Archive - August 2025

Fatih Mehmet Küçük

Türkiye strives for a ‘United and Single Libya’ through military, political and diplomatic support

The Second Libyan Civil War, which began in 2014 and lasted for approximately six and a half years, involved a power struggle that divided the country into two main axes. On one side is the U.N.-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA), based in Tripoli, while on the other is the House of Representatives (HoR) in the east, backed by the Libyan National Army (LNA) led by putschist Gen. Khalifa Haftar.

This internal conflict in Libya quickly turned into an international proxy war. Haftar’s forces received significant military and financial support from countries such as Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Russia, France and Saudi Arabia. These countries have supported Haftar through air strikes, mercenaries (Wagner Group) and the supply of weapons and ammunition. In contrast, the GNA, which holds international legitimacy, has received political and military support from countries such as Türkiye, Qatar, Italy and, to a lesser extent, the United Kingdom.

The long-running war reached a new turning point in 2019 when Haftar launched a major offensive to capture the capital, Tripoli, but failed due to Turkish support. The failure of the offensive and increased international mediation efforts forced the parties to seek a cease-fire. With the permanent cease-fire approved on Oct. 23, 2020, widespread fighting in Libya effectively came to an end. However, this did not mean that peace had been established. The end of the war was the result of a stalemate, as neither side achieved absolute military victory. Therefore, the peace process froze the fighting on the military fronts, leaving the resolution of underlying disputes to a political transition process.

Although armed struggle gave way to different conflicts, small-scale clashes continued throughout the country. For example, the capital, Tripoli, was shaken on May 12, 2025, by the outbreak of fighting between two powerful armed groups affiliated with the Government of National Unity: the 444th Infantry Brigade and the Stability Support Agency (SSA).

Triggered by the assassination of an SSA commander, the clashes resulted in at least eight civilian deaths and more than 70 injuries before a cease-fire was declared on May 14. These clashes are a critical indicator that the nature of the “civil war” has undergone a significant shift. The primary conflict is no longer a clear confrontation between East and West. Instead, it has become a complex, unpredictable struggle for power and influence within each faction’s own territory.

The internationally recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) formally requested military support from Türkiye on Dec. 26, 2019. In response to this request, the Turkish Parliament approved a presidential decree on Jan. 2, 2020, authorizing the deployment of troops to Libya. This decree granted the President the authority to deploy the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) in Libya for a period of one year, which has been extended in subsequent years. In addition to sending Turkish troops to Libya, it is known that various products developed by the Turkish defense industry, primarily the Bayraktar TB2, are being used in Libya.

5+5 Joint Military Committee

Türkiye provides comprehensive support in the political and military fields to achieve the goal of a “United and Single Libya.” This support is carried out through military talks, technical delegation visits and naval activities.

A key aspect of the cooperation between Turkey and Libya is the 5+5 Joint Military Committee (JMC) talks. These meetings were held in Ankara in 2021 and 2024. In December 2021, during a meeting held by the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), steps that could be taken to promote peace and stability in Libya were discussed, and information was shared about the Action Plan announced in Geneva on Oct. 8, 2021.

Another meeting in November 2024 focused on additional steps to promote Libya’s peace, stability, and security. The talks emphasized the importance of Libya’s territorial integrity and national unity. Statements made by Libya indicated that Türkiye approached the matter not with a colonialist attitude, but with a friendly and supportive stance. These meetings confirmed both sides’ commitment to the goal of a “United and Single Libya.”

Agreement on intelligence sharing

The establishment of relations between Türkiye and Libya has not been limited to the military sphere. In this context, an agreement was signed in October 2024 to develop intelligence sharing and law enforcement cooperation. The agreement outlines cooperation in areas such as counterterrorism and the prevention of organized crime. The signed agreement establishes a secure communication channel for the real-time sharing of intelligence between Turkish and Libyan law enforcement agencies.

In addition, under the agreement, Türkiye commits to providing joint training programs and technical assistance to modernize Libya’s security infrastructure. In other words, Türkiye will provide logistical and technical support to Libyan law enforcement agencies to increase operational efficiency. Thus, in addition to efforts to restore Libya’s military stability, Türkiye is also working to ensure the country’s internal security.

Building contacts with LNA

In line with its determination to cooperate with all parties in Libya, Türkiye has also increased its contacts with the eastern-based Libyan National Army (LNA). In this context, on April 4, 2025, the son of Gen. Khalifa Haftar and Deputy Commander of the LNA, Col. Gen. Saddam Haftar, paid an official visit to Ankara to meet with Minister of National Defense Yaşar Güler. This visit was considered a “new, important strategic step” toward the goal of “ending the fratricidal conflict” and establishing a “United and Single Libya.”

During the visit, Hafter praised Türkiye’s operational experience, discipline and high technological capacity, emphasizing the competence of the TSK in border security. Following this visit, between June 15 and 28, 2025, three military technical delegations from eastern Libya conducted inspections at various military headquarters and training institutions in Türkiye.

Güler and Hafter also met at the IDEF 2025 Defense Industry Fair, where they continued their bilateral contacts. It is also worth noting that Saddam Hafter met Güler previously, when he attended the “Saha Expo 2024” International Defense and Space Fair, held on Oct. 22, 2024. In this regard, it is also possible to say that Libya is interested in Turkish defense industry products.

Turkish, Libyan navies side by side

Türkiye’s efforts to bring stability to Libya also continue by sea. In this context, the TCG Kınalıada corvette visited both the ports of Tripoli and Benghazi in August 2025. During the visit to the Port of Tripoli on Aug. 17-18, 2025, meetings were held with several high-level Libyan officials, including the Libyan minister of Defense, the chief of the general staff, and the commander of the navy. It is stated that these visits demonstrate Türkiye’s inclusive approach to its “One Libya” goal and its determination to develop relations with all Libyan officials.

In addition, the Turkish Naval Task Group operating off the coast of Libya conducted various training exercises with the Libyan Navy and students from the Libyan Naval Academy. Such training exercises are interpreted as another element supporting Türkiye’s efforts in the region.

Türkiye’s ambassador to Tripoli, Güven Begeç (2nd R), visited the TCG Kınalıada Corvette and met with naval commanders in Tripoli, Libya, Aug. 17, 2025. (AA Photo)

From support to partnership

Türkiye’s involvement in the Second Libyan Civil War has not only changed the course of the conflict but has also been a strategic move that reshaped the regional equation in the Eastern Mediterranean. The main motivations for the intervention can be summarized as Libya’s geopolitical and economic potential, as well as the prevention of policies that exclude Türkiye in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The most critical impact on the ground was the transformation of the conflict dynamics in favor of the GNA, as Turkish UAVs targeted Khalifa Haftar’s forces’ air superiority and logistical lines. This military success paved the way for Haftar’s defeat and a lasting cease-fire. In this context, Türkiye’s actions in Libya constitute an important case study demonstrating the impact of technological superiority on proxy forces in modern warfare.

Recently, Türkiye’s role in Libya has evolved from a military presence to an economic and political partnership. Military support has paved the way for a political solution, laying the groundwork necessary for Türkiye to maintain its economic and political influence in the long term. Although the political process in Libya remains uncertain, Türkiye’s steps reflect a multifaceted and determined foreign policy approach that integrates hard and soft power elements. This strategy supports Türkiye’s goal of increasing its power and influence in the region.

______________________

Hanaa Mohamed

According to the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), at least 60 people have been arbitrarily detained in the first half of 2024 alone.

For more than a year, Jumaa al-Darsi, 40, has scoured Benghazi and beyond for any trace of his brother, Libyan lawmaker Ibrahim al-Darsi, 47, who disappeared in Benghazi in 2024, after attending a military parade marking the tenth anniversary of “the Dignity Revolution,” the uprising led by Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, commander of the Tobruk-based Libyan National Army (LNA). 

Al-Darsi has knocked on doors and called in old favours. He has followed whispers and chased rumours. But every path has led to silence. His family still does not know why he was taken, or if he will ever come home. His brother’s disappearance is among the countless cases in Libya, where abductions have become a weapon against dissent, utilised by the rival factions and infighting militias that have carved up the country since 2011.

“We still cling to any hope of finding Ibrahim, but the security and human rights authorities aren’t cooperating with us on my brother’s case,” al-Darsi told The New Arab. “His situation remains unknown. We don’t know which entity or individuals kidnapped him or the reason behind it.”

According to the UN human rights office and United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), at least 60 people have been arbitrarily detained in the first half of 2024 alone for peacefully expressing their political views. The practice, entrenched under Muammar Gaddafi to muzzle critics, has endured even after his ouster through years of upheaval and division. 

Today, both the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity (GNU) and the eastern Government of National Stability (GNS), alongside their affiliated armed groups and militias, continue to detain opponents in secret locations, cutting them off from their families and denying them legal counsel. The UN has noted that “these unlawful practices have created a climate of fear, shrinking civic space, and eroding the rule of law.”

No safety in Libya

According to human rights activist Ahlam al-Warfali, the systematic violations committed by law enforcement and security agencies in detention centres and prisons in eastern and western Libya against activists, journalists, and human rights defenders constitute “crimes against humanity punishable under international law.”

“There’s no safety in Libya,” she said to TNA. “Everyone is vulnerable to kidnapping, torture, and sometimes killing, for refusing the presence of certain groups or publishing political posts criticising the current political landscape.” Media outlets and social media users had circulated photos and video footage reportedly of al-Darsi, showing him chained and stripped of his clothes in a secret prison in eastern Libya.

