Archive - March 2026

Libya Update

The Supreme Court’s Constitutional Circuit in Tripoli issued a ruling. It declared four parliamentary laws unconstitutional. These laws relate to the judicial authority system. This ruling continues to impact Libya’s judicial and political scenes. Debate is growing over the limits of jurisdiction. It also concerns the unity of the judicial institution. The decision’s implications for justice in the country are also being discussed.

The decision was issued on January 29. Legal and judicial circles did not view it merely as a constitutional ruling in a legal dispute. They saw it as a critical juncture. It concerns one of Libya’s most complex issues. This is the judiciary’s position within the political division. It also addresses the impact of judicial rulings on institutional balance.

The Supreme Court announced details of the ruling. It included the unconstitutionality of four parliamentary laws. It also covered their resulting legal implications. These included amendments to parts of the Judicial System Law. The ruling also impacted decisions made in previous years. These decisions were part of reorganizing the judicial authority.

Judicial Reactions

The ruling did not pass quietly within judicial circles. In the days following its issuance, there were rejecting or reserved reactions. This was especially true from some judicial bodies. They believed the decision’s repercussions could create more confusion. This confusion could affect the judicial institution.

In this context, heads and members of judicial bodies issued a statement. This statement came from various appeals courts. They affirmed their commitment to the judiciary’s unity and independence. They rejected any arrangements that could harm its unity. They also rejected dragging it into division.

The statement emphasized the judiciary’s complete independence. It said this is a cornerstone of the rule of law. It stressed the need to preserve the judiciary’s unity. It also highlighted the importance of working according to current laws.

The signatories also confirmed the Supreme Judicial Council, in its current formation. They stated it is the sole authority for judicial body members’ affairs. They called for postponing any constitutional matters. These should wait until a permanent constitution for the country is approved.

Observers believe this statement clearly reflected reservations. These existed within part of the judiciary regarding the ruling’s practical impact. This applies especially to reordering references. It also concerns opening the door to varying interpretations of the Supreme Judicial Council’s powers.

A Decision at the Heart of an Institutional

Crisis

The debate surrounding the ruling is linked to Libya’s institutional division. This division has persisted for years. Observers believe any change to the judiciary’s structure or references now could be seen beyond a purely legal context. It could be part of more complex balances. Legal and political considerations intertwine within these balances.

Hanan Al-Sharif, head of the Libyan Organization for Human Rights, commented. She said events within the Libyan judiciary are not a normal legal dispute. Instead, she described it as a dangerous division. This division threatens the remaining idea of justice in the country.

Al-Sharif told the Libyan News Agency that recent rulings invalidated fundamental laws. These laws had regulated the judiciary for years after being frozen. However, she noted the outcome was not the unification of the judicial path. Instead, it was an increase in division and a deepening of legal confusion.

She explained one of the most serious repercussions. Libyan citizens might face different legal applications. This would depend on their region, not a unified legal standard. She considered this to undermine the principle of equality before justice. It also weakens public trust in the judiciary.

Al-Sharif warned against involving the judiciary in political conflict. She said this transforms the institution from an arbiter of law into a party in the crisis. She stressed that continuing this path could lead to divided justice. It could also create contested references and more fragile institutions.

Political Interpretation

Political analyst Mohamed Motairid offered his perspective. He stated that the Libyan judicial scene today faces one of its most serious tests in modern history. This is especially true amid debates over the legitimacy of the Supreme Judicial Council’s presidency. Disputes also arise over jurisdictions and locations. Motairid told the Libyan News Agency that the judiciary served as a safety valve for state unity for years. However, he noted current events place it at the heart of a crisis. This crisis could affect the country’s remaining institutional cohesion.

He added that judicial intervention leads to two interpretations or references within the institution itself. This cannot be separated from the broader political division. He believed that rulings, regardless of their legal strength, must also be viewed from the perspective of their impact on stability. This also applies to the unity of institutions.

He suggested this issue should not be addressed by dominance or imposing a fait accompli. Instead, a legal and institutional approach is needed. This would preserve the judiciary’s prestige. It would also prevent it from becoming a new arena of conflict.

Consequences

The dispute appears to be confined within the judicial institution. However, its effects extend beyond the judiciary to citizens and the state. Continued divergence in references could lead to confusion in implementing rulings. It could also cause conflicting procedures. Unifying legal standards across regions would become difficult.

Any crack within the judicial authority would directly impact Libyans’ trust in justice. It would also affect their trust in state institutions. The country needs institutions capable of managing disputes. This must be done according to unified rules. It must be free from political pulls and divisions.

Observers believe the most dangerous outcome of this crisis is not just the legal debate. It is the potential for the dispute to become a permanent institutional division. This would happen within a body meant to be the country’s highest judicial authority.

Calls to Neutralize the Judiciary and

Freeze Escalation

Meanwhile, calls are escalating to neutralize the judiciary from political maneuvering. There is also a renewed emphasis on its natural role. It should be an authority for resolving disputes, not a party to them.

The Libyan Organization for Human Rights called for an end to using constitutional justice in political conflict. It urged efforts to protect the judiciary’s unity. This is crucial before internal division expands further.

Observers also believe moving past this stage requires legal and institutional de-escalation. It demands freezing any confrontational steps. A formula must be sought to preserve the Supreme Judicial Council’s unity. This is needed until a comprehensive political settlement is reached. Such a settlement would end the country’s current division.

Judicial Crisis: A Reflection of

the State’s Crisis

Ultimately, the debate surrounding the Constitutional Circuit’s ruling appears more than an isolated legal dispute. It reflects a deeper crisis. This crisis concerns the nature of the Libyan state and its institutions. It exists amidst ongoing political division.

Some see the ruling as correcting a previous legal course. Others consider it a decision that further complicated the scene. What remains constant is that the Libyan judiciary faces a delicate test today. This test concerns its unity and independence. It also concerns its ability to remain outside political conflict equations.

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Fuel smuggling helps maintain peace between Libya’s rival elites but drains the treasury. In this excerpt from the Watch List 2026 – Spring Edition, Crisis Group illustrates how the EU and member states can staunch the hemorrhaging of public funds and strengthen economic governance.

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Though Libya’s deadly civil war ended in 2020, the country remains divided between two rival governments, based in Tripoli and Benghazi, respectively, and each backed by its own military coalition. The post-2020 peace is fragile, but it holds, relying largely for its survival on the willingness of both sides to share revenue from oil sales as well as turn a blind eye to other sources of unofficial income that both tap into.

These include the smuggling of imported fuel, which is purchased by Libyan authorities at international prices, sold at heavily subsidized prices locally and then resold on the black market abroad.

While these practices shore up the peace in Libya, they come at huge cost to the country’s coffers, stunt economic growth and entrench the two competing sets of elites by removing all incentives for reunification. The fuel smuggling racket, along with other embezzlement schemes, also indirectly undermines international mediation initiatives aimed at ending the country’s longstanding division. 

Given its geographical proximity to Europe, and its dual role as a transit country for migrants heading across the Mediterranean and a hydrocarbons supplier, Libya remains strategically important for the European Union. Brussels and EU member state capitals should strive to help improve management of Libya’s public finances and create the conditions for eventual political reunification by reinforcing efforts to stop fuel smuggling and train Libya’s maritime security forces. To achieve these goals, the EU and its member states should aim to strengthen the EU’s naval mission in the Mediterranean. 

A Nation Split in Two

Fifteen years after Muammar al-Qadhafi’s fall, Libya remains divided between an internationally recognised government in Tripoli, headed by Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dabaiba, and a rival executive based in Benghazi, led by Osama Hamad. In practice, however, power in the east rests with Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar and his sons.

Though the two camps present themselves as adversaries, behind closed doors they maintain a transactional relationship based on shared oil revenue and, especially in the country’s east, off-the-books funding schemes.

These financial flows allow them to bankroll their administrations, pay salaries, buy political loyalty and consolidate authority in their respective zones. This arrangement appears to suit both sides well. It also removes any real urgency from the pursuit of difficult compromises on elections and reunification.

While large-scale war has not resumed and, for now, Libya’s rival leaders appear reluctant to rekindle violence, insecurity remains widespread. In western Libya, the Tripoli-based government has gradually brought more armed groups under its control, yet deadly clashes between rival militias competing for local influence and resources still erupt.

In the east, forces led by Haftar, now known as the Libyan Arab Armed Forces, govern with a heavy hand, as reports of arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial killings have shown. In the south, armed groups loosely affiliated with either side periodically confront one another, while criminal networks involved in drug and fuel trafficking, as well as migrant smuggling, operate with total impunity.

The lingering insecurity has combined with economic mismanagement to worsen living conditions. Misallocation of public funds and gross overspending are draining the state treasury, which depends almost entirely on hydrocarbon revenue.

Parallel financing mechanisms established by the eastern authorities, who have issued unauthorized treasury bills to cover their expenses, are depleting hard currency reserves, forcing the Central Bank to devalue the dinar.

Devaluation has in turn driven up living costs and eroded purchasing power in Libya’s import-dependent economy. Roughly one third of the population in this oil-rich country struggles to make ends meet.

Prospects for change appear slim. The UN-led political mediation process, supported by the EU and its member states, seeks to unify the country through nationwide elections, but has made no meaningful progress in five years.

Elections were to have been held in 2021. But they were derailed by legal disputes over whether to appoint a new unified government before voting or wait for the results at the ballot box to form a new executive; and whether to hold both presidential and parliamentary elections, and, if so, in what sequence, or simply opt for a legislative ballot.

These same disagreements continue to block consensus. The eastern parliament’s July 2025 decision to establish a rival Supreme Constitutional Court in Benghazi, challenging the writ of the Supreme Court in Tripoli, is the latest in a long series of rifts that have dimmed the prospect of holding national polls. With no recognized high court covering the whole of Libya, credible judicial oversight of any vote would appear impossible.

Constitutional and judicial disputes benefit Libya’s current leaders by delaying elections and silencing calls for political renewal. Numerous rounds of UN-led mediation over the past decade have focused on laying the groundwork for nationwide polls, either by drafting a new constitution or agreeing on electoral laws.

Aside from a brief interlude in 2021 that saw Dabaiba appointed prime minister of a UN-mediated unity government – an arrangement that later collapsed – the emphasis has mainly been on preparing the ground for a national vote. The underlying assumption has been that Libya’s rival governments have lost legitimacy, either due to overstaying their mandates or lacking full recognition, and that only a popular vote can restore it. 

The UN has generally encouraged members of the rival assemblies to lead discussions in this direction, but to little avail. In its most recent initiative, the Structured Dialogue launched in late 2025, the UN attempted a novel approach, bringing together experts and representatives from different parts of the country to discuss four tracks: governance, economy, security and reconciliation/human rights.

Though it has produced recommendations, ruling elites have been indifferent to the initiative and little action has been taken. These developments have eroded the public’s confidence that polls will take place. Many Libyans have grown disillusioned with parliamentarians who seem primarily interested in preserving their positions.

Signs of fatigue with the long wait for elections are also emerging among foreign powers. Washington has lately pursued an approach putting security and the economy first, launching its own parallel mediation effort in the second half of 2025 that sidelined thorny political questions.

Washington’s envoy, Massad Boulos, convened members of Prime Minister Dabaiba and Khalifa Haftar’s families for closed-door talks, which reportedly led to agreement on joint military training initiatives and a unified development funding mechanism. 

Prolonged political deadlock presents dilemmas for Libya’s foreign partners, particularly European states. Elections no longer appear to be a realistic solution in the short to medium term to address Libya’s impasse, whereas less ambitious alternatives, such as agreements on budgetary issues or joint security training of rival forces, appear more feasible. Nor is it clear who should take part in future mediation between the sides: the rival legislative bodies (the House of Representatives in Benghazi and the Tripoli-based High State Council), current leaders Dabaiba and Haftar or their representatives, or independent experts less entangled in the political system but also less influential.

At the same time, removing the prospect of national reunification as an immediate goal sends a signal to ruling elites that they are free to remain in power and enrich themselves and allied interest groups. Official data from the Central Bank, Audit Bureau and National Oil Corporation point to systematic and large-scale waste of public funds over the past five years, with little tangible benefit for the Libyan people and no attempt to diversify the country’s oil-dependent economy.

The informal division of power between two corruption-prone administrations may have contributed to curbing violence in the short term, but it risks sowing the seeds of future instability as Libyans grow increasingly frustrated with the scale of graft as their own hardship deepens.

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Alyssa Sims & Peter Bergen

2011-2018: Revolution Turns to Civil War

Several leaders among the various rebel factions had begun to jockey for control over the direction of the revolution before Gaddafi’s death, so when the regime. finally collapsed, the stage was set for bitter disagreements between rebel camps.

The artillery and other weapons that had been funneled by Western and Arab states to the rebel coalition that defeated Gaddafi’s forces were now in the possession of a range of competing factions.

Interim government

Immediately following the end of the NATO intervention in October 2011, the National Transitional Council (NTC)—led by provisional prime minister Mahmoud Jibril, whom Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had met with in Paris earlier in the year—appointed itself as the interim government and set out to develop a road map for political transition.

The NTC had announced in August, when it was apparent that the regime would fall, its plan for an 18-month transition, which would commence promptly at the conflict’s end. There were several legislative hurdles to clear—appointing an interim government, establishing election law and an election commission, and holding congressional elections.

However, the NTC struggled to maintain the confidence of the public because of a lack of transparency in its appointments and decision-making; a cohort of the NTC leadership that included former Gaddafi regime officials; and an effort to placate disgruntled militia members pushing for representation in the transitional body that included granting them amnesty for war crimes committed during the revolution.

The NTC struggled to maintain the confidence of the public because of a lack of transparency in its appointments and decision-making. Also, former revolutionaries ignored calls to disarm or be absorbed into the national armed forces, and the NTC had no means to prevent rival militiamen from looting and fighting in violent late-night skirmishes.

“We are the ones who are holding the power there—the people with the force on the ground—and we are not going to give that up until we have a legitimate government that will emerge from free and fair elections,” Anwar Fekini, a leader of a coalition of militias in the western mountains, told the New York Times in November 2011, abandoning a previous pledge to disarm. Some armed groups took control of state buildings in the aftermath of the revolution, providing leverage over the NTC in negotiations for government jobs.

The Zintan militia, which led the final march on the Libyan capital, Tripoli, that had toppled the regime, took over Tripoli International Airport, and other militias controlled Tripoli’s port, in some of the first signs of post-Gaddafi chaos.

Parliamentary elections

On July 7, 2012, Libya held its first congressional elections since Gaddafi’s 1969 coup, for a body called the General National Congress (GNC), which was supposed to direct the drafting of a national constitution.

This legislative body was designed to govern for 18 months, until the implementation of a constitution, after which new parliamentary elections would take place. Ninety-four percent of polling locations opened, despite interference from armed protesters in the east of Libya who anticipated, and feared, the dominance of the west of Libya in the elections.

The GNC seats were allocated to proportionally represent three main voting blocs: Islamists, which included the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists who sought to govern by sharia; the National Forces Alliance (NFA), Jibril’s party of moderates, which won the most seats; and independents.

On August 8, the NTC handed over power to the elected assembly. Despite the successful holding of elections, the GNC proved incapable of functioning, falling prey to factional infighting and pressure from militias.

This culminated in the passage of the Political Isolation Law in May 2013—a sweeping piece of legislation that excluded broad swaths of Libyans from future government employment on the basis of their affiliation with the Gaddafi regime —as militia power continued to grow through access to state funds.

In Benghazi and the east, the sense of marginalization was compounded by growing violence and a radical threat, exemplified most starkly by the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi by Ansar al-Sharia. The first civilian casualty case in our database perhaps stems from this 2012 attack.

Several Libyans on Twitter on August 11, 2013, reported hearing explosions that might have been caused by U.S. airstrikes in retaliation against this group. Twitter account “@news_yemen” tweeted (in Arabic) that there was an airstrike targeting Ansar al-Sharia’s headquarters in Al-Dahir, a district in Sirte.

The tweet also stated that there was “death.” This possible report of casualties was echoed by a Libyan man named Hatem Ben Mussa, who wrote (in Arabic) on his Twitter account that evening, “Urgent…four killed and 15 wounded in the bombing of Sirte.”

Major Karl Wiest told our researchers that AFRICOM has conducted “post-strike assessments” of all U.S. military actions in the region and after investigating two allegations of civilian casualties in Libya, found both to be not credible. Wiest said in an email, “From the Fall of 2016, the command has assessed two recorded CIVCAS allegations related to operations in Libya.

After thorough investigations, both claims were deemed not credible.” Wiest did not specify which two claims were investigated. However, he also said, “with regards to the specific incidents you highlighted and asked our team to review, they are not assessed as credible with the information currently available.”

The August 11, 2013 strike was one of the highlighted cases sent to AFRICOM for review by New America and Airwars. Despite the successful holding of elections, the GNC proved incapable of functioning, falling prey to factional infighting and pressure from militias. Meanwhile, the GNC continued to clash with armed groups.

On January 19, 2014, the GNC reportedly bombed militias at the Qweira al-Mal gate at the northern entrance to Sabha, an oasis city about 400 miles south of Tripoli. A Middle East news blog, World Akhbar, posted to its Twitter account (in Arabic) about an “aerial bombardment” at the site, and another local account belonging to “@osama_targam” said three children were killed as a result of the air raid.

The strike may have killed Ramadan Faraj Khalifa, Ayman Massoud Ali, and Mu’tasim Mohammed, according to the February 17th Martyrs Brigade, a pro Gaddafi militia that posted the names of the alleged victims to its Facebook page, stating that they were killed. In the course of our research we’ve documented as many as 18 airstrikes that were attributed to the GNC from 2014 to 2015 in media reports and which resulted in four civilian deaths.

The original GNC term was set to conclude on February 7, 2014, but it extended its mandate despite its deep unpopularity in an effort to develop a new constitution. The extension sparked protests, and deadlock within the body led to calls for new elections. Amid this anger with the GNC’s extension, Gen. Khalifa Haftar of the Libyan National Army (LNA) announced the dissolution of the GNC in February 2014, presaging threats against the elected body.

In May 2014, supported by eastern tribes and disaffected military units, Haftar launched Operation Dignity to rid Benghazi of Islamist militias and restore security, as well as to press for elections. The result of those elections, held June 25, was unfavorable to Islamist parties.

