The Sentry
Haftar’s Southwest Grab: A Hub
of Convergence
Armed groups affiliated with Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, mainly Saddam Haftar’s forces, exploit their control over strategic checkpoints and petrol stations across southwest Libya. They oversee the diver sion of subsidized fuel into a parallel market that extends into the neighboring countries of Niger, Chad, and Sudan. Imperfect rule over greater Sabha Since 2021, Saddam Haftar has been increasing his control over the security sector in the Sabha area and, with it, the fuel smuggling operations in southwestern Libya.
Prior to that time, Sabha, a city of 130,000 and southwestern Libya’s largest, harbored a disparate array of armed actors: some nominally pro-Haftar yet operating with autonomy from Benghazi’s general command, others openly hostile to the Haftar family’s dominance. This fractured makeup, rife with ten sion and petty criminality, made Sabha difficult to govern. Various armed groups stubbornly guarded their illicit revenues and resisted the Haftar family’s attempts to assert supremacy in the city.
Following the seizure by rival forces of a large cannabis shipment in spring 2021, Saddam Haftar stepped up his military assertiveness, dispatching personnel, armed vehicles, and equipment to the Sabha area from Benghazi and Ajdabiya. He used his main armed force, Brigade Tareq bin Ziyad, led by Brak al-Shatti native Omar Mrajae al-Maqarhi, to either subdue or co-opt local groups.
On the economic front, Saddam also used the National Development Apparatus, a recon struction agency under his tacit control, to oversee infrastructure projects, agricultural initiatives, and other endeavors. Until it was dismantled in early 2025, the LAAF’s Brigade 128 also played a major role in projecting the Haftars’ influence in the southwestern province, notably in Qatrun, Awbari, and Ghat.
As the LAAF has strengthened its security presence in southwestern Libya, it has come to control almost all fuel flows entering Libya’s southwest province, whether from the northwestern or northeastern coast. This consolidation has enabled the LAAF to dominate most fuel smuggling operations in the southwest ern province. To further capitalize on this control and increase the amount of fuel diverted into the parallel market, the LAAF issues QR codes, which limit each civilian’s vehicle to one tank refill every five days, and it restricts petrol stations’ opening hours. Thanks to this system, most tanker trucks appear to be delivering their cargo at genuine petrol stations, while legitimate buyers are indirectly prevented by the LAAF from accessing fuel from official outlets. As a result, most of the fuel intended for legal sale is in fact diverted to southwestern Libya’s parallel market at inflated prices.
The Umm al-Aranib municipality serves as the main transit point for fuel heading south through the greater Sabha area. In the town and its surroundings, checkpoints manned by LAAF units regulate the flow of millions of liters of fuel each day, fuel that travels along both official roads and sand tracks toward northern Niger and Kouri Bougoudi in northwestern Chad, a bustling gold-mining hub. Once near the border, the fuel typically sells for $1.20 to $2.40 per liter, and sometimes for even more.
Most of the profit from this wide margin goes to the LAAF. The Umm al-Aranib area, along with locations further south such as the strategic city of Qatrun near Chad’s border, is dominated by the Tubu community. In recent years — especially since 2020 — the Haftar family has shifted from an openly hostile stance to more pragmatic arrangements with this non-Ar ab community. Some of the Tubu’s local armed units have joined Khaled Haftar’s Security Units division within the LAAF, while others operate under a protection economy logic.
In exchange for allowing fuel convoys to pass safely through their territory, Tubu-majority militias capture a share of the sizable profits that the LAAF derives from facilitating the sale of Libya’s subsidized fuel at much higher prices abroad. Aside from Niger and Chad, some fuel leaving the greater Sabha area heads for Darfur via Chad’s northeastern corner, traveling yet another corridor protected by local militias working closely with the LAAF.
The Northwest’s Disingenuous Efforts
Against Smuggling
In addition to illicit maritime exports, northwestern Libya sends large volumes of fuel from the coast to the southwest, with a significant portion of fuel handled by Saddam Haftar’s brigades in charge of the southwest province. Haftar’s forces and other LAAF brigades then pass those deliveries of fuel into Niger, Chad, and Sudan, capturing a profit in the process. Some of the northwestern Libya actors en gaging in the illegal trade, such as Brigade 111, are directly linked to Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dabaiba, who has taken no genuine action to curtail their activities.
