Officials from Libya’s UN-backed Tobruk parliament, and prominent allies of the head of their army, Gen. Khalifa Hifter, are expressing hope that the election of Donald Trump will lead to a shift in US priorities in their country, seeing themselves as more natural allies to Trump than is the “unity government.”
Gen. Hifter was a high-ranking general in the Gadhafi government in the 1980s, but was disavowed and became a top figure in a CIA-funded insurgency. When the insurgency fell apart, Hifter moved to Virginia, but returned to Libya with eyes on seizing power amid the NATO-imposed regime change.
During the campaign, Trump was critical of US policy in Libya, saying the world would be better off if Gadhafi was still in power. With Gadhafi dead, Gen. Hifter’s allies seem to hope they can brand him as the sort of anti-Islamist strongman that would fit neatly into that role.
The Tobruk parliament was quick to congratulate Trump on his victory, and members said they believe that the US decision to stop supporting them and start backing the “unity government” was largely a decision made by the Democrats, and one which the new Republican administration might reverse.
Yes it will be intriguing to find out-if that is possible at all-what Trump will decide to do with our Libyan misadventure.
Libya has long been a divided nation with two major tribal areas named Cyrenaica and Tripolitania. If Libya is split into two states they will begin a regular war. If Libya is not split the civil war which began under Qaddafi will continue because the anti-Hifters (1) will not give up. With the world awash in crude there is no urgency for Trump to do anything other than preventing that a flood of the very highly desired Libyan oil enters the market and thereby destroys US fracking once and forever.
One of the intriguing facts of history is that Rommel’s army was transiently in control of that oil when his army occupied Libya. His engineers drilled…for sweet water needed for his water-cooled tanks. They reported back that nearly all of the water they struck was too salty for the panzers. The Allies were lucky that these reports were never read by German oil geologists (salt domes!) although it is far from clear how the Germans could have shipped the crude to the homeland if they had started drilling for oil in Libya.
(1) I could not help but serving him with the Dutch insult of “hufter”.