Sabratha, Libya—A sleepy town of smalltime farmers and traders, Sabratha sits on the Mediterranean seaboard just west of the capital Tripoli. It is most famous for its Roman ruins—a colonnaded city and a restored amphitheater that, under the late ruler Muammar Qaddafi, hosted floodlit performances of Puccini’s operas for busloads of Italian tourists. The tourists are gone now and the town has suffered a series of afflictions since the 2011 overthrow of the dictator. In early 2016, it became the site of a fierce battle against Islamic State jihadists, who had set up a training camp in nearby date palm groves. Emboldened by a US airstrike on that camp, local militias pushed out the terrorist group.
Then came a new bane: the reign of smugglers and human traffickers, and pitched battles to staunch this lucrative trade. The clashes killed scores and blotted the ancient amphitheater with the charred blossoms of rocket-propelled grenades and bullet holes. Still, when I visited the ruins one afternoon this February, normalcy had returned. Families picnicked on grassy patches between the pillars, where the winter rains had left a dusting of dandelions.
Another shadow now hangs over the town. Khalifa Haftar, the septuagenarian Libyan army general, was a dissident during the Qaddafi regime and onetime CIA asset. In May of 2014, he led a group of disaffected army units and local tribes in a military assault on Islamists and jihadists in the eastern city of Benghazi. After years of grinding combat, he won the east and turned his sights on the west.
In recent weeks, his coalition of forces, the Libyan National Army, has blitzed across Libya’s vast southern desert, seizing strategic oilfields and airbases. He is now encroaching on Tripoli, where the isolated, internationally backed Government of National Accord has failed in basic governance and is beholden to militia barons who have carved the capital into fiefdoms and plundered the state’s coffers. The result of Haftar’s offensive has been a major shift in the balance of power in Libya. “A reshuffling of the deck of cards,” a United Nations official in Tripoli told me.
Military and financial support from foreign patrons—the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, France, and Russia—has been essential to his drive. For its part, the United States has long eyed him warily and has officially backed the Tripoli government, even while maintaining an intelligence and special operations presence among his forces in Benghazi. Increasingly, however, US diplomats see Haftar as crucial to moving Libya beyond a drawn-out “transition” period. Washington is now backing a United Nations effort to try and convert his campaign into momentum for a dialogue conference and national elections later this year.