An iron fist and an international conference.. How is Haftar trying to benefit from the Derna disaster despite his possible responsibility for it?
Huge billboards in Benghazi leave no doubt about who is in charge in the country. Across the capital of eastern Libya, the moustachioed face of Khalifa Haftar stares sternly, his ubiquitous image an echo of Muammar Gaddafi's dictatorship. The discontent that erupted after the Derna disaster has done nothing to change the situation.
For nine years, Haftar, a former CIA agent, and his army have controlled eastern Libya, including the areas containing most of the country's shattered oil wealth, but have also suffered some of the bloodiest conflicts since the fall of Gaddafi in 2011.
The region has now suffered devastating floods that culminated in the city of Derna, killing at least 4,000 people and sweeping away entire residential neighbourhoods.
Many Libyans blame local authorities for the scale of the disaster, which was magnified when two neglected dams in the hills above Derna collapsed after Storm Daniel hit the country on September 10 - after years of warnings that they needed maintenance, according to a report from the newspaper British : Financial Times.
In 2022, Abdel-Wanis Ashour, an expert in water sciences from Libya’s Omar Al-Mukhtar University, warned in a paper he published that recurring floods threaten the dams built in the valley, which is usually a dry riverbed, and urged immediate maintenance work.
Haftar's forces refused to evacuate the city
His warning was ignored by the authorities controlled by Haftar's forces.
Reports indicate that the mayor of Derna, Akram Abdel Aziz, requested permission to evacuate the city as Hurricane or Rain Storm Daniel approaches, which was rejected by Haftar and the authorities of eastern Libya.
“The authorities (in the east) have clearly said: no to evacuations,” says Jalal Harchaoui, a Libya expert at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), attributing this to a lack of trust in the city’s residents and the desire to keep them in a state of permanent siege.
While The Guardian newspaper says that instead of issuing instructions to conduct an evacuation operation as the storm approaches. A curfew was imposed, which is the usual response of Libyan militias to any crisis.
Hundreds of people protested in Derna last week in a rare wave of popular anger in the east, which has a weak and ineffective government loyal to Haftar.
But there were no public protests against the former Libyan army general, who arrived to inspect the damage.
“People may implicitly blame him, but they know not to speak out against him because that would threaten their safety and could even get them killed,” said Imad El-Din Badi, an analyst at the Atlantic Council.
Analysts say this tragedy is not expected to affect his grip on the region. He brooks no opposition and few dare speak out against him for fear of reprisal.
Cutting off communications, arresting activists, and restricting journalists
The American New York Times said that the authorities in the flood-ravaged eastern region of Libya moved in the direction of silencing the opposition over the past week, and arrested a number of protesters and activists who demanded accountability for what they described as the failed official response to the disaster, especially in the city of Derna.
The American newspaper reported in a report on Thursday, September 21, 2023, citing eyewitnesses and a relative, the arrest of at least three people who criticized the government’s response or participated in a protest in the city of Derna on Monday, September 18.
Aid workers and journalists also said that the authoritarian administration ruling the besieged eastern half of Libya - where Derna is located - has restricted access to the city. While Internet and mobile phone services were cut off from the city for two days last week, raising questions about whether the companies providing these services had deliberately cut them off.
Volunteer aid worker Islam Azouz from Derna, who attended a protest on Monday, September 19, said: “People’s anger has reached very high levels, and communications have been cut off, because they are afraid of people expressing their anger publicly.” Monday's protest reportedly saw hundreds demand that those responsible for the disaster be held Punishment.
Following this protest, some Arabic-language Reporters from across the Middle East said they had been ordered to leave Derna. While some journalists covering rescue and relief operations said they were prevented from moving freely within the city or from re-entering it once they left.
Revives Gaddafi's rule
As for some who participated in the revolution to oust Gaddafi, the autocrat's rise has been worrying.
A man who fought in the 2011 uprising said: “Yes, security has been restored and no one now dares to form a militia in the east. But he is a dictator. It is like returning to square one.”
Derna was a stronghold of the armed Islamic opposition to the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, and it revolted against Gaddafi in a rare manner in Libya before the 2011 revolution. During the revolution, it was one of the first cities to be liberated from Gaddafi. Then ISIS took control of the city for a period before it was expelled by the Shura Council of the Mujahideen of Derna ( A group described as being linked to Al-Qaeda) after a two-year campaign.
