For his part, Haftar — a U.S. citizen and an allegedly CIA-trained estranged Gaddafi ally supported by an alliance of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt as well as Russia — has made little secret of the modern French weaponry he has acquired despite a U.N. arms embargo.

Some of his followers are not exactly the secular warriors that Paris might wish.

“Aside from a military core, the motley forces that Haftar oversees are comprised of tribal militias, hard-line Salafists linked to Saudi Arabia, Sudanese rebels and one commander wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes,” said Mary Fitzgerald, a researcher on Libya.

That hasn’t stopped France from giving him a leg up politically.

One of President Emmanuel Macron’s first high-profile diplomatic initiatives upon winning office in 2017 was to invite Haftar and Sarraj to a chateau outside Paris to try to broker a power-sharing deal. He didn’t bother to involve the Italians. After all, this was part of a blitz of summitry to show that France was back on the international stage.

Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, who in his previous role as minister of defense was the architect of the "back Haftar" strategy, at odds with foreign ministry experts, seems to have convinced the young president that Libya is low-hanging fruit.

Here was an opportunity to demonstrate Macron’s skills in a country where his predecessor-but-one, Nicolas Sarkozy, had tarnished his reputation by cozying up to Gaddafi, then leading the air campaign to overthrow him in the name of “humanitarian intervention.”

“Macron was misadvised into thinking that Libya could be a quick win for his charisma,” said Tarek Megerisi, a Libyan researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “He underestimated the complexity of the country. It was half naiveté, half opportunism. He tried to rely on military personnel to solve a political problem.”

Italian officials insist they understand Libya’s complex social dynamics better and contend that Haftar will not be able to command the loyalty of the Toubou and Touareg tribes that dominate southern Libya or the multiple localized factions in the northwest of the country.

Critics of France say potential “winnings” in reconstruction contracts and increased business for oil major Total provide one motive for its Libya policy. Haftar, who controls eastern Libya from his stronghold outside Benghazi, grabbed key oilfields operated by Italy’s Eni in the south earlier this year before turning his guns on the capital.

A senior French figure familiar with government policy said support for Haftar is partly driven by the imperative of stanching the supply of arms and funds to jihadist groups threatening fragile governments in Niger, Chad and Mali, which are backed by France’s Operation Barkhane.

But the French official said Paris’ love for the Libyan strongman is far more about strategic alliances across the wider Middle East than commercial considerations. Paris is aligned with the Emirati, Saudi and Egyptian rulers, to whom it has sold billions in weapons, against a looser alliance of Qatar, Turkey and the transnational Muslim Brotherhood movement that briefly governed Egypt before being ousted in a military coup in 2013.

French policymakers connect this regional struggle with their fight against Islamist insurgency in the Sahara-Sahel belt and terrorism at home, their No. 1 national security priority, especially since the November 2015 Paris attacks that killed 130 people.

After the instability unleashed by the Arab Spring uprisings, the dominant view in government circles in Paris is that strongman solutions are the only way to keep a lid on Islamist militancy and mass migration, and tant pis (tough luck) for human rights and democracy.