The newly elected and Haftar-aligned House of Representatives (HOR) took power, but some members of the old GNC held out in partnership with Libya Dawn, a coalition of Islamist and Misratan militias, along with boycotting HOR members from western Libya who feared for their safety because of the HOR’s relationship with Haftar and its move to the eastern city of Tobruk. The end result was the fracturing of the country into two governments, each with its own parliament, militias and branches of the Central Bank.

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Simon Watkins 

• Western companies like Eni, BP, and TotalEnergies are increasing investments, driven by the need for non-Russian energy and Libya’s goal to boost production to 2 million bpd by 2028.
• Recent gas discoveries, field restarts, and infrastructure projects signal growing confidence, with potential for increased exports and domestic supply.
• Ongoing instability, disputes over oil revenue distribution, and lack of governance reforms could still derail long-term progress despite rising foreign investment.

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It comes to something when Libya looks like a relative beacon of stability compared to key Middle Eastern states, such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar, but here we are, nevertheless. Of course, the recent fire at Libya’s largest oil field, Sharara, caused by a pipeline leak, may have been the product of another attack by one of the many warring factions there, so it is not exactly Switzerland in terms of the global peace rankings table. However, Libya’s appeal to international oil companies (IOCs) has been on the rise again since Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, as Western countries looked to new oil and gas supply sources to compensate for those controlled by the Kremlin.

This resurgence of Western interest coincides with Libya’s re-energised plan to boost crude oil production to at least 2 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2028, and the announcement last year that 22 offshore and onshore blocks would be licensed in the initial bidding round to this effect. Recent news underscores how positively these initiatives are currently playing out.

One of the Western companies that has been among the trailblazers to secure non-Russian energy supplies from as diversified a portfolio as possible is Italy’s Eni, and it announced last week new offshore gas discoveries in Libya. The European oil and gas giant said these were made following exploration activities near the Bahr Essalam field, Libya’s largest producing offshore gas field. Both locations — Bahr Essalam South 2 (BESS-2) and Bahr Essalam South 3 (BESS-3) — are located about 85 kilometres (km) offshore in water depth of around 650 feet, according to Eni. It added that its preliminary estimates are that the two structures contain more than 1 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of gas in place.

As the two sites are positioned only around 16 km south of the existing Bahr Essalam facilities, the company expects to be able to develop them on a fast-track development trajectory, through tie-ins to the Bahr Essalam facilities. Eni highlighted that the resulting gas will partly go to Libya’s domestic market and partly to Italy, supporting both local energy supply and export revenues.

This deepwater drilling is a testament to Western firms’ confidence in their ability to continue their business in Libya over many years, as it requires long-term capital and security guarantees that IOCs do not commit to unless they believe Libya is entering a more stable, Western-aligned phase. Indeed, it was also Eni that recently started drilling the first deepwater offshore well seen in Libya for nearly two decades, in its energy-rich Sirte basin.

This exploration work continues in the basin’s Matsola exploration prospect in Contract Area 38/3 in the Mediterranean Sea, according to Eni. The project also marks the first major new operation between it and Great Britain’s BP — with the joint venture comprising a 42.5% stake each for the two firms, with the remaining 15% held by the country’s sovereign wealth fund — the Libyan Investment Authority. The joint venture is committed to drilling a further 16 wells in Libya, across onshore and offshore areas.

Moreover, BP also recently signed a memorandum of understanding to evaluate options for redeveloping the giant Sarir and Messla onshore fields in the Sirte basin, and to assess potential unconventional oil and gas development. The firm’s executive vice president for gas and low carbon, William Lin, stated that the agreement “reflects our strong interest in deepening our partnership with Libya’s NOC [National Oil Corporation] and supporting the future of Libya’s energy sector.”

In a similar vein, last week also saw another of the West’s vanguard firms engaged in sourcing new non-Russian energy supplies — France’s TotalEnergies — announce the restart of production at Libya’s Mabruk oil field in Libya, in which the firm holds a 37.5% stake. Again, this marks a major turnaround in Libya’s fortunes, as the onshore field, positioned around 130 km south of Sirte, saw production stopped in 2015. “This restart illustrates our long-term commitment in Libya,” said Julien Pouget, Middle East and North Africa director for TotalEnergies’ exploration & production business.

“This project, which follows TotalEnergies’ recent announcements regarding the extension of the Waha concessions, brings low-cost, low-emissions oil production in line with the company’s strategy, and contributes to our objective of 3 per cent annual production growth per year until 2030.” The French energy giant agreed more broadly back in to continue its efforts to increase oil production from the giant Waha, Sharara, Al Jurf, and Mabruk oil fields by at least 175,000 bpd. It also agreed with the NOC to make the development of the Waha-concession North Gialo and NC-98 oil fields a priority.

These fields have a combined estimated capacity of at least 350,000 bpd. At the same time, improvements in Libya’s refinery operations look likely over time, beginning with the announcement last week that U.S.-based technology and engineering giant KBR was awarded
a contract to provide project management and technical services for the South Refinery Project (SRP) in Ubari, southwest Libya. The SRP is in line with KBR’s efforts to advance key oil and gas infrastructure across the country.

In broad terms, none of this interest is that surprising, as before the removal of Muammar Gaddafi as leader of Libya in 2011 and the civil war that ensued, the country was producing around 1.65 million bpd of mostly high-quality light, sweet crude oil, particularly in demand in the Mediterranean and Northwest Europe. It also remained the holder of Africa’s largest proved crude oil reserves, of 48 billion barrels.

Moreover, in the years leading up to Gaddafi’s forced exit, oil production had been on a rising trajectory, up from about 1.4 million bpd in 2000, albeit well below the peak levels of more than 3 million bpd achieved in the late 1960s, as analysed in my latest book on the new global oil market order.

Positively as well, Libya’s NOC was advancing plans at that point to roll out enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques to increase crude oil production at maturing oil fields, and its predictions of being able to increase capacity by around 775,000 bpd through EOR at existing oil fields looked well-founded. However, in the depths of the civil war, crude oil output fell to around 20,000 bpd, and although it has recovered now to just under 1.3 million bpd — the highest level since mid-2013 — various politically-motivated shutdowns in recent years pushed this down to just over 500,000 bpd for prolonged periods.

Having said all of this, there remain deep-seated issues that may derail Libya’s progress unless they are finally resolved. At the time of signing the interim peace agreement with Tripoli’s U.N.-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) on 18 September 2020, the Commander of the rebel Libyan National Army (LNA), General Khalifa Haftar, made it very clear that enduring peace would depend on a solution being reached on how the country’s oil revenues would be distributed over the long term.

The key to this in his view — and supported by the GNA back then — would be the formation of a joint technical committee, which would: “Oversee oil revenues and ensure the fair distribution of resources… and control the implementation of the terms of the agreement during the next three months, provided that its work is evaluated at the end of 2020 and a plan is defined for the next year.”

To address the fact that the then-GNA effectively held sway over the NOC and, by extension, the Central Bank of Libya (in which the revenues are physically held), the committee would also “prepare a unified budget that meets the needs of each party… and the reconciliation of any dispute over budget allocations… and will require the Central Bank [in Tripoli] to cover the monthly or quarterly payments approved in the budget without any delay, and as soon as the joint technical committee requests the transfer.”

None of these measures has yet been put into place, and there are no ongoing discussions aimed at resolving them. It may be that the bolstered presence of Western interests in Libya may affect such changes, but until they do, the country’s long-term stability remains in question.

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Simon Watkins is a former senior FX trader and salesman, financial journalist, and best-selling author. He was Head of Forex Institutional Sales and Trading for Credit Lyonnais, and later Director of Forex at Bank of Montreal.

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MMC Research Report

Medium risk/deception

Debt-driven reroute

This profile captures migrants whose irregular journey to Europe originates in financial distress and unmet expectations from earlier labour migration experiences elsewhere. Many first migrate legally to the Gulf, investing heavily in recruitment, documentation, and travel.

Once abroad, they often discover that promised salaries or conditions fall far short of expectations, leaving them unable to recover their costs. Debt then becomes a key driver of onward migration, turning economic frustration into renewed mobility.

While still abroad, particularly in cities such as Dubai, some of these migrants are approached by intermediaries offering “European jobs.” Disillusioned by low wages and restrictive contracts, they see these offers as their only chance to escape debt and achieve the prosperity they originally sought.

Smugglers exploit this vulnerability, marketing onward movement to Libya as a legitimate or inevitable next step toward Europe. Others return to Bangladesh after multiple unsuccessful migration attempts, determined to try again but this time to Europe directly.

In both cases, the decision to move irregularly arises less from aspiration than from economic compulsion—a final attempt to resolve debts and meet family expectations after years of unfulfilled regular migration.

Across this profile, the boundary between voluntary choice and coercion is blurred. Migration decisions occur under severe financial pressure, and brokers deliberately frame Libya as the “next stage” in an otherwise familiar migration cycle, transforming vulnerability itself into a profitable market.

Deceived migrant

This profile encompasses those who embark on their journey from Bangladesh under false pretenses. Several respondents reported being told they were traveling to Kuwait or Malaysia for legitimate employment, only to discover mid-journey, or even upon arrival, that their destination was Libya.

In some cases, migrants only realized this after landing in Egypt or during transit in Dubai, when facilitators confiscated their documents. In each case, deception began at the recruitment stage, by facilitators who exploited migrants’ trust and limited knowledge of geography and travel procedures.

These migrants rarely have the intention to reach Europe at the outset. Their journeys to Libya are the product of misinformation and manipulation, exposing them to both debt and coercion. By the time they realize the deception, they are often already in transit; without valid visas for the countries they are passing through, without their passports, and fully embedded within the smuggling network. At that point, there is little possibility of withdrawal or seeking assistance.

Continuing the journey becomes the only viable option, both because of practical constraints and the fear of financial ruin or social disgrace if they return home empty-handed.

While these journeys involve two of the constitutive elements of trafficking under the Palermo Protocol (the Act of transport and the Means of deception or abuse of vulnerability), they do not involve the third element, which is a purpose of exploitation.

In this profile, the intent behind the deception is primarily to extract migration fees or transport migrants into Libya for onward smuggling, rather than to exploit their labour or body once in Libya.

As such, although these migrants experience clear violations of their rights and significant coercion, their experiences do not constitute trafficking unless or until a purpose of exploitation emerges later along the route. This distinction is important, as many migrants who begin as deceived travelers only become trafficked once they fall into situations of forced labour, debt bondage, or other exploitative arrangements inside Libya, as described in the subsequent profile.

High risk/exploitation

Trafficked migrant

This profile reflects migrants who fall into debt bondage and labour exploitation once in Libya. Many enter without paying the full cost upfront, being told that they can settle the remainder after arrival or once they begin working.

Instead, when they arrive, they are forced to work under the control of brokers or employers to repay inflated travel debts. Wages are withheld, movement restricted, and identity documents confiscated.

Others are promised specific jobs and salaries in Libya but are placed in exploitative conditions upon arrival: lower-paid, irregular work, or no pay at all. Some are even sold to other brokers or employers, illustrating the commodification of labour within Libya’s broker-controlled economy.

These dynamics meet all three elements of the Palermo Protocol definition of trafficking: recruitment through deception, transport across borders under false promises, and exploitation through abuse of vulnerability and control of labour.

Physical violence may not always be visible, but control is maintained through indebtedness, dependency, and fear. The full spectrum of trafficking risks is explored further in section.

Returnee/escapee

This final profile represents those who leave Libya, either towards Italy or back to Bangladesh, after enduring violence, insecurity, or repeated exploitation. Many arrived in Libya for work but faced continuous extortion by security forces, including arbitrary detention and ransom demands by police or militias.

One respondent described being arrested multiple times by police and forced to pay for release until he was destitute. Unable to return home due to debt and shame, he decided to attempt the sea crossing to Italy as an escape route rather than a planned migration.

Others who manage to return to Bangladesh often do so through brokers after prolonged hardship, sometimes after contacting the same intermediaries who arranged their initial migration.

For these migrants, onward or return movement is not an act of opportunity but of survival: an attempt to flee a cycle of violence, exploitation, and debt from which formal protection mechanisms offer no relief.

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Assad Ounalla

For years, public debate in Libya has focused on cash liquidity. Yet experience has shown that the deeper problem was never simply a shortage of cash. It was the lack of reliable and efficient digital alternatives capable of reducing dependence on it.

Today, that picture is beginning to change.

In recent years, Libya’s electronic payments ecosystem has expanded noticeably. Mobile banking applications and point of sale, or POS, devices are becoming a more visible part of daily life across many cities.

According to data from the Central Bank of Libya, the number of POS devices nationwide has surpassed 165,000, up from around 150,000 a year earlier. Transactions processed through these devices exceeded 288 million, with a total value of nearly LYD 37.8 billion in 2025.

On the digital banking side, more than 4.3 million users are now registered on mobile banking applications, with transaction values reaching approximately LYD 47.9 billion. In addition, the number of active bank cards has exceeded 5.5 million.

These figures suggest that Libya’s shift toward digital payments is no longer theoretical. It is already underway. Still, this shift should be assessed with caution.

Beyond the numbers: a limited

digital shift

Despite these strong growth indicators, Libya’s banking sector is not yet undergoing a full digital transformation. What is taking place today is closer to digitization than genuine transformation.

Banks have made visible progress in launching mobile applications, expanding POS networks, and issuing payment cards. But in most cases, these efforts amount to a digital layer placed on top of traditional systems rather than a fundamental redesign of banking operations, customer journeys, or decision making processes. In other words, the interface has evolved, while the core remains largely unchanged.

Infrastructure expansion versus

operational efficiency

The rapid growth of payment infrastructure does not automatically translate into dependable performance or stronger user confidence.

Challenges remain clear, including network instability, system outages, and limited interoperability between banks. As a result, the key question is no longer how many devices have been deployed, but whether they work reliably when customers need them most.

Customer experience: the critical

weak point

One of the most pressing, and often overlooked, challenges lies in user experience.

Many digital banking services still suffer from cumbersome onboarding, technical disruptions, and weak customer support. This friction discourages regular use and often pushes customers back toward cash.

Digital adoption is not driven by availability alone. It depends on simplicity, reliability, and consistency.

Trust: the invisible barrier

Beyond technology, trust remains a decisive factor in shaping user behavior.

For many Libyans, cash still represents certainty and control, while digital payments are often seen as carrying greater risk. Concerns about transaction errors, delayed resolutions, and limited transparency in handling disputes reinforce this perception.

Unless this trust gap is addressed, growth in digital payments may remain fragile and reversible.

A fragmented ecosystem

Another structural constraint is the fragmented nature of the banking ecosystem.

Banks continue to operate largely in silos, each developing its own digital platforms with limited interoperability. This lack of integration creates inconsistent user experiences and slows the emergence of a seamless national payment environment.

True digital transformation requires a system wide approach, not isolated institutional efforts.

Growth driven by necessity,

not preference

A critical point is that much of the recent growth in digital payments appears to have been driven by necessity rather than genuine consumer preference.

Cash liquidity pressures have pushed users toward digital channels as an alternative, not necessarily because they see them as a better option. This raises an important strategic question: if cash availability improves, will users remain digitally engaged?

Without delivering clear and lasting value, current growth trends may prove difficult to sustain.

A window of opportunity

Despite these challenges, Libya still has significant potential to accelerate its digital transformation.

The country has a young and tech aware population, high smartphone penetration, and growing demand for e commerce and digital services. Together, these factors provide a strong foundation for future progress.

To make the most of this opportunity, banks should focus on four priorities: improving customer experience before adding more features, building trust through transparency and efficient dispute resolution, strengthening interoperability across the financial system, and turning POS usage from a substitute for cash into a genuine payment habit.

Conclusion: a transition in progress,

not yet a transformation

Libya’s banking sector has made meaningful progress in expanding digital tools and payment infrastructure, but it has not yet achieved a fundamental shift in customer behavior or in the structure of the financial system itself.

The real test now is whether banks can move beyond simply digitizing traditional services and begin building solutions that are reliable, integrated, and trusted enough to reduce the economy’s dependence on cash over the next five years. That is what will ultimately determine whether Libya’s current momentum becomes a genuine digital transformation or remains only a partial transition.

_____________________

Alyssa Sims & Peter Bergen

An Overview of the Air Campaigns

in Libya since 2012

A poem about the “suffering” of Sirte, Libya, accompanied a photo of two dead children that Khaled Alkhwaildi uploaded to his Facebook page. Hamad al-Sayeh Hambali’s home was flattened by airstrikes on Zafaran, a district in eastern Sirte, on March 9, 2016, and local Facebook accounts like Alkhwaildi’s contained the only reporting of the incident. Hambali’s young daughters, Isra and Wafaa, lay side by side in the graphic photo, their Minnie Mouse and Hello Kitty pajamas dusted with rubble, one covered in a pool of blood.

Photographic evidence shows that a strike occurred on Hambali’s home that day, but there were no Western media reports of the event, and no country or local militia claimed responsibility for the strike. The deaths of Hambali’s children weren’t acknowledged outside of social media. This is characteristic of the aerial conflict in Libya.

New America and Airwars have documented more than 2,000 airstrikes that were reportedly conducted between September 2012 and June 10, 2018 in Libya, which resulted in at least 242 civilian deaths using the low-end estimate, and as many as 395 civilian deaths using the high-end estimate.

In 2011, during a national uprising in Libya, NATO intervened to protect civilians from the forces of Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi, a military action that significantly contributed to the regime’s defeat. Though the United Nations sanctioned campaign ended on October 31, 2011, several countries and local militias have continued to conduct airstrikes and drone strikes intermittently with scant accountability. New America and Airwars have documented more than 2,000 airstrikes that were reportedly conducted between September 2012 and June 10, 2018 in Libya, which resulted in at least 242 civilian deaths using the low-end estimate, and as many as 395 civilian deaths using the high-end estimate.

Some organizations have attempted to produce an accurate death toll of civilians in Libya and identify the responsible parties. However, a lack of reporting and self-reporting of strikes has enabled those responsible to go largely unnoticed. The United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) consistently provides figures for civilian casualties of the hostilities in Libya. However, according to its press releases, UNSMIL is usually unable to “determine with certainty” which parties contributed to the casualties, with the exception of the Libyan National Army.

Human Rights Watch also reports casualties from “unidentified aircraft,” due to an inability to identify the country or militia group responsible. With some exceptions, no party typically claims responsibility for these airstrikes or their outcomes. With the aid of a team of Libyan researchers, New America and Airwars have found 2,158 reported airstrikes in Libya from September 2012 to June 10, 2018.

