NARCO ANALYSIS: Saddam Haftar on a Pedestal

July 8, 2026

By H.J.M.

The US is pushing harder than at any point in recent years to bring about a political arrangement between eastern and western Libya. But the harder it pushes, the more it seems to be relying on a shallow method: stage an announcement first, present it as the beginning of national unification, and deal with the inevitable blowback later. That approach has now placed Saddam Haftar near the center of Washington’s Libya policy without defining the overall structure that he and his western-Libyan counterparts would occupy, leaving its eventual shape to the coming weeks’ pressures and the scrambles.

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