Euroviews. The rise of Clan Haftar: Is Western myopia in Libya creating a far worse version of Gaddafi?

Today, a gridlocked Libya ambles along in an unsettling calm as Russia increases its presence in the region.

Libya continues to unravel quietly, with indications mounting that rival governments are regrouping for something big.

Recently, Italian authorities intercepted a cargo ship suspected of bringing Russian weapons to General Khalifa Haftar in eastern Libya.

The reason being that Russia is arming Haftar in return for allowing Moscow to build a port on the Mediterranean coast, which would give it a base with Italy directly in its sites.

The country remains compromised, not least by its self-assured ruling elites, but also by the unhelpful policy decisions and changing rules of engagement in Western capitals. I fear the consequences will likely birth the country’s next and likely Muammar Gaddafi.

Briefly looking back, we can see that Western approaches toward Libya have undergone noteworthy changes, shifting from narrow security-oriented strategies to facilitating inclusive political settlements.

And, when that failed to secure meaningful progress in restoring the Libyan state, the West subsequently devolved toward a messy strategy of pursuing agreements among Libya’s differing factions.

This new strategy erroneously viewed bargains between the fractious and unelected Libyan elites as a makeshift bridge toward the ultimate goal—peace and stability.

This is a grave miscalculation and a deliberate misreading of fairly obvious dynamics at play in Libya.

By prioritising exclusive bargains, the West inadvertently sponsored the entrenchment of Libya’s kleptocratic governance model that has successfully sidelined the building of key institutions and security sector reform.

At the core of this ill-informed shift in strategy was a