TRIPOLI: The military strongman in the east of divided Libya, Khalifa Haftar, has named one of his sons as army chief, tightening his family’s grip on the oil-rich region.
Saddam Haftar is the third of the field marshal’s six sons to assume a key post, and experts see it as a sign the 81-year-old patriarch is preparing for his succession.
They also warn this entrenches the division of the North African country that has been rocked by chaos since the 2011 overthrow of dictator Muammar Qaddafi in a NATO-backed uprising.
Energy-rich Libya is split between a United Nations-recognized government in the capital Tripoli in the west and the Haftar-backed rival administration that rules from Benghazi and Tobruk in the east.
Presidential elections that had aimed to unify the fractured country were scheduled for late 2021 but then postponed indefinitely.
In early June, the strongman’s youngest son, General Saddam Haftar, 33, took over as chief of staff of the land forces within Haftar’s self-proclaimed Libyan Arab Armed Forces.
Saddam’s older brother Khaled was named last July as chief of staff of “security units” within the LAAF.
And in February, another son, Belgacem, took the helm of a newly created development and reconstruction fund.
The appointments continue “what has been from the beginning a private and family army as Haftar bolstered his power,” said Wolfram Lacher of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.
“The inner circle” which controls “key units and resources of this private empire” is comprised of “his sons but also his cousins, his nephews, his sons-in-law,” Lacher told AFP.
Haftar was once an ally of Qaddafi but fell out with the dictator and then spent years in the United States, where he gained citizenship, before returning to Libya to help topple him.
In the years of war that followed Qaddafi’s ouster and killing, Haftar’s forces gained control of about two-thirds of Libya’s territory, including crucial oil infrastructure in its Sahara desert south.
In 2019-2020, Haftar tried to seize Tripoli but failed, despite backing from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Russia and some Western powers.
His opponents received military support from Turkiye.
Haftar is a declared enemy of Islamist forces and the Muslim Brotherhood but critics say he has previously cooperated with jihadists.
Khaled Al-Montasser, an international relations professor at the University of Tripoli, said that now the aging soldier, who suffered a stroke in 2018, is “stepping up the pace” to prepare for his succession.
Imad Jalloul, a Libyan political analyst, said Haftar’s allies abroad have begun seeing him as “unfit to lead Libya,” hence the need for “new blood.”
Lacher said that in recent years Haftar’s sons had enjoyed “a rapid rise” through the military ranks, “achieving in no time what would take other officers decades.”
He said this “became the subject of mockery” but that “since then, by seeing them every day on social media, the Libyan public started to get used to them.”
Lacher said that Saddam Haftar now holds real military power and a key role in murky business dealings in a graft-ridden country notorious for trafficking of irregular migrants.
The expert said Saddam has a hand in “repression, managing trafficking, embezzling public funds and negotiating shady transactions with political rivals in Tripoli.”
The recent reshuffles are “a clear sign of preparation for the day when Haftar disappears and when his entire power structure is then in danger,” Lacher added.
“It is also a sign that Haftar himself is getting older and can no longer manage this structure all on his own.”
Jalloul said the Haftar clan has brutally repressed opponents across a vast stretch of eastern and southern Libya, where political, tribal and civil society figures have been arrested, disappeared or killed.
The latest example was the death in April of activist Siraj Dughman while in detention at a military base controlled by Haftar.
Last December, former defense minister Al-Mahdi Al-Barghathi and six others died in custody while in custody of eastern authorities after their arrests in Benghazi.
Lacher said that “what’s distressing to see in recent months is that Western and UN diplomats, by publicly meeting Haftar’s sons, have begun to legitimize this family power structure, which sees the country’s two thirds and its underground wealth as private property.”
Strongman Haftar and sons tighten grip on eastern Libya
https://arab.news/92egk
Strongman Haftar and sons tighten grip on eastern Libya
Israeli military raids in Syria raise tensions as they carve out a buffer zone
- Syria’s interim president, Ahmad Al-Sharaa, who led the rebels who took over the country, said he has no desire for a conflict with Israel
- Damascus has struggled to push Israel diplomatically to stop its attacks and pull its troops out of a formerly United Nations-patrolled buffer zone
BEIRUT: Qassim Hamadeh woke to the sounds of gunfire and explosions in his village of Beit Jin in southwestern Syria last month. Within hours, he had lost two sons, a daughter-in-law and his 4-year-old and 10-year-old grandsons. The five were among 13 villagers killed that day by Israeli forces.
Israeli troops had raided the village — not for the first time — seeking to capture, as they said, members of a militant group planning attacks into Israel. Israel said militants opened fire at the troops, wounding six, and that troops returned fire and brought in air support.
Hamadeh, like others in Beit Jin, dismissed Israel’s claims of militants operating in the village. The residents said armed villagers confronted Israeli soldiers they saw as invaders, only to be met with Israeli tank and artillery fire, followed by a drone strike. The government in Damascus called it a “massacre.”
The raid and similar recent Israeli actions inside Syria have increased tensions, frustrated locals and also scuttled chances — despite US pressure — of any imminent thaw in relations between the two neighbors.
