The great pretender

After Muammar Gaddafi was killed in 2011, the former CIA asset Khalifa Haftar went on to become Libya's de facto leader - and today he's answerable to no one

- By Anas El Gomati

IN JULY 2025, four of Europe’s most senior officials landed in eastern Libya for an urgent meeting. Italy’s interior minister had watched migrant arrivals surge during the previous six months. Greece’s migration chief was reeling after 2,000 people reached Crete in a single week. Malta’s home minister feared his island was next. And the EU’s migration commissioner was scrambling to rescue an agreement worth many hundreds of millions that was visibly failing to stop the boats. Libya is a place where crises converge. Its 1,770km coastline, the Mediterranean’s longest outside Europe, has become the main departure point for migrants heading north. Since Muammar Gaddafi was toppled in 2011, the country has been torn apart by successive civil wars. Russia, Turkey, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) arm rival factions, and the contest no longer stops at Libya’s borders. From military bases in the south, Russia and the UAE funnel weapons and fighters into Sudan’s civil war, which has driven hundreds of thousands more refugees north towards Libya’s coast.

Whoever controls Libya holds leverage over Europe. Yet Libya’s political crisis is so byzantine that it confuses even experienced European officials. The country is split between two governments, one in the west and one in the east, and neither really governs. The UN and Europe recognise the Government of National Unity in Tripoli, which was formed in 2021 to oversee elections that never happened. In response, the House of Representatives, Libya’s parliament elected in 2014, appointed a rival government in the eastern city of Benghazi in 2022, though that government is not officially recognised by any country. Both administrations, in the east and west, claim authority. Neither controls the oil, military bases or migration routes that make Libya matter to Europe. One man does. His name is Khalifa Haftar.