The French newspaper, Le Monde, asked: Will the disappointment in Chad change Paris’s view of Libyan theater?
Will it contribute to its reassessment of the retired Libyan general, Khalifa Haftar, who was considered the supposed guardian of Libya's southern borders, from which the Chadian rebel attack that killed Chadian President Idriss Déby was launched?
The newspaper pointed out that it was not hidden from anyone that France had invested heavily in this man who installed himself as head of the Libyan National Army, and that he was a strategic bet for it, as evidenced by the security, diplomatic and political assistance provided to him, which was a source of concern for European partners to Paris. And a source of tension within the French establishment itself.
The goal - as the newspaper explains - was to give this "strong man" the opportunity - behind the guise of fighting terrorism - to establish stability in Libya, which is in chaos after the Arab Spring, in order to create a safety cordon in the south for the "Barkhane" operation carried out by France in the Sahel region. .
There is no evidence for this from Ghassan Salameh, when he was head of the United Nations mission in Libya, that "France's vision is more regional than Libyan."
Le Monde concluded from this that the recent Chadian unrest came against Paris’s expectations, and it became clear that relying on Haftar was a matter of deception, as not only did the "border guard" not stop the infiltration operations coming from Libya, but the rebel group "the Rotation Front" Al-Wefaq, which dealt the fatal blow to President Déby, was among the heterogeneous military alliance that surrounds Haftar, which generously recruited Chadian and Sudanese “mercenaries” (from Darfur), not to mention the Russian Wagner fighters whom Moscow put in his service.
Valuable technical expertise
And the fact that the Chadian Front of Rotation and Accord came from the ranks of Haftar does not mean - as the newspaper says - that the retired general sponsored or approved the attack on Deby, with whom he had an ostensible friendship under the title "joint war on terror", a strategic complicity that strongly encouraged France keen on Promoting Operation Barkhane, not to mention that Haftar had no objective reason to attack Déby through those “mercenaries”.
The newspaper believes that Haftar's inability to prevent his Chadian followers from attacking his "friend" Deby has revealed a lot about the fact of the brigade's control over southern Libya, as a former United Nations official says that "Haftar's presence in Fezzan is not a continuous line, it is a set of points." Nevertheless, France has repeatedly described Haftar's position in the political equation as "inevitable" under the pretext that he controls "80% of the Libyan lands," according to the newspaper, which saw this as an exaggeration in the estimation of this brigade's ability to keep his fiefs and allies.
Le Monde wondered what remains of France's strategic bet on Haftar, if we take the jihadist threat as a criterion, considering that Haftar was "effective" - according to a former French security official - against the Islamic State in Benghazi, where it randomly bombed entire neighborhoods teeming with people, at a time. In it, France provided him with invaluable technical expertise in intelligence matters, which he used to fuel his ambitions for a more comprehensive invasion of Libya.
Frustrated French interests
The newspaper said that the results for French interests from a broader regional perspective appear to be more mixed, because the attack launched by Haftar in the spring of 2019 on the Libyan government in Tripoli led by Fayez al-Sarraj at the time, and officially supported by the United Nations, had only one tangible result, And that is, in addition to the humanitarian catastrophe, the door was wide open for the entry of foreigners, as Russian fighters affiliated with Wagner arrived on the side of Haftar, and Turkish soldiers on the side of the Tripoli government.
Now, as the newspaper says, France has every reason to bite its fingers in regret, because the establishment of a new quasi-sovereignty in western Libya on the border with Tunisia overtly frustrates French interests in the Mediterranean, and accepting to deal with the game of Wagner fighters is also fraught with doubts. Although France is contrary to the American perception, it considers that the Turkish threat is more "a threat" to its interests than the Russian threat, despite Moscow's plans to enter sub-Saharan Africa, especially the "back garden" countries of France.