# Khalifa Haftar **Khalifa Haftar** (born 1943) is the field marshal who rules eastern and southern [[Libya]] through his Libyan National Army. A participant in [[Muammar Gaddafi]]'s 1969 coup, he was captured in Chad in the late 1980s, disowned by Gaddafi, and moved to the United States around 1990 in a CIA-negotiated arrangement, living in northern Virginia for two decades and becoming a US citizen. He returned in 2011, launched "Operation Dignity" in 2014, and in April 2019 ordered an assault on Tripoli backed by [[Wagner Group]] contractors, which Turkish intervention defeated by 2020. Since the fall of the Assad regime his air bases have hosted Russia's [[Africa Corps]] logistics hub. Now in his eighties, he has positioned his son Saddam Haftar as successor; Saddam was received in Washington in June 2026 under a US mediation led by [[Massad Boulos]]. ## See Also - [[Libya]] · [[Abdul Hamid Dbeibah]] · [[Wagner Group]] · [[Africa Corps]] · [[Muammar Gaddafi]]