Al-Darsi refused to comment on the widely shared images, saying only: “My brother is still missing, and the security authorities aren’t providing us with any information about his condition or whereabouts.”

Most recently, the abduction of human rights activist Youssef al-Taweel in Misrata—seized from his workplace after he criticised Fathi Bashagha, the former interior minister in Fayez al-Sarraj’s Government of National Accord, the predecessor to the GNU, and a powerful militia leader who later rose to become prime minister under Libya’s Parliament in 2021—sent shockwaves through the city. “This confirms that Libya has neither freedom of opinion nor expression,” she added.

Security expert Mohamed al-Mahshash argues that impunity for perpetrators of these crimes increases the severity of these brutal acts, considering that security and executive agencies do not operate according to laws but according to orders and instructions they receive from dominating figures heads in either eastern or western Libya.

“These acts don’t only affect Libyans, activists, and journalists, but also foreigners, migrants, and asylum seekers, often committed out of revenge or to obtain confessions under duress, or based on political or ideological affiliation, despite repeated demands and calls for the necessity of putting an end to such operations,” he remarked. 

The Libyan watchdog Monitoring Crimes in Libya reported that in November, security forces linked to the GNU in Tripoli arrested more than 200 asylum seekers, mostly Sudanese and Nigerian nationals, among them women and children.

The organisation also held the GNU responsible for the wave of arbitrary arrests, pointing most recently to the case of Abdel Moneim Rajab al-Marimi, a 51-year-old activist and journalist who died from severe injuries after falling from the third floor of the Public Prosecutor’s office in Tripoli. He had been seized in Tripoli in July by armed men and handed over to the Internal Security Agency over his critical political and human rights views. 

Social media users have also circulated in August leaked footage showing the conditions inside prisons run by the Special Deterrence Forces, known as Rada, a hard-line Islamist paramilitary unit that controls Mitiga International Airport. The videos appear to reveal the violence and torture inflicted on detainees within the airport. The group is also accused of torturing and killing Sharaf al-Din Hamdan, who had been arbitrarily detained for more than 11 years without trial. 

Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah’s government ordered an assault on Rada in May, after the militia affiliated with the Presidential Council had expanded its grip over parts of Tripoli. The government also demanded the release of all detainees held in its prisons without legal justification. But after the recent cease-fire, their fate remains uncertain. 

In a 6 July interview, Dbeibah insisted that the inmates of Mitiga prison be referred to the Office of the Attorney General and that control of Mitiga International Airport be transferred to the Ministry of Transport.

Unknown fates

Women, girls, and female human rights activists and journalists face enforced and arbitrary disappearance and various forms of torture, violence, and assault in the absence of legal protection for women. 

Among them is Libyan lawmaker Siham Sergiwa, who has been missing for more than six years, and whose alleged leaked photos recently reignited debate about her unknown fate since her kidnapping. The circulated images showed a body believed to be MP Sergiwa after being assaulted and killed by forces affiliated with the LNA in Benghazi.

These leaks sparked condemnation from the Council of Elders and Notables of Misrata over what Sergiwa was subjected to after being taken from her home and tortured. 

Council member Khalifa Lamloum told TNA that this act was committed by gangs operating outside the law, executing authorities’ instructions without recourse to law, calling on the Attorney General and judicial authorities to “open an investigation into the leaked photos, verify their authenticity, and urgently hold those involved accountable.”

“If these acts go unpunished, they will only entrench impunity and reinforce the dominance of armed force and violence,” al-Warfali warned. 

“There are no reliable figures on the kidnapped, detained, or missing across Libya, and the victims range from activists and journalists to community elders, targeted for their political or tribal affiliation or simply for views critical of the authorities in both east and west. Many are even coerced into recording false confessions to crimes that may not exist,” al-Warfali concluded. 

______________________

Sema Kalaycioglu  

As of 2024, China has increased its interest in North Africa again and has started a comprehensive opening to the region, especially through Libya. Its approach based on the principle of political neutrality allows it to establish simultaneous relations with the Tobruk and Tripoli administrations. Within the framework of the Belt and Road Project, rail system, energy, infrastructure and port investments come to the fore, while high-cost initiatives such as the Benghazi Metro Project are a symbol of China’s return to Libya. …

Return to Libya

China’s interest in North Africa has increased again as of 2024. The Trump administration’s lack of focus on the region has paved the way for new initiatives for Beijing. With Libya, which needs support, meeting this interest, political and military contacts, especially economic projects, have started to revive since the spring of 2023. China’s Libya policy is based on the principle of political neutrality.

This approach offers the opportunity to establish simultaneous relations with the Tobruk and Tripoli administrations. Although it does not seem possible to achieve reconciliation between the two sides in the short term, it can contribute to the reduction of tensions through investments in housing, infrastructure, employment and industry.

In particular, the rail system investments to be initiated within the scope of the Belt and Road Project will not only strengthen the logistical ties between Tobruk and Tripoli, but will also enable regional integration for Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt, which has not been implemented for a long time. Thus, China will also gain access to new market opportunities.

Concrete project initiatives have been on the agenda under the umbrella of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum (CASCF) for the past year. China, which effectively used Libya’s influence on the African Union during the Gaddafi era, aims to revive this legacy by increasing its influence in Libya today. Although economic goals seem to be a priority in Beijing’s Libya policy, the political consequences cannot be ignored.

China’s orientation towards development projects simultaneously with Tobruk and Tripoli meets the common interest of different political groups within the country in the reconstruction processes. While this approach has the potential to reduce the influence of Western Europe in the region, it also carries the risk of the US-China rivalry moving to North Africa via Libya. In this context, it remains unclear whether Washington will turn to an intervention again.

Multiple Projects and Investment Areas

China is acting with a long-term strategy rather than taking unplanned steps in Libya. It has simultaneously submitted project proposals to central and local governments and diversified them. Within the framework of the Belt and Road Project, infrastructure investments, renewable energy initiatives, renewal of oil pipelines, increasing refinery capacities and port construction are prominent topics.

In eastern Libya, the Libyan Fund for Development and Reconstruction, established by Khalifa Haftar to rebuild the infrastructure destroyed by the floods, is trying to attract Chinese investments to the country. In this context, the Chinese BFI Consortium has put solar power plants, water treatment plants and railway line projects that will connect Benghazi to the city of Musaid on the border with Egypt on the agenda.

In addition, the Benghazi Metro Project, which is planned to be largely financed by China and whose cost is estimated to be 24-30 billion euros, draws attention. The implementation of the project in cooperation with China Railways International Group Company (CRI), Germany’s Siemens and Britain’s Arup International Engineering Company will be one of the first examples of China-Europe partnership in North Africa. In addition, housing and workplace projects in Derna and Benghazi have also come to the fore.

Security Dimension

For China, Libya is important not only economically but also geopolitically. It has a strategic location, especially in terms of being an alternative to the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) announced in 2023.

In this context, China has included Algeria and Tunisia in the scope of the Belt and Road Project. Excluding Turkey from IMEC may make it attractive for Ankara to support China’s expansion into North Africa. However, the fact that Turkey’s military presence in Libya remains relatively in the background makes the possibility in this direction uncertain.

China’s opening up to Africa is not limited to economic initiatives; The security dimension is also becoming more and more prominent. Beijing, which has developed military and security cooperation with more than 100 countries within the framework of the Global Security Initiative, carries out military training activities with Egypt, Algeria and Sudan. Although there is no clear agenda for direct arms sales yet, this possibility cannot be ruled out in the long term. The concretization of China-Libya military cooperation in the near future is not limited to Libya but can reshape the balances in North Africa.

_______________________

Faisal Edroos

National Security Adviser Ibrahim Dbeibah, a relative of Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, has quietly held talks with Israeli officials over deal that would see US release $30bn in frozen assets, sources say

A senior official in Libya’s internationally recognised government has held talks with Israeli officials over a proposal to resettle hundreds of thousands of Palestinians expelled from Gaza, multiple sources have told Middle East Eye.

Speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the issue, Libyan, Arab and European officials told MEE that National Security Adviser Ibrahim Dbeibah, a relative of Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, was spearheading the talks despite Palestinians in Gaza flatly rejecting US President Donald Trump’s postwar plan for the enclave.

One Libyan source said that “practical talks” had already taken place but the specifics were vague. “The mechanisms and implementation have not yet been spoken about,” the source said. Another Libyan source said that discussions were still ongoing and that members of the Tripoli-based parliament were deliberately being kept in the dark as pro-Palestine sentiment runs deep in the country.

The source said that in an attempt to placate some Libyan leaders, the US was prepared to confer economic support or other benefits in exchange for the country taking in Palestinians. The source said that Ibrahim Dbeibah had already received guarantees that the US Department of Treasury would release some $30bn in frozen state assets.

In May, separate sources had told MEE that Massad Boulos, an adviser to Trump and father-in-law to his daughter Tiffany, had held discussions with Ibrahim Dbeibah about unlocking billions of dollars in sanctioned frozen wealth funds.

The assets were frozen in early 2011 by former US President Barack Obama, several months before the Nato-backed ouster of Muammar Gaddafi. Boulos flatly denied that he was involved in talks over the resettlement of Palestinians, telling MEE that the reports were “inflammatory and totally false”.

