How Haftar squandered his near secure victory, and why

In early April 2019, General Khalifa Haftar’s offensive to take Tripoli by force seemed almost certain to succeed. Thirteen months later he not only lost, but was forced to retreat. By the end of last May, Haftar’s own base in eastern Libya appeared threatened like never before, since appearing on the conflict’s landscape in 2014. The first week of June saw Haftar’s forces, the Libyan National Army (LNA) pushed back to almost the positions it held on 4 April, 2019. So, what went wrong and what is next? On 27 June, 2019, the LNA lost control of Gharyan, 100 kilometres south of Tripoli. That was a major blow, since the town served as a staging outpost for the attack on Tripoli. It also acted...