An expanding Israeli presence
An Israeli-Syria rapprochement seemed possible last December, after Sunni Islamist-led rebels overthrew autocratic Syrian President Bashar Assad, a close ally of Iran, Israel’s archenemy.
Syria’s interim president, Ahmad Al-Sharaa, who led the rebels who took over the country, said he has no desire for a conflict with Israel. But Israel was suspicious, mistrusting Al-Sharaa because of his militant past and his group’s history of aligning with Al-Qaeda.
Israeli forces quickly moved to impose a new reality on the ground. They mobilized into the UN-mandated buffer zone in southern Syria next to the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria during the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed — a move not recognized by most of the international community.
Israeli forces erected checkpoints and military installations, including on a hilltop that overlooks wide swaths of Syria. They set up landing pads on strategic Mt. Hermon nearby. Israeli reconnaissance drones frequently fly over surrounding Syrian towns, with residents often sighting Israeli tanks and Humvee vehicles patrolling those areas.
Israel has said its presence is temporary to clear out pro-Assad remnants and militants — to protect Israel from attacks. But it has given no indication its forces would leave anytime soon. Talks between the two countries to reach a security agreement have so far yielded no result.
Ghosts of Lebanon and Gaza
The events in neighboring Lebanon, which shares a border with both Israel and Syria, and the two-year war in Gaza between Israel and the militant Palestinian group Hamas have also raised concerns among Syrians that Israel plans a permanent land grab in southern Syria.
Israeli forces still have a presence in southern Lebanon, over a year since a US-brokered ceasefire halted the latest Israel-Hezbollah war. That war began a day after Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, with Hezbollah firing rockets into Israel in solidarity with its ally Hamas.
Israel’s operations in Lebanon, which included bombardment across the tiny country and a ground incursion last year, have severely weakened Hezbollah.
Today, Israel still controls five hilltop points in southern Lebanon, launches near-daily airstrikes against alleged Hezbollah targets and flies reconnaissance drones over the country, sometimes also carrying out overnight ground incursions.
In Gaza, where US President Donald Trump’s 20-point ceasefire deal has brought about a truce between Israel and Hamas, similar buffer zones under Israeli control are planned even after Israel eventually withdraws from the more than half of the territory it still controls.
At a meeting of regional leaders and international figures earlier this month in Doha, Qatar, Al-Sharaa accused Israel of using imagined threats to justify aggressive actions.
“All countries support an Israeli withdrawal” from Syria to the lines prior to Assad’s ouster, he said, adding that it was the only way for both Syria and Israel to “emerge in a state of safety.”
Syria’s myriad problems
The new leadership in Damascus has had a multitude of challenges since ousting Assad.
Al-Sharaa’s government has been unable to implement a deal with local Kurdish-led authorities in northeast Syria, and large areas of southern Sweida province are now under a de facto administration led by the Druze religious minority, following sectarian clashes there in mid-July with local Bedouin clans.
Syrian government forces intervened, effectively siding with the Bedouins. Hundreds of civilians, mostly Druze, were killed, many by government fighters. Over half of the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria. Most other Druze live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights.
Israel, which has cast itself as a defender of the Druze, though many of them in Syria are critical of its intentions, has also made overtures to Kurds in Syria.
“The Israelis here are pursuing a very dangerous strategy,” said Michael Young, Senior Editor at the Beirut-based Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center.
It contradicts, he added, the positions of Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, Egypt — and even the United States — which are “all in agreement that what has to come out of this today is a Syrian state that is unified and fairly strong,” he added.
Israel and the US at odds over Syria
In a video released from his office after visiting Israeli troops wounded in Beit Jin, barely 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the edge of the UN buffer zone, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel seeks a “demilitarized buffer zone from Damascus to the (UN) buffer zone,” including Mt. Hermon.
“It is also possible to reach an agreement with the Syrians, but we will stand by our principles in any case,” Netanyahu said.
His strategy has proven to be largely unpopular with the international community, including with Washington, which has backed Al-Sharaa’s efforts to consolidate his control across Syria.
Israel’s operations in southern Syria have drawn rare public criticism from Trump, who has taken Al-Sharaa, once on Washington’s terror list, under his wing.
“It is very important that Israel maintain a strong and true dialogue with Syria, and that nothing takes place that will interfere with Syria’s evolution into a prosperous State,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social after the Beit Jin clashes.
Syria is also expected to be on the agenda when Netanyahu visits the US and meets with Trump later this month.
Experts doubt Israel will withdraw from Syria anytime soon — and the new government in Damascus has little leverage or power against Israel’s much stronger military.
“If you set up landing pads, then you are not here for short-term,” Issam Al-Reiss, a military adviser with the Syrian research group ETANA, said of Israeli actions.
Hamadeh, the laborer from Beit Jin, said he can “no longer bear the situation” after losing five of his family.
Israel, he said, “strikes wherever it wants, it destroys whatever it wants, and kills whoever it wants, and no one holds it accountable.”
