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Anas El-Gomati

Shadow State-lords: Infrastructure and Influence

Libya’s economy is heavily dependent on the oil sector. Oil receipts account for nearly 95% of the country’s budget, with between 60-80% of the country’s workforce on the public payroll: oil remains the backbone of the economy, whilst paradoxically fuelling the conflict that brought it to its knees. Read More

Adam Goldman

A Libyan intelligence operative charged in the 1988 bombing of an American jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, was arrested by the F.B.I. and is being extradited to the United States to face prosecution for one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in American history, officials said on Sunday. Read More

Anas El-Gomati

Over a decade has passed since the 17 February Libyan revolution, and the disintegration of the Gaddafi regime’s centralised state into a fractured post-revolution state characterised by political divisions, repeated civil wars, and an economy of predation. Read More

Wolfram Lacher

Post-Qadhafi Politics

The momentous changes in the political scene raise questions concerning the nature of politics during the transitional period. Which actors are likely to dominate the transition, and along which lines will political mobilization occur? Read More

Wolfram Lacher

Cities and Tribes

From the beginning of the revolution, there was much controversy among observers over the role of tribal allegiances. While some have described the Libyan civil war in exclusively tribal terms and argued that it will be decided by tribal loyalties, others have utterly dismissed the idea that the urban young men who led the revolution on the battlefield could attach any importance to tribal identity. Read More

Tarek Megerisi

Human Traffickers: The Maritime Face of Mafiaisation

The result of the mafiaisation of Libya is a country where the government controls very little of what goes on, leaving its borders, and the management of key issues such as migration, in the hands of non-state actors or powerful international players. This in turn shaped the consolidated, mafiaised state which Libya eventually settled into. Read More

Wolfram Lacher and Peter Cole

Ill-fated reform attempts

In view of the conflicting interests at work in the highest levels of government, the authorities’ inability to conceive any coherent strategy for the establishment of new security sector institutions has been unsurprising. Read More

Wolfram Lacher

New leadership, old Families

With the disintegration of state institutions and defection of senior officials, an elitist political leadership established itself at the top of a hitherto uncoordinated popular movement. Until the fall of Tripoli, two main groups dominated the NTC, its representatives abroad as well as, to a lesser extent, the local councils emerging in liberated areas. Read More

Tarek Megerisi

Over the past ten years of turmoil and upheaval, Libya’s political economy has been fundamentally altered. Despite the role of political and business elites in continuously setting ever worse examples of malpractice, it is Libya’s militia class which have truly become the biggest beneficiaries of the state of Libya’s dissolution. Read More

Wolfram Lacher

Since the outbreak of the February 17 Revolution, Libya’s political map has changed beyond recognition. Where before, few players and institutions seemed to matter outside the opaque informal networks and security apparatus centered around Qadhafi and his extended family, a multitude of actors has emerged to lead the revolution. Read More

Wolfram Lacher and Peter Cole

The emergence of hybrid institutions

Conflicts over legitimacy, mutual suspicion between the thuwwar and old institutions, and, increasingly, political differences among the thuwwar prompted two developments. On the one hand, some thuwwar groups formed their own separate military, security, and intelligence units. Read More

Jalel Herchaoui

Conclusions

Though a vast majority of Libyan citizens wish to choose their leadership peacefully through a free, fair, and credible vote, odds are against them. The half-life of 2021’s missed opportunity may be long indeed, its causes found in the confluence of U.N. weakness, the shortcomings of domestic leadership, and egregious foreign meddling. Read More

Wolfram Lacher and Peter Cole

The thuwwar and post-revolutionary armed groups

Perhaps unusually following a revolution, the victors—the thuwwar—did not seize control of the state, nor did they immediately force purges of state security institutions (although many senior officials led of their own accord). Instead, the thuwwar remained largely autonomous, with each group holding on to its weapons. Read More

Jalel Herchaoui

2.5 The Qadhafist Problem

At the time of Libya’s parliamentary elections in 2014, most Qadhafi loyalists were out of the game. Over the seven years that followed, however, they staged a comeback of sorts. Read More

