Khalifa Haftar

Field Marshal Khalifa Belqasim Omar Haftar (خليفة بالقاسم عمر حفتر; born 7 November 1943) is a Libyan politician, military officer, and the commander of the Tobruk-based Libyan National Army (LNA).

He studied at al-Huda School in Ajdabiya in 1957 and then moved to Derna to obtain his secondary education between 1961 and 1964.

He joined the Benghazi Military University Academy (also known as Benghazi Royal Military College) on 16 September 1964 and graduated from there in 1966.

He served in the Libyan army under Muammar Gaddafi, and took part in the coup that brought Gaddafi to power in 1969.

As a young army officer, Haftar took part in the coup that brought Muammar Gaddafi to power in 1969, assisting Gaddafi in the overthrow of Libya's King Idris.

Shortly thereafter, Haftar became a top military officer for Gaddafi.

In the late 1970s, he went on to receive military training in the Soviet Union, completing a special three-year degree for foreign officers sent to study in the USSR, at the M. V. Frunze Military Academy.

Haftar later pursued further military training in Egypt.

He was also stationed with the artillery corps.

He took part in the Libyan contingent against Israel in the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

He commanded Libyan troops supporting Egyptian troops entering Israeli-occupied Sinai in 1973.

Like other members of the Free Unionist Officers (the junta that toppled the monarchy), Haftar is a secularist and was a Nasserist.

He was a member of the Revolutionary Command Council which governed Libya in the immediate aftermath of the coup.

Haftar later became Gaddafi's military chief of staff.

In the late 1980s, Haftar commanded Libyan forces during the Chadian–Libyan conflict, which ended in defeat for Libya.

By 1986, Haftar had attained the rank of colonel, and was then the chief officer in command of Gaddafi's military forces in Chad in the Chadian–Libyan conflict.

In 1986 and 1987 the Government of Chad accused Libya of using toxic gas and napalm against central government forces and against rebel forces.

In 1987, he became a prisoner of war during the war against Chad after being lured into a trap and captured, which was then a major embarrassment for Gaddafi and represented a major blow to Gaddafi's ambitions in Chad.

While being held prisoner, he and his fellow officers formed a group hoping to overthrow Gaddafi.

During the war, in which the Libyan forces were either captured or driven back across the border, Haftar and 600–700 of his men were captured as prisoners of war, and incarcerated in 1987 after their defeat in the Ouadi Doum airstrike.

Shortly after this disastrous battle, Gaddafi disavowed Haftar and the other Libyan prisoners of war who were captured by Chad.

One possible contributing factor to Gaddafi's repudiation of Haftar and of other captured prisoners of war may have been the fact that Gaddafi had earlier signed an agreement to withdraw all Libyan forces from Chad, and Haftar's operations inside of Chad had been in violation of this agreement.

Another possible reason given for Gaddafi's abandonment of Haftar was the potential that Haftar might return to Libya as a hero and thus pose a threat to Gaddafi's rule itself.

Libya may have used Mustard gas delivered in bombs by An-26 aircraft in final phases of the war against Chad in September 1987.

He was released around 1990 in a deal with the United States government and spent nearly two decades living in the U.S. in Langley, Virginia, and gained U.S. citizenship.

In 1993, while living in the United States, he was convicted in absentia of crimes against the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya and sentenced to death.

Haftar held a senior position in the forces which overthrew Gaddafi in 2011, during the First Libyan Civil War.

In 2014, he was commander of the Libyan Army when the General National Congress (GNC) refused to give up power in accordance with its term of office.

Haftar launched a campaign against the GNC and its Islamic fundamentalist allies.

His campaign allowed elections to take place to replace the GNC but then developed into the Second Libyan Civil War.

On 2 March 2015, he was appointed commander of the armed forces loyal to the elected legislative body, the Libyan House of Representatives.

Haftar was born in the Libyan city of Tarhuna.

In 2017, Ramzi al-Shaeri, Vice-President of the Derna city council and lawyers Ryan Goodman and Alex Whiting accused Haftar of the war crime of ordering the killing of prisoners of war during the recapture of Derna.

Haftar has been described as "Libya's most potent warlord", having fought "with and against nearly every significant faction" in Libya's conflicts, as having a "reputation for unrivalled military experience" and as governing "with an iron fist".

Although Haftar is reportedly an anti-Islamist, his allies include the Salafi Madkhali militias for geopolitical purposes.

In November 2021, Khalifa Haftar announced his candidacy for the presidential election in December 2021 before it was postponed.

Besides his native Arabic, Haftar also speaks English, Italian and Russian, and is conversational in French.

He is a dual Libyan-US citizen.

He is expected to renounce his US citizenship prior to the next Libyan election.

Haftar was born in Ajdabiya, and is a member of the Firjan tribe.