Libya’s government regains control of western Libya

FOR OVERUNGNAGNALNAGNALNAGNAGNAUAELNA a year the -backed Government of National Accord () in Libya had been under siege by the forces of Khalifa Haftar, a renegade general. Then, all of sudden, it wasn’t. On June 3rd militias aligned with the pushed General Haftar’s self-styled Libyan National Army () out of Tripoli’s international airport. The next day they took back Tarhouna, a city 90km to the south-east (see map). By June 7th the oilfields in Sharara were back in the ’s hands—and pumping for the first time since January. The militias are now fighting the in Sirte, the gateway to General Haftar’s heartland in the east. Fight “for the whole of the homeland”, says Fayez al-Serraj, the ’s prime minister.Mr Serraj, however, is not calling the shots. Drawn by Africa’s largest oil reserves and over 1,700km of Mediterranean coastline, foreign armies have piled into Libya. A surge of support from Turkey beginning in December saved Mr Serraj. It now determines how far the advances. Russia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates () have long backed the and are trying to shore up its hold on the east. After six years of civil war, the division of Libya into a Turkish zone of influence in the west and a Russian zone in the east—in other words, de facto partition—looks increasingly likely. “We’re heading towards a frozen conflict,” says a diplomat in Tripoli.