Daily Times

A year after flooding in eastern Libya killed thousands and razed entire neighbourhoods, reconstruction is allowing military strongman Khalifa Haftar to wield further power in the divided country, experts say.

On September 10, 2023, extreme rainfall from the hurricane-strength Storm Daniel caused two dams to burst in the coastal city of Derna, some 1,300 kilometres (800 miles) east of the capital Tripoli.

This led to flooding that killed nearly 4,000 people, left thousands missing and displaced more than 40,000 others, according to the United Nations.The tragedy sent shockwaves across the oil-rich North African country, casting a harsh light on Libya’s crumbling infrastructure and the dysfunction among its divided rulers, and sparking angry demands for accountability.

Libya is still grappling with the aftermath of the armed conflict and political chaos that followed the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that toppled long-time dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

The country is now divided between an internationally recognised Tripoli-based government in the west, led by interim Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah, and a rival administration in the east backed by Haftar.

Derna, once home to around 120,000 inhabitants, has become a vast construction site, where homes, schools, roads and bridges are being rebuilt.

But the massive reconstruction effort is underway without any oversight from the authorities in Tripoli.

‘Blank cheque’: In February, the speaker of the eastern administration’s parliament, Aguila Saleh, announced the creation of a reconstruction fund headed by Belgacem Haftar, one of the strongman’s six sons.

By doing that, parliament gave Haftar a “financial carte blanche” worth 10 billion dinars ($2.1 billion), said Libya analyst Anas El Gomati.

“It’s a blank cheque with zero oversight,” added Gomati who heads the Sadeq Institute think-tank.

Reconstruction should be supervised by UN agencies and local elected officials who “would prioritise needs, merit and anti-corruption measures”, he said.

Instead, it is being carried out by “an impenetrable institution where billions vanish”, said Gomati.

The Haftars are “not rebuilding Derna, they are building their political launch pads”, said the analyst.

“Every brick laid in Derna is a stepping stone in their succession plan,” he added, referring to Haftar’s children.

Belgacem Haftar is the figurehead of Derna’s reconstruction, and unlike his brothers Saddam and Khaled, he holds no military role. He could use his position to “establish political standing at the national and international level”, said Jalel Harchaoui, a Libya expert at the Britain-based Royal United Services Institute.

And as a whole, the Haftars could use their political clout to show that the UN-recognised government in Tripoli is “ineffective and superfluous”, he added.

‘Minimise culpability’: On Thursday, during a visit to the south, Belgacem Haftar claimed that 70 percent of reconstruction projects in Derna had been completed.

He said 3,500 homes have been rebuilt, while maintenance work had been done on the city’s power grid and in schools.

Authorities say they have also made some progress in judicial cases against those responsible for the disaster.

In late July, 12 unnamed civil servants were given prison sentences of between nine and 27 years for their roles in managing the collapsed dams.