Libya’s revolution in 2011 was relatively simple to understand. It was the dictator and his supporters on one side against all the rest. Three years down the line, it’s not so clear who is fighting who anymore. Mark Micallef tries to make some sense of the latest chaotic fighting.

To begin getting some bearings on the latest escalation of violence across Libya it’s convenient to start from the confident launch of Operation Dignity in the eastern city of Benghazi on May 16.

Tired of the weakness shown by the central government and the “complicity” of the Libyan Congress in respect to the threat from Islamist extremists, retired general Khalifa Haftar vowed to rid the country of them, starting with the biggest threat, the Ansar al-Sharia (Partisans of Sharia).

The reality is that this tension has been bubbling ever since Gaddafi was eliminated

Long thought to have been a CIA asset in the US during his years in exile when Muammar Gaddafi was in power, Haftar is not trusted by most average Libyans, but many of them share his concern over the growing assertiveness of groups like Ansar al-Sharia (Partisans of Sharia), particularly in the east.

In the west of the country, the split between Islamists and liberals is broadly represented by the armed brigades attached to the coastal town of Misurata, which is aligned to the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Zintan militia, respectively.

Last month, they brought the fight to Tripoli with the catastrophic battle for the airport, which saw planes and facilities, worth hundreds of millions of euros, literally blown up in smoke in a reckless battle with rockets.

But while Haftar’s campaign can be said to have escalated the rivalry between these two camps, the reality is that this tension has been bubbling ever since Gaddafi was eliminated.

With a weak government trying to assert itself in the institutional desert of post-Gaddafi Libya, and the country awash with weapons from the 2011 conflict, armed militias formed an alternate state in which they provided security to different political patrons and tribal interests without pledging any loyalty to a wider notion of a fledgling Libyan state.

And this does not take into account a proliferation of criminal gangs with no particular political motive, some of them made up of ex-convicts released, no questions asked, in the fog of war.

In the following list, we try to represent the main players involved in the fighting.

Islamists

Misrutan militia

• The Misurata brigades are the most feared armed grouping of the country. During the revolution, they withstood one of the fiercest sieges seen in the conflict.

It took six months but eventually, with the help of Nato airstrikes, the Gaddafi forces were overwhelmed.

As a result of their role in the revolution, however, they have among the best equipped armies.

They form part of Libya Shield and have focused their struggle to defend Congress with their fight against the Zintanis in Tripoli.

Some brigades within the Militia, however, have been unwilling to get involved in the ongoing conflict and have remained stationed in Misurata.

Ansar al-Sharia

• Ansar al-Sharia, believed to be allied with Al-Qaeda, is without question considered to be the most dangerous armed group operating in Libya at the moment.

It advocates the implementation of strict Sharia law and has been blamed for the attack on the US Benghazi consulate in 2012, in which its ambassador Chris Stevens was killed.

The group was also held responsible for a string of kidnappings and murders of prominent Libyan figures and even suicide bombings – a tactic previously alien to Libyan culture.

Last week, it announced that it had seized control of Benghazi after overwhelming a special forces compound. It declared the establishment of an Islamic state a month after the jihadist militant group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) announced the establishment of a Caliphate over their territory.

Libyan Revolutionary Operations Room

• In 2013, an alliance of pro-Congress militias was formed under the name of Libya Shield. They believe themselves to be the true representatives of the revolution and guardians of the right to free representation.

The Libyan Revolutionary Operations Room is the head of this alliance.

The group was responsible for the brief kidnap of former Prime Minister Ali Zeidan, who in turn accused sitting Muslim Brotherhood congressmen of having ordered the abduction.

The group has been opposing General Haftar’s offensive. It attacked with rockets the headquarters of the air force in Tripoli on the same day the air force declared allegiance to Operation Dignity.

Anti-Islamist

Khalifa Haftar’s National Army

• The National Army is the armed group led by retired General Khalifa Haftar. It is not the country’s regular army.

Haftar was by Muammar Gaddafi’s side in the coup of 1969 that overthrew King Idris. However, the two fell out after Haftar and his men were captured and made prisoners of war in 1987 during the war between Libya and Chad.

Gaddafi repudiated the men and abandoned them. The General eventually wound up in the US with some of his soldiers.

In 2011, a group of fighters involved in the Chad war regrouped under Haftar’s command and joined the struggle against Gaddafi.

The National Army is a non-Islamist, largely professional army.

Haftar launched his Operation Dignity on May 16, with an accusatory finger pointed at the first Congress which he blames for funding Islamists. A new Congress was formed, following elections in June. It met for the first time in Toubruk on Saturday. It has been boycotted by Islamists, who claim electoral fraud.

In the past weeks, his group swallowed most of the fighters from Libya’s regular army as well as other militias in the east but it still seems to have got a battering by Ansar al-Sharia.

This group declared it had seized control of Benghazi last week and declared the establishment of a Caliphate there. However, the extent of their control still has to be ascertained. Thousands marched in protest in downtown Benghazi on Friday following Ansar al-Sharia’s announcement.

Libya’s regular forces

• One of the country’s problems since the revolution has been to recruit soldiers to populate the country’s army and air force.

The regular army fought on both sides during the revolution, although those stationed in the east, where Haftar is based, were among the first to defect to the rebel side.

When Haftar launched his Operation Dignity, many defected giving him access to the special units and crucially, the air force, which was used to bomb the Islamists in the first weeks of the battle. However, their main opponent Ansar-al-Sharia now appears to have overwhelmed the Saiuqua special forces brigade and literally flattened their headquarters with bulldozers.

Zintan Militia

• Zintan’s brigades were among the first to reach Tripoli on August 24, 2011, giving them the upper hand on other armed groups that followed.

They are originally from the Nafusa mountains nearly 150 kilometres southwest of Tripoli, which suffered oppression during the Gaddafi years.

However, they maintained a strong base in Tripoli and control of strategic roads and the airport until they came under attack from the Misuratis last month. They can normally be recognised by the fact that they wear army uniforms.

They have fought the Muslim Brotherhood and were responsible for the attack on Congress in Tripoli after Operation Dignity in Benghazi.