Saddam Haftar aims to become Libya's president

Saddam Haftar, the son of Khalifa Haftar, aims to become Libya’s president through a Turkish maritime deal. Eastern Libya spent nearly seven years denouncing the deal with Tripoli, but it now embraced it in a single sitting of the legislature. On October 20, the House of Representatives in Benghazi ratified the deal, marking a significant shift in Libya’s political landscape.

The ratification was less a Turkish triumph than the final act of a sequence choreographed by Saddam Haftar. The United States is trying to broker a power-sharing arrangement between Tripoli and Benghazi, with the goal of installing Saddam as Libya’s president. The opening move in his pursuit of the presidency was a palace coup, as the House of Representatives unseated its speaker, Aguila Saleh, removing both Cairo’s principal ally in the east and the most stubborn obstacle to the memorandum’s ratification.

Saddam’s path to a handover is now clear, and the elder Haftar’s advanced age could hasten it at any moment. Saleh’s successor, Al-Salhin Abdulnabi, is able to defuse the risk of tribal backlash while signalling where the chamber now takes its cues. Whether the gambit pays off will be decided in Washington, as Saddam is counting on the Trump administration’s appetite for a Libyan deal.

Saddam hopes the deal can prevail over the objections of Athens and Nicosia and the displeasure of Israel, which is uneasy about Ankara’s reach. Europe’s navel-gazing fixation on migration has reduced its Libya policy to counting the boats leaving Libya’s eastern coast for Crete. A Union that implores Saddam to police the very waters now in dispute is in no position to make him pay for redrawing them.

Abu Dhabi has every reason to look the other way because it wants Saddam to succeed. None of Khalifa’s sons has been more faithful to the Emiratis, and seeing their most loyal client installed at the apex of the Libyan state would cap a decade of investment in the Haftar project. Whether the deal becomes the cornerstone of their dynasty or the epitaph of the son’s ambitions remains to be seen.