However, White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly said that Trump had “long advocated for creative solutions to improve the lives of Palestinians, including allowing them to resettle in a new, beautiful location while Gaza rebuilds”.

Seeking legitimacy from the US

The idea of Libya serving as a possible new home for expelled Palestinians comes amid reports that Khalifa Haftar, a powerful military leader who also oversees a rival rubber-stamp parliament in the country’s east, was offered greater control over the country’s oil resources if he agreed to resettle hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

Haftar, who has played a seminal role in the widespread destruction and instability in Libya, as well as the ensuing civil war in neighbouring Sudan, has denied the reports. Meanwhile on Monday, hours after receiving a request for comment from MEE on the issue of resettling Palestinians, Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah said that his government would not engage in the “crime” of resettling Palestinians.

He reiterated a line from a statement by the US embassy in Tripoli in May which dismissed reports that Washington was pursuing a relocation plan for Palestinians in Libya. Israel has publicly mulled expelling Palestinians from Gaza and last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli officials were in contact with “several countries” about absorbing displaced civilians from the war-torn territory.

“I think this is the most natural thing,” Netanyahu said. “All those who are concerned for the Palestinians and say they want to help the Palestinians should open their doors to them. What are you preaching to us for? We’re not pushing them out – we’re enabling them to leave… first of all, [leaving] combat zones, and also the Strip itself, if they want to.”

Recently, Israel’s Agriculture Minister, Avi Dichter, singled out Libya as “the ideal destination” for Palestinians saying they would “happily leave” Gaza if the necessary international support was provided. “Libya is a huge country, with vast areas and a coastline similar to Gaza’s,” he said. “If the world invests billions to rehabilitate Gazans there, the host country will also benefit economically.”

Israeli officials have long advocated expelling Palestinians from Gaza and within a week of the 7 October attacks, Israel’s intelligence minister at the time, Gila Gamliel, presented the cabinet with her “voluntary migration plan” where she hoped 1.7 million Palestinians would leave the enclave. Forced displacement, as observed in Gaza, violates international humanitarian law, notably Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits the forcible transfer of protected persons by an occupying power. 

The European source told MEE that Dbeibeh and Haftar were “simultaneously negotiating with the Israelis” in the hope of getting “more legitimacy from the Americans”. The source said that if the resettlement plan was forcibly imposed on Libya, Palestinians would find themselves moving out of the frying pan and into the fire. “It will be catastrophic at multiple levels,” the source said. 

“Firstly, for the Palestinians themselves, who would have just about made it out of the Strip alive and escaped an obliterated life in Gaza, facing forced expulsion to a country like Libya which is in deeply complicated political turmoil with divided governments, where systems and society is broken by its civil war.”

“The Palestinians will not be getting any care from those governments, which will push them to the following catastrophe, [which] will lead to a new wave of migration towards the shores of Europe. And this is also a scary thought, firstly because the past decades have proven to us that many of them will only make it halfway through the Mediterranean, like many of those boats that capsized. And those that would eventually get to Europe, I do not think that Europe would be welcoming of another one million Arabs arriving at its shores, as the Syrians who just made similar journeys just few years ago.”

The Arab official, who was intimately aware of the latest talks, warned that complicity in Israel’s ethnic cleansing plan could provoke widespread anger across all of Libya. “This will be a shock to the Libyan people,” he said. Mohamed Mahfouz, a Libyan political analyst, echoed his remarks, telling MEE that the US was acutely aware that discussions around Libya resettling Palestinians could cause great distress for Libyan authorities.

“Accepting Palestinians could come at a high price for any of the parties that will engage with the United States on this matter. This in itself may explain why neither [Libyan] government is yet to normalise relations.”

Outreach to Africa

In recent weeks Israeli officials have publicly said, then later denied, reaching out to leaders from across Africa and Asia to use their territories as potential destinations for expelling Palestinians. Plans have been mooted for Palestinians to be resettled in Sudan, South Sudan and the breakaway region of Somalia known as Somaliland, despite all of the territories being plagued by violence.

Sudan has been gripped by intense violence since its civil war broke out in 2023, with an estimated 150,000 people killed in the past two years. South Sudan has struggled to recover from a civil war that broke out after independence, with more than seven million people facing food insecurity and at least 2.3 million children at risk of malnutrition.

Meanwhile, Somaliland continues to face threats from the armed group al-Shabab over the region’s memorandum of understanding with Ethiopia – one of the greatest enemies of the group. A Libyan political analyst, who requested anonymity due to fear of reprisal attacks by government-aligned militias, said that it was “unsurprising” that Ibrahim Dbeibah was leading the outreach efforts with Israel.

“[Ibrahim] Dbeibah, like the Libyan government, is marked by self-interest. He is well aware of the benefits of ingratiating himself with the US and Trump.” While Libya does not officially recognise Israel, the Tripoli-based government, known officially as the Government of National Unity (GNU), is known to have held several secret meetings with Israeli officials in recent years.

In 2023, Najla al-Mangoush, then foreign minister under Dbeibah, secretly met Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen in Italy. The revelation sparked outrage in Libya, resulting in angry protests and her suspension. In a later interview with Al Jazeera Arabic, Mangoush claimed she had attended the meeting on direct orders from Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, and that it was coordinated between his government and Israel.

Arabic Post later reported that Ibrahim Dbeibah had orchestrated the meeting, citing unnamed sources. 

Middle East Eye reached out to the prime minister’s office and the GNU for comment but did not receive a response by time of publication.

______________________

Hassuna Baishu

Under the scorching sun, Libyans wait in long lines at fuel stations, sometimes for hours or even days, just to buy a few liters for their cars or household generators.

Meanwhile, heavy oil tankers speed down highways toward ports, where smugglers load shipments bound for global markets.

Libya, one of the world’s major oil producers and home to Africa’s largest reserves, has seen generous subsidies turn fuel into a prime target for organized smuggling rather than a relief for its citizens.

Fuel smuggling drains an estimated $5 billion from Libya each year, according to the World Bank. More critically, revenues lost outside the state budget have become a key funding source for militias that control vital distribution routes, fueling the armed struggle for power.

In October 2024, a World Bank report noted that “southern Libyan regions repeatedly experience fuel shortages, with prices on the parallel market reaching 7 dinars per liter when available,” while the official price is less than 0.15 dinar.

“We cannot find fuel, and when it is available, it’s sold at higher prices because gas station owners trade it on the black market,” said Mohamed al-Sayyid, a resident of the southern city of Sabha.

With queues stretching outside the few stations that still open, many citizens return home with nearly empty tanks. Families, al-Sayyid explained, are forced to buy from smugglers at exorbitant prices to keep their cars and generators running — “while government subsidies remain only theoretical, with no tangible benefit for ordinary citizens in the south.”

The latest International Monetary Fund figures show Libya paid a steep price for energy subsidies in 2024, allocating $9 billion for fuel alone. The electricity sector — which uses part of that fuel — consumed several more billions.

“When the cost of domestically refined crude oil and natural gas used for power generation is added — estimated at $3.9 billion and $4 billion respectively — the total energy subsidy bill in 2024 reaches about $17 billion, or 35% of GDP,” the IMF said.

Sleepless Ships

On the eastern coast, Benghazi’s old port has become a hub of illicit trade, transformed into a complex center for organized fuel smuggling.

A 2024 United Nations expert report offered a stark picture of the port, controlled by the Libyan army. While Libyans live with chronic fuel shortages, large vessels remain busy, laden with smuggled oil.

The UN documented at least 137 smuggling operations between October 2022 and September 2024, involving 48 ships that called at the port more than 185 times. These were not small shipments: the average cargo per vessel rose from 5,700 tons to 9,970 tons of diesel, bringing the total smuggled volume to about 1.125 million tons.

The ships were often chartered or carried no clear registration, relying on forged or fictitious documents, the report said.

“Benghazi port now reflects a different equation: a strategic location that should support the national economy but has instead become a lifeline for fuel smuggling to foreign markets,” political analyst Ahmed al-Saadi told Alhurra.

Since May 2022, the National Oil Corporation has filed repeated complaints with the prosecutor general about fuel smuggling to Turkey, Spain, Malta and Italy via vessels such as the Queen Majeda, which was seized in Albania carrying shipments worth more than $2 million, al-Saadi added.

“The continuation of this pattern means the port operates with two faces: an official, public activity and another illegal one under the table, doubling state losses and adding pressure on citizens who stand daily in fuel queues.”

In western Libya, smuggling also flourishes through coastal towns such as Zuwara, Zawiya, Sabratha and Khoms.

A 2023 United Nations expert report documented several maritime smuggling cases and identified routes including Sidi Ali near the Tunisian border.

“The situation in Khoms, Zuwara, Zawiya and Sabratha reflects a recurring pattern,” al-Saadi said. “Fuel allocations meant for citizens are diverted through intermediaries to smugglers, who transport them by land toward Tunisia or by sea across the Mediterranean.”

Al-Saadi warned that these towns will remain hubs of the shadow economy — funding armed groups and undermining stability — unless strict oversight is imposed on distribution chains and ports.

Barter Deals: Fuel Outside the Budget

Until 2021, Libya’s central bank imposed a strict ceiling on fuel import allocations, leaving the National Oil Corporation (NOC) up against a financial wall each year.