As outlined in the methodology section, those reports were collected from wide variety of sources. Because this study seeks to fill gaps in English-language reporting on civilian casualties in Libya, the vast majority of our sources are in Arabic.

Some of the strikes in the database include allegations of civilian casualties against the following parties: Libya’s Government of National Accord (GNA), which is recognized by the United Nations; the Libyan National Army (LNA), a rival military force led by Gen. Khalifa Haftar; the air force of the first post Gaddafi Libyan government, the General National Congress (GNC); as well as Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, France and the United States.

Meanwhile, on March 10, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president at the time, met in Paris with Libyan rebel group representatives Mahmoud Jibril and Ali al-Esawi. The same day, France became the first Western nation to recognize a ragtag organization of Libyan rebels—dubbed the National Transitional Council—as the only legitimate government in Libya.

On March 15, President Barack Obama met with his National Security Council, and intelligence officials warned him that Benghazi would fall to the regime in 24 hours. Convinced by his chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, that a no-fly zone would make little difference to this outcome, President Obama directed U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to strengthen the language of the proposed French-British resolution on Libya at the Security Council, which would give member states latitude to bomb Gaddafi’s forces.

The Security Council on March 17 authorized Resolution 1973 to protect Libyan civilians and for the first time in history invoked the U.N.’s Responsibility to Protect to authorize military action. French aircraft struck Gaddafi’s columns advancing on Benghazi late in the afternoon of March 19, followed by British and American cruise missile attacks on air defense sites and Libyan government targets along the Mediterranean coast.

Out of a desire not to “own” the Libyan conflict, the U.S. strategy was to use air power to cripple Gaddafi’s air defenses. The United States, chastened by the failure of the Iraq occupation, elected to pursue an aerial campaign in Libya without significant political or diplomatic engagement with the rebel factions on the ground. This created gaps in U.S. understanding of the internal dynamics of the rebellion.

The relationships between the loose factions of the anti-regime rebels were fraught, even before the uprising, creating the foundations for the predictable postwar power struggle that ensued. French aircraft, directed by surveillance from U.S. Predator drones, on October 21 struck a convoy of regime vehicles as Gaddafi was spotted trying to flee his hometown of Sirte. He was removed from his vehicle and killed shortly after by rebel fighters on the ground.

On October 27, the U.N. voted to end foreign intervention in Libya, just a week after the dictator’s death, ignoring a request from the interim government to extend the NATO presence to the year’s end. NATO officially ended its mission in Libya on October 31, 2011.

Much like after the toppling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, militant jihadist groups moved into the vacuum left by the fall of the Gaddafi regime.

________________

Mohammed Elgrj

When the Libyan dinar weakens in the parallel market, public debate often attributes the movement to speculation, seasonal liquidity shortages, or political noise. These factors can shape short term mood in the market, yet the deeper driver is longer lasting and easier to measure.

In this context, the instability of the dinar is structural. At the heart of the issue lies a foreign exchange gap, a sustained imbalance between the country’s external earnings and its demand for foreign currency.

The Numbers Behind the Pressure

According to official data published by the Central Bank of Libya, total foreign exchange usage in 2025 reached approximately $31.1 billion, while oil revenues, as reported by the National Oil Corporation, amounted to roughly $22.1 billion. This resulted in an annual shortfall of nearly: $9 billion

On a monthly basis, the imbalance becomes even clearer:

• Average FX demand: approximately $2.6 billion
• Average oil inflow: approximately $1.8 billion
• Monthly gap: roughly $700–800 million

This gap is grounded in simple arithmetic. A deficit of that size steadily translates into exchange rate pressure under virtually any regime.

Where the Dollars Go

Central Bank breakdowns of foreign exchange allocations show heavy concentration:

• Letters of Credit account for roughly 50% of total FX usage.
• Personal transfers account for approximately 25%.

Nearly three-quarters of foreign currency demand is therefore concentrated in two channels. This concentration matters. Measures that do not meaningfully influence these segments may calm to day volatility, yet the overall path remains largely unchanged.

Recent allocations, including approximately $600 million in personal transfer settlements, represent around one quarter of typical monthly FX demand. Steps like these can support confidence and reduce stress temporarily, especially when markets feel tight.

Reserves: Stock Is Not Flow

The Central Bank reports net foreign assets exceeding $100 billion, while total external assets across state institutions are often cited above $150 billion. Reserves play an important role as a buffer. At the same time, exchange rate stability is ultimately shaped by ongoing inflows and outflows.

Between Q3 2024 and Q3 2025, Central Bank balance sheet data indicate that net foreign assets improved by roughly $8–9 billion. Yet gold revaluation accounted for approximately $5.3 billion of that increase. The improvement in non-gold assets was significantly smaller.

Valuation effects can lift the balance sheet and strengthen headline metrics. Trade settlement capacity, however, depends on liquid and recurring inflows. In a flow constrained economy, accounting gains offer reassurance, while sustained inflows provide the durable anchor. Markets recognize this distinction. That is why the parallel premium persists despite large headline reserve figures.

Liquidity Expansion and Exchange

Pressure

Monetary statistics published by the Central Bank show that broad money (M2) expanded by over 20% year-on-year during the same period.

When domestic liquidity grows at double digit rates while foreign currency inflows remain constrained, exchange pressure tends to build and the exchange rate becomes the adjustment point. This dynamic also aligns with straightforward portfolio choices, as households and firms seek to protect purchasing power.

The widening premium between the official rate (6.30 LYD/USD) and the parallel rate (hovering near 10 LYD/USD) — a divergence exceeding 50% — signals:

• Fiscal pressure on monetary policy,
• Excess domestic liquidity,
• Persistent FX mismatch,
• Weak coordination between fiscal and monetary authorities.

Exchange rate instability is therefore a reflection of governance constraints, not merely market sentiment.

The Institutional Constraint

The Central Bank operates within a politically fragmented environment, facing competing fiscal demands. Aggregate public expenditure exceeds 130 billion dinars annually, while non-oil revenues remain structurally weak. Under such conditions, monetary policy becomes reactive rather than strategic.

The Central Bank can smooth volatility. It cannot eliminate structural imbalance without fiscal consolidation and institutional alignment.

2026 Outlook: Three Scenarios

The trajectory of the dinar in 2026 depends on whether the FX gap narrows.

Controlled Adjustment: If foreign currency usage declines by 15–20%, through disciplined import management, fuel subsidy reform, and tighter liquidity control, the annual gap could shrink by $4–6 billion. In this case, the parallel premium would likely compress gradually.

Status Quo Persistence: If usage remains near $28–30 billion while oil inflows fluctuate between $16–20 billion depending on price and production, the structural gap remains embedded. Volatility continues, and depreciation risk persists.

External Shock: A sustained oil price decline below $60 per barrel would widen the gap significantly, prompting rapid repricing in the parallel market.

Stability Requires Alignment, Not

Intervention

Libya has meaningful resources, and the key variable is how effectively fiscal policy, monetary management, and external earning capacity move together. As long as annual dollar demand exceeds annual supply by billions, the exchange rate will keep reflecting that balance.

Reserve draw-downs, valuation gains, and episodic interventions can buy time and reduce stress. Structural correction, however, comes from materially narrowing the foreign exchange gap. Exchange rate stability in Libya will emerge when the foreign exchange gap narrows materially. Until then, the dinar will continue to reflect arithmetic rather than rhetoric.

____________________

Younis Moussa

One dollar, one price?

Libya’s Central Bank is reportedly preparing to cancel the commodity tax and apply a unified exchange rate of 6.37 dinars to the dollar across all uses, including personal transactions, imports, education, and medical expenses. On paper, the move looks like a technical adjustment. In practice, it could become one of the most meaningful changes to Libya’s economic framework in recent months.

That is because the issue goes well beyond tax policy. At stake is whether Libya can begin to simplify a foreign exchange system that has long operated through multiple prices, uneven access, and persistent uncertainty. In an economy as import dependent as Libya’s, the dollar is not just a financial instrument. It is a daily economic fact. It helps shape the price of food, medicine, tuition, consumer goods, and the cost structure facing nearly every trader and importer in the market.

This is what makes the Central Bank’s reported plan important. For years, Libya has lived with a fragmented currency reality. There has been the official rate, the effective rate citizens and businesses actually face through formal channels, and the price signaled by the parallel market. When one economy runs on several prices for the same dollar, confusion is inevitable. So are distortions. Businesses struggle to price accurately, consumers lose confidence in the formal system, and the gap between policy and lived economic reality grows wider.

The appeal of a unified exchange rate is therefore easy to understand. One clear rate would, in theory, make the system easier to navigate. Importers would be able to estimate costs more accurately. Families paying for treatment or studies abroad would face less confusion. Retailers and wholesalers would have a more stable benchmark for pricing goods. In a country where uncertainty often becomes an added cost in itself, clarity carries real value.

This point matters because Libya’s economy can absorb a difficult price more easily than a confusing one. Markets can adapt to a more expensive dollar when that price is transparent and consistently available. Businesses can revise margins, negotiate with suppliers, or pass on part of the cost over time. What is much harder to manage is a market where access to foreign currency is unpredictable and where official pricing does not always align with economic behavior on the ground. In such an environment, businesses do not merely price goods. They price risk, delay, and uncertainty.

Removing the commodity tax could help reduce some of that distortion. The tax has acted as an added burden on access to foreign currency, raising the effective cost of dollars even when the official rate appeared lower on paper. In that sense, scrapping it could make formal access more straightforward and potentially lower some of the hidden costs embedded in the import cycle. For an economy already facing inflationary pressure and strained household purchasing power, that would be a welcome step.

But the real test lies elsewhere. A unified exchange rate is only useful if the market believes it. That may sound obvious, yet it is the central issue. Exchange rate policy does not succeed because a new number is announced. Exchange rate succeeds when traders, households, and firms begin to treat that number as credible. In Libya, that means the official market must offer not only the right rate, but also reliable access, reasonable speed, and enough consistency to pull demand away from informal channels.

If that does not happen, the parallel market will continue to act as the economy’s shadow benchmark. Importers will still hedge against shortages. Consumers will still assume that official channels cannot fully meet demand. Businesses will continue to price goods with one eye on the banking system and another on the street. In that case, the reform may simplify the formal framework without changing the deeper logic of the market.

This is why credibility matters more than design. Libya’s foreign exchange problem has never been purely about arithmetic. It has also been about trust. When people lose confidence that dollars can be obtained smoothly through official channels, they stop treating the official rate as the real one. Once that happens, the state may still set a rate, but the market quietly chooses another. Closing that credibility gap requires more than a cleaner policy structure. It requires implementation that is broad, timely, and dependable.

There is also a larger macroeconomic context that should not be overlooked. Libya’s foreign exchange pressures reflect deeper structural imbalances, including dependence on oil revenues, high public spending, and recurring mismatches between the supply of foreign currency and demand for it. A unified rate may reduce distortion, but it cannot by itself solve those underlying pressures. It can make pricing more transparent. It cannot eliminate the broader vulnerabilities that keep the currency under strain.

Still, that should not diminish the potential importance of the move. Simplification has economic value of its own. So does transparency. For too long, Libya’s exchange rate system has asked households and firms to navigate too many layers of uncertainty. One dollar has not always carried one meaning. That has weakened planning, inflated risk, and given the informal market too large a role in shaping expectations.

Seen in that light, the Central Bank’s reported shift is not just a technical reform. It is an attempt to restore a basic principle to economic life: that a currency should have a clear and trusted price. Whether this effort succeeds will depend not on the announcement alone, but on what follows it. If official foreign currency access becomes smoother and more credible, the move could help narrow distortions and improve confidence in the formal market. If not, Libya may end up with a cleaner policy on paper while the real economy continues to take its cues from elsewhere.

The question, then, is not simply whether the country can move to one dollar and one price. It is whether Libya’s institutions can make that price believable enough for the market to follow.

___________________

Alyssa Sims & Peter Bergen

Key Findings

• An important feature of the conflict in Libya post-2011 has been the rise of airstrikes by multiple domestic and international belligerents. At least four foreign countries and three domestic Libyan factions are reported to have conducted air and drone strikes in Libya since 2012.

• According to reports by some of the belligerents as well as news reporting and accounts in social media, the nations and local groups operating in Libya have conducted at least 2,158 airstrikes and drone strikes between September 2012 and June 10, 2018.

• According to news reports and accounts on social media, at least 237 civilians were killed in these strikes, taking the lowest estimate, and as many as 387 killed, by the highest estimate. No nation or local group has stated responsibility for any of these civilian deaths. This study is the first overall accounting of these civilian deaths.

• In addition to civilian fatalities, according to news reports and individual accounts on social media, at least 324 civilians were wounded in airstrikes, by the lowest estimate, and 524, taking the highest estimate.

• Less than 50 percent of all reported airstrikes are officially declared. A lack of international media reporting on the air war has helped to obscure the fact that a number of countries elect not to report their air strikes in Libya, including France, the United Arab Emirates and, at times, the United States and Egypt.

• Reported civilian deaths from airstrikes in Libya are relatively low when compared to higher-intensity conflicts in, for example, Iraq, Syria, or Yemen. Casualty estimates more closely match at present those from lower-intensity counterterrorism campaigns, such as the U.S. drone program in Pakistan and Somalia, albeit over a shorter time period. (This may reflect the fact that reporting mechanisms for civilian deaths in Libya are slight compared to countries such as Syria.)

• Libya’s civil war began in earnest in May 2014, and almost 250 strikes reportedly occurred that year, which were conducted mostly by the Libyan National Army. This was followed by a slowing of strikes in 2015, as Gen. Khalifa Haftar’s ground campaign targeting Islamist militias spread across the country. In contrast, 2016 and 2017 were high-volume years for airstrikes, with 1,015 and 574 reported strikes, respectively. This jump in numbers was in part due to a 2016 U.S. military operation targeting ISIS that involved 495 air and drone strikes on the city of Sirte.

• Most strikes between September 2012 and June 10, 2018, have reportedly occurred in Benghazi, Sirte and Derna, cities that were high-conflict zones during the Libyan rebellion and the 2011 NATO intervention. ISIS controlled territory in both Derna and Sirte in 2015 and 2016, contributing to high volumes of strikes in those locations. However, heavy bombardments of these cities in recent years have not been accompanied, as might be expected, by significant local reports of civilian harm.

This may indicate a local under-reporting of the issue, which could be explained by difficulties accessing these cities during the high-volume periods of airstrikes. Additionally, Libya lacks local monitors such as the Syrian Network for Human Rights, which assesses civilian harm in Syria.

• Gen. Haftar’s LNA has reportedly conducted 1,112 airstrikes in Libya since 2014—more than any other belligerent. These have reportedly resulted in 95 civilian deaths at minimum and potentially as many as 172 noncombatant deaths, based on the highest estimates. These fatalities account for almost 40 percent of the documented civilian deaths in our database—the highest reported number for any belligerent.

• Of the four foreign states conducting strikes in Libya, the United States is the most transparent about its operations. The United States conducted the campaign Operation Odyssey Lightning against ISIS forces in Libya from Aug. 1, 2016, to Dec. 19, 2016, which included 495 air and drone strikes, according to the U.S. Africa Command. (It reopened the operation for a single day on Jan. 19, 2017.)

The U.S. military self-reported these strikes. However, the United States may be inconsistent with its strike reporting. Our database includes 15 strikes attributed in local reports to the United States that have not been confirmed by American officials.

• According to our data, the United States has conducted 524 strikes on militant targets in Libya since the NATO intervention, primarily at Sirte during 2016, which according to Libyan reports resulted in 10 to 20 civilian fatalities, based on the minimum and maximum estimates in our database.

• Some strike allegations report different parties as responsible for the same strike (e.g., a local report might claim the LNA conducted a strike, while an international outlet reported that Egypt was responsible for the same action). Based on contested cases like these that implicate both the United States and another party, the United States could be responsible for up to 54 additional civilian deaths in Libya, primarily as a result of its strikes in support of Libya’s internationally recognized Government of National Accord, known as the GNA.

• Like the United States, the LNA faction has also declared many of its airstrikes. Between them, the two belligerents account for more than 75 percent of reported strikes. However, neither party has publicly accepted responsibility for any reported civilian casualties.

• The GNA has reportedly conducted 54 strikes, which have resulted in at least seven and at most nine civilian fatalities, according to local reports. However, the GNA could be responsible for as many as 54 additional civilian deaths, based on strike allegations that name more than one country or local group as responsible for certain strikes.

• The United Arab Emirates, which conducts actions in support of the LNA, has reportedly conducted at least 35 strikes in Libya, which are said to have resulted in at least 11 and potentially as many as 18 civilian deaths.

• Egypt also conducts strikes alongside the LNA, as well as unilateral actions against suspected militants on its borders. At least 41 strikes have been declared or reported, which have resulted in at least 13 and at most 14 civilian deaths, according to local and international sources.

• France has reportedly conducted at least five strikes in Libya, which have resulted in a minimum of four and potentially as many as eight civilian deaths. France might also be responsible for a single strike on Aug. 12, 2016, that hit an urban area in Benghazi, killing more than two dozen civilians by some estimates. Sources blamed both the LNA and France for this strike.

• 132 airstrikes in our database have been attributed to more than one party in reports of the incident. For example, one source might say France conducted a strike in a specific location, while a separate source blames the LNA for a strike in an identical location on the same day.

Theoretically, the strike may have been conducted by both parties jointly, or perhaps was misattributed to one of the parties. Since we can’t be sure, these 182 strikes, and the 83 resulting civilian deaths are considered “contested” in our database and aren’t included in the total strike and casualty estimates of each individual belligerent, underscoring the need for belligerents to report airstrikes and investigate allegations of civilian casualties.

• Based on news reports and social media accounts, the number of militants that have been killed in airstrikes in Libya range from a minimum of 778 to 966, taking the highest estimates. However, it is unclear how local belligerents and foreign militaries distinguish ‘enemy fighters’ from noncombatants and whether these distinctions are the same across aerial conflict participants.

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MMC Research Report

Introduction

Bangladesh is one of the most significant countries of origin within the global migration landscape, with millions of its citizens seeking opportunities abroad through both regular and irregular means. Overseas employment has long been a defining feature of Bangladesh’s development trajectory, supporting household incomes and national growth through remittances.

