Libya’s New Civil War

On April 4, Khalifa Haftar, the militia leader who controls eastern Libya, launched a large-scale offensive to capture the capital, Tripoli. The attack marked the collapse of negotiations to form an interim government between Haftar and key leaders in western Libya and triggered Libya’s third civil war since 2011.

Haftar evidently hoped to rapidly gain a foothold in Tripoli, finally establishing himself as the unrivaled ruler of Libya. What happened instead was that armed groups across western Libya mobilized to counter his power grab. For the past month, Haftar’s forces—a coalition of regular military units and militias calling themselves