The northwestern quadrant of Libya, the most diverse province of Libya and home to more than two thirds of the country’s population, features a deeply ingrained web of smuggling routes linking it to Tunisia, southwestern Libya, and northern Mediterranean countries, including EU member states Malta and Italy. Faced with a reality in which distinct groups control their own territories and revenue streams through well-entrenched networks with deep social roots, Dabaiba and his government have been re luctant to engage in protracted confrontations in the northwestern cities of Zawiyah and Zuwarah.
Along the coast west of Tripoli, Dabaiba has disrupted smuggling networks on several occasions but has con sistently backed off before open conflict. Along the coast east of Tripoli, an area that includes Zliten, Khums, Misrata, and Abu Qrain, where local Dabaiba allies are strong, ever fewer measures have been taken against smuggling. In fact, in Misrata and its surroundings, the attitude of the Tripoli government is best described as active complicity. Northwestern Libya’s fuel smuggling operations differ from those overseen by the LAAF in the east and south. In the northwest, no single faction possesses the capacity to impose itself as a near-hege mon — unlike in the east and south, where the Haftar family dominates.
Leveraging their quasi-monopo ly on the use of force, the Haftars devote substantial resources to protecting, regulating, and overseeing both legitimate and illicit fuel supply chains across the vast territories under their purview. In contrast, the area stretching from Tripoli’s western outskirts to the Tunisian border is home to multiple rival armed factions. Yet, despite the absence of a dominant party capable of policing the area, these actors essentially cooperate to maintain revenue streams from illicit activities. This seemingly paradoxi cal cohabitation among rival groups underlines a classic protection economy model in which smuggling thrives despite tribal differences and socio-political enmities.
Zawiyah: No Cop on the Beat
When it comes to fuel, Zawiyah — a fractious tribal city of around 250,000 inhabitants located about 45 kilometers west of the capital — serves as the main distribution hub for both the surrounding area and more distant parts of the country. Inaugurated in 1974, the city’s energy complex houses a large refinery and, more significantly, a maritime terminal that receives more than a billion dollars’ worth of imported fuel each year.
Since 2013, a local armed group leader named Mohammed Koshlaf has exercised de facto control over the Zawiyah energy complex, even obtaining official recognition as head of a Petroleum Facilities Guard unit under Libya’s Defense Ministry. Despite being under international sanctions since 2018 for human smuggling, Koshlaf has, without interruption, maintained a tight grip on the inner workings of this strategic site. Thanks to his position, Koshlaf maximizes the throughput of subsidized fuel by selling it at prices above the official rate, capturing a modest margin that is multiplied by large volumes.
In practical terms, he delegates most of the distribution logistics and related security problems to an array of smaller smugglers, as well as to private distribution companies willing to participate in the illicit fuel market under rules largely established by Koshlaf and his associates. Although official records list roughly 750 petrol stations between western Tripoli and the Tunisian border, only around 300 can be physically verified, and of those, fewer than 200 are operational. In other words, the vast majority of these stations exist solely on paper; they provide a veneer of legitimacy to justify much larger allocations of subsidized fuel by Brega Petroleum for so-called “local” consump tion.
From an accounting perspective, Brega Petroleum appears as though it is supplying legitimate outlets, when in reality, most of the fuel leaving Zawiyah’s energy complex is diverted to black markets rather than reaching bona fide pumps. From Zawiyah’s refinery, some smugglers move fuel westward, primarily to the coastal city of Zuwarah, an Amazigh municipality near the Tunisian border. In Zuwarah, actors connected to the city’s military council export the diverted fuel by land or load it onto vessels, which typically carry between 400,000 and 750,000 liters, to be shipped toward the northern Mediterranean.