“Often these allocations ran out before year’s end, and the bank refused the NOC’s requests for more, citing budget violations. This happened amid volatile oil production and low prices, causing liquidity crises and foreign currency shortages alongside rising domestic demand for fuel,” economist Mohamed al-Safi told Alhurra.

To cover the shortfall, the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity authorized the NOC to use a mechanism known as “barter,” exchanging crude oil with intermediaries for refined fuel delivered directly to Libya without cash payments.

“The barter system was fast and effective in supplying fuel, bypassing bureaucratic hurdles such as financial approvals and transfers,” al-Safi said. “But the fuel Libya obtained was not officially recorded in the state budget or accounts.”

“The absence of accurate data on quantities or value opened the door to a lack of transparency and corruption,” he added.

The Libyan Audit Bureau’s 2021 report noted that the National Oil Corporation “exported crude shipments without collecting revenues, instead swapping them for fuel outside the state budget without disclosing the process to the Ministry of Finance.”

The report also said the NOC delayed collecting taxes and royalties from foreign companies worth 10.4 billion dinars that should have been counted as 2021 revenue.

Warnings continued. In its 2023 report, the bureau revealed that spending on subsidized fuel purchases had more than doubled, rising from $2.9 billion (16 billion dinars) in 2021 to more than $7.6 billion (41 billion dinars) in 2023, justified as covering market demand and power plants.

In January 2025, the prosecutor general intervened, sending an official letter to the NOC demanding an end to the barter system. The mechanism was suspended after an agreement between the central bank, the Audit Bureau and the NOC, which created a committee to review all crude-for-fuel transactions during 2024.

War on the Western Coast

Along Libya’s western coast, a silent, undeclared war has raged since mid-2023. Using Turkish drones, forces aligned with the Tripoli government have launched repeated airstrikes on suspected fuel smuggling and storage sites, particularly in Zawiya, home to the country’s largest refinery and a key export port.

The most recent strike took place in August 2025. But images and videos posted by activists on social media showed some raids hitting not only alleged smuggling dens but also residential neighborhoods and civilian facilities. With Tripoli remaining silent, suspicions grew over the campaign’s motives. Observers described it as politically driven, aimed at eliminating militias believed to be loyal to the eastern-based Libyan National Army.

“The airstrikes on smuggling hideouts deterred some armed groups, but they weren’t enough,” political analyst Ibrahim Belqasim told Alhurra.

“There is selectivity in these campaigns. They target groups opposed to Prime Minister Dbeibah’s government, while pro-government militias receive clear military and logistical support, including uniforms, weapons and training,” Belqasim added.

He linked this selectivity to the absence of army and security institutions in western Libya since Abdulhamid Dbeibah came to power, fueling militia dominance in cities such as Zawiya.

Jalal al-Haroushi, a Libya expert at the Royal United Services Institute, was even more skeptical. He argued the campaign lacked credibility from the outset because armed groups were notified in advance of strike times.

Writing on X, al-Haroushi added that Zawiya refinery has been under the control of Dbeibah’s political rivals, the Awlad Bu Hamira tribe, since 2013 — making the strikes less about combating smuggling and more about local power struggles.

Subsidy Reform: Shock or

Gradual Change?

At the start of 2024, talk of lifting Libya’s fuel subsidies moved from rumor to public declaration.

Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah presented the step as necessary to “stop smuggling losses” and stabilize the market. He sought to reassure citizens with three proposed compensation mechanisms: direct cash payments, salary increases, or fuel cards with limited subsidized amounts.

In the east, the position was similar despite political divisions. Parliament-appointed Prime Minister Osama Hammad’s government endorsed ending subsidies but gave no clear timetable.

Public protests and political criticism, however, were swift. In Tripoli, Benghazi and even smaller towns, fear of rising prices dominated daily discussions.

Economists argue that any subsidy reform in Libya must be gradual, paired with compensation for low-income groups and tighter controls on borders and ports to curb smuggling. Others contend a “shock” approach would be more effective for security, swiftly cutting off smuggling networks.

“Gradual subsidy removal has economic benefits. Studies show the inflation from a one-year shock equals the inflation from gradual removal over five years. Gradualism allows citizens to diversify income and adapt to inflation, while shock may push them below the poverty line,” economist Mohamed al-Safi explained.

“The shock method, however, has security advantages, as some politicians argue. It cuts off legal profiteers from subsidies and contains street anger that could pressure the government to back down. But Libya needs a study to determine which option is best,” he said.

Caught between sacrificing the familiar and risking the unknown, Libyans fear the reforms may be a false mask hiding deeper deterioration in living conditions. They face a stark choice: accept a decision that could curb corruption draining the country’s wealth but add a heavy economic burden amid weak guarantees — or remain trapped in a cycle of crises fueled by smuggling networks, with cheap fuel continuing to drive an endless national crisis.

***

Hassuna Baishu – Libyan journalist based in Washington with over a decade of experience in strategic communications and media work across the United States, the Middle East, and North Africa. He has worked with international and media organizations including Voice of America, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN), and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), focusing on Libya and regional politics.

______________________

Mohammed Amin

In June, the Rapid Support Forces captured Sudan’s wild border frontier with Libya and Egypt. This is how they did it.

On 10 June, Ismail Hassan, an artisanal gold miner and trader in the triangle border region that straddles Sudan, Egypt and Libya, watched as more than 250 fully equipped military vehicles entered his local market, al-Katma. The vehicles carried fighters from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the Sudanese paramilitary group that has been at war with Sudan’s army since April 2023, alongside a host of Libyan mercenary groups connected to the eastern military commander Khalifa Haftar.  

“The RSF and Libyan forces entered the area and advanced into the market, declaring control of the region,” Hassan told Middle East Eye, referring to the Sudanese part of the triangle.  The Libyans then moved out, Hassan said, leaving the RSF to loot the area’s markets, making off with gold, money, cars, mobile phones and much more. 

Hassan was one of many miners who fled the area following the attack, before speaking exclusively about it to MEE over the phone.  The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and their allied Joint Forces militia were forced to leave in the wake of the RSF-led attack. Two days later, on 12 June, the RSF announced that it successfully taken “control of the strategic Almuthallath ‘triangle’ area, which constitutes a pivotal junction between Sudan, Libya and Egypt”. 

As the army has taken Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, and made inroads in other parts of central Sudan, the takeover of the Sudanese part of the border triangle region has cemented the RSF’s hold on western Sudan, where it holds almost all of Darfur. According to satellite imagery, flight tracking data seen by MEE, and interviews with gold miners and other eyewitnesses, this success in the wild, lawless border regions would not have been possible without Haftar’s Libyan forces and the patronage of the United Arab Emirates and Russia. 

The involvement of the UAE has brought Abu Dhabi into further conflict with Egypt, which has tried – and so far failed – to mediate better relations between Haftar and Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of the Sudanese Armed Forces. At the beginning of July, MEE revealed a secret meeting hosted by Egypt between the Sudanese general and the Libyan commander, both of whom are its allies. The meeting did not go well.

RSF attack

Key to the RSF’s capture of the Sudanese part of the triangle region was Subul al-Salam, a Libyan militia affiliated with Haftar’s forces. A cousin of Hassan, who works with him as a gold miner and trader, told MEE that forces from Subul al-Salam “helped the RSF until it reached the market and controlled the entire area”. 

He said that the group, alongside RSF fighters, carried out ethnically motivated killings. Another miner, Abu Zar, said there were Libyan fighters inside the main market at al-Katma. He told MEE that an armed group called the Tariq Ben Zeyad brigade, which is believed to be controlled by Saddam Haftar, Khalifa’s son, was also part of the attack on the triangle border region.

“We heard that Saddam Haftar, the strong son of the Libyan commander, was closely monitoring the military operation before he ordered the forces to withdraw back to Libyan territory,” another miner, who asked for anonymity, said. The RSF then advanced into Sudan’s northern state, seizing Karb al-Toum, an oasis near the Jebel Arkenu mountain range, as well as a host of other small villages. 

The Joint Forces – Darfur rebels fighting alongside the Sudanese army – were forced to withdraw from areas in the northern desert, while some of them had to retreat through Egypt alongside army soldiers. It was reported that RSF fighters also crossed the border into Egypt but that they were ordered by senior commanders to withdraw.

The UAE’s project

Libyan sources, Sudanese officials and a former US diplomat all told MEE that Haftar’s forces and the RSF had been given the green light and logistical support from the UAE to take control of the triangle border region. Though it denies it, the UAE has been the RSF’s main patron throughout the war in Sudan.

An unpublished study leaked to MEE by a Libyan researcher reported that two Emirati planes landed at southeastern Libya’s al-Kufra airport on 10 July, unloading weapons and supplies that were then transported to the RSF in Darfur through the Chadian-Libyan border. The dossier revealed that the UAE ordered Haftar to move his Libyan National Army (LNA) forces from Camp 87 in Benghazi to support the RSF “with hundreds of vehicles in its attack on the SAF and Darfur rebels in the desert”. 

This movement of Haftar’s forces comes partly in response to resistance in Chad to the continued supply of the RSF through the country’s desert regions. A Libyan source close to the issue, who did not want to be named, said the “recent interference by Haftar through its allied militia Subul al-Salam” had changed the balance of power in the triangle region, which has a Sudanese, Libyan and Egyptian component. 

