The killing of one of eastern Libya’s most senior intelligence officers has exposed vulnerabilities at the heart of Khalifa Haftar’s security apparatus, just as international efforts to reunify the country appear to be gaining momentum. Major General Fawzi al-Mansouri, head of military intelligence for the eastern-based Libyan National Army (LNA), was killed late on Monday, 10 August, when an explosive device attached to his vehicle detonated in Benghazi. He had just left evening prayers at a mosque in the Sayyida Aisha quarter of the al-Hawari district. No one else was killed. Nearly a week later, no group has claimed responsibility, and no credible evidence has emerged publicly identifying those behind the attack. Haftar appointed al-Mansouri director of military intelligence on 20 May 2024. Before that, he had spent almost three years commanding the Sabha military zone, a strategically important area in Libya’s southern desert. The region borders Chad, Niger and Sudan and lies at th...
Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed a collective-defence treaty on 7 August. Long before the ink was dry, all three were already backing the same side in Africa’s largest war — against another Gulf power. When Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Shehbaz Sharif signed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement on 7 August, its collective-defence provisions were framed around attacks on the three signatories. Yet on the very same day, analysts were tracing Pakistani weapons in the hands of Sudan’s army. In that sense, the new alliance does not need to wait for its first conflict. Its members are already deeply entangled in one. Sudan, now in the fourth year of a devastating civil war, has emerged as one of the clearest arenas of competition between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have all aligned themselves, to varying degrees, with General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan’s Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). On the other side, the United Arab Emirates has been...