Other actors transport fuel from Zawiyah’s energy complex into southwestern Libya — an inland journey that is complicated by fragmented territories and communities that are socially or politically opposed to one another. As a result, truck drivers sometimes must hand off their cargo mid-route if they belong to the “wrong” community for a particular stretch of territory, entrusting it to another driver for the next section. Every checkpoint requires payment to the militia or authority dominating that pocket of land.
These additional costs accumulate, pushing the final sale price higher by the time the fuel reaches southwestern Libya. Plus, drivers receive an extra bonus when the requested itinerary involves a clear deviation from official channels. Compared to makeshift transporters, the four authorized distribution companies enjoy added protection for their trucks, making their official convoys somewhat less vulnerable to extortion and checkpoint fees as they pass through rival-held zones.
Misrata Joint Force:
The PM’s protégé Misrata, a wealthy merchant city endowed with a major port, a free trade zone, and a vital fuel entry point, has long ensured the stable and sufficient distribution of fuel to itself and to neighboring cities such as Zliten and Khums. This stability has traditionally prevented major fuel shortages or disrup tions, creating an environment relatively free from fuel smuggling networks.
The situation worsened in 2021 when the Joint Force, a local brigade that had participated in Misrata’s 2016 war on the Islamic State in nearby Sirte, aligned itself with the newly appointed prime minister. When Dabaiba assumed office in March 2021, he struck a deal with Joint Force leader Omar Bug hdada, providing the armed group with access to Defense Ministry funds, equipment, and recognition. Empowered by its new status, the Joint Force assumed key security responsibilities in Tripoli, including guarding significant state facilities.
The alliance between Dabaiba and the Joint Force enabled the brigade to assert control over parts of Misrata’s airport and maritime port. Under the implicit protection of Dabaiba, the brigade expanded its involvement in illicit activities, including fuel smuggling. Joint Force smuggling ops The Joint Force and the smugglers that it protects acquire fuel from specific petrol stations near Misrata. The Joint Force network also purchases fuel from petrol stations in neighboring cities like Zliten, Khums, and Tawergha. To move this fuel, Joint Force members, often serving as fuel truck drivers, use their military identification to bypass checkpoints.
The Joint Force runs fuel smuggling operations through the Misrata Free Trade Zone and the port of Khums using several tactics: manipulating shipping documents, using hidden tank capacity, concealing fuel in regular cargo containers, and conducting nighttime offshore transfers between large and small vessels. Their control over the free trade zone enables them to manipulate documents to mask these activities. While fuel is officially documented for distribution to Zliten, Khums, and Tawergha, the Joint Force diverts much of it via tanker trucks to the Jufrah area through Abu Qrain and, to a lesser extent, to Shwayref via Bani Walid.
Once in these areas, the product is transferred further south by Haftar-aligned actors, including through official distribution networks. Collaboration with Haftar’s armed coalition, particularly in the Shwayref area, is a critical element in the transfer of fuel from Misrata to the south. However, the fluctuating state of relations between actors affects the fluidity and volume of fuel smuggling operations. When relations are strained, coordination weakens, leading to disruptions in these illicit activities.
An aura of legitimacy
Separate from fuel, the Joint Force has been suspected of facilitating the transit of illicit gold from sub-Saharan Africa through Misrata to destinations abroad, mainly Turkey, as well as permitting Ira nian vessels to access Misrata’s port for various illicit activities, including arms trafficking. Because Misrata seeks a reputation for legitimate commerce, some of the city’s business magnates resent the Dabaiba family. Yet Bughdada remains politically and technically shielded by Dabaiba, who pre serves a tight partnership with the Joint Force, lending it an aura of legitimacy despite scandals such as the May 2024 gold trafficking affair that pitted the Joint Force against the Attorney General’s Office.
The Joint Force is also present in Tripoli, where it has been securing the NOC’s headquarters since July 2022, when Dabaiba ordered it to expel then-chairman Mustafa Sanallah and install Haftar ally Farhat Benqdara. Though Benqdara was removed in January 2025, the Joint Force still controls the NOC’s security, thus retaining leverage over the oil and gas sector.
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The Source: INSIDE JOB: Libya’s Fuel Smuggling Escalation by the Sentry (November 2025)