Egypt, the source said, was “looking suspiciously at the UAE and Haftar”, with the region vital to Cairo’s national security. “Subul al-Salam matters, but this is an Emirati project,” Jalel Harchaoui, an analyst focusing on Libya, told MEE. “The big event is the fact that the RSF now controls the Sudanese part of the triangle… Subul al-Salam was instrumental because the Libyan part of the triangle was very permissive until mid-May. The SAF, the Joint Forces and civilians from Egypt were all able to access it.” 

“What was necessary, as preliminary step, was for Subul al-Salam to shut all of that down – and this is how the RSF was able to use that platform to carry out that incursion and take over the Sudanese part of the triangle,” Harchaoui said. Former US diplomat and CIA expert Cameron Hudson believes the UAE is still working to ensure the victory of the RSF in Sudan’s war. 

“The RSF’s control of its border areas will worsen and extend Sudan’s war, making it even more difficult to resolve. This has been the UAE’s plan, not just in Libya, but in Chad, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan. Control of borders gives them free access to weapons, to recruit fighters and to smuggle out gold,” Hudson, who is also a senior associate at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies Africa programme, told MEE.  

“It is no coincidence that the UAE maintains bases in all these countries near the border with Sudan to help facilitate that military and economic trade,” he said. Libyan researcher and political analyst Islam Alhaj said that the UAE was exploiting the security vacuum in southern Libya to send the weapons to the RSF and support other illegal activities, including gold smuggling, in the region. 

Russian planes

Satellite imagery reported by Nova Italian news agency disclosed that two Russian-made cargo planes were recently tracked flying from al-Kufra airport to RSF areas in Sudan. According to previous reporting by MEE and the imagery provided by the Copernicus programme, the IL-76 plane is typically used for transporting military personnel and equipment, as well as for medium-range logistical operations.

The shipment was part of an Emirati-directed flow of arms shipments from southeastern Libya to the RSF that has been in operation since May, a month before the paramilitary’s capture of the Sudanese part of the border triangle. Harchaoui told MEE that the “brand new phenomenon” was the act of flying supplies from UAE bases outside Libya directly in al-Kufra, rather than transporting them overland or by air from within other parts of Libya.   

The airport at al-Kufra plays a key operational role, serving as a logistical base to facilitate the flow of supplies to RSF forces through remote and lightly monitored corridors. Russia, as MEE has reported before, is most interested in securing a naval base at Port Sudan, with the government in Moscow building ties with the Burhan-led Sudanese administration now based in the Red Sea city. Wagner, the former Russian paramilitary group, left Sudan at the end of 2023, but ties between Moscow and Abu Dhabi remain strong.

Regional power plays

With Turkey recently stepping up its help for the Sudanese army and other regional powers, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, aligned with Burhan, external actors continue to struggle for control and profit in Sudan, which still contains vast untapped natural resources and an expansive and strategically positioned coastline. The RSF has declared a parallel government in Nyala, South Darfur. This self-declared entity would border five countries, including South Sudan, Central African Republic, Chad, and now – following the capture of Sudan’s triangle border area – Libya and Egypt. 

“The new government will face many challenges to carry any civilian duties including the good governance, protecting the civilians and oversight the finance and this will lead to big failure which will threat the other neighbouring countries,” Suliman Baldo, the executive director of the Sudan Transparency and Policy Tracker, told MEE. “I don’t think it will be able to stop the smuggling of gold and crops from Sudan and maintain the other supplies coming from neighbouring countries towards Sudan as its big investments for the RSF commanders,” he said.

***

Mohammed Amin is a Sudanese journalist specialising in geopolitics and human rights abuses in Sudan and South Sudan, as well as elsewhere in northeast Africa.

_______________________

Hafed Al-Ghwell

Libya has since become a brutal case study in the consequences of institutional and governance collapse. The 2011 rebellion shattered Muammar Qaddafi’s hyper-centralized state but failed to replace it with a functional alternative. Instead, the international community’s fixation on centralized power-sharing deals with warlords and loose militia coalitions continues to neglect the crucial work of subnational institution-building.

Thirteen years of political limbo have not yielded a single coherent local governance framework, enabling parallel power structures to metastasize. To date, Libya remains split between the Tripoli-based, UN-recognized Government of National Unity and a rogue eastern fiefdom dominated by the warlord Khalifa Haftar and his sons. These, in turn, also compete with more than 100 autonomous militias, including tribal-affiliated groups exploiting administrative vacuums.

A conspicuous absence of well-defined, legally enforceable administrative boundaries is the principal accelerant. Law 59 of 2012 envisaged governorates as intermediaries between municipalities and the state, but zero have been operationalized. Proposed maps, like the Government of National Unity’s 2022 blueprint for 19 provinces, remain theoretical amid venomous disputes over territorial jurisdiction.

Meanwhile, tribal councils fill service-delivery voids in regions like Fezzan, where public structures have simply vanished. Elsewhere, municipalities consequently shoulder functions spanning healthcare, policing and infrastructure without budgets or coordination mechanisms, resulting in woeful outcomes such as crippled hospitals and extremely high dropout rates in schools. Such an operational vacuum is now fueling resource predation as local factions continue to seize parts of Libya’s petroleum sector. 

Tribal and militia leaders have also become adept at exploiting institutional ambiguity, converting geographic influence into lucrative monopolies. Illicit economies and networks are now generating sums close to one-tenth of Libya’s pre-2011 gross domestic product via ports and desert crossings administered by de facto warlords. At the same time, boundary disputes between Zintan and Gharyan municipalities have frozen $120 million in reconstruction funds for three years.

Such paralysis is not incidental; it is structural.

The persistent failure to establish legitimate subnational governance structures, particularly resolving the question of administrative boundaries, entrenches division and dims prospects for a unified, sovereign state. Delaying the resolution of this cartographic standoff means that Libya’s fragmentation risks becoming irreversible at the cost of more than 2 million Libyans who require humanitarian aid in a country that once boasted high life expectancy, literacy rates and per capita income.

There is some precedence to the depth of the challenge Libya faces now.

The country’s territorial administration has always been unstable, from the Ottoman sanjaks designed for tax extraction, to Italy’s colonial divisions, to King Idris’ short-lived federal experiment (1951-1963) balancing Cyrenaica, Tripolitania and Fezzan. Qaddafi’s 1969 coup replaced provinces with “people’s districts,” eviscerating local capacity. Post-Qaddafi, the 2012 Local Administration Law envisioned governorates, municipalities and sub-municipal tiers, yet the critical governorate level remains non-existent. This absence cripples coordination on regional transport, resource management and security, overburdening a weak central authority and leaving municipalities isolated.

Current proposals for administrative boundaries reveal crippling tensions. 

Advocates of three regions (Cyrenaica, Tripolitania, Fezzan) invoke historical legitimacy but ignore perilous realities. Similar “federalizations” around the world with minimal regional units, e.g. Bosnia (two entities), Comoros (three) and Pakistan (1973: four) all exhibit chronic instability. In addition, Nigeria’s post-independence shift from three to 36 states deliberately diluted ethnic domination. Libya’s three-region model risks entrenching the very divisions that fueled past civil strife: Fears of secessionism, resource-hoarding by dominant cities like Benghazi or Misrata, and the marginalization of smaller tribes within macro-regions. 

Alternative frameworks, for instance, 12 provinces or 13 units based on electoral districts, aim for balance but face legitimacy deficits. Electoral districts, drawn for technical convenience, often ignore deep-seated tribal animosities or socioeconomic ties. Proposals for “economic regions” coordinating multiple governorates require robust planning institutions and fiscal autonomy that Libya lacks. Crucially, all models stumble on the core political schism: Federalists demanding regional autonomy vs. centralists fearing state fracture. This deadlock paralyzes reforms while illicit economies flourish; fuel-smuggling alone generates at least half a billion annually for militias, entrenching rule-by-gun-barrel. 

However, there is still some hope yet.  

South Africa’s post-apartheid boundary delimitation offers curious parallels. Facing similar risks of ethnic polarization, it established a technocratic Commission on Demarcation and Delimitation guided by clear criteria: Historical boundaries, economic viability, infrastructure and cultural realities. 

Crucially, it embedded this within a Multi-Party Negotiating Forum, separating technical work from political bargaining. Four months of consultations yielded 780 written submissions and 157 oral testimonies, with hearings translated into 11 languages. The result: Nine provinces replacing apartheid’s racial Bantustans, validated through inclusive participation. 

Libya’s path demands a similarly structured process, not just a map. 

A boundary commission must integrate multidisciplinary expertise, such as demographers to quantify population distributions, economists to model resource allocation and geographers to assess topographical constraints, as seen with South Africa’s commission, which included 16 specialists across seven fields. Crucially, such a body must derive its mandate from an inclusive political forum representing Libya’s fragmented power centers, ensuring decisions reflect negotiated consensus rather than unilateral imposition. 

Historical continuities must be weighed alongside contemporary realities: Tribal land claims governing 65 percent of southern territories, hydrocarbon reserves concentrated in three basins and population disparities where Tripoli hosts 2 million residents while southern municipalities average 30,000. Resource distribution formulas must be codified to prevent rent-seeking, particularly given Libya’s lucrative oil revenues. 
Public consultations require robust methodologies, not tokenism. Besides, imposing boundaries without tribal and community buy-in guarantees rebellion. Yet Libya’s context demands added safeguards: Independent dispute-resolution mechanisms and explicit rejection of referendums, which magnify polarization in fractured societies. 