Today, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and Southeast Asia remain the primary destinations for Bangladeshi labour migrants. However, Libya and Italy have also formed part of this broader migration landscape for decades. In recent years, Bangladeshi nationals have consistently ranked among the top nationalities arriving irregularly in Italy, particularly via the Central Mediterranean Route.

Although this corridor remains small compared to established labour migration channels to the Gulf and Malaysia, it has become an increasingly visible and organised pathway to Europe. This trend has been enabled by the emergence of a hybrid migration system in Libya, in which formal entry and residence mechanisms coexist with irregular onward movement.

Within this system, migrants are able to enter Libya through semi-regular channels but subsequently rely on smuggling networks to reach Italy. At the same time, socioeconomic pressures in Bangladesh have intensified, marked by rising unemployment, high living costs, and limited diversification of the domestic labour market.

In parallel, disillusionment with regular migration pathways to the Gulf and Malaysia, often characterized by debt, exploitation, and restricted mobility, has affected their appeal. These overlapping dynamics have created fertile ground for brokers and intermediaries to promote the Libya–Italy route as a viable and desirable alternative. Italy is perceived as a destination where migrants can aspire not only to better economic opportunities but also to a greater sense of dignity and long-term security.

Stories of regularization through past campaigns, family reunification, and social mobility within Italy’s large Bangladeshi diaspora have strengthened its image as a country where hard work can eventually lead to stability and belonging.

For many aspiring migrants, Italy represents an escape from the exploitative yet legal systems of Gulf migration, embodying the possibility of both livelihood and transformation. In light of the growing number of Bangladeshi migrants arriving in Italy via Libya, this report seeks to examine the mechanisms underpinning this movement and to address a critical evidence gap. Despite the visibility of this corridor, little is known about how Bangladeshi migrants reach Italy, or about the actors and processes that facilitate their journeys.

This study therefore explores the motivations, journey planning, facilitation networks, financial arrangements, and protection risks that shape this evolving migration system. By mapping these interconnected dimensions across origin, transit, and destination contexts, the report contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of one of the most complex and underexplored migration corridors linking South Asia and the Central Mediterranean.

Profiles

This research reveals that Bangladeshi migration to and through Libya is not a single, uniform phenomenon but rather a spectrum of experiences shaped by differing levels of agency, information, and exposure to risk. Migrants’ pathways vary according to how informed their decisions are, the degree of deception they encounter, and the conditions they face along the route.

These diverse trajectories can be charted across a continuum of vulnerability, ranging from:

(a) low-risk or planned migration, where individuals travel to Libya through relatively structured channels with valid documents and clear intentions to work there;

(b) medium-risk or deceptive journeys, where misinformation and financial pressure push migrants into irregularity; and

(c) finally to high-risk or exploitative experiences, where individuals are subjected to trafficking and forced labour.

Low risk/planned

Planned labour migrant in Libya

This profile represents the least vulnerable group within the spectrum of Bangladeshi migration to Libya. These migrants travel from Bangladesh with the intention of working legally in Libya, often through semi-formal or formal labour channels, and without plans for onward movement to Europe.

Their journeys are comparatively structured and better resourced, reflecting a higher degree of agency and informed decision-making than other profiles in this study. Historically, labour mobility schemes between the Bangladeshi and Libyan governments enabled official recruitment and placement, channeling arrivals primarily to western Libya, where the internationally recognized government and its labour administration are based.

In recent years, however, an increasing number of Bangladeshi workers have entered through eastern Libya, drawn by reconstruction activities under the Libyan National Army (LNA), which have generated a demand for foreign labour and an alternative system of entry.

According to IOM’s Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM), in 2024, only 11 per cent of Bangladeshi migrants in Libya reported using migration facilitators to reach the country. The majority stated that they held valid passports and work permits, suggesting entry through relatively regular channels.

Among those employed, 87 per cent reported having permanent or fixed-term contracts, which is higher than the rate for all migrants in Libya (78 per cent). These findings suggest two distinct Bangladeshi populations in Libya: one that migrates to work and remains (captured by DTM statistics), and another that transits Libya for irregular onward movement to Italy (most likely not captured by DTM).

While this group faces fewer risks than others in the spectrum, it is important to recognize that the risk of exploitation, wage theft, kidnapping, and poor living conditions remain common. What distinguishes this profile is not the absence of vulnerability, but the relative predictability and stability of their migration experience compared to those who enter Libya irregularly or are deceived along the way.

Their journeys tend to be self-financed—through family savings or modest loans—and largely insulated from the high-risk smuggling networks that dominate the Libya–Italy corridor.

However, as the profiles presented later in this section demonstrate, even planned and documented migration can deteriorate under the pressures of Libya’s volatile security environment and governance gaps.

Several migrants who initially entered Libya through regular channels ultimately found themselves trapped in cycles of abuse or extortion, prompting their eventual departure. These experiences are explored in greater depth in the “Returnee/ Escapee” profile that concludes this spectrum.

Italy aspirant

This profile consists primarily of young men who travel from Bangladesh to Libya with the explicit aim of reaching Italy. They represent the more mobile end of the low-risk category: migrants whose journeys unfold largely according to plan, even within an inherently volatile and dangerous environment. Since 2022, most have entered through eastern Libya, taking advantage of the relatively open visa and entry system that has emerged under the Libyan National Army (LNA), detailed in subsequent sections. In DTM Europe’s 2024 Flow Monitoring Survey, Bangladeshi respondents were primarily surveyed in Italy, reflecting their strong presence among arrivals on both the Central Mediterranean and Western Balkans-Italy routes.

The Bangladesh-specific profile shows a highly consistent demographic pattern: all respondents were men, and nearly three-quarters were aged 18–29. Many reported lower-secondary education and previous employment before departure, with most having worked in sectors such as agriculture and construction. Economic motivations dominated their migration decisions, cited by roughly three-quarters of Bangladeshi respondents (76–78%). The concentration of Bangladeshi interviews in Italy, together with the profiles of those surveyed there, underscores Italy’s central role as the main point of arrival and primary destination among Bangladeshi migrants captured in the 2024 FMS.

Interviews for this study reinforce these patterns and demonstrate that the majority came from close-knit family structures in which migration decisions were collective. Fathers or older male relatives typically negotiated with brokers and financed the journey. Migration was therefore not an individual act of risk-taking but a family project to secure long-term stability. Unlike Gulf migration, which is temporary and cyclical, movement towards Europe is perceived as permanent. These migrants are generally educated enough to aspire to better opportunities abroad but lack the qualifications to access regular migration channels.

While their journeys are considered the smoothest within this spectrum, they are far from risk-free. Even those who move quickly through Libya must navigate territories controlled by armed groups, repeated checkpoints, and widespread extortion. Passage from eastern to western Libya exposes them to the same networks of coercion and rent extraction that entrap others for far longer.

Their crossings to Italy, which are usually by sea from the western coast, remain highly perilous. However, compared to other profiles, they face fewer unexpected disruptions and a higher likelihood of arrival. In this sense, the Italy Aspirant embodies the most “successful” iteration of a high-risk system, where relative luck, timing, and connections reduce, but never eliminate, the dangers of the route.

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More than a simple reshuffle, the one initiated by the Prime Minister of the Government of National Unity, Abdulhamid Dabaiba, appears to be a maneuver of political and territorial consolidation of Tripolitania in view of a possible new phase of dialogue with eastern Libya.

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More than a simple reshuffle, the one initiated by the Prime Minister of the Government of National Unity (GUN), Abdulhamid Dabaiba, appears to be a move to consolidate Tripolitania’s political and territorial position in preparation for a possible new phase of dialogue with eastern Libya.

The replacement of approximately half the government, the agreement reached with President of the Presidential Council Mohamed al-Menfi and the president of the High Council of State Mohamed Takala, the parallel moves in the strategic cities of Zawiya and Misrata and the appointment of Salem al-Zadma The Deputy Prime Minister in charge of Fezzan indicates an attempt to strengthen Tripoli’s negotiating position at a time when the United States and the United Nations continue to push for greater inclusion of Eastern institutions in the political process.

Dabaiba, a powerful businessman from Misrata who has turned to politics, presented the reshuffle as a necessary move to “inject new energy and fill vacant positions,” defending his government’s continued existence until national elections. The political message, however, appears broader. The prime minister has not simply filled vacant positions, but has also redefined key aspects of the government.

According to information gathered by “Agenzia Nova,” 13 new appointments have been made, including those in key ministries such as Economy, Health, Industry, Higher Education, Youth, Tourism, Culture, Sport, Water Resources, and Digital Economy and Artificial Intelligence. No new ministers have been appointed for Foreign Affairs, Interior, or Defense, a decision that suggests caution especially on the most sensitive issues at home and abroad.

On the political level, perhaps the most significant element is that the reshuffle received institutional backing following a tripartite summit with Menfi and Takala. This step was not exactly a foregone conclusion, as it came after Menfi expressed reservations in recent days about the advisability of changing the government structure without broader national consensus.

The final green light does not seem to indicate full political convergence, but rather the decision to retrospectively reintroduce Dabaiba’s moves within an institutional framework compatible with the 2015 Libyan Political Agreement, the UN-brokered agreement that governs the post-2011 phase, and with the transition phase the country has been undergoing for over a decade without yet having managed to hold national elections. In this way, Tripoli has attempted—at least formally—to contain its internal friction before the next phase.

This need for unity is also evident in other signs seen in recent days in western Libya. In Zawiya, a strategic city west of Tripoli and crucial to the security balance for years, Dabaiba has established the new municipality of Abu Surra.

Formally, this is an administrative measure, but the measure affects an area local sources have linked to the Buzriba family, an influential group to which the prime minister has gradually entrusted portions of the power networks that emerged after the death of Abdel Ghani al-Kikli, known as “Ghneiwa,” the former commander of the Stabilization Support Authority.

The move takes on further significance because the Buzriba family itself has ties to the east of the country: Issam Buzriba is Interior Minister in the parallel government supported by the House of Representatives in Tobruk.

For this reason, the creation of the new municipality can be interpreted as an attempt to consolidate Tripoli’s control over a sensitive area, but also to keep open channels with circles not entirely unrelated to the eastern sphere.

A similar argument applies to Misrata, another key hub in Tripolitania. The meeting organized by interim Interior Minister Imad Trabelsi with the city’s notables, civil authorities, and security officials had a clear political as well as symbolic significance.

Misrata remains a sort of “city-state” within the balance of power in western Libya: it wields economic, military, and institutional clout, and no stable structure in Tripolitania can ignore its consensus, or at least its neutrality. The message from the political-security iftar promoted by the ministry is that Tripoli is seeking to close ranks with one of the most influential power centers in the west before facing a potentially more delicate phase in national negotiations.

While Tripolitania is recovering, the east is also showing signs of recovery. The government led by Osama Hammad has reorganized the internal security leadership, appointing General Salah al Aqili to head the Internal Security Authority and transferring General Osama al Darsi to the Judicial Police.

These decisions, while presented as normal administrative changes, indicate the eastern camp’s desire to consolidate control over the security apparatus at a time when the prospect of new political mediations makes it even more important to present an orderly chain of command.

The Al Darsi family name also recalls one of the most influential tribal groups in Cyrenaica. The Darsa tribe represents one of the key social groups in the Derna and Al Marj area and maintains significant influence on the political balance of power in eastern Libya.

In recent years, the clan has also returned to the spotlight due to the case of Ibrahim al Darsi, a member of the Tobruk House of Representatives, who disappeared in Benghazi in May 2024 after his home was attacked by armed men. In May 2025, an appeal was filed with the International Criminal Court in The Hague in relation to the case.

In this context, the military movements recorded in recent days also take on a broader significance. The visit of the Libyan National Army (LNA) Chief of Staff, Khaled Haftar, to Sabha and the southwestern border areas should be interpreted in this light: a signal of presence, control, and attention to the southern theater. And Fezzan is precisely the true center of gravity of the game.

The appointment of Salem al-Zadma as Deputy Prime Minister for the south is not a technical choice, but a political move with potential repercussions on the tribal and military balance of power in the region. Al-Zadma belongs to a clan rooted in Fezzan and areas of central Libya such as Jufra, Sirte, and Harawa, with ties to the Arab Awlad Suleiman tribe.

Furthermore, Salem al-Zadma has a background in the eastern parallel government and has returned to the political scene after a period spent primarily in Egypt, amid tensions that pitted his family against circles close to Khalifa Haftar, particularly General Hassan al-Zadma, commander of the 128th Reinforced Brigade. Bringing him to Tripoli and assigning him responsibility for Fezzan represents an attempt to insert a player with local clout into the southern GUN, with the implicit goal of at least partially undermining the structure built in recent years by the east in the south of the country.

The centrality of Fezzan depends on three factors:

The first is energy: In the southern region of Libya, which extends from the cities of Sebha, Murzuq, and Ubari to the borders with Niger, Chad, and Algeria, lie the Sharara and El Feel fields, two of the country’s most important, the latter operated by the Mellitah Oil and Gas joint venture controlled by the National Oil Corporation and the Italian company Eni.

The second factor is geostrategic: The south connects Libya to the Sahel and represents a key hub for controlling the Saharan borders, cross-border traffic, and the main migration routes that cross the desert toward the Mediterranean coast.

The third is political-military: Whoever controls Fezzan strengthens their influence in the future national architecture, because they dominate a buffer zone between Tripolitania and Cyrenaica as well as one of the country’s key economic levers. It is no coincidence that recent security incidents demonstrate how fragile and contested the south remains.

In Sebha, the main urban center in Fezzan, located approximately 750 kilometers south of Tripoli, authorities have established a joint security operations room to strengthen security and enforce a greater state presence.

Meanwhile, in Qatrun, in the desert area of ​​the Murzuq region, approximately 120 kilometers from the border with Niger and along the route connecting Sebha to the Al Tum crossing, a Libyan National Army (LNA) major, Fares al Farjani, was killed in broad daylight at the end of February, confirming the persistent instability in the border areas.

More generally, after the January 31 attack on the Al Tum crossing, one of the main crossing points between Libya and Niger, Haftar strengthened his presence in Fezzan with the creation of the 18th Light Infantry Brigade and increased pressure on the southern routes.

Local sources have traced some of these tensions to the Tebu, a cross-border ethnic group present between Libya, Niger, and Chad, and to rivalries for control of routes and resources in the desert. In this context, the return of figures like Salem al-Zadma to the Tripoli camp suggests an attempt to reshape alliances in the south and erode at least some of the eastern influence.

Overall, Dabaiba’s reshuffle therefore appears to be more than just administrative or image concerns. Rather, the move indicates Tripoli’s desire to present itself as more orderly, more cohesive, and more territorially entrenched in the face of a possible resumption of confrontation with the east. At the same time, the eastern camp is also closing ranks.

Therefore, the next phase of the Libyan crisis may not be played out solely in the palaces of Tripoli and Benghazi, but above all in the ability of the two blocs to consolidate their respective spheres of influence before negotiations. And in this competition, Fezzan (rich in natural resources but poor in services) remains the most sensitive and potentially decisive front.

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MMC Research Report

Executive summary

Bangladesh has long relied on overseas labour migration as a pillar of its economic and social landscape. Millions of households depend on remittances for stability, mobility, and long-term security, and migration has become deeply embedded in national development pathways.

In this context, Libya and Italy have re-emerged in recent years as increasingly significant destinations within a wider ecosystem of regular and irregular movement. Although migration to the Gulf and Malaysia continues to dominate in scale, the Bangladesh–Libya–Italy corridor has evolved into one of the most organised and adaptive routes linking South Asia to Europe.

This study examines the architecture and operational logic of that corridor. Based on 80 qualitative interviews across Bangladesh, Libya, and Italy, it addresses an important evidence gap: how Bangladeshi migrants reach Italy through Libya, how intermediaries and facilitators structure their journeys, and how risk and exploitation accumulate along the way.

What emerges is a route defined not by rupture but by continuity. It is a system that extends Bangladesh’s long-standing labour migration infrastructure into irregular terrain when formal opportunities shrink.

A continuum of profiles: from planning to

deception to exploitation

Movement along this corridor reflects six interconnected profiles, representing gradations of agency, constraint, and vulnerability:

1. Planned labour migrants, who enter Libya through semi-regular channels to work.

2. Italy aspirants, who travel intentionally to Libya to continue to Europe.

3. Debt-driven reroute migrants, whose failed or costly regular migration to the Gulf pushes them toward Europe.

4. Deceived migrants, who are misled about their destination and find themselves in Libya unknowingly.

5. Trafficked migrants, who fall into debt bondage, forced labour, or resale between brokers in Libya.

6. Returnees or escapees, who attempt to flee Libya after cycles of violence, extortion, or detention.

These profiles are not discrete categories but points along a continuum. Migrants may move from planning to deception, from smuggling to exploitation, and from agency to coercion depending on circumstances.

This continuum forms the analytical framework of the study and underscores how vulnerability is produced and compounded throughout the migration process.

Structural pressures and recalibrated

opportunity

Bangladesh’s reliance on overseas employment is increasingly shaped by economic deterioration, rising inflation, underemployment, and disillusionment with Gulf migration, which is widely perceived as exploitative, debt-inducing, and offering little long-term mobility.

At the same time, Italy exerts a strong motivational pull. Its large Bangladeshi diaspora, past regularization campaigns, and reputation for eventual stability and belonging create a sense that Italy offers a path to both livelihood and transformation.

These narratives circulate through family networks and social reputation, reinforcing migration as a collective household strategy rather than an individual decision. Shrinking access to regular pathways amplifies these pressures.

Prospective migrants frequently begin with the intention to migrate legally, approaching recruitment agencies or applying for visas, but are steered toward irregular options by the same intermediaries they rely on for information and documentation.

In Bangladesh’s dense recruitment ecosystem, the distinction between regular and irregular channels quickly collapses in practice because the actors, processes, and paperwork frequently overlap.

This study finds that irregular migration to Italy is often the final stage of an attempted legal migration process rather than an alternative to it.

Eastern Libya as the organizing center of

the route

Since 2020, a semi-formal entry system in eastern Libya has become the backbone of the corridor.

Under this system, migrants enter Benghazi legally using entry clearances issued by the Libyan National Army’s Military Investment Authority. This structure has reshaped the entire corridor:

• Recruitment in Bangladesh is organized around delivering migrants directly into eastern Libya with valid passports, visas, and flight itineraries that mirror regular labour migration.

