[Daily Beast] Gen. Hiftar worked with Gaddafi, then the CIA. Now he says he'll purge Libya of Islamists and jihadists. Is he his country's savior -- or just another militia leader?
| I think the word the Beast is looking for is 'warlord'... |
MARJ, Libya -- Legend has it that in 1987, in the middle of a dirty little war in the Chadian desert, Libyan General Khalifa Hiftar stood with his men as enemy troops flooded onto the airbase he was guarding. Most of the Libyan forces had been driven back across the border or captured during Muammar Gaddafi's disastrous invasion of Chad. Hiftar, with a just few hundred soldiers, fired all the ammo he had left. Then, completely surrounded by the enemy troops, he threw the spent rifle at them.
Men who have served with Hiftar said it is this hardheadedness on the battlefield that means he will not give up his latest mission: to "save" Libya by wiping out militias and extremists that have run riot since the 2011 revolt that toppled Gaddafi.
But is Hiftar, whose background includes service with both Gaddafi and the CIA, really the man to do it? Can he bring order to Benghazi, scene of the terror attacks in 2012 that cost the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans their lives, and the Obama administraion some of its imperiled credibility?
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