Lastly, dispute resolution necessitates permanent architecture. Nigeria’s National Boundary Commission, operational since 1987, offers a template: A neutral technical body empowered to adjudicate inter-provincial conflicts and manage cross-boundary resources. However, in Libya, where 40 percent of proposed boundaries overlap with militia territories, such a commission will require authority to deploy verification teams and impose binding arbitration, backed by international guarantors to prevent politicization. 

A tall order, given the current context, but the cost of inaction escalates daily. 

Libya’s chief export — oil, remains hostage to blockades by armed groups, even as 1.5 million people lack healthcare access, while municipalities, starved of funds and authority, cannot provide basic services. Each year of fragmentation deepens kleptocratic networks, radicalizes marginalized populations and erodes faith in public institutions. 

Strangely, the 2011 rebellion demanded dignity and equitable development. Redrawing administrative boundaries should therefore not be a mere cartography exercise but the very foundation for dismantling militias, redistributing resources and rebuilding social contracts. 

Without this, Libya’s sovereignty will remain a fiction sustained only by foreign patrons and kleptocrats.

***

Hafed Al-Ghwell is a senior fellow and program director at the Stimson Center and senior fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies. 

______________________

Gregory Holyoke

Family at home, friends abroad

Over the decades, Haftar had built up close relationships in Cairo, but when he returned to Libya, Egypt was also in the midst of revolutionary fervour, tending towards the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood group. As Gazzini explained, “There was a jihadist threat in Libya and then we have Egypt, which was very weak.”

“If you go back to before 2013 before (President Abdel Fattah) El-Sisi, there was this fear that Egypt could implode … And the Europeans also didn’t want Egypt to collapse,” she explained. Faced with difficult choices and fearing the likes of the self-proclaimed IS group spreading their influence in North Africa, some analysts believe that European leaders gave Haftar — whose power and army grew in strength — the silent nod of approval to do what he thinks is right.

“They needed a new Gaddafi, someone who could stop democracy from becoming contagious. Haftar fit the mould: ruthless, ambitious, and willing to trade sovereignty for support,” El Gomati believes. Egypt also backed him as a known known, someone in the immediate neighbourhood who understood the context, but also the perils the region was facing.

The list of backers, silent or otherwise, only continued to grow from there on out. In addition to Cairo, Haftar gained the support of governments ranging from Moscow to Washington, even though the UN did not recognise his wider authority as a legitimate head of state. However, according to Gazzini, it was Abu Dhabi and Paris who ended up as his most unquestioning supporters. While the Emirates saw the allure of Libya’s oil reserves — the largest in Africa — France and Europe more widely were dealing with an influx of refugees through the Mediterranean, hundreds of thousands of whom were hoping to reach the continent via Libya.

In all that, Haftar saw his chance to utilise the international support and finally become the ruler of Libya — and who knows, maybe even bigger than Gaddafi himself. When Haftar announced his intention to overthrow the Tripoli-based, internationally recognised Government of National Accord on the day UN Secretary General António Guterres arrived in the capital in 2019, even Egypt warned him against it.

“But he was full of hubris from the Emiratis who wanted to do it. They were giving him aerial cover. The French also wanted to do it,” Gazzini told Euronews from the IRG offices in Rome. It is a hubris that some have compared to his ally Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Yet similarly, Haftar’s attempts also failed. Tripoli refused to fall into Haftar’s troops’ hands, and Libya fell back into a form of stalemate.

Divided we stand

Throughout this time, Haftar was accumulating extraordinary wealth for his family, whom he had installed in various positions, experts say. As Eaton told Euronews, “There was a debate on whether when Khalifa (Haftar) died, could his sons come in and take over. It seems that they have come in and started creating their own portfolios even before.” And it is all in the family and the hands of his children, as El Gomati succinctly outlined.

“Saddam runs the ground forces. Khaled commands the personal guard. Belkacem controls the billions in Libya’s reconstruction fund. Sedig runs the reconciliation file,” he explained. The family has amassed a portfolio estimated to be worth billions. Despite his failure to seize the wider country, Haftar and his sons continue to run much of Libya. “He controls everything that matters in eastern Libya,” El Gomati said.

“Oil fields, ports, airports, military bases, and the central bank’s printing press. He has his own air force, controls cross-border smuggling routes… It operates like a state within a state.” As shown by the EU’s lack of retribution over the past week, the self-proclaimed field marshal also maintains significant international backing. He was recently in Russia for talks with Putin – a trip he was rumoured to have died on, but once again, he miraculously recovered.

The “humiliation” of the EU delegation also isn’t the first time Haftar has managed to push around supposed allies in Europe. The analysts Euronews spoke to put this down to Europe’s domestic wranglings over “irregular migrations,” and the simple fact that “there’s no way migrant boats would be leaving the east without Haftar knowing.”

Gazzini gave the example of her native Italy: “At some point, a lot of migrants were going to the coast of Italy about a year and a half ago, he let it be known that he wanted an official visit and an official invitation to Rome. And he got that.” At the end of his interview, El Gomati did not mince words about the European approach to the Libyan commander. “Europeans keep volunteering as victims. Haftar treats EU diplomats like desperate suitors because that’s exactly what they are.”

It is a point that Eaton also touches upon, albeit somewhat more diplomatically. “There’s a real imbalance,” he concluded. However, Europe is not acting in a vacuum either. It is often trying to play by international rules and conventions in an arena where shady actions speak much louder than words and agreements on paper.

Sometimes, it is better to have a strongman on your side — or at least his ear. “We have very little leverage compared to other states. Compare it with the Russians, who have MiGs and have fighter jets that are at Haftar’s disposal,” Gazzini admitted. “Compare us to the Emiratis who bring in reinforcements and ammunition in violation of the embargo.”

When a senior EU delegation travelled to the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi last Tuesday, they were hoping to discuss ways to limit the increasing numbers of migrants leaving Libya heading north to Europe. However, shortly after their jet touched down at Benghazi Airport, the cluster of EU foreign ministers – as well as European Commissioner for Migration Magnus Brunner – were sent packing.

There was no agreement, not even a meeting. They were unceremoniously kicked out and declared “personae non gratae,” a source on the European side told Euronews at the time, adding that the delegation was caught in a diplomatic “trap” in which Haftar tried to force them to take a photo with, and tacitly legitimise, his Benghazi-based government.

While the EU itself has been remiss to publicly comment on what one senior Libyan analyst said was outright “humiliation,” it is understood that the man they were hoping to strike a deal with was General Khalifa Haftar.When a senior EU delegation travelled to the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi last Tuesday, they were hoping to discuss ways to limit the increasing numbers of migrants leaving Libya heading north to Europe.

However, shortly after their jet touched down at Benghazi Airport, the cluster of EU foreign ministers – as well as European Commissioner for Migration Magnus Brunner – were sent packing. There was no agreement, not even a meeting. They were unceremoniously kicked out and declared “personae non gratae,” a source on the European side told Euronews at the time, adding that the delegation was caught in a diplomatic “trap” in which Haftar tried to force them to take a photo with, and tacitly legitimise, his Benghazi-based government.

While the EU itself has been remiss to publicly comment on what one senior Libyan analyst said was outright “humiliation,” it is understood that the man they were hoping to strike a deal with was General Khalifa Haftar.

________________________

Gregory Holyoke

After an EU delegation was humiliated by the commander in control of large swaths of eastern Libya, Euronews explores Haftar’s fall, then rise to power and who is helping him maintain it. When a senior EU delegation travelled to the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi last Tuesday, they were hoping to discuss ways to limit the increasing numbers of migrants leaving Libya heading north to Europe.

However, shortly after their jet touched down at Benghazi Airport, the cluster of EU foreign ministers – as well as European Commissioner for Migration Magnus Brunner – were sent packing. There was no agreement, not even a meeting. They were unceremoniously kicked out and declared “personae non gratae,” a source on the European side told Euronews at the time, adding that the delegation was caught in a diplomatic “trap” in which Haftar tried to force them to take a photo with, and tacitly legitimise, his Benghazi-based government.

While the EU itself has been remiss to publicly comment on what one senior Libyan analyst said was outright “humiliation,” it is understood that the man they were hoping to strike a deal with was General Khalifa Haftar.

As the head of the powerful Libyan National Army, despite not leading the internationally recognised government, Haftar has become the de facto ruler of vast swathes of the North African country, which has lacked a unified state since the fall and assassination of notorious dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

Although Haftar is arguably the most powerful person in Libya today, he was once persona non grata himself, living quietly in exile right up to Gaddafi’s demise.

Keep your friends close…

Born to an Arab Bedouin family in northeastern Libya at the start of Britain’s eight-year occupation of the country, Khalifa Belqasim Omar Haftar was, even according to his allies, “a very quiet young lad who did not do much work.”

However, he managed to gain admission to the Benghazi Military University Academy, where friends from his time there reportedly also refer to him as “a very stern boy”. “He would not ask for a fight, but if it came to him, he knew how to handle it,” Haftar’s friends described him. It was at the academy where Haftar got to know a student in the year above — one Muammar Gaddafi.