• Transit routes through Dubai, Egypt, Kuwait, Turkey, India, or Sri Lanka function as feeder systems designed to synchronize documentation, verify payments, and route groups into Benghazi.

• Arrival in Benghazi initiates a structured sequence of registration, health screening, nationality-segregated holding sites, and coordinated transportation across the country. Initially established for Syrians through Cham Wings Airlines, the eastern system has been increasingly dominated by Bangladeshi arrivals.

In its early phase, migrants entering Benghazi were moved to Tobruk, where boats departed directly from the eastern coast toward Italy. This changed in 2023 when increased scrutiny and selective enforcement in the east made Tobruk departures less feasible.

As conditions shifted, networks adapted by redirecting migrants from Benghazi to the western coastal hubs of Zuwara and Zawiya, which became the main points of departure to Italy. Despite this relocation of the final leg, eastern Libya remained the organising centre of the route.

A modular, multi-layered network across

three regions

The Bangladesh–Libya–Italy corridor functions through a segmented structure in which different actors control specific parts of the journey.

• Brokers in Bangladesh handle recruitment, documentation, fee negotiation, and communication with families.

• Transit facilitators based in the UAE, Egypt, Kuwait, Turkey, India, and Sri Lanka coordinate group movement and manage handovers between networks.

• Libyan actors, including airport sponsors, armed groups, drivers, and coastal smugglers, regulate movement inside Libya and control access to onward travel. These actors are linked through communication channels, trust-based relationships, and shared financial arrangements.

Movement inside Libya follows a chain of negotiated hubs — from Benghazi in the east, through Ajdabiya, Sirte, and Shwerayif, to the coastal centers of Zuwara and Zawiya — with responsibility passing from one facilitator to the next.

This segmented architecture enables rapid adaptation to political and enforcement shifts. When restrictions increased in eastern Libya at the end of 2023, networks redirected migrants to the western coast for departure to Italy, ensuring that the overall flow continued even as operational routes changed.

A protection economy built on

predictability and coercion

Bangladeshi migrants are uniquely targeted for extortion due to their strong family support networks, which make them reliable payers.

The result is a protection economy in which financial extraction occurs at every stage:

• confiscation of wages or documents;

• inflated fees for food, security, or onward travel;

• staged or genuine kidnappings for ransom;

• periods of captivity in holding sites or “game houses”;

• forced labour during delays or detention;

• resale between brokers.

These practices reflect a continuum between smuggling and trafficking rather than two distinct systems. Migrants frequently transition from one to the other depending on debt, payment failure, or capture by armed groups.

The purpose of exploitation, whether through labour, ransom, or coercion, is embedded in the operational logic of the route. Even interception at sea does not end the cycle. Many migrants are handed back to Bangladeshi intermediaries along the western coast and forced to pay again for release or onward movement.

The economics of the system

The study finds that the route operates through standardized price tiers. Most Bangladeshis pay between USD 10,000–14,000 for the full journey from Bangladesh to Italy, with many ultimately spending USD 15,000–17,000 after extortion and additional costs inside Libya.

Using 2024 arrival figures in Italy as the baseline and applying these documented price structures across scenario-based models, the estimated size of the Bangladesh–Libya–Italy smuggling economy is USD 160–190 million per year.

This represents a lower-bound estimate, excluding those who paid but never arrived in Italy. These revenues sustain actors across the route’s layered architecture and reinforce the economic incentives underlying the system

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Amanda Kadlec

Cross-border trafficking networks linking Libya, Chad and Sudan have turned northern Chad into a key hub of the Sahel’s conflict economy. Fuel, gold, weapons and fighters now circulate through militia-run “traffic loops”.

The matrix of armed group conflict and cooperation in North Africa and the Sahel is a microcosm of a much broader geopolitical dynamic. Libyan, Sudanese and Chadian militias in cross-border areas form a decentralized, yet efficient supply chain of high-demand goods – vehicles, fuel, food, gold, arms – and people, based on mutual interest and profit. Well beyond their narrow areas of operation, distant suppliers of arms and buyers of gold – primarily by state-linked intermediaries – embed these flows in a wider, systemic web of patronage that both sustains and profits from the region’s destruction.

Chad now sits at the center of these dynamics rather than in the periphery. Although these networks are multi-nodal, multi-directional and mutually reinforcing, three production locations act as pivotal hubs.

Fuel: Chad as the Smuggling Route from

Libya’s Ports to Sudan

A primary starting point are the Mediterranean ports in north Libya, where subsidized fuel from state-run companies GECOL and National Oil Corporation (NOC) is diverted southward to the Kufra region and further into Bir Mirgui and Nyala in Darfur, Sudan, with the Tibesti region of Chad acting as a central transit point.

This area, controlled by the Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF) in the east and in the south (Fezzan), emerged as the epicenter of highly profitable militia-run smuggling activities since the fall of Muammar Gadhafi in 2011, and has grown exponentially. According to UN expert panel reporting, approximately 185 illegal diesel shipments amounting to 1.1 million tons moved from a single harbor in Benghazi from 2022 to 2024 alone.

Further south, Arab and Tebu armed-groups in control of Kufra that are aligned with the LAAF –  namely the Salafi Subul al-Salam Brigade – form the locus of the delivery of fuel and arms to the proximate locations of Rapid Support Forces (RSF) via Chad and Sudan in its conflict with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) that are then run through a series of locations.

The LAAF’s reach across the south of Libya over the past decade, alongside Russia’s Africa Corps, has reshaped relationships and smuggling dynamics – historically the domain of Tuareg and Tebu armed groups – in Niger and Chad. While the LAAF previously deferred trafficking to localized groups, it has sought to exert more control in recent years.

In 2025, a crackdown on a militia commander sparked clashes in Gatrun, leading Chadian fighters based there to scatter across the Fezzan region and the border to northern Niger, or, where possible, back to Chad. Several times, the Libyan Tebu ground commander Mohamed al-Mahdi Warqadou has pushed into Libya, under the umbrella of The Front for Change and Accord in Chad (FACT), through the Al-Tumm border crossing: it occurred most recently in January 2026. under the new moniker of Southern Rebels, due to skirmishes with the LAAF which resulted in blocking key supply lines to the RSF.

In this context, Ukrainian forces groups seeking to undermine Russia’s role in the region and its alliance with the RSF are actively reinforcing Warqadou’s operational aims, which are in contrast with the LAAF-RSF partnership. The LAAF’s once seamless connection to the RSF in Sudan was first disrupted in 2024, when Musa Hilal – leader of the Arab Mahmid tribe and his fighters that extend throughout Chad, the Fezzan, and northwestern Niger – split with the RSF’s leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo to formally align with the SAF.

These developments have triggered a rechanneling of fuel and arms to Chad through the Salvador Pass among Nigerien and Chadian militias that reluctantly cooperate to resist LAAF’s recapture over key corridors, even as they clash among themselves for controls and rents.

Gold: Chadian Militias as Intermediaries

for Land and Air Smuggling

While fuel runs southward and eastward, gold is typically trafficked from Chad northward to Egypt and Libya by land and air, or directly to the Gulf. Chadian militias – which have worked and fought alongside aligned groups in Libya for over a decade – are a key intermediary in this process, which is led by FACT leader Mahamat Mahdi Ali and his Gorane ethnic group.

The FACT based its multi-ethnic coalition of fighters in the southern Libyan towns of Jufra and Sabha during the civil conflict in Libya in 2019 that was initiated by Haftar’s forces, with the support of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Russia.

Following the 2020 ceasefire and reduction in mercenary payments, FACT and other Chadian militias relocated to concentrate on the artisanal gold trade. The Military Command Council for the Salvation of the Republic – a splinter of FACT composed of fighters from the Kreda ethnic group led by Mahamt Hassani Bulmay – has both competed against and collaborated with FACT over control of the mining areas and recruits.

The Transit Point of Northern Chad: How

the Sudan War Redirects Gold,

Weapons and Fighters Networks

In 2023, the simultaneous outbreak of conflict in Sudan further redirected these networks. Arms and ammunition from Libya reached Kouri Bougoudi via Um al‑Araneb, Gatrun and Emi Madama, where Chadian traffickers and mercenary networks redistribute them to markets in eastern Chad, Darfur and Niger.

The northern regions of Chad therefore now double as hinge transit points not only for gold, but for fuel, arms and the movement of fighters to support the RSF across the border in Darfur. The UAE is the lynchpin in this wider web.

Materiel and supplies are flown into Chad’s eastern airports – most notably through Amdjarass and Abéché – that are then trafficked by land to the RSF, while crates of bullion purchased at a steep discount are packed into the plane for its return flight.

Both Sudan and Chad-originated gold is alternatively moved via Port Sudan: the main artery for international shipping on the eastern side of the Red Sea corridor, with an international airport adjacent. The mining areas and interconnected routes are split among RSF and SAF control, but the primary recipient of these vast quantities of gold is the UAE.

In 2024-2025 alone, conservative estimates of 10-20 tons (and over 700 tons from across the African continent) ended up in Dubai. The SAF’s main partner, Saudi Arabia, has opened a new front in the emerging geopolitical Emirati- Saudi rift by making inroads into its own gold extraction activities.

Local Smuggling It’s a Tool of Foreign

Influence

This international trafficking architecture has turned the web of armed groups and their respective spheres of localized smuggling activity into instruments of foreign influence, shaping the geopolitical positioning of Russia, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. This dynamic reinforces the conflict economy from which armed groups in Chad and beyond benefit.

The reach and impact of the UAE and Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the region – along with Russia –  was well established in Libya and Chad long before the armed conflict erupted in Sudan: both support the LAAF against armed groups in West Libya, with the Emirates serving as the primary financial and logistical backer.

Russia’s entry into Libya with security agreements and deployment of the Wagner Group (now Africa Corps), and in conjunction with its close ally, the UAE, positioned it as a direct and critical link in the Sahel’s trafficking market. 

Where Moscow supplies the security assistance and cover for armed groups to source and move goods, conflict-linked profits sustain its operations and proxies in Sudan, Libya and Chad.

The UAE in turn provides the logistics and capital that facilitate Russia’s role, and ultimately, its capacity to evade sanctions in parallel markets.

The Impact on Mediterranean and

European Security

Against this backdrop, the endless and reinforcing loop of armed groups, competing smuggling corridors, foreign patrons and conflict structurally enable widespread instability, shaping a deeply unstable configuration across the entire Mediterranean region – from the entry via the Red Sea at Suez to the northern coast of Libya – sitting just across Europe’s southern coast.

The most tragic byproduct are millions of displaced struggling to survive in poorly sourced encampments.

These effects of conflict economy both directly and indirectly impact Mediterranean and European security. The gold extraction, trafficking hubs and corridors – as well armed groups in Chad fighting with the RSF – are linked to networks in eastern coastal Libya.

On the other side, Port Sudan controlled by the SAF has direct access to the Red Sea approaching the critical shipping lanes in the Gulf of Aden and the Suez Canal through to the Mediterranean. As long as arms and revenue flow seamlessly throughout these two major streams through the complex of militias and the Gulf actors that facilitate it – with much of it originating in Chad – the risk to Europe’s interests remains.

Russia’s well-established presence throughout the Sahel region, underwritten by Emirati logistics operations and capital, is still secure. This presence represents a direct challenge to European security in the Mediterranean and NATO’s southern flank. The entanglement of these financial and strategic interests further poses a challenge to the EU’s ability to enforce sanctions or conditionality arrangements, to mitigate through negotiation the source of the conflict economy and its effects.

Any leverage that European actors might have to advance their interests is effectively neutered by an asymmetrical concentration of power occupied by the Gulf-Russia-Sahel axis.

What began as an affiliation of fragmented militias and illicit artisanal gold mining in Chad in the 2010s has burgeoned into a well-organized and efficient parallel economy that presents real downstream effects to eastern and central Mediterranean security today.

The deep involvement of Chadian militias with Libyan and Sudanese arms, fuel and gold trafficking markets over the past decade has shifted from being a peripheral phenomenon to becoming a critical source-point in the conflict economy, geopolitical financial market shifts and the potential for disruption to Europe’s maritime frontier.

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Italian Institute for International Political Studies

Anas El Gomati

In late March, a Nato air campaign, led by Britain and France with US support, began bombing Gaddafi’s forces. In August, rebels took Tripoli. In October, Gaddafi was captured and executed. In July 2012, Libya went to the polls for the first time since 1969. Mohamed Megareyef, Haftar’s former boss in exile, was elected president of the parliament. Haftar withdrew to a farmhouse south of Tripoli. Just like in Chad, it seemed he was finished. But failure had taught him patience.

“What drove him wasn’t just ideology like Gaddafi, or even just raw power,” said Mohamed Buisier, who served as Haftar’s political adviser from 2014 before breaking with him in 2016. “It was more personal than that. He wanted to know his name would be remembered in Libya’s history. Not as the defeated commander from Chad, but as the man who saved Libya.”

What followed was the collapse of the order that had rejected him. In the west, revolutionary brigades turned into militias and divided Tripoli into armed fiefdoms. In the east, judges, activists and military officers were assassinated. With armed groups operating openly under jihadist banners, the term “Islamist” became such a common accusation that it lost all meaning. It was a way to mark an enemy, whether they were a genuine jihadist or not.

Meanwhile, the mood across the region was shifting. In July 2013, Egypt’s military, backed by the UAE and Saudi Arabia, overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood government. A narrative hardened: Islamists were the disease, generals the cure.

Haftar saw his opportunity. In February 2014, Haftar attempted to launch a coup, but when no troops rallied to his side, he was forced to flee to Benghazi with a warrant for his arrest. It was there that he began to build a real power base that could bring him what he wanted. Just as in the Chadian prison camp, in Benghazi Haftar saw a place full of men who felt abandoned, humiliated and excluded: former regime officers now locked out of power, armed groups that had once fought Gaddafi and were now sidelined. Haftar realised he could organise them if he found a unifying cause.

On 16 May 2014, Haftar launched Operation Dignity, declaring a “war on terror” against Islamists and reviving the Libyan National Army, the title he had first used in Chad in 1988. In Chad, the name had given the CIA a fiction to support. Now it gave Egypt and the UAE the same cover: they were not backing a warlord with militias, but an army fighting terrorism. Backed by Egyptian and Emirati airstrikes, his forces attacked jihadist factions and revolutionary brigades in Benghazi and Tripoli on the same day, plunging the country into civil war. Everyone who opposed Haftar was branded an Islamist.

Weeks later, Libya’s second parliamentary elections deepened the split. The new parliament convened in the east; the old one in Tripoli refused to disband. By the end of the year, the country had two governments, two parliaments, two claims to law, and no mechanism to replace or reconcile them. That division largely continues today.

In early 2015, Aguila Saleh, chief of the eastern parliament, used Islamic State bombings as a pretext to appoint Haftar head of the army. On paper, Haftar answered to Saleh. In reality, the parliament sat in territory his forces controlled – politicians who dissented disappeared or fled. The eastern parliament gave his militias what the NFSL once gave him in Chad: legal cover. When the UN brokered a unity government that December, it demoted the western parliament and required a confidence vote from Saleh’s. His parliament refused and appointed a rival government. The UN had not unified Libya. It had handed Haftar a veto.

The revolution had tried to build something without Haftar and failed. Now he had what he needed: an army that answered to him, a parliament that depended on him, and foreign backers – the UAE, Egypt and later Russia – invested in his survival. He would not govern or hold office, but he controlled the men who did. What he had rehearsed in Chad, refined in exile, and tested in Benghazi, was complete. The system had found its country.

Today, from an ageing Soviet-era airbase in Rajma, just outside Benghazi, Haftar runs his system. From the outside, the compound is unremarkable. Inside, it functions as the headquarters of a power that exists nowhere on paper but controls everything that matters: the oilfields, the export terminals, the parliament, the courts, the men with guns.

The foundation of his power is oil. In September 2016, Haftar’s forces seized the “oil crescent”, a 250-mile coastal strip that includes Libya’s four major export terminals. Two-thirds of Libya’s crude oil flows through these ports. Under international pressure, Haftar handed operational control back to the National Oil Corporation (NOC) in Tripoli, the only exporter the world recognises. But he kept military control of the territory, giving him extraordinary leverage. In August 2024, Aguila Saleh cautioned that replacing Libya’s central bank governor – which Haftar opposed – “may result in shutting down oil”. Meanwhile, western embassies consistently condemn any disruptions to oil flow without naming the commander whose forces control every terminal. The fiction is maintained on all sides.

From 2016 to 2019, while two governments claimed legitimacy, Haftar was courted at summits in Paris and Abu Dhabi. Despite repeated meetings with the UN-backed prime minister, Fayez al-Sarraj, Haftar dismissed all compromises. “We offered him legitimate power,” former US special envoy Jonathan Winer told me. “Control of a military council under civilian oversight, or leadership through elections if the Libyan people chose him. He just shook his head. He would not be subservient to anyone, elected or not.”

Inside Haftar’s territory, a simpler system applied. Since 2014, dissent has been classified as terrorism. A protest, a conversation, a Facebook post: any criticism can carry a death sentence. In October 2016, so many bodies were found on Al-Zayt Street on the outskirts of Benghazi, bound and shot, dumped among the rubbish, that locals renamed it “corpse street”. “When I enquired about a 16-year-old boy who’d disappeared in Benghazi in early 2016, they told me, matter of fact, that they’d murdered him for spying,” Buisier told me. “I protested – we were supposed to be building a state of institutions, of law. They looked at me like I was naive. One officer suggested I might be sympathetic to the terrorists myself.” Buisier left Haftar’s circle shortly after and returned to the US.

By 2019, Haftar had racked up $25bn in debt, funding his army through unofficial bonds, commercial bank loans and even Russian-printed dinars circulating in his territory. He needed the central bank in Tripoli to open its vaults. And on 4 April 2019, he launched a full assault to capture Tripoli. The Trump administration had effectively authorised the move: the national security adviser, John Bolton, told him to act “quickly” if he wanted to seize the capital and unify the country under his control. Days after the assault began, Trump himself called to praise Haftar’s “counterterrorism” efforts. By the summer, Russian mercenaries had joined Haftar’s ground forces, transforming what had been conceived as a lightning coup into a protracted siege.

