General Khalifa Belqasim Haftar

Recent reports suggest that the head of the Tobruk-based Libyan National Army and leader of the anti- Islamist Operation Dignity in Cyrenaica General Khalifa Haftar has fallen out with both the Tobruk government and other Cyrenaica factions (AC Vol 55 No 11 Enter the General)...

The group even sees the Libya Dawn alliance in Tripoli as 'waging war against Allah's religion' by attempting to institute man-made laws and it describes the House of Representatives' in Tobruk's military chief General Khalifa Haftar as a taghout a corrupt godless tyrant...

The military successes of 'Operation Dignity's' General Khalifa Haftar against the late Mohamed el Zawahi's jihadist Ansar el Sharia militia in Benghazi have inadvertently helped IS (AC Vol 55 No 24 A tale of two cities)...

The alternative is for Khalifa Belqasim Haftar and his Egyptian backers to go for a pure military victory over their enemies in the Islamist-Misurata alliance of Fajr Libya (Libya Dawn) and IS (aka Islamic State in Iraq and Syria/Levant: ISIS/ISIL)...

General Khalifa Haftar's 'Operation Dignity' troops are at war with Islamist groups for the control of Cyrenaica in the east...

* Domestic support: Operation Dignity led by General Khalifa Haftar Libyan air force special forces and other army units; Cyrenaican federalist groups including Ibrahim el Jathran's Cyrenaica Political Bureau; some Tebu (Toubou) militia...

Khalifa Haftar in the west and the General National Congress's favoured Chief of Staff Gen...

Such discussions soon proved academic however as more than a month of fighting between Zintan's El Qaqa militia – aligned with maverick General Khalifa Haftar – and Islamist-backed Misuratan forces culminated in the Zintanis abandoning their posts (AC Vol 55 No 11 Enter the General)...

Islamist militias aligned with Libya's Muslim Brotherhood have mounted their most serious counter-offensive yet against forces loyal to General Khalifa Belqasim Haftar in a series of attacks in Tripoli and Benghazi...

With speculation mounting about the possibility of Egyptian and other external support for renegade General Khalifa Belqasim Haftar's anti-terrorist 'Operation Dignity' – effectively an unauthorised military campaign against the armed Islamist group Ansar el Sharia in eastern Libya – groups aligned with the Brotherhood face the threat of an Egyptian-style purge...

Now Khartoum faces a Saudi-Egyptian alliance strengthened by close ties between Cairo and Libya's anti-Islamist rebel general Khalifa Belqasim Haftar which would take care of the long desert border to the north (AC Vol 55 No 11 Chaos theory)...

Cairo is also courting South Sudan while pressure on the NCP is growing from Libya as the anti-Islamist leader General Khalifa Belqasim Haftar sends troops to his deep south...