They became fast friends, with Haftar even labelling Gaddafi an “angel”. The two united over their revolutionary spirit, fomented by a recent political coup that toppled the monarchy and political class in Libya’s neighbour, Egypt. “We were massively affected by Jamal Abdel Nasser’s era and what was going on in Egypt,” Haftar later explained.

Haftar was also said to be a massive admirer of the Iraqi vice president at the time — soon to become another household name. “Khalifa’s most important son is named Saddam, who by the way is named after Saddam Hussein. He’s the most like his father, I think that tells you all you need to know,” Tim Eaton from the Chatham House Institute said during an interview with Euronews from London.

It is also likely that he chose his title, field marshal, as a nod to Yugoslav socialist leader Josip Broz Tito, experts believe. Just three years after his graduation, Haftar was instrumental in the 1969 coup, which toppled King Idris and replaced him with Gaddafi, who had expansionist ambitions of spreading his Islamic socialist ideology — also known as Jamahiriya — beyond Libya’s borders.

In subsequent years, Haftar trained in the Soviet Union and rose through the ranks of Gaddafi’s military, commanding the Libyan troops supporting Egyptian troops entering Israeli-occupied Sinai during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. This cemented what was to become an enduring relationship between the Libyan military commander and leaders in Cairo.

But keep your enemies closer

In 1986, Haftar was made a colonel before becoming the military chief of staff. As the Gaddafi regime became increasingly authoritarian and rogue, his rise seemed inexorable. However, his luck suddenly turned: Gaddafi’s favourite commander led a disastrous mission in the late 1980s into neighbouring Chad, which led to the capture of almost 700 Libyan soldiers, including Haftar himself.

He was jailed, along with his men. Then it was the US, not Libya, that secured his release, which Libyan analyst Anas El Gomati contends was a turning point in the Haftar-Gaddafi relationship. “Haftar was like Gaddafi’s chosen sword until he became his sharpest blade turned inward,” the founder of Libya’s self-described first think tank told Euronews.

As El Gomati explained, Haftar “was abandoned as a scapegoat, then spent two decades in Virginia plotting revenge.” “He didn’t just oppose Gaddafi, he became his dark mirror, learning every lesson about authoritarian control,” El Gomati pointed out.

In fact, Haftar spent the next 24 years in exile and working with Libyan opposition movements, living just kilometres away from Washington, in Langley, the home of the CIA. In 2019, a former advisor to Haftar in the mid-2010s, Mohamed Bouzier, concurred with El Gomati in an interview with the BBC. “He was inhabited by Gaddafi. He was inhabited by envy of Gaddafi. How Gaddafi ruled this country,” Bouzier said.

However, some Libya insiders privately told Euronews of rumours that Gaddafi had actually gifted his former military chief an opulent mansion in Cairo during this time — the same house in which Haftar’s most powerful son, Saddam, grew up.

Back in the fold

When protests erupted across the Arab world in 2011, Libyans took to the streets in cities across the country. After decades of discussing plots to overthrow Gaddafi with willing Western ears and, as Libya expert Claudia Gazzini describes it, “sort of defecting to the Americans”, Haftar finally saw cracks emerging and soon went to the Libyan capital Tripoli.

However, the International Crisis Group’s senior analyst pushed back on the idea that Haftar was a key US puppet in the Libyan revolution. “I haven’t heard anybody make it so explicit. It would make sense, but nobody has said the Americans told him to go back there,” Gazzini said. Even if they did, it would not have been a short-term success, she continued.

“In 2012-2013, he based himself in Tripoli, but he wasn’t a big name at the time, because there were just so many different armed groups in Tripoli an the power was balanced out between all these people.” El Gomati was less diplomatic: “Haftar was a footnote, a Cold War fossil.”

It was not until 2014 that Haftar’s head really appeared above the parapet, when he announced an operation which he said was to root out extremists in Benghazi. Even then, Gazzini contends that he was not taken seriously. “It was very pathetic. He actually came on TV with a big map behind him saying: ‘Hey, you know, we need to rebel against these bad Islamists.’”

A claim that both Gazzini and Eaton doubt, with the latter telling Euronews that “for Haftar, there’s always been good Islamists and bad Islamists.” “There’s actually a lot of Salafists (Islamist extremists) in his ranks, just ones who can take orders,” Eaton explained.

However, Operation Dignity, as it was known, helped consolidate Haftar’s power over Libya’s second biggest city and much of the country’s east. Over the following years, he built up his power and became the supreme commander of the Libyan National Army in 2015.

None of this happened in a vacuum.

______________________

Julia Fengler

Since 2020, Libya has recorded the largest improvements in the Global Peace Index. However, ongoing challenges, fragmented governance, foreign interference, and institutional weaknesses, continue to undermine stability, explains Julia Fengler.

After nearly a decade of civil war, Libya in the past few years has substantially reduced its levels of open conflict. However, this relative peace belies its extreme social fragility and fractured military and political landscape, which leaves it at heightened risk of renewed conflict. 

After nearly a decade of civil conflict that followed the 2011 overthrow of long-time ruler Muammar Ghaddafi, Libya has recently experienced a notable improvement in peacefulness. Since 2020, it has registered the largest improvement of any country in the Global Peace Index (GPI), improving by 25 places in the global rankings.  

Yet Libya’s progress in reducing outward manifestations of violence belies the country’s extreme social fragility amid its deeply fractured military and political landscape. This fragility is reflected in Libya’s ongoing deteriorations in Positive Peace, IEP’s measure of social and institutional resilience. While Libya’s recent reductions in violence are welcome, they have come as the result of an untenable socio-political stalemate. Unless Libya’s fractures can be overcome and its institutional resilience can be strengthened, peace will remain unsustainable, as shown in the outbreaks of violence earlier this year.

Historical context  

Libya’s present-day instability is deeply rooted in the legacy of Gaddafi’s four-decade rule. Coming to power in 1969 through a military coup, Gaddafi established an authoritarian regime that dismantled formal institutions. His jamāhīriyyah system replaced traditional government structures with a complex network of people’s committees and revolutionary councils. Political dissent was harshly repressed, and opposition groups were exiled. While Gaddafi used oil wealth to fund social programs and infrastructure, his rule left Libya without functioning political institutions or a clear succession plan.  

In the context of the Arab Spring, civil war broke out in the country in 2011, causing tens of thousands of deaths and leading to the regime’s collapse. This created a major power vacuum, in which militias, tribes and rival political factions competed for control.  

Without strong institutions or a unified national army, Libya struggled to transition to democratic governance. Elections in 2012 initially brought hope, but growing tensions between Islamist and secular factions, along with the rise of powerful militias, led to renewed violence. This fragmentation triggered a second civil war in 2014, with frequent clashes and the involvement of external actors costing thousands more Libyan lives.  

After six years of intensive fighting, this second civil war ended through a ceasefire agreement in 2020. These successive conflicts of the 2010s, combined with a substantial upsurge in terrorist activity, drove the massive deterioration in the country’s peace score, and their cessation has driven its subsequent improvement.

The records of the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, for example, count around 4,000 deaths from internal conflict in 2011. And from 2012 to the end of the decade, the country averaged more than 1,100 conflict fatalities per year, but it has recorded fewer than 15 conflict deaths each year since 2021.  Similarly, according to the Global Terrorism Index 2025, terrorism peaked in Libya in the mid-2010s. There was a high of 234 terrorism-related deaths in the country in 2015. But there have been no recorded terrorist attacks or deaths since 2022.

Contemporary challenges 

While negative peace, defined as the absence of violence or fear of violence, has recently improved in Libya, this trend has not been accompanied by corresponding gains in Positive Peace. Positive Peace encompasses the social systems, institutions and governance structures that support long-term stability. By this metric, Libya has been on a largely consistent deteriorating trajectory for more than a decade. As of 2024, it ranks 145th out of the 163 countries in the Positive Peace Index (PPI).

Libya’s dearth of Positive Peace has been reflected in, and exacerbated by, the country’s fractured political landscape. In recent years, it has effectively been ruled by two governments, each controlling a large portion of its territory. The internationally recognised Government of National Unity (GNU) is based in Tripoli and controls the western part of the country, while a rival authority backed by Commander Khalifa Haftar controls Benghazi and the eastern part of the country.  

Both factions claim legitimacy, but neither has been able to carry out the long-promised national elections, originally scheduled for December 2021. This stalemate has frozen reform efforts and left much of the country in a state of political uncertainty. Unless meaningful steps toward unity are taken, this persistent fragmentation of governance will leave the country vulnerable to renewed eruption of violence.  

In early May 2025, for example, Tripoli experienced its most severe outbreak of violence in over a year, following the assassination of Abdel Ghani al-Kikli, a commander affiliated with the Government of National Unity. His death triggered armed clashes between government-affiliated forces and non-state actors. The violence quickly escalated in densely populated neighbourhoods, resulting in the deaths of both combatants and civilians. Although a UN-brokered ceasefire was reached by mid-May, the incident revealed the fragile nature of Libya’s security landscape.

Future prospects 

Since that ceasefire, militia mobilisations have continued, particularly around Tripoli. These movements have prompted the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) to issue repeated warnings, most recently in July. While the overall conflict intensity has declined, the risk of future violence remains high. 

Foreign involvement has further complicated this picture. Türkiye backs the GNU, while Russia, through proxies and private military contractors, supports Haftar’s forces. Though these powers may bring temporary stability to certain regions, they also obstruct national reconciliation.  

