Mohamed Guma Bilazi
Libyan journalist, analyst and translator
The self-ascended to Marshal, Khalifa Haftar, leader of the so-called “Libyan National Army”, located in the eastern part of Libya, organized last Saturday, May 29, a military parade in the center of the city of Benghazi, to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the so-called “Operation Karama (dignity in Arabic)”, which he launched in February 2014 against several areas of the country and turned into civil war, in addition to a major conflict, both nationally and internationally.
Haftar’s military incursion against the capital, Tripoli, which lasted from April 4, 2019 to October 23, 2020, ended in a resounding failure and did not achieve its fundamental objective: to proclaim himself full head of the country. However, in view of his advanced age and poor health, according to reliable information, his expectations led him to think of bequeathing his post to his two sons, Saddam and Khaled, both officers in his army.
Last Saturday’s military parade was a direct challenge by Haftar not only to the will of Libyan citizens, who yearn for peace and stability in their country, but also to all the efforts of the International Community to achieve peace in Libya, whose major powers, including those that backed Haftar, have been the main protagonists of his military parade, even those that once supported Haftar, chose to intervene to establish peace and understanding in Libya and put an end to the warlike hostilities that pushed the country to unsuspected limits, causing hundreds of thousands of dead, wounded and displaced people, and an almost complete paralysis of the country’s economy.
Haftar’s project to bequeath to his children a power he does not yet possess, exposes his intentions to create a despotic regime and a dictatorship that would be a continuation of that of Muammar Gaddafi, who was his guide in seizing power through coups d’état and bloodshed.
Bequeathing power to descendants or brothers was, until two decades ago, the main purpose of Arab dictators, whether in their long-lasting rides, such as that of Gaddafi in Libya, or short-lived ones, such as that of Baji Sebsi in Tunisia.
Haftar has tried, actively and passively, to find international support so that the military enterprise on which he has embarked is not left adrift. The ephemeral support he had mainly from former U.S. President Donald Trump has vanished in a matter of months, and the military and political support provided by the French government has had to be suspended following the new political orientations that unanimously supported the newly created government of national unity, the only legitimate government, located in Tripoli.
Haftar, so repudiated by the vast majority of Libyan citizens and abandoned to his fate by almost all regional and international powers, has no choice but to withdraw from the political and military scene until the time of his death, and he will have to let the country and its citizens turn the page on decades full of suffering and blood, because at this stage of the 21st century there is no room for dictatorships and no place for despotism, at least in Libya, which has already suffered it like no other country for more than four dark decades.
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