As General Khalifa Haftar’s offensive closes in on the Libyan capital of Tripoli, US troops have withdrawn, leaving the UN-supported Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj on his own. A scholar told Sputnik that Haftar is the man the international community wants, but they only want him so he’ll resume production in Libya’s vast oil fields.

Once the most affluent country in Africa, Libya has been wracked by chaos and civil war since the catastrophic NATO-directed intervention in 2011 that overthrew longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi, resulting in his murder, the destruction of the country and its splitting into rival militant factions.