Jalel Herchaoui

2.3 The boldness of Aqila Saleh

Among the many hurdles on the path to December 2021’s general elections, the most formidable was the exceedingly weak character of the electoral laws that a small group of MPs — led by the Speaker of the HoR, Aqila Saleh — designed and rammed through without a proper parliamentary vote. Read More

Wolfram Lacher and Peter Cole

Introduction

Since Qaddafi’s death on 20 October 2011 and Libya’s formal declaration of liberation three days later, the transitional authorities have faced enormous challenges. Chief among these have been controlling and managing the armed groups that emerged to fight Qaddafi and his security services. Read More

Jalel Herchaoui

2. Why Elections Failed In Libya

Libyan history following the fall of Muammar Qadhafi has been full of twists and turns. We hope the brief review just furnished both attests to this fact, and clarifies many of the sequences and players most essential to this still-developing story. Read More

Francesca Folda

Libyan civil society organizations are fighting against all odds to support victims of human rights violations. In doing so, they themselves risk violence and do their work despite the visible and invisible pain they feel and the innumerable obstacles placed in front of them. Renewed global attention on the Libyan conflict and two new draft laws to protect activists and others may help. Read More

Tim Eaton

The clock is ticking for the UN Special Representative to Libya, Abdoulaye Bathily, who must outline his plans before his window of opportunity snaps shut. Read More

Jalel Herchaoui

1.5 The Libyan Political Dialogue Forum is born

Keen to exploit the cooldown ushered in by concerted Turco-Russian cohabitation, the U.N. intensified its diplomatic efforts in the summer of 2020. This began by first insisting that relevant parties make formal ceasefire declarations. Read More

Hala Bugaighis and Mazigh Buzakhar

Rethinking the Oil Sector Reform

The NOC should aim to harness the opportunities provided by the national accord on the new leadership and international oil market developments to develop a concrete plan to reform the oil sector. Read More

Stefano Marcuzzi

The EU and the limits of soft power

The organization that stepped forward to help stabilize Libya after the war was the EU, under the direction of a UN Support Mission in Libya. The EU promised to provide an “essential and a clear contribution to promoting peace in our immediate neighborhood.” Read More

Stefano Marcuzzi

Libya’s decade of crisis

In March 2011, a coalition of countries under the United Nations (UN) umbrella led militarily by NATO launched an air campaign in support of a series of revolts against the regime of Muammar al-Qaddafi in Libya, ostensibly to stop Qaddafi’s reprisals on civilians. By the end of October, Qaddafi was dead and his regime had collapsed. Read More

Hala Bugaighis and Mazigh Buzakhar

In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, Libya witnessed a period of instability and political polarization. The rise of uncontrolled armed militias challenging the central government forced several international oil companies to leave the country in 2011, while production volumes fell to a 30-year low in 2013 reaching 1 million oil barrels a day. Read More

Jalel Herchaoui

1.3 After 2015’s Skhirat Agreement, the U.N. Tries to Forge Ahead

While fighting went on in Benghazi and further afield, U.N. mediation managed to bring together representatives from Libya’s eastern and western power centers. In December 2015, in Skhirat, Morocco, these parties signed the Libyan Political Agreement (LPA). Read More

Jalel Herchaoui

Libya’s Long Road to 2021

1.1 Why Elections Matter in Libya

In August 2021, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov declared that the world has “learned the lessons” from Libya’s example: “Attempts to impose one’s value system […] are highly explosive,” he went on, echoing previous remarks from 2021 where he asserted that U.S. attempts to establish “democracy” in Libya transformed the country into “a black hole.” Read More

Khadija Sharife, Lara Dihmis, Erin Klazar

Wagner, the Russian mercenary company owned by the infamous businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, secured and maintained its position in Sudan’s gold sector while working closely with companies affiliated with Sudan’s brutal military. Read More

Jalel Herchaoui

Executive Summary

In 2021, Libya’s U.N.-backed election plans collapsed due to technical difficulties, yes, but also politically-motivated maneuvering. Powerful players both within and outside the country moved to subvert and weaken the electoral process. Read More