The fierce fighting that swept across the Libyan capital on Sunday and the storming of the country’s interim parliament, along with the announcement of its suspension, by militias from the western mountain town of Zintan, marks a worrying new twist in the long-running crisis that has seen prime ministers come and go after weeks in office and the country’s oil-exporting ports blockaded by federalist-supporting militias.
Other than their refusal to hand over to the fragil national government their prized captive, Gaddafi’s 41-year-old son Saif al-Islam, Zintan’s militias have been among the most loyal to Tripoli and dedicated to what passes in the north African nation for more orderly politics. They refused to participate in a coup last year against Libya’s longest-serving post-Gaddafi prime minister, Ali Zidan. Nor were they backers of a blockade of ministries last summer to force through a wide-ranging political isolation law excluding Gaddafi-era officials from holding public office. They have reserved their interventions in the capital to ensuring Tripoli’s international airport doesn’t fall into rogue hands.
But the strong Islamist make-up of the legislature and the Muslim Brotherhood’s behind-the-scenes maneuvering appears, along with the chaotic drift and bombings and abductions in Benghazi, to have tried their patience.
Zintan’s militias have now aligned with Retired Gen. Khalifa Haftar. Fighters from his self-proclaimed Libyan National Army, many drawn from official Libyan security forces, prompted Friday’s firefights in Benghazi with attacks on predominantly Islamist militias, including Ansar al-Sharia, one of the jihadist-inclined groups blamed for the 2012 razing of the U.S. diplomatic compound where Stevens died.