After years of fruitless peace talks, Haftar had finally abandoned the diplomatic charade entirely. That July, Benghazi MP Seham Sergiwa appeared on a pro-Haftar television channel to urge dialogue over war. Her broadcast was cut mid-sentence. That night, gunmen dragged her from her home and spray-painted “the army is a red line” on the building. She hasn’t been seen since, and her family suspect she was taken by forces loyal to Haftar.

Ultimately, Haftar’s assault on Tripoli failed. In late 2019 Turkey intervened on behalf of the UN-backed government to try to force Haftar to negotiate for peace. The following month, at a conference in Berlin convened to end the war, as world leaders were waiting to announce the agreement, Haftar was nowhere to be found. He had gone to take a nap. “It wasn’t fatigue,” the former UN envoy Stephanie Williams told me. “It was theatre, designed to show that he operated outside the rules.” No agreement was reached.

In late 2020, the UN brokered a ceasefire to end the war. The deal required that Haftar place his forces under civilian command. Again, he refused. Elections were promised for December 2021. After disputes over candidate eligibility and electoral laws, they collapsed. None have been held since, and the country has returned to division.

Haftar’s financial grip has only tightened. In late 2024, officials at the central bank in Tripoli discovered nearly 10bn new dinars in circulation bearing serial numbers that did not exist in their system. Counterfeit notes had flooded the economy from the east. The scheme helped finance Haftar’s forces, paid debts incurred to his Russian mercenaries. The counterfeit notes circulated as real currency in eastern Libya and were traded for US dollars on the hidden market – giving Moscow access to hard currency from which it had been cut off by western sanctions since the invasion of Ukraine.

The central bank faced a choice: expose the fraud and trigger another financial crisis, or absorb the loss in silence. “We knew exactly where the notes came from,” said a central bank insider. “But saying so would mean confrontation, and confrontation means the oil stops, and the dinar loses more value. So we absorbed them and said nothing. That is how institutions survive in Libya. You accept what you cannot confront.”

In October 2025, the counterfeit notes were withdrawn quietly, written into the bank’s books, and Haftar’s wealth grew. “It’s easier to deal with a lie you can manage,” a former western official told me, “than a truth you can’t fix.”

Now 82, Haftar faces the ultimate quandary of his creation: how to transfer power in a system that depends on institutions that function only because no one admits who controls them. What happens when the man behind the pretence is gone?

Observers agree that Haftar would like to secure his legacy through his children. “His eyes would light up when he introduced you to his sons,” Williams, the former UN envoy, recalled. According to those who knew the family, one son held a special place. “Saddam was always his favourite,” Buisier told me. “Maybe because he most closely reflected his father’s stature and bearing.”

Haftar’s sons have divided the system between them, ahead of what is rumoured to be a year of succession. Saddam, appointed deputy commander-in-chief in August 2025, is the heir apparent, commanding the most powerful of his father’s brigades. Khaled serves as chief of staff, keeping his father’s army in check. Belkacem, an engineer turned businessman, directs billions in reconstruction contracts to rebuild cities destroyed by his father’s wars. Al–Siddiq, a poet, manages tribal politics through reconciliation commissions that promise peace and forgiveness but do not deliver them. Okba oversees the cryptocurrency and AI sector. Each holds a title. None holds elected office. The succession has been rehearsed so openly it barely qualifies as a secret. According to recent reporting, even US diplomats are now involved in discussions about a deal to unify Libya’s rival governments with Saddam as its president.

But Haftar built his system for one man, not five. His sons must divide what their father never shared – territory, money, mercenaries, an economy stitched together with counterfeit currency – in a fractured Libya where a rival government commands its own militias and foreign backers. Gaddafi groomed his sons for decades, gave them an ideology to recite, however hollow, and they were still tearing at each other before the revolution swept them away. Haftar’s sons have no creed to share, only the pragmatism of survival. Gaddafi claimed to preside over a system of popular rule. Haftar’s system claims nothing except silent assent.

***

Anas El Gomati is the founder of the Tripoli-based Sadeq Institute, the first Libyan think tank, and a visiting fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center, where his research focuses on socioeconomics, democratic governance, the security sector and political Islam in Libya. He is also a visiting lecturer at the NATO Defense College in Rome, where his work focuses on political analysis and public policy.

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Anas El Gomati

The Americans began visiting Haftar regularly, and he was on occasion permitted to leave the camp to meet with the dictator who ruled Chad, President Hissène Habré. According to former detainees and opposition figures, Haftar soon took control of food distribution, medicine and communications inside the camp, and enforced discipline among the prisoners. Survival required obedience to him.

In August 1987, Habré informed the leader of the main Libyan opposition movement in exile that Haftar and the captives wanted to join forces with them. “It was a shock,” recalled Mukhtar Murtadi, then a senior member of the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL). “He had enforced Gaddafi’s system. Now he wanted to be an ally. We didn’t know how to place him, but we saw a chance to hurt the regime.”

Murtadi visited Haftar shortly afterwards. What he found unsettled him. The prison compound was a vision of suffering: barracks crammed with prisoners, 50 or 60 to a cell, the reek of sewage and sickness, men wasted by hunger and heat. And at the centre, untouched by any of it, a small villa with a porch, a kitchen and running water: Haftar’s quarters. For their meeting, Haftar emerged freshly showered, wearing a spotless white kaftan, his beard neatly trimmed. “He didn’t look like a prisoner,” Murtadi recalled. “He looked like a guest.”

In June 1988, Haftar announced he was establishing the NFSL’s armed wing. He called it the Libyan National Army, a name he would revive decades later. It was an army without territory or a state, but the title was enough. It turned a discarded prisoner into a commander again, and gave the CIA something to recognise and support.

The CIA trained Haftar and his men in guerrilla warfare in camps outside Chad’s capital, N’Djamena. In Washington, they were known as the Libyan Contras. “He had a way of commanding the space,” recalled a former NFSL member who trained with Haftar. “Tall, broad-shouldered, rigid. He made you feel he was in charge, even in a dusty tent.”

Then, in December 1990, the arrangement collapsed when a Chadian general backed by Gaddafi suddenly overthrew Habré. The Americans scrambled to extract their assets. “We got 300 of Haftar’s men on to a C-130. No bags. We cheered when the plane took off,” a former CIA officer who worked on the Libya desk told me. For the next six months, Haftar and his men were shuttled between African capitals as governments weighed American pressure against Libyan threats. Gaddafi wanted them captured.

View image in fullscreen The spectre of a CIA-trained army led by his former colonel, broadcasting into Libya, recruiting defectors, became an obsession for Gaddafi. As his paranoia grew, he sent hit squads across Europe and the Arab world to hunt opposition figures – or “stray dogs”, as he called them. Inside Libya, people vanished for a rumour or a joke. Of the more than 1,000 Libyan soldiers captured in Chad, only about 300 had made it to the US by May 1991. The rest were scattered or returned to Libya. Many were never seen again.

My father, one of Libya’s most distinguished physicists, had left Tripoli in the 1970s to complete his doctorate in England. In the universities he left behind, students were being hanged from campus gates for their politics. It defined him, and he made enemies of the regime for saying so. Growing up in the northern English city of York in the early 1990s, I spent summers with my mother in Tripoli while he remained in England. It was too dangerous for him to return.

In Tripoli, surviving depended on pretending. When a relative disappeared, my aunt told the neighbours he was on holiday. I found her sobbing in the kitchen at midnight, hands pressed over her mouth so no one would hear. At dinner, my cousin kicked me under the table when I mentioned my father’s missing friend Hussein. I learned to pretend he did not exist. Every morning, during our stays in Tripoli, a Peugeot surveillance car with tinted windows would park outside my uncle’s house. It was still there when the streetlights came on. We pretended not to see it and the men inside pretended not to watch us.

In late 1995, my mother left our home in England and flew to Tripoli for her brother’s funeral. Weeks passed, then months. We learned that she had been detained at the airport in Tripoli. Intelligence officers instructed her to tell my father to come to Libya, that they only wanted to talk. She sent the opposite message through a family friend: it’s not safe, don’t come, look after the children. She was saying goodbye. She did not know if she would see us again. She was kept under house arrest until mid-1996, when a relative bribed a senior military official to return her passport. She was given hours to leave, crossed by land into Tunisia, and flew home. We met at the airport. She was thinner than I had ever seen her. She held me for a long time, then asked me what I wanted for dinner. We talked about everything except where she had been.

Haftar would later build his own system on the same foundations: the disappearances, the silence, the pretence that nothing was wrong.

As Libyans across the west navigated these fears, Haftar was building a new life in the US. By the summer of 1991, he was living in a one-bedroom apartment at Skyline House in Falls Church, Virginia, not far from CIA headquarters in Langley. He never truly settled into American life, being chauffeured between Langley meetings and community gatherings, where he appeared withdrawn and socially awkward.

Salah Elbakkoush, a Libyan dissident who lived in the same building, recalled a scene in Haftar’s apartment that characterised his American years: a former Libyan prisoner of war served them tea in silence, head bowed, just as he had in the Chad prison camp. “Here we were in suburban Virginia,” Bakoush said, “and this broken man was serving us like nothing had changed. It told me everything about Haftar. He wasn’t building a new life. He was recreating his old one.”

The CIA had resettled Haftar, but the arrangement came with expectations. “Washington was full of useless dissidents,” the former CIA officer told me. “The agency wanted more; useful intelligence from inside the country. The quid pro quo was simple: we’re glad to resettle you, but we need actionable intel from your own networks. Otherwise you’re just a burden.”

In 1992, the CIA and NFSL began planning a coup inside Libya. Haftar was tasked with recruiting regime officers willing to defect. For more than a year, he travelled to Zurich to meet Libyan military officers who were willing to risk everything to overthrow Gaddafi. On those same trips, Haftar also, it later emerged, met secretly with Ahmad Gaddaf al-Dam, Gaddafi’s cousin and a senior regime fixer.

According to Mukhtar Murtadi and the then-leader of the NFSL, Mohamed Megareyef – both of whom worked closely with Haftar during this period – Haftar played both sides. To the Americans and the NFSL, he claimed his meetings with regime figures were intelligence gathering, part of the preparation for the coup. To Gaddafi’s people, he offered something more valuable: the names of every officer who had pledged to betray the regime. In October 1993, the coup was launched inside Libya. It failed within hours. The regime arrested hundreds of conspirators. Most were executed.

The full truth may never be known. But what followed told its own story. In 1995, Haftar received a villa in Cairo as a personal gift from Gaddafi, something he would openly admit decades later, when it no longer mattered. That same year, Haftar broke with the NFSL and founded a rival organisation, the Libyan Movement for Change and Reform. The split proved fatal to the opposition: infighting consumed what remained of the NFSL. Gaddafi had wanted the exiles divided. He got his wish.

The former CIA officer was hesitant to confirm how or if the relationship with Haftar officially ended. What is clear is that by the mid-1990s, US intelligence considered Haftar an unreliable cold-war asset with no war left to fight. But his ties to Gaddafi endured. In 2005, Gaddafi visited Haftar’s family at their villa in Cairo. Haftar was not there but in leaked audio of the meeting, Gaddafi told his eldest son that Haftar was like a brother to him.

By 2011, Haftar had lived in Virginia for two decades, long since abandoned by the CIA but still holding his US citizenship and his grievances. When the Libyan revolution erupted that February, he watched it on television. “His eyes were fixed on the TV screen,” recalled a Libyan dissident who met him at that time. In early March, Aly Abuzaakouk, a prominent dissident and later parliamentarian who had known Haftar for more than 20 years, drove him to Dulles airport for his return to Benghazi. “We hugged,” Abuzakook told me. “But the man who arrived in Libya was different from the one I dropped off. I believed he was joining the revolution, but he was going to take it over.”

When Haftar landed in Benghazi on 15 March 2011, he arrived late to a revolution that did not need him. Gaddafi still held Tripoli and the west. In the east, revolutionaries had formed a transition council: a loose coalition of defectors, lawyers and academics determined to replace military rule with civilian government. On the ground, power rested with protesters who had formed armed brigades and paid for it in blood. They distrusted career military officers, people with foreign ties and officials with old-regime baggage. Haftar embodied all three.

Within days, Haftar’s sons began approaching brigade commanders, speaking of their father’s desire to “protect the revolution”. A week later, the council’s military spokesperson announced Haftar as their new commander, without consulting the political leadership. “I control everybody,” Haftar told the New York Times that April. “The rebels and the regular army forces.” This was pure bluster: at the time, he controlled no one. The war moved on without him.

***

Anas El Gomati is the founder of the Tripoli-based Sadeq Institute, the first Libyan think tank, and a visiting fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center, where his research focuses on socioeconomics, democratic governance, the security sector and political Islam in Libya. He is also a visiting lecturer at the NATO Defense College in Rome, where his work focuses on political analysis and public policy.

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Anas El Gomati

When Nato helped overthrow Gaddafi in 2011, there were hopes of a new beginning. More than a decade later, a former CIA asset runs the country – and Libya has become yet another lesson in the unintended consequences of foreign intervention

In July 2025, four of Europe’s most senior officials landed in eastern Libya for an urgent meeting. Italy’s interior minister had watched migrant arrivals surge during the previous six months. Greece’s migration chief was reeling after 2,000 people reached Crete in a single week. Malta’s home minister feared his island was next. And the EU’s migration commissioner was scrambling to rescue an agreement worth many hundreds of millions that was visibly failing to stop the boats.

Libya is a place where crises converge. Its 1,100-mile coastline, the longest Mediterranean coastline in Africa, has become the main departure point for migrants heading north. Since Muammar Gaddafi was toppled in 2011, the country has been torn apart by successive civil wars. Russia, Turkey, Egypt and the UAE arm rival factions, and the contest no longer stops at Libya’s borders. From military bases in the south, Russia and the UAE funnel weapons and fighters into Sudan’s civil war, which has driven hundreds of thousands more refugees north towards Libya’s coast.

Whoever controls Libya holds leverage over Europe. Yet Libya’s political crisis is so byzantine that it confuses even experienced European officials. The country is split between two governments, one in the west and one in the east, and neither really governs. The UN and Europe recognise the Government of National Unity in Tripoli, which was formed in 2021 to oversee elections that never happened. In response, the House of Representatives, Libya’s parliament elected in 2014, appointed a rival government in the eastern city of Benghazi in 2022, though that government is not officially recognised by any country. Both administrations, in the east and west, claim national authority. Neither controls the oil, military bases or the migration routes that make Libya matter to Europe. One man does. His name is Khalifa Haftar.

Haftar is 82. His title, general commander of the Libyan National Army, a coalition of militias assembled in 2014 and later rubber stamped by the eastern parliament, does not convey the vast extent of his power. His forces hold the oilfields and export terminals across central Libya. His coastline units police the eastern shore and run the smuggling routes that feed Europe’s migration crisis. His bases host the foreign militaries feeding Sudan’s war. For Europeans confronting migration, energy insecurity and regional spillover, Haftar controls everything that matters.

The European delegation had come to Benghazi in the hope of a private audience with Haftar. Upon arrival, they learned that he had one condition. He insisted they first meet, publicly and on camera, ministers from the eastern administration that he claims to serve. Europe does not officially recognise that government.

Meeting the eastern administration’s ministers would legitimise it; refusing would mean no access to Haftar. When the Europeans declined, they were denied entry. The delegation never made it past the airport lounge. The humiliation exposed Libya’s central fiction: to reach the country’s most powerful man, you must pretend he is not the country’s most powerful man.

In 2011, foreign powers intervened to overthrow Gaddafi. This is what they built. As bombs fall on Iran and the architects of yet another intervention promise that force will deliver freedom, Libya stands as the parable they refuse to read. Every intervention makes the same promise: remove the dictator and the people will be free. Libya is what happens when the dictator is removed and the people are forgotten.

For more than a decade, as Libya’s politicians fought over diplomatic recognition, Haftar was changing the facts on the ground, accumulating the oil, territory and foreign backers that constitute real power. He claims to be a servant of the eastern government – but it is a government whose ministers he approves, whose parliament his soldiers surround, and whose laws apply only when he permits.

Meanwhile, the rival government in Tripoli survives on oil revenues and infrastructure that run through territory he can close at will. Both governments are officially responsible for everything, but neither has power over anything essential. This is Haftar’s system: control everything that matters, be answerable for nothing, and force everyone to pretend the arrangement does not exist.

This system is propped up from outside by foreign powers, and held together inside by enforced silence. Egypt, Russia and the UAE officially recognise the government in Tripoli. In practice, they support Haftar. The UAE bankrolls his operations and provides the weapons that enforce his authority. Egypt offers intelligence and the use of a military base inside its own territory.

Russia supplies mercenaries who guard his oilfields and fight his wars. In May 2025, Vladimir Putin received Haftar at the Kremlin and offered him diplomatic protection at the UN security council. Without these patrons, Haftar’s system would collapse. With them, it is untouchable. “The foreign powers maintain the pantomime as much as Haftar does,” said Tarek Megerisi, senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “They can claim to support Libya’s sovereignty while backing the man who undermines

In eastern Libya no one is fooled. Haftar’s face watches from billboards across Benghazi, and hangs in government offices. In May 2025, the eastern government named a new city after him. His sons command military units, oversee reconstruction contracts, and conduct foreign meetings like heirs in waiting. Yet stating what everyone knows is dangerous. In eastern Libya, everything is monitored.

“People believe Haftar’s reach has no limit,” says Hanan Salah, associate director for north Africa and the Middle East at Human Rights Watch. “His forces take someone from their home, whether a citizen or a parliamentarian, and they vanish. He controls the courts. He controls the investigations. He operates with total impunity because the international community has chosen appeasement over accountability.”

Everyone can see the reality, but no one dares say so. Haftar is Libya’s great pretender. As Jonathan Winer, a former US special envoy, told me, Haftar sees himself as “the Dune messiah, a messianic figure out of the desert who controls the fate of nations while pretending to be the instrument of the people”.

Haftar has spent 50 years closely studying how power works: beside Gaddafi as the dictator governed through committees and councils while claiming no title, in a Chadian prison camp where he made himself indispensable to captors and captives alike, as a CIA asset in Virginia who later played the CIA against the Gaddafi regime, as a failed commander in a revolution that rejected him until he outlasted everyone who did. Each experience taught him the same truth: power does not require a throne. The space between what everyone knows and what no one can say, that is where he rules.

Haftar’s political life began with betrayal. On 1 September 1969, a 25-year-old Haftar stood shoulder to shoulder with Muammar Gaddafi as one of the junior officers who overthrew King Idris, Libya’s pro-western monarch. Over the years that followed, Haftar rose through the ranks of Gaddafi’s revolutionary state, becoming one of his most trusted military commanders.