Immediately after the council forces eliminated ISIS, they were attacked by Haftar, supported by aircraft and artillery, despite calls from the Derna Shura Council to negotiate.
Some Libyans credit Haftar with ending assassinations carried out by Islamist extremists in Benghazi, and he has received the support of the UAE, Egypt, Russia and France as he presents himself as a vital figure in the battle against extremism.
But his critics accuse him not only of being responsible for repression and human rights violations, but also of being a stumbling block to ending years of division and chaos.
A former Western diplomat said: “Haftar’s security apparatus includes some figures who appeared greatly during the Gaddafi era, and they brought with them the same practices.”
Libya has been divided between rival governments in the east and west since conflict erupted following disputed elections in 2014.
That year, Haftar made Benghazi his stronghold and launched a brutal campaign against armed Islamists and others opposed to his rule. Derna fell under his control in 2018 and 2019 after his forces besieged the city for two years.
Hani Al-Warshafani, the owner of a clothing store in the city, said that the security situation in Benghazi has improved since the army took control, and added: “Before that, I saw many victims of shooting.”
Faraj Najm, who heads the Benghazi Peace Building Center, a group affiliated with eastern authorities, said he had been put on a hit list by extremists. He added: "Haftar saved us from slaughter. ISIS occupied Benghazi and the army under his leadership was able to defeat them," he said.
It should be noted that the coincidence between the Derna Mujahideen Shura Council’s elimination of ISIS and Haftar’s attack on the city, and his not targeting ISIS during its presence, is seen by some as an indication of a deal between the two parties, or at least a consensus of interests in a way that has been repeated repeatedly in other regions of Libya (in addition to Haftar’s alliance with the Madkhaliyya Salafism).
Not far from Najm's office, there is an entire area of destroyed buildings with crumbling concrete, cracked floors and exteriors riddled with shell holes, a legacy of the battles that Haftar's forces fought against the Islamists.
But analysts say the campaign also targeted former anti-Gaddafi rebels who resisted what they saw as an attempt by Haftar to reimpose authoritarian rule.
“He smeared all his opponents as extremists to portray his repression of the West as a fight against terrorism,” said Anas El-Gamati, director of the Sadiq Institute, a think tank in Tripoli.
A decade ago, Mustafa Al-Saqzli, then a resident of Benghazi, ran a government agency seeking to disarm the countless militias across the country in the years after Gaddafi's killing, and integrate their members into society.
But when he tried to explain to the “decision makers” that not all groups in Benghazi were jihadists, he failed.
“Once the war started in Benghazi, no one wanted to listen to me,” he said from his exile in Turkey. “Both sides threatened that I and my children might be killed, and I had to leave Libya. The militias allied with the Libyan National Army took over my house.”
Al-Saqzli said that he is trying to recover his home through a committee formed by the Benghazi authorities to return the confiscated property to its owners.
Kidnapping and killing of opponents, and an international conference in Derna may become a source of funding
Haftar sparked a new civil war in 2019 when he marched his forces into Tripoli to oust the UN-backed government. Its fighters were supported by Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group. But it was defeated in 2020 after Türkiye intervened to support the Tripoli government.
The country remains divided; Where the militias control the west and Haftar controls the east. Wagner fighters are believed to remain in military bases in parts of southern Libya under Haftar's control, despite the killing of the group's leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Meanwhile, Haftar's outspoken critics have been brutally eliminated.
Siham Sergewa, a member of Parliament, expressed her opposition to Haftar’s war on Tripoli. Masked gunmen kidnapped her and stormed her home in Benghazi in July 2019, and her fate remains unknown.
At the time, there were graffiti on the wall of her house bearing the signature of a brigade allied with the Libyan National Army, saying: “The army is a red line.”
Outspoken lawyer Hanan Al-Barassi was shot dead on a street in Benghazi in 2020. Al-Barassi was a supporter of Haftar but claimed his relatives were involved in corruption.
After the floods, authorities in the east announced that they would host an international conference in October to discuss reconstruction in Derna; Where searches continue. But the fear is that Haftar and his companions will exploit this process.
Badi, the Atlantic Council analyst, warned that reconstruction “will be seen as a fortune they can fight over and take kickbacks from. It is clear that the lion’s share will go to Haftar.”