The military strongman in the east of divided Libya, Khalifa Haftar, has named one of his sons as army chief, tightening his family’s grip on the oil-rich region.
Saddam Haftar is the third of the field marshal’s six sons to assume a key post, and experts see it as a sign the 81-year-old patriarch is preparing for his succession.

They also warn this entrenches the division of the North African country that has been rocked by chaos since the 2011 overthrow of dictator Moamer Kadhafi in a NATO-backed uprising.
Energy-rich Libya is split between a United Nations-recognised government in the capital Tripoli in the west and the Haftar-backed rival administration that rules from Benghazi and Tobruk in the east.
Presidential elections that had aimed to unify the fractured country were scheduled for late 2021 but then postponed indefinitely.

In early June, the strongman’s youngest son, General Saddam Haftar, 33, took over as chief of staff of the land forces within Haftar’s self-proclaimed Libyan Arab Armed Forces.
Saddam’s older brother Khaled was named last July as chief of staff of “security units” within the LAAF.
And in February, another son, Belgacem, took the helm of a newly created development and reconstruction fund. The appointments continue “what has been from the beginning a private and family army as Haftar bolstered his power”, said Wolfram Lacher of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.