Libya’s post-2011 trajectory reflects the gap between the absence of war and the presence of peace. While the country has moved beyond the peak of open conflict, the underlying drivers of instability – fragmented governance, foreign interference, and institutional collapse – remain in place. As a result, gains in peacefulness may prove temporary without deeper structural reforms and a resolution to the political and military deadlock.

______________________

Chiara-Lou Parriaud and Grace Spalding-Fecher

JUST SECURITY

France’s Dangerous Game in Libya

In his dealings with the Libyan regime, Sarkozy strayed away from the more restrained foreign policy approach of his predecessor, Jacques Chirac (1995-2007), and instead pursued a more assertive stance.

This shift culminated in the French- and British-led NATO intervention that toppled Gaddafi in 2011. Yet France’s interventionist legacy did not end with Sarkozy’s defeat in the 2012 presidential election.

His successors, François Hollande (2012-2017) and Emmanuel Macron (2017-present), despite their criticism of the NATO operation, have continued to meddle in Libya’s political process at the expense of Libyans’ fundamental freedoms.

Since 2011, France has officially backed the U.N. Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), supporting efforts to hold free elections, rebuild public institutions, and prevent armed conflict.

Yet as the U.N.-brokered Libyan Political Agreement in December 2015 was leading to the formation of the GNA, France’s domestic priorities shifted as the country was hit by multiple Islamist terrorist attacks in its capital.

The national security crisis reinforced the Middle East strategy of then-Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, under former President Hollande, who prioritized a security approach in Libya at the expense of democratic considerations.

Le Drian saw a pragmatic ally in Haftar, especially because of his victories against ISIS and al-Qaeda. For France’s counterterrorism operations in the Sahel region, Haftar appeared capable of imposing order and stability in a fragmented Libya that had become a haven for jihadist groups.

The Libyan Political Agreement called for broad inclusion of Libyan factions in the political process and civilian oversight of the military. In contrast to these terms, France began quietly bolstering Haftar’s eastern regime.

Since early 2015, it provided support via special forces, advisers, and clandestine operations. The death of three French secret service agents in a helicopter crash near Benghazi in 2016 forced Hollande to confirm France’s military presence in the country.

France’s meddling and double standards in Libyan political affairs became more blatant under Macron, who hosted Haftar and the GNA’s then-Prime Minister Fayez al‑Sarraj for peace talks in July 2017, circumventing the established U.N. peacebuilding efforts.

Though both pledged support for a ceasefire and prompt national elections, Macron’s move – making him the first European leader to host Haftar – granted the warlord international legitimacy, despite EU, NATO, and U.N. support for the rival GNA.

Although professing support for the Libyan Political Agreement, Macron failed to include other factions in the talks and made no demands on Haftar.

In May 2018, Macron continued to sideline the U.N.-led process by convening Haftar and Sarraj along with Libyan parliamentary leaders, where he proposed a plan to hold elections by December 10, a timeline widely seen as unrealistic at the time.

Macron’s unilateral initiative only incentivized the U.N. plan’s detractors to stall negotiations. After this plan fell apart, U.N. special envoy Ghassan Salamé postponed elections till spring 2019, but Haftar derailed the process by launching an offensive on Tripoli.

In response to the offensive, France leveraged diplomatic protection to thwart the EU from condemning Haftar, downplayed the humanitarian toll, and portrayed the warlord’s opponents as terrorists.

On the ground, U.N.-backed forces found four American-made Javelin anti-tank missiles, supplied by France, in a Haftar-controlled stronghold south of Tripoli. Meanwhile, France’s Emirati allies hired Russian mercenaries, cementing a long-term Russian presence in Libya. Through the end of 2019, Haftar’s forces made fast territorial advances until Turkey sent troops to bolster opposing GNA forces, prompting the GNA to declare a unilateral ceasefire in October 2020.

Going Beyond Counterterrorism

Paris’ adulation of the Libyan war general goes beyond counterterrorism; it is also rooted in its strategic alliances with key military partners across the wider Middle East, primarily Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, both major buyers of French weapons and backers of Haftar’s LNA.

The warlord also enjoys support from Russia, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, while the GNU is backed by Turkey and Qatar. Marginalizing Haftar could jeopardize lucrative military contracts with Egypt and the UAE, two of France’s most important clients.

Although the Franco-Emirati relationship has deteriorated since 2021, Sisi and Macron’s ties remain strong.

Natural resources also dictate France’s presence in Libya, as the French energy company Total holds exploration rights in several oilfields in the West and a share of one of Libya’s main oil companies.

Furthermore, as Ali Albayaa, a research fellow specializing in the Middle East and North Africa region at the Human Rights Foundation, told us, “We should not overlook Macron’s personal ambitions of projecting France as a guarantor of European continental security.”

Libya is a crucial piece in France’s puzzle, as Haftar controls the majority of the country’s territory and, by extension, the masses of immigrants pouring into France in search of a safer future.

Haftar’s capacity to shape immigration realities in Europe partly explains France’s tacit support to the dictator.

The Costs of French Realpolitik

Not only does France’s diplomatic and military support for Haftar delegitimize the U.N. political process, but it also abets the perpetuation of human rights abuses by Haftar’s LNA.

In fact, Haftar himself was convicted by a U.S. judge in 2022 of war crimes for his role in ordering extrajudicial killings and torture in Libya. The militias that make up the LNA are no better and have been accused of a host of human rights abuses.

The Tareq Bin Zeyad Brigade (TBZ), led by Haftar’s son Saddam, has been accused of crushing any opposition to the LNA. Amnesty International has documented the TBZ’s links to a “catalog of horrors,” particularly against migrants, including torture, mistreatment, and forced expulsions in total impunity.

Haftar’s 2019 offensive on Tripoli, which France tirelessly sought to shield from international condemnation, was marred by significant human casualties, killing at least 430 civilians and displacing 250,000 more.

Rampant corruption and mismanagement further infringe on the local populations’ fundamental freedoms. One example is the collapse of two dams in September 2023 in the city of Derna after a storm brought heavy rains to the country’s northeastern coast. The resulting devastation killed at least 4,000 people and left tens of thousands of people missing to this day. Corruption within both the GNU and the LNA is to blame for the floods’ cataclysmic impact.

The dams collapsed after over a decade of warnings about their degrading state and a half-hearted attempt to fix them by Libyan politicians on both sides. The widespread protests that erupted following the disaster were met with the eastern regime’s brutal retaliation and arbitrary arrests of activists.

Jalel Harchaoui, an analyst on Libya security and associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies, pointed out to us that these authoritarian tactics are not unique to the Eastern regime; in fact, the GNU in the West has adopted more totalitarian actions in recent months, with little objection from the international community.

France’s Pervasive Legacy

“What started out as military aid in the context of France’s fight against terrorism ended with Haftar managing to transform that technical aid into political and ideological support,” Harchaoui explained in an interview. “Once Haftar gained absolute control of Benghazi from ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Libyan political opponents in 2017, France should have ended its support.

Instead, under Macron’s presidency, it continued to support Haftar diplomatically.” Harchaoui concluded, “It’s in the name of realpolitik that France lacked realism in Libya.

By solely backing Haftar, France left key players out of its unilateral vision for the country’s future. As a result, France does not hold the same relevance that it did in 2019. Libya has turned into a playing field for non-Western powers.”

Despite its waning influence, the damage France has done will persist. The Libyan civil and political spaces are rife with human rights violations, as both regimes deploy authoritarian practices to repress any form of dissent and political pluralism.

Libya’s window of opportunity for nationwide elections, which briefly opened in 2021, is not available today due to the partisan nature of foreign interference that has sown divisions rather than the unity sought by the U.N.-led political process. France needs to bear responsibility for the long-term consequences of foreign interference.

With the Sarkozy-Gaddafi trial, French democracy upholds its commitment to holding its former leaders accountable for their wrongdoings. France owes this self-healing, in large part, to its civil society.

Without the Médiapart journalists who first uncovered the affair, or anti-corruption organizations like Sherpa, Transparency International, and Anticor, which coalesced as civil parties in the trial “to underscore the systemic mechanisms facilitating financial flows and the associated repercussions on the populations of impacted states,” and without the French Association of Victims of Terrorism (AfVT), which also joined as a civil party to represent the families of the DC10-UTA flight victims, France’s judiciary would not have had the tools to address the complex web of corruption weaved by Sarkozy, Gaddafi, and their respective ministers.

If Libyans are to have a real chance at democracy, France must stop undermining the U.N.-led peace process by legitimizing warlords through backchannel diplomacy. Instead, it should hold perpetrators of violence in both Libyan regimes accountable for their human rights abuses through individualized and targeted sanctions.

On the commercial front, any lucrative contract passed between France and its Middle East allies should be conditioned on the respect of human rights.

Repression should not be rewarded. And at the grassroots level, in light of civil society’s vital role in democratic processes – as witnessed during the Sarkozy trial – France should support and fund civil society efforts in Libya to ensure diverse voices are included in a viable political solution.

Although Libyan civil society organizations, such as Together We Build It, are working to address the absence of women’s participation in peace-building processes, foreign powers should also empower an intergenerational, gendered approach to peace-building. It is only by pushing for accountability, transparency, and letting Libyan voices be heard that France will truly play a constructive role in ensuring Libyans’ access to their fundamental freedoms.

_______________________