Khalifa Hifter’s bid to unite Libya under an anti-Islamist banner represents an opportunity for America to back an enemy of our enemies.
Hifter joined the Libyan fray over the weekend, leading assaults against Islamists in Benghazi on Friday and seizing the parliament building in Tripoli on Sunday.
Dozens were killed in the fierce fighting between his loyalists and various opposing militias in several parts of the country.
The skirmishes are the bloodiest since the 2011 overthrow of Moammar Khadafy, at the height of what was then rosily dubbed an Arab Spring.
Three years after the US military helped oust the oppressive Khadafy regime at the height of the “spring,” few in the region are crying out for liberal democracy.
Hifter is no Thomas Jefferson, either. His goal is fairly narrow: quash the various offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda vying to dominate Libya.
Yes, in Libya’s fractured society, where loyalties can be bought by throwing money and arms at tribal politicians and militias, the Islamists are on the march.
Backed by regional powerhouses like Qatar and Turkey, the Muslim Brotherhood and its clones managed impressive gains in the wake of the Arab revolutions — not only in Libya, but in neighboring Egypt and elsewhere.
But the anti-Islamist pushback is now in full swing.
The military coup in Egypt unseated the Brotherhood there, and now Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sisi is set to sweep next week’s election, running on the platform of fighting the Brotherhood.
Even Qatar, diplomatic sources tell me, is slowly pulling back from its past wholesale support for the Brotherhood and other political Islamists.
Meanwhile, the Saudis and other Gulf states, which have fiercely opposed the Brotherhood from Day One, are helping al-Sisi with a $16 billion aid package (compared with our $1.5 billion a year to the second-largest US foreign-aid recipient) — and now they’re throwing their weight behind Libya’s Hifter as well.
The last Libyan election, in 2012, left the parliament evenly divided between Islamists and anti-Islamists.
Back in April, pressure got to the then-interim prime minister, Abdullah al-Thinni, who said his family was under constant threats. To avoid further bloodshed, he said, he wouldn’t even form a Cabinet.
Then the Islamists in parliament last week named one of their own, Ahmed Maiteeq, to form a new Cabinet. That’s when Hifter decided enough was enough.
The 71-year-old ex-general donned his old uniform, assaulted the parliament building and managed to — at least for now — unite most of Libya’s top anti-Islamist political and military players behind him.
Hifter is no stranger to Libyans.
Back in 1969, he was one of the plotters who helped Khadafy overthrow King Idris.
In the face of Khadafy’s excesses, he tried to stage a coup in the 1980s; when that failed, he left the country, gained US citizenship and lived in northern Virginia until 2011, when he returned to a hero’s welcome.
Now he wants to do in Libya what al-Sisi did in Egypt: Declare all-out war on the Islamists.
The Islamists won’t easily give up. On Tuesday, much of the parliament gathered in a Tripoli hotel and (after asking a militia from Misrata, a Brotherhood stronghold, to defend it against Hifter) called for a new election on June 25.
What does America think? Well, the Obama administration has yet to say.
After initially supporting Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Washington declined to call al-Sisi’s overthrow of Mohamed Morsi’s Brotherhood government last year a “coup.” We couldn’t risk cutting off aid to Egypt.
The administration’s since been publicly cool to al-Sisi’s ruthless suppression of the Brotherhood — even as it quietly supports his war against al Qaeda in the Sinai.
Anyone in the region trying to make sense of us is hopelessly confused.
Libya represents a chance to clarify. It was there, after all, that President Obama exerted US power to help oust Khadafy.
But then we did little to stabilize the place, and even less so after the Benghazi Islamists killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others in the Sept. 11, 2012, attack.
OK: This president prefers to lead from behind, and the voters are tired of America’s involvement in the world. We’re not going to do much.
But Obama could revive his old “let me be very clear” schtick, and declare which side we’re on.
As the dream of liberal democracy flourishing across the Mideast fades into nightmare, we need to say we side with the region’s least-bad forces.
In Libya, Egypt and elsewhere, those are the anti-Islamists.