The Resistible Rise Of Saddam Haftar

Given hot wars raging in Ukraine, the Middle East, and Sudan, the news attracted little attention except among those who specialize in following obscure conflicts. News reports in Arabic and some in English spoke of a dangerous confrontation or military escalation in Western Libya, specifically near Ghadames, a strategic Libyan town in the tri-border area where the frontiers of Tunisia, Libya, and Algeria meet.[1]

The confrontation – not yet open conflict or war – was between units associated with the Tripoli-based Libyan government and those connected to the Benghazi-based Libyan government, or to be more precise, the Government of National Unity under Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh (Tripoli) and a parliamentary-led government based in Eastern Libya (Benghazi) under Prime Minister Osama Hammad and closely associated with Libyan military strongman (made a Field Marshal in 2016) Khalifa Haftar. An uneasy ceasefire between the two sides has been in place since October 2020.

The UN recognizes the Tripoli government and not the Benghazi government but both sides in Libya have powerful allies – Tripoli is backed by Turkey and Qatar, and by whatever Turkish arms and Qatari money can secure for them. Benghazi is backed by Egypt and the United Arab Emirates and Russia, with their firepower and gunmen. The Americans support the UN but are not unalterably opposed to Haftar, who spent two decades in the United States and had American citizenship. Haftar also has very real ties to Russia.[2] The Americans fear chaos in Libya more than anything else, chaos that could lead once again to the rise of Jihadist emirates on the southern shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

The "armies" of both sides are rife with foreign fighters and mercenaries, both incorporate local and tribal militias within their ranks in addition to foreigners. Both sides have used Syrian and Sudanese mercenaries against the other. Both sides have Islamist fighters in their ranks. And, as if the situation in Libya was not complicated enough, there is a UN mission (UNSMIL) and UN mandate and resolutions focused on Libya, the whole panoply of globalist interventionism run amok providing years of employment to international bureaucrats, experts, and administrators, as tends to happen in certain countries and situations ("Palestine," Haiti, Lebanon, Democratic Republic of Congo being some salient examples). And yet it is not the United Nations that will likely decide the nation's destiny.[3]

Stripped of think tank jargon and UN rhetoric, the struggle in Libya is over who rules locally and who has the upper hand regionally. Inside Libya, it is essentially between pro-Haftar and anti-Haftar forces – with all their ideological, tribal, regional, and personal hues and variations – who have waged bloody conflict before – helped by their patrons – and who now maneuver within the country to try to gain the upper hand within the context of a tenuous, increasingly fragile, ceasefire. And while the "pro-Haftar" and "anti-Haftar" camps are backed by a range of different countries, it is mostly a conflict between regional powers UAE and Qatar, and also connected to the bloody civil war raging in Sudan between UAE-backed (RSF) and Qatari-backed (SAF) armed groups since April 2023.[4]  

Haftar (technically, the Libyan Arab Armed Forces or LAAF) forces moving toward the Algerian border signals several things. First of all, it signals that the LAAF can move significant forces across the country and position them on a sensitive international border, essentially in the backyard of the Tripoli-based government. It could also be an effort to connect pro-Haftar Libya more immediately with the emerging pro-Russian Alliance des États du Sahel (Alliance of Sahel States or AES) of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. The Ghadames region is also a key node in the Sahel smuggling trade, including drugs and the booming human trafficking business aimed at Europe. The border crossing with Algeria only reopened in December 2023 after being closed for nine years because of instability inside Libya.[5]

In a statement, the LAAF said it wanted to strengthen border security and secure the stability of the country in a strategic region by regular patrolling. But the movement of forces comes about as a new political crisis is brewing in Libya with the Haftar-allied Libyan parliament unanimously dismissing Prime Minister Dbeibeh (who will, of course, ignore the dismissal).[6] Not surprisingly, Haftar's actions have also alarmed Algeria and pleased those opposed to the Algerian regime.[7]

News reports mentioned that the LAAF forces were led by Major General Saddam Haftar, the 33-year-old youngest son of Marshal Haftar.[8] Saddam Haftar has had, so far, a banner year. In March 2024, the Egyptian press reported that the young Haftar had received a doctorate of philosophy in military science from the Egyptian Military Academy for Higher and Strategic Studies.[9] What seems like empty adulation may be significant in that Egypt reportedly had reservations about Saddam Haftar because of the latter's support for Sudan's Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan's bloody civil war. Cairo prefers RSF's rivals, the Sudanese Army (SAF) led by General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan. Those concerns seem to have been overcome.

Saddam Haftar was also appointed Chief of Staff of LAAF ground forces in June 2024.[10] Shortly thereafter, he traveled to Chad as his 80-year-old father's envoy to Chadian ruler Mahamat Idriss Deby.[11] Although the elderly, ailing Field Marshal Haftar has several sons, and all of them seem to have been mentioned at some point as rising men of influence, Saddam is definitely getting the most attention now.[12] After his latest appointment, he has been carefully cultivating a public image.

He met with the British Military Attache on July 14, 2024, and then with the Deputy Commander of US Africa Command (AFRICOM), Lt. General John W. Brennan, Jr. to discuss training programs, counterterrorism, and border security on July 18.[13] A pro-Haftar media outlet on August 14, 2024 showed Saddam Haftar chairing a meeting in the presidential offices in Benghazi with "the minister of Interior and the heads of the ministry's security agencies, in addition to the head of the Internal Security Service and the deputy head of general intelligence."[14] Still other recent media coverage saw him signing a contract for a new free trade zone with an Emirati company.[15]

Saddam Haftar has, for one so young, a colorful if controversial past. He was indeed named for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, a popular name in the Arab world in 1991. Born and raised in Benghazi, not much is known of his early years but by his early twenties he was taking part in various military campaigns aimed at advancing the cause of his father. Not surprisingly, in addition to fighting, the young man was implicated in all sorts of other unsavory actions, among them bank robbery and kidnapping. Rather common behavior in a civil war.

Saddam Haftar was later associated with the Tariq Ben Zeyad (TBZ) Brigade, a key unit in the Haftar Army. TBZ (and Haftar himself) were excoriated in a damning and detailed December 2022 Amnesty International report.[16] The report accuses the unit and its commanders of war crimes, human rights abuses, and corruption – serious charges which both ring true and which almost certainly apply to other military and security organizations across North Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea.

Despite his thuggish reputation, in 2022, Saddam Haftar was his father's envoy sent to negotiate a successful oil revenue sharing deal with rival Prime Minister Dbeibeh.[17] There are also rumors of him having visited Israel, speculation promoted, of course, by Qatari-funded, pro-Algerian and pro-Tripoli media.

In Libya and in the region writ large, things are not exactly what they seem to be. "Armies" are often more groupings of militias allied for a common purpose. Control on the ground (especially in mostly desert Libya) is less than it appears on the map. And real power has less to do with righteousness or good governance than it does with cash flow, firepower, or charisma. The West may talk about "a catalogue of horrors," but what they fear most, especially nearby Europe, is chaos.[18] The elder Haftar's forces have been written off before yet bounced back.[19] It is early days, but Saddam – the word means "Confronter" or "Adamant One" in Arabic – Haftar may be rising and may eventually replace his father. He may amount to something or he may just be one more ugly Libyan warlord on the passing, mostly chaotic, scene. There have been hundreds of those over the past decade.  

*Alberto M. Fernandez is Vice President of MEMRI.