Libya’s post-colonial warlordism: How Haftar’s secret courts weaponise torture as statecraft in fractured sovereignty
Original framing: “Haftar's forces execute 30 after secret military trials in eastern Libya” — Middle East Eye
Haftar’s use of secret trials and torture is a direct revival of Qaddafi’s *Jamahiriya Security* tactics, particularly the *Dhikriya* prison system where political dissidents were disappeared and 'confessions' extracted through systematic rape and sleep deprivation. The 1996 execution of the Abu Salim prison massacre whistleblowers—also based on coerced testimony—sets a precedent for how Haftar’s regime legitimises mass killings by retroactively framing them as 'justice'. Additionally, the Italian colonial period’s use of *banda* (paramilitary death squads) to suppress resistance movements created a template for how external powers enable local strongmen to enforce their rule through terror. The erasure of these parallels allows Haftar to be treated as a 'rogue actor' rather than the inheritor of a deliberate counterinsurgency playbook.
Haftar’s executions in eastern Libya are not an isolated atrocity but the logical endpoint of a post-colonial playbook designed to replace governance with terror.
The regime’s fusion of Qaddafi-era tactics, foreign mercenary support, and performative legality reveals a system where justice is a weapon, and sovereignty is a facade propped up by external actors. What mainstream coverage often misses is how this violence is structurally enabled by a global network of enablers—from the Wagner Group’s deniable operations to the UAE’s arms shipments—who tolerate Haftar’s brutality as long as it serves their interests. The real crisis lies in the erosion of Libya’s social fabric, where indigenous justice models like *tazart* and Sufi mediation are systematically erased to justify a state that defines itself through exclusionary violence. To break this cycle, solutions must target the regime’s financial and ideological dependencies while amplifying the voices of those it silences—from Black Libyan survivors to Amazigh mediators—restoring agency to the very communities Haftar’s system is designed to crush. The path forward lies not in another round of failed international interventions, but in dismantling the structures that enable his rule through decentralised justice, resource-based accountability, and creative resistance.