Is Libya on the brink of a new civil war?

With two rival governments at either end of the country, ongoing political rifts and now, renewed military mobilization, there are concerns that Libya is headed for more violence and fighting. Several international bodies have sounded the alarm in the past week. In a statement, the United Nations Support Mission in Libya said it was monitoring “with concern the recent mobilization of troops in various parts of Libya.” The organization, known as UNSMIL, urged “all parties to exercise maximum restraint and avoid provocative military actions that could be perceived as offensive.” On Thursday, the European Union delegation to Libya expressed similar concerns. “The use of force would harm stability in Libya and lead to human suffering. It must be avoided at all costs,” it said in a statement. Longtime observers of Libya were more blunt, suggesting that, after about four years of relative calm in the country, civil war could break out again. The warnings came in response to a large mobilization last week by militias affiliated with one of Libya’s two rival governments. Since 2014, Libya has been split in two, with opposing governments in the east and west of the country. A UN-backed administration known as the Government of National Unity, or GNU, is based in Tripoli in the west, and its rival, known as the House of Representatives, is based in the east, in Tobruk. At various times over the past decade, each government has tried — and failed — to seize control from the other. The government in eastern Libya is backed by former warlord-turned-politician Khalifa Haftar, who controls several armed groups in his area. It was Haftar’s forces that appeared to be moving toward Tripoli late last week. Haftar attacked the city in 2019 but was eventually forced to sign a ceasefire in 2020. Haftar said troops under the command of his son, Saddam, were marching to secure Libya’s borders, combat drug and human trafficking, and fight terrorism. But military analysts suspected other plans. Haftar’s forces have wanted to take control of Ghadames airport and its surroundings for some time, Jalel Harchaoui, a North Africa expert at the British think tank Royal United Services Institute, told French newspaper Le Monde. Control of Ghadames “would significantly increase its territorial status vis-à-vis Algeria, Tunisia and Niger,” Harchaoui said, and would also block access for the rival GNU. If Haftar’s forces take Ghadames