In 1986, Gaddafi promoted Haftar to colonel and sent him to command Libyan forces in neighbouring Chad. By that point, the two nations had been fighting for almost a decade, and the war had evolved into a struggle for control of smuggling routes and armed networks across the Sahel, a strategic zone linking Libya, Niger and Sudan. Gaddafi wanted the frontier secured and Haftar was the colonel he chose to do it.

The appointment ended in disaster. In March 1987, at the remote airbase of Ouadi Doum, Chadian forces backed by French and American air power routed Haftar’s army. Hundreds of Libyan soldiers were killed. Haftar and more than 1,000 of his men were captured and taken to a prison compound on the outskirts of Chad’s capital.

Gaddafi had always denied any Libyan military presence in Chad, and he did not acknowledge the humiliation at Ouadi Doum. When officials raised Haftar’s name after the defeat, Gaddafi mockingly replied: “Do we have someone in the army by that name? Perhaps you mean a shepherd in the desert called Hfaytar.” Nearly two decades of loyal service, betrayed in a sentence.

For most prisoners of war, the story would have ended in that camp. For Haftar, it was merely the next stage of his education in how power works. The Reagan administration wanted Gaddafi gone, viewing Libya as a Soviet-aligned state, and the CIA had been closely following events on the ground. In Haftar, they saw a trained commander with 1,000 embittered soldiers and a grievance they could use.

In the spring of 1987, US intelligence officers slipped into the prison camp, alongside a group of humanitarian inspectors. They brought food and medicine. They also brought recordings of Gaddafi’s speeches, which they played to the prisoners: their leader denying their existence, mocking them. The aim was to turn them against Gaddafi. It worked. “The Americans planted the seed,” recalled a former Libyan opposition figure based in Chad. “But it was Haftar’s wounded pride that made it grow.”

***

Anas El Gomati is the founder of the Tripoli-based Sadeq Institute, the first Libyan think tank, and a visiting fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center, where his research focuses on socioeconomics, democratic governance, the security sector and political Islam in Libya. He is also a visiting lecturer at the NATO Defense College in Rome, where his work focuses on political analysis and public policy.

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Salem Maiar

Political fragmentation is the most structurally significant obstacle

Keeping the lights on in Libya has been a persistent problem for decades. Renewable energy is now emerging as a critical and strategic tool for energy security. For decades, oil and gas generated roughly 95 percent of Libya’s state revenues and supplied the majority of its electricity. That model funded the state – but it also left the country dangerously exposed. 

Persistent power shortages, ageing infrastructure and political fragmentation since 2011 have made the costs of hydrocarbon overdependence impossible to ignore. Renewable energy is now emerging as a critical and strategic tool for energy security, economic resilience and institutional rebuilding.

A growing portfolio of memoranda of understanding (MoU), cooperation agreements and early-stage contracts – many advanced through the Libya Energy & Economic Summit (LEES) in late January – signals that this shift is moving beyond rhetoric. Not all agreements are fully bankable, but they are helping translate policy intent into defined project pipelines and attracting serious international developers.

Policy framework and strategic direction

Libya’s National Strategy for Renewable Energies and Energy Efficiency sets out the roadmap. The initiative targets approximately 4GW of renewable capacity by 2035, primarily from solar photovoltaic (PV), supported by wind power, concentrated solar power, and hybrid systems. Interim milestones include 1.7GW of renewables by 2026, with solar PV reaching around 3.3GW and wind generation around 600MW by 2035.

Recent agreements address these

constraints directly.

A 100MW solar power agreement between the Renewable Energy Authority of Libya (REAoL) and New York-based W16 Energy, announced at LEES, moves beyond feasibility discussions towards tangible development. Final investment decisions and financing structures remain pending, but the project reflects growing external confidence in Libya’s regulatory direction.

A strategically significant MoU links the ministry of oil and gas with REAoL to integrate solar and wind systems into oil production and processing facilities. By reducing fuel consumption, lowering emissions, and improving operational reliability at existing energy sites, this initiative aligns decarbonisation with economic pragmatism. Leveraging existing infrastructure also lowers development risk and compresses deployment timelines.

International cooperation is broadening the scope. A framework agreement with Serbia focuses on renewable collaboration and technical exchange, while a cooperation initiative between the UNDP and the Libyan Iron and Steel Company targets decarbonisation and energy efficiency in heavy industry – connecting clean energy deployment with industrial diversification.

Large-scale investment pipeline

TotalEnergies’ 500MW Al-Sadada solar project remains the most advanced utility-scale renewable development in the country and is expected to come online this year. With a multi-hundred-million-dollar capital commitment, it sets a benchmark for foreign participation.

Additional interest from PowerChina, EDF Renewables, AG Energy, and Alpha Dhabi Holding has focused on solar portfolios ranging from 1.5GW to 2GW across multiple regions. Most proposals remain at pre-contract stage, but their cumulative scale signals strong appetite for Libya’s solar potential, particularly if regulatory clarity and grid capacity improve.

Wind energy, while smaller in scale, is gaining traction along the Mediterranean coast. A typical 100MW wind project requires capital investment of around $146 million and offers output profiles that complement solar PV, reducing grid vulnerability to single-source intermittency.

Investment implications and challenges

Political fragmentation is the most structurally significant obstacle. The split between Tripoli-based institutions and eastern authorities directly complicates grid integration, contract enforcement and regulatory coherence.

A renewable energy agreement signed with one authority may carry limited legal force or operational reach in territory governed by another. Investors face the practical challenge of identifying which counterparties hold authority over project sites, grid connections and revenue flows.

Recent reforms – including tax incentives, foreign ownership provisions and evolving public-private partnership frameworks – are designed to convert preliminary agreements into bankable assets. Whether they succeed will depend less on the reforms themselves than on the stability of the institutions tasked with enforcing them.

Should favourable conditions advance alongside solar deployment, renewables can reduce domestic fuel consumption and strengthen energy security. In a country rebuilding its infrastructure and its institutions at the same time, clean energy is a state-building strategy.

***

Salem Maiar is a consultant in Libyan natural resources, finances and geopolitics

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Rhiannon Smith

Systemic corruption and overspending

Libya’s wealth is also being squandered at the level of the two formal governing authorities – the GNU in Tripoli and the Government of National Stability (GNS), the political arm of the LNA, in Benghazi – as well as at the level of Libya’s key institutions which theoretically provide Libyans with the public goods and services they need.

The political division within Libya means that there has been no agreed budget between the East and West in several years, and few limits on the increasing amount of money being spent by both governing authorities each year.

In 2025, according to the CBL, over half of Tripoli’s expenditure went on Libya’s public sector salaries (including salaries in the East) – in Libya, public salaries have historically functioned as a type of state benefit, distributing oil wealth to citizens through public sector employment. This has resulted in a bloated and inefficient sector rife with corruption.

Around a quarter of spending also went on subsidies, another way in which the Libyan state has typically sought to keep the population satisfied. These figures don’t include eastern spending. Rampant corruption within Libya’s Letters of Credit system, the main way that Libyan actors secure access to foreign currency for imports, is also driving the growing USD deficit.

Efforts by the CBL to rein in public sector spending have largely been unsuccessful and although the new CBL Governor Naji Essa has introduced a raft of monetary measures to try to stabilise the Libyan economy, they are akin to fixing minor leaks on a sinking ship – without major reforms to public sector spending on salaries and subsidies, as well as moves to tackle institutionalised corruption, there seems little chance of the ship staying afloat.

As it stands, Libya’s oil sector is still generating wealth, but that wealth is being pumped into an economic system which is full of leaks. Some are a product of years of political, institutional and fiscal failings which require major reforms to correct, others are deliberate schemes (often taking advantage of structural flaws) designed to channel Libya’s wealth away from the state coffers and into individual pockets.

Beneath the shiny new buildings, the lucrative development contracts and the exported barrels of crude lies a crumbling institutional landscape which is finding it harder and harder to hold up the country’s economy as state spending balloons, inflation accelerates, and corruption expands, pushing Libya deeper into a financial hole.

Libya as a geopolitical concern

The UN and many key foreign stakeholders are actively engaged on the Libya file, though there is little unity these days, with individual governments primarily pursuing and protecting their own interests and often pulling in different directions as a result.

Finding ways to address the economic crisis is a key focus, though in many cases this is framed through the commercially driven lens of the investment opportunities that a functioning Libyan economy could offer to well-placed companies. Libya’s energy sector is at the top of the list of interests in both commercial and strategic terms.

Libya’s proximity to Europe and its gas reserves means it is an attractive prospect for Europeans seeking to reduce reliance on Russian oil and gas, while Libya’s proven reserves and sweetness of its crude mean there are serious profits that could be made for companies willing to stomach the risk.

There are efforts underway to mediate some sort of unified budget agreement or spending framework to rein in expenditure. However, there is a real danger that striking deals involving the current elite – the main architects of the accelerated corruption and state spending – without stringent conditions linked to progress on the political front could result in the further entrenchment of these corrupt and inefficient systems and practices.

For many countries, especially those in the North Africa and Mediterranean region, Libya is increasingly seen through a security lens, especially as it is a main hub of illegal migration to Europe, with thousands of people attempting to cross the Mediterranean from Libya each a year.

Despite platitudes around improving human rights conditions, European nations continue to provide support to Libyan coast guard units whose role in the horrific abuse of migrants is well documented, as well as facilitating the return of migrant boats intercepted in the Mediterranean to Libya despite it not being a ‘safe port.’

At a geopolitical level, Libya is at the intersection of several live international issues. Russia has a strong presence in eastern Libya and close ties to Khalifa Haftar, supplying him with vital military equipment and support.

Moscow’s paramilitary Africa Corps forces (the rebranded and restructured Wagner Group) are positioned at Libyan bases and have frequently used Libya as a forward base for operations further south in the Sahel region and in other parts of Africa. Western nations are keen to see Khalifa Haftar and his sons distance themselves from Moscow, though there are few signs of this to date.

Libya’s position in the eastern Mediterranean means it has a stake in the often-contentious maritime borders in that region. Indeed, a 2019 maritime Memorandum of Understanding between Libya and Turkey created a direct maritime border between eastern Libya and Turkey – in contravention of existing Greek, Cypriot and Egyptian maritime zones – and a subsequent agreement granted Turkey exploration rights in this zone.

Although the MoU has not been ratified by Libya’s parliament, there has recently been a détente between Turkey and Benghazi resulting in heightened concerns that ratification is possible. Turkey also maintains a major military footprint in western Libya, with troops on the ground and use of airbases.

Meanwhile, Libya’s border with Sudan and the role of LNA-aligned forces in transporting UAE-supplied military supplies from the UAE to the rebel Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are of particular concern to Egypt and others who support the Sudanese Armed Forces.

In general, foreign actors are engaging in direct negotiations and deal-making with the Libyan actors concerned. This in turn gives the Libyan actors significant leverage over international actors, reducing the likelihood of any unified, concerted international effort to pressure the Libyan elite into moving ahead with a political process which would result in national elections.

Reasons to be hopeful

Despite the litany of challenges facing Libya, there are reasons to be hopeful. Municipal council elections have taken place successfully across Libya in the last few months with high turnout rates. Libyans desperately want to be able to choose their political leaders, or at a minimum be able to hold them to account – they will not give up easily on their democratic dreams. Although major political protests are not common in Libya, Libya’s elite cannot afford to ignore widespread anger against them.

Although the security environment is fragile and the lack of rule of law creates fear and uncertainty for many people, Libyans have been able to avoid large-scale conflict and war for the past six years and informal mediation channels are fairly effective. In addition, although the country is divided between East and West in governance terms, Libyans can travel between the different areas and overt hostility between communities is fairly limited.

At a more formal level, efforts to unify the two military structures are making some progress, with both sides showing a willingness to at least engage in the unification process. As for the economy, there are positive developments in the oil sector with a wave of new investment being secured, while international efforts to stem the decline of the Libyan economy may yet have an impact, if the right levers are pulled.

Although the Libya of today is not yet the peaceful and prosperous democracy envisioned by many Libyans after Qadhafi was overthrown in 2011, it remains a country which has a huge amount of potential vested in its people, its land and its institutions. The flame of the 17 February revolution has not yet gone out, but without concerted action to get Libya back on the path to political unity, economic stability and accountability, Libya’s hopes of a better future could be reduced to ashes.

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Rhiannon Smith – Libya-Analysis’s Managing Director.

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Hafed Al-Ghwell

Libya has never lacked for foreign meddlers, yet few have shaped its dysfunction as profoundly as the UAE. A chaotic post-Qaddafi era created an opening for assertive actors seeking pliable allies and geopolitical footholds.

Abu Dhabi stepped into that opening with unmatched ambition, treating Libya as a proving ground for a regional model of power projection that prizes influence over stability, armed clients over institutions and tactical gains over long-term order. The results have been corrosive: (i) A fractured political arena, (ii) Empowered warlords, (iii) Militarized patronage networks and a state unable to reclaim its path to sovereignty and, (iv) Perhaps, some form of democracy.

At the core of Abu Dhabi’s strategy remains Khalifa Haftar’s entrenchment and the fragmentation of national authority. Haftar’s strategy relies heavily on external supply lines, with the UAE delivering money, weapons, mercenaries and political guarantees. As such, the UAE’s backing has allowed Haftar to consolidate a personalized chain of command, marginalize civilian authorities and harden rival institutions. That empowerment comes with a predictable cost.

National reconciliation has become hostage to the ambitions of an aging strongman whose authority derives less from internal legitimacy than from foreign patrons. Libya’s parallel central banks, dueling governments and splintered armed forces are just a few symptoms of an engineered imbalance.

Moreover, Haftar’s foreign sponsorship provides insulation from political compromise, giving him the bandwidth to reject power-sharing frameworks and derail negotiations. Empowered by Abu Dhabi, Haftar has consistently refused to meaningfully integrate his forces, bolstered his reliance on secrecy and coercion, and clung to a dependence on ad hoc external forces, including foreign fighters and mercenaries, to fill gaps in manpower. Naturally, this has led to the creation of a durable ecosystem of unaccountable armed actors that no coherent state could reabsorb.

As a result, a country of barely 7 million people now hosts more than 20 major armed groups, multiple “sovereign” institutions and parallel security forces funded through competing channels, including parallel currency printed by the Haftar clan and used to buy dollars on the black market to finance its insurgency.

The economic burden is staggering. Estimates indicate that Libya has lost more than $150 billion in cumulative oil revenue since 2011 due to blockades, institutional splits and insecurity, dynamics closely tied to the cycles of conflict driven by Haftar’s offensives and the counter-mobilization they have forced.

Each armed surge fed the survival logic of militias in the west, prompting them to dig in, deepening the very dysfunction Abu Dhabi claimed it was helping to neutralize. Even more troubling, the forays into Libya previewed a template for a broader Emirati strategy that fuses counter-democratic instincts with an almost experimental use of hybrid forces.

A reliance on mercenary conglomerates has created a model that rewards pliable strongmen, sidesteps multilateral oversight and opens channels of plausible deniability. Moreover, the “Libya sandbox” also inspired Emirati strategies of merging commercial infrastructure with military utility in a way that few middle powers have managed to execute.

Since 2012, Abu Dhabi has channeled about $60 billion into ports, logistics hubs and supply chains from Senegal to Somalia. In Eritrea, the port of Assab hosted an Emirati military base that functioned as the logistical backbone for Yemen operations while simultaneously handling commercial cargo. This same dual-use logic applies to Berbera in Somaliland, where a $442 million port deal included provisions for Emirati naval access and facilities for training local coast guards.

Such arrangements allow Abu Dhabi to project power without the political baggage of formal bases, while the commercial veneer insulates the operations from international scrutiny. Perhaps more visible is the illicit gold trade fueling the atrocious war in Sudan, which is now a hallmark of Abu Dhabi’s hybrid model for overseas adventurism.

Dubai refineries process about $8 billion in gold sourced from the African continent annually, but customs discrepancies suggest much of the gold reaching Emirati markets first passes through informal smuggling networks controlled by the very militias the UAE later contracts for regional operations, such as Haftar’s forces or Chad’s sprawling mercenary networks.

What emerges is a closed loop where revenues from illicit resource extraction finances paramilitary partners that, in turn, secure the interior corridors in parts of Africa where Abu Dhabi seeks to project power.

The regional spillover is no abstraction

Support for the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan closely mirrors patterns already seen in Libya: a well-resourced outsider enabling paramilitary units accused of atrocities, including the El-Fasher horrors. The same transactional logic appears in parts of the Sahel, where mercenary flows, arms transfers and political interference also echo Emirati adventurism in Libya. Reports of Abu Dhabi’s ambitions in the Horn of Africa also reflect a similar mindset.

Port deals, political sponsorships and security pacts appear motivated less by strategic clarity than raw influence projection, an approach that risks destabilizing already fragile states.
A striking feature of the UAE’s forays into Libya and elsewhere is a strategic blindness to long-term outcomes. Abu Dhabi sought a friendly autocrat who could suppress extremists, control borders and align with its vision of regional order.

Instead, the pursuit of that ideal produced a centrifugal state with weak institutions, proliferating armed groups and a governance crisis that now threatens regional stability. Libya’s porous borders have allowed arms to travel south into the Sahel, fueling insurgencies and bandit economies in Niger, Mali and Chad. Human trafficking networks flourish in zones of lawlessness and flow into Europe.

Regional actors now face a hard truth.

Libya will not stabilize through the empowerment of a single faction, no matter how heavily armed or externally backed. Stability requires a shift from foreign sponsorship of rivals toward coordinated diplomacy aimed at unifying critical institutions, security forces, the central bank, the national oil company and the electoral framework.

Abu Dhabi’s preference for militarized solutions obstructs that shift. Emirati sponsorship of electoral engineering, quiet attempts to shape constitutional sequencing and pressure campaigns on UN mediation processes all contribute to a political environment where Libyan agency is routinely sidelined.
A recalibration is possible, but only if influential Arab states step in. Saudi Arabia offers a contrasting approach rooted in stabilization, economic development and de-escalation rather than factional engineering.

Riyadh’s restrained posture in Libya, its improving diplomatic ties across North Africa and its growing interest in security coordination in the Red Sea basin provide an alternative to the destabilizing adventurism witnessed over the past decade by its neighbor. A Saudi-led orientation toward responsible regional stewardship could help shift Arab diplomacy toward supporting unified national institutions as a precursor to stabilization and helping countries like Libya regain their sovereignty rather than deepening fault lines.

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Hafed Al-Ghwell is senior fellow and program director at the Stimson Center in Washington and senior fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies.
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Rhiannon Smith

Libya’s economic crisis

On a recent visit to Tripoli, I was struck by the visible changes that have occurred in recent years – the old city and downtown area of the capital have been revamped and gentrified, flashy new cafes and restaurants have popped up all over the city, and roads that were once sand are now paved.

In the East, Benghazi has seen an even more dramatic transformation, with much of the city redeveloped and redesigned since its war-stricken days, and the city of Derna is being completely rebuilt after the devastating dam collapse and flooding in 2023 which literally swept away the city and thousands of its residents. Even the much-neglected southern region has seen some signs of development.

Yet whereas in years past the Libyan middle classes would have flocked to spend their money in these upscale establishments, these days many Libyans are being forced to tighten their belts, and many businesses are struggling to stay afloat.

For Libya’s poorer residents, even finding the money to buy basic commodities is becoming a challenge. Adding to the pressure is a chronic lack of the physical dinars needed to pay for goods in what is still a predominantly cash-based society, meaning the sight of long queues in front of banks is a regular sight as Libyans wait to be able to withdraw their salaries or savings from the banks.

There are frequently limits set on withdrawals however, often leaving families unable to access the cash they need (even if it is in their accounts). Lack of trust in the banking sector is a key driver of this issue and despite multiple recent deliveries of cash printed overseas, liquidity shortages remain a problem.

On top of all of this, Libya is experiencing rapid inflation, with the cost of basic commodities shooting up. The Libyan dinar has officially been devalued twice in the last year – most recently it was devalued to LYD 6.37 to 1 USD in January 2026. This has mainly been driven by Libya’s ballooning USD deficit and the growing gap between the official exchange rate and the black market exchange rate, which as of 23 February had risen to over 10 LYD to the dollar.

In the most basic terms, Libya is spending more in foreign currency each month than it receives in oil revenues, up to twice as much according to some estimates. This has been driven in large part by the hugely inflated fuel import bill, most of which is then siphoned off for smuggling.

The irony of a country with the largest proven hydrocarbon reserves in Africa being brought to the edge of economic collapse by fuel imports is not lost on Libyans. To add injury to insult, fuel shortages are common and Libyans are often forced to join fuel queues for hours or days at a time just to fill up their cars.

Foreign currency is not readily available from the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) or commercial banks (although new foreign currency bureaux are being introduced to address this), meaning most Libyans requiring dollars or Euros must buy them on the black market. In Tripoli, this generally means visiting the traders in the dusty side streets of the old city, though there is additional caution these days as the ministry of interior tries to crack down on the black market traders.

The gap between the official exchange rate and the black-market exchange rate remains a key driver of corruption and economic instability in Libya, allowing those who can access the lower official rate (Libya’s political elite, well-placed armed groups, and major traders) to make significant financial gains. For normal Libyans, this means that the prices of basic commodities have risen significantly, with many especially feeling the pinch in the run up to the holy month of Ramadan (when purchases tend to increase).

Development and reconstruction boom

Despite the worsening living conditions, Libya’s message to the world is that it is open for business, with money to spend. In many ways, this is true.

In 2025, Libya’s oil production stabilised at around 1.3 million barrels per day (bpd), the highest average for a decade, and Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) has just announced the results of its first exploration bidding round for investors in 17 years, securing new exploration contracts with several oil majors. In particular, there has been renewed US investment in the Libyan oil sector.

A raft of reconstruction and development contracts have also been signed, especially in the East, where the Libya Development and Reconstruction Fund – led by Belqassem Haftar, one of Khalifa Haftar’s sons – has been granted a 69 billion LYD development budget over three years. This has coincided with Khalifa Haftar coming in from the cold as far as Western actors are concerned, with a steady stream of diplomats, business delegations and international companies regularly beating a trail to Haftar’s door.

However, while the money being spent comes directly from the Libyan state’s coffers, it is not the Libyan state, and certainly not the Libyan people, which is benefitting. Rather, this spending is a reflection of the success of Libya’s ruling elite at diverting Libya’s wealth into their own pockets, using the country’s oil wealth to enrich themselves, buy support from local and international actors alike, and secure their power bases.

Elite capture of the oil sector

While corruption and extractive economic practices are nothing new in Libya – they were a cornerstone of Qadhafi’s 42-year rule – the institutionalisation and expansion of corrupt practices have intensified in recent years. Both the Dabaiba clan in the western region and the Haftar family in the eastern region (among others) have used their positions of power to enrich themselves and their patronage networks, anchoring their rule through parasitical roots that are hollowing out Libya’s institutions and sucking their riches dry.

Take Libya’s oil sector, the engine driving the Libyan economy and generating the vast majority of the country’s revenue. On paper, Libya has experienced 18 months of stable oil production, avoiding the politically-motivated blockades of oil fields and ports which have so frequently disrupted oil production since 2011. Yet a key reason for this stability is the behind-the-scenes deals which have been struck between the Dabaibas and the Haftars, facilitating and accelerating the elite capture of the sector.

The headquarters of Libya’s main financial institutions, namely the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) and the National Oil Corporation (NOC), are located in Tripoli, which is under the control of the GNU, led by Dabaiba. The NOC produces and sells Libya’s oil, the CBL receives the revenues from the oil, and the funds are then nominally disbursed based on the instructions of the government or other funding arrangements.

This is complicated by the existence of two governments and the lack of an agreed budget. In addition, most of Libya’s oil fields are located in areas under LNA control, meaning it is within Haftar’s power to halt production through blockades at fields and ports, usually framed as the LNA taking action in support of the demands of local communities and tribes.

This has occurred several times in the last decade. In return for not pulling this lever, the Haftar family has been allowed to expand its control over the NOC and the wider oil ecosystem through the appointment of supporters to key positions, securing contracts for companies from which they benefit, and the drastic expansion of fuel smuggling networks at an institutional level, cashing in on the gulf between the dirt-cheap price of Libya’s subsidised fuel and market prices.

Yet the NOC has not received any operational or development funding from the state for over two years and its debts to service companies have been stacking up. As a result, although there are ongoing efforts to bring new oil and gas wells online, Libya’s oil production is likely to enter a period of decline without a major injection of investment in the country’s deteriorating hydrocarbon infrastructure and refining capacity. Less oil means less money for the Libyan state and the ruling elite, especially if global oil prices decline.

The NOC has been seeking international investment in an effort to address its financial issues. It concluded Libya’s first exploration tender in 17 years on 11 February, with five new exploration contracts agreed with international oil companies. It has also signed a slew of other new agreements in recent months. However, 17 of the available exploration blocks did not receive valid bids, highlighting the persistent concerns about the political, economic and security risks involved in investing in Libya.

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Rhiannon Smith – Libya-Analysis’s Managing Director.

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Simon Cordall

Crossing to Europe offers hope but exposes refugees to peril, as militia abuse persists in unsafe Libya.

The new year is less than two months in, but already more than 560 people have gone missing in the Mediterranean Sea while trying to reach Europe, making it on course to be one of the deadliest years on record. At least 500 of those were lost crossing from Libya, Tunisia and Algeria to a Europe that continues to attempt to force them back.

The stories of those lost at sea, many of them travelling on boats that offer little protection from the waves, reveal the extent of their suffering. Earlier in February, 53 people, two of them babies, were reported to be dead or missing after their boat capsized off the coast of the Libyan town of Zuwara. Only two women, both Nigerian, were rescued.

A few weeks earlier, as a freak cyclone tore across the Mediterranean Sea, hundreds, possibly up to a thousand people, desperately trying to reach Europe, were believed to have lost their lives.

Qualified risk

The risks of travelling to and through Libya are well known among migrants and refugees. Nevertheless, they come. According to the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration (IOM), between August and October 2025, at least 928,000 migrants were identified in Libya, hoping to either stay in the North African country or, in the case of many, attempt to cross to Europe and the promise of a better life.

But, as they wait for the funds to pay for their passage, or the right opportunity to travel, they find themselves prey to the militias that have controlled much of Libya since a civil war robbed the country of a stable and unified government.

A report, issued by the UN Human Rights Office in February, painted a bleak picture of life for refugees and irregular migrants in Libya. In it, researchers described an environment where traffickers and armed groups could conduct widespread and systematic abuse against migrants with impunity. These “grave violations and abuses have evolved into deliberate, profit-driven practices that together form a ruthless and violent business model”.

Ola, a 25-year-old from Freetown in Sierra Leone, is one of the thousands to have fallen victim to Libya’s militias. Speaking from Libya’s capital Tripoli, Ola described being beaten and held prisoner by one of the militias in Zuwara, which is in western Libya.

Ola said that his hand had still not recovered after he was hit with an iron bar before he was detained in the summer of 2024. Ola remained in detention, enduring forced labour and regular beatings, for three months: the time it took his parents to borrow the $700 his captors demanded to free him.

“Conditions were very bad,” he said of his time in detention, as he rubbed his injured hand. “There was a lot of suffering. We would have bread to eat, and sometimes we had to drink the water they gave us to wash in. It was very bad; it had salt in it.” “I did not have a [reputation for taking risks] in my country,” Ola said. “I did not associate with bad people. I never did anything illegal,” he continued. “I know this is dangerous, but it’s better than where I come from”.

Mubarak, a 31-year-old from Sudan, is no different. He fled fighting around his village near Nyala in Darfur in 2023, crossing into Libya overland through Chad. Like Ola, Mubarak described being held prisoner, being beaten and forced to work by one of Libya’s militias, before being released.

Mubarak also knows the risks of continuing to Europe and is ready to accept them. He laughed bitterly, “I know the crossing [to Europe] is dangerous. [But] It’s just the money that’s stopping me. I know in my soul that Libya is just as dangerous as Sudan, but where will I go?”

No deterrence for the desperate

For those willing to stake their lives on surviving what the IOM says is the world’s most dangerous migration route, European deterrence means little. Nevertheless, the European states most exposed to departures from Tunisia and Libya, principally Italy, have adopted increasingly punitive measures. Under a new Italian bill approved earlier this month, the country can indefinitely prohibit boats from entering its waters “in cases of grave threats to public order or national security”.

Moreover, the bill allows Italy to stop boats and send passengers to third-party countries it has outsourcing deals with, such as Albania, with no indication that authorities would check for protection needs, vulnerabilities, or physical or mental health concerns. The European Parliament has also signed off on changes to EU asylum rules that let member states transfer asylum seekers to “safe third countries”.

How effective all of that is at reducing migrant numbers remains to be seen. Despite an Italian government elected partly on the back of its anti-migrant platform in 2022, arrival numbers remain stubbornly high, with more than 63,000 people braving the odds in 2025, almost the identical number as those from the previous year.

“Why people take these extreme risks is one of the big questions,” said Ahlam Chemlali, a migration expert at Aalborg University in Denmark, who has conducted extensive field research among irregular migrants along Tunisia’s border with Libya, Chemlali described speaking to the women in the border region, who knew and, in many cases, had experienced the danger inherent to migration firsthand.

“They told me they were already dead there [on the border], and they’re right. It’s a social death, where people have no future,” she said, “Everything is denied to them, so taking these risks is one way they can regain some control over their lives. They understand what they’re doing. The EU has poured millions into information campaigns, but the prospect of being stuck in limbo with no future feels worse. This is especially true for women with children. The presence of children can be a huge motivator, but of course, it also increases the risks.”

In Ola’s case, the drive to reach Europe is unwavering. He craves the rule of law – anything that would lead to consequences for those committing acts of violence against him. “Life in Europe would be amazing,” he said, the tone of his voice lightening, “I would be safe. There is no violence there. If there is violence, it is punished by the law. “I will educate myself and then get a job.”

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Rhiannon Smith

When the spark of the 2011 Libyan Revolution was lit in Benghazi 15 years ago, protests and armed revolt against the brutal 42-year rule of Qadhafi quickly ignited across the country, fanned by anger and grief over decades of oppression and kept alive by the wider hope of the Arab Spring.

The fear, determination and anticipation of those days was palpable. After months of death, destruction and defiance, and the support of the NATO intervention, the Libyan rebels succeeded in liberating Tripoli in summer 2011. On 23 October, days after Qadhafi was killed in his hometown of Sirte, the liberation of Libya was formally declared.

Just weeks later, Saif al-Qadhafi, was captured. The streets of the capital were raucous with beeping car horns, celebratory gunfire, and Libyans waving their fingers in the air, mocking Saif’s infamous finger wagging speech during the 2011 Revolution (and the subsequent images showing bloody stumps on his right hand after he was caught trying to flee through the desert).

It was a time of giddy hope that Libya could move on from four decades of oppression and dictatorship, that justice could be served for the victims of the regime, and that the country could finally realise its potential, using its rich oil resources to improve the lives of its citizens.

A decade and a half later, however, on the anniversary of the 17 February Revolution, that hope is in tatters, the dreams of a ‘new Libya’ slowly but inexorably torn apart by years of militia rule, political instability and corruption.

The assassination of Saif al-Qadhafi

When the news broke on 3 February of the assassination of Saif al-Qadhafi in his secret compound in Zintan, in the mountains south-west of Tripoli, it was yet another blow to hopes that Libya might be able to find a way to dismantle the autocratic control of its ruling families and the ecosystem of armed groups keeping them in power. Not because most Libyans expected or wanted Saif to lead Libya into a better era, but because his continued presence at the edges of Libyan politics suggested there was still hope for wider reconciliation in the country, still hope that Libya might yet achieve a unified future.

Unsurprisingly, supporters of the Qadhafi regime, known as ‘Greens’, expressed their grief and anger at Saif’s ‘martyrdom’, calling for those responsible to be held accountable. There were also Libyans who celebrated his death, both because of his role in the crackdowns on protests (he was wanted by the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges) and because it effectively ended the threat of a Qadhafi ever leading the country again.

However, a common reaction among Libyans seemed to be one of unease and resignation, with many people seeing his killing as evidence of the increasing ‘mafia-isation’ of the Libyan landscape, where rival actors are assassinated or intimidated as a matter of course.

Although Saif was rarely seen or heard in public, kept under careful watch by his Zintani guards-turned-protectors after he was released as part of an amnesty in 2017, he remained an important symbolic figurehead for the Greens and for Libyans who rejected the East-West division of power in the country.

Saif stood as a presidential candidate in the failed 2021 elections, and his intended candidacy was a key factor preventing agreement and progress on fresh elections.

Rumours, speculation and accusations are rife about who sent the armed men to Saif’s compound to kill him and why, though there is no clarity yet. An investigation is underway by the Libyan Attorney General, though it is far from certain it will reveal the truth.

Rather than being an outlier, his assassination is instead the most high-profile indication of a wider trend of political instability and militia rule in Libya.

Libya’s divided political and security

landscape

There have been no national elections in Libya since 2014 and the country is divided into two distinct spheres of political, economic and military rule. The Government of National Unity (GNU), under Prime Minister Abdul Hameed Dabaiba, controls Tripoli in the western region and the Libyan National Army (LNA) in Benghazi, under the leadership of Khalifa Haftar and his sons, controls the eastern and southern regions of Libya.

Dabaiba is the head of the internationally-recognised executive authority in Libya, yet his direct influence extends little further than Tripoli and his hometown of Misrata. Even in these places, he is reliant on the support of powerful armed groups to retain control and implement his government’s edicts. While some armed groups are strategic allies, most require more tangible benefits (whether money, territory, positions or access) to ensure their continued support. As such, continued access to the country’s wealth is the cornerstone of Dabaiba’s strategy for staying in power.

The armed groups that control the capital have evolved into better organised, professional-looking, and well-equipped forces than their revolutionary militia days, yet the rank and file still primarily follow the commands of their militia leaders, not the government.

As such, the militias are able to act with impunity and are rarely held accountable for their transgressions against those they intimidate, imprison, torture and even kill without recourse to justice. Civil society activists, journalists, and political rivals have been increasingly targeted, while the abuse and mistreatment of migrants detained in Libya remains endemic.

Although there have been no major violations of the 2020 Ceasefire Agreement between Tripoli and the LNA (ending a months-long attempt by the LNA to take control of the capital), there are frequently localised clashes between rival militias and targeted killing in the western region. Civilians are often injured or lose their lives to such violence. The coastal cities west of Tripoli, including Zawiyya, suffer particularly badly from such violence.

In the East, the internationally recognised parliament, the House of Representatives (HoR), is within the sphere of influence of the Haftar family while the Government of National Stability (GNS) –recognised by the HoR but not by most international actors – functions as the political and governance arm of the LNA.

The LNA General Command exerts significant command and control over LNA forces in the eastern region and has extended its influence over armed groups in the southern regions. Nonetheless, Khalifa Haftar is still reliant on retaining the support of key tribal groups in order to maintain stability.

The security situation in LNA-controlled areas is less volatile than in the western region as the LNA has been able to extend and embed its command-and-control structures across large swathes of the eastern region and much of the South.

However, the reins of power are held firmly by Khalifa Haftar, and increasingly his son and LNA Deputy Commander Saddam Haftar. As such, although there is arguably greater stability in the East, there is even less freedom. Opponents of the LNA are quickly detained, tortured or disappeared, and open criticism or protest is rare in recent times.

Libya’s legislative and executive bodies are set on protecting their own positions and power. Successive UN-mediated political processes have failed to either force or persuade the country’s deeply entrenched crop of political leaders to reach the consensus needed to hold presidential and parliamentary elections.

The most recent UN roadmap announced in August 2025 has so far failed to create any meaningful progress, and this doesn’t look as if it is about change in the short term, not least because there is a lack of international unity and interest in the political process.

The political divisions are also having a corrosive impact on the Libyan judiciary, with competing constitutional courts issuing conflicting rulings, creating a judicial quagmire where legal rulings are being politicised and the rule of law rendered meaningless.

Although both the Tripoli and Benghazi authorities held various events and displays to celebrate the 17 February anniversary and shore up their revolutionary credentials, these days there are not many Libyans who enthusiastically celebrate the occasion. After all, on its current trajectory, Libya is moving further and further away from the ideals the revolution espoused – namely freedom, accountability and democracy.

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Rhiannon Smith – Libya-Analysis’s Managing Director.

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