging an aggressive, successful military and counter-insurgency campaign against ISIS and other extremist elements while the cynical Haftar and his spokesmen have painted the NSG as being in league with those same Islamist extremists, which, to observers on the ground in Libya, it is clearly not. Moreover, as the NSG seeks to disarm local militias and integrate them into a single force with clear leadership, authority, responsibilities, and accountability, Haftar has been sneaking in foreign fighters from the Middle East and Africa to bolster his HoR forces.
The confusion over the two rival governments, particularly in the West where falsity has been sewn so deeply by Haftar’s disinformation and propaganda campaign, has created an environment, which emboldens Haftar’s military and personal objectives.
To date, and to its credit, the U.S. has refused Haftar’s requests for arms and munitions. He does, however, have a modicum of recognition from Washington that the NSG doesn’t. It’s clearly time to reevaluate our initial goals and objectives and determine who can best help achieve them. To many who understand the situation in Libya, Tripoli’s NSG is clearly the right choice.