Military and financial support from foreign patrons—the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, France, and Russia—has been essential to his drive. For its part, the United States has long eyed him warily and has officially backed the Tripoli government, even while maintaining an intelligence and special operations presence among his forces in Benghazi. Increasingly, however, US diplomats see Haftar as crucial to moving Libya beyond a drawn-out “transition” period. Washington is now backing a United Nations effort to try and convert his campaign into momentum for a dialogue conference and national elections later this year. [...]
Central to this effort are the pacts and alliances that Haftar has negotiated with the Libyan communities that lay in his path. Some towns and tribes allied with Haftar out of desperation at the impotence of Tripoli-based Government of National Accord. Others did so to obtain leverage against local rivals. This was certainly the case in the desert south, where crime and economic misery created a vacuum that Haftar’s forces filled with cash and supplies—even as they stoked communal tensions by favoring some tribes over others. In western Libya, towns are divided, with some armed groups having aligned themselves with his forces even while nominally still under the authority of his rival, the government in Tripoli. [...]
Another seeming contradiction is the general’s aversion to Islamists. “We don’t need Sharia [Islamic law] here,” he told me in 2014. “Sharia is already in our hearts.” And yet, adherents of a conservative, literalist interpretation of Islam known as Salafism are his staunchest military supporters. My hosts in Sabratha were also Salafists, including the owner of the farm and the commander of the militia, a man named Musa al-Najem. [...]
I asked him about whether he and his fellow Salafists followed Haftar, but they demurred, citing the Salafi doctrinal tenet about obeying the local political authority in one’s geographic area—which, these days, looks like Haftar. It is a belief that forms the bedrock of a Salafi current often described as “quietism,” nurtured with Saudi petrodollars to eschew overt political activism. In Libya, however, these Salafists are hardly apolitical: they are a rising force, in schools and mosques, but also in the policing sector, where they patrol against illicit drugs and alcohol—as well as activities they deem un-Islamic, such as art exhibitions. They have also fought the terrorists of the Islamic State and are opposed to rival political Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood.
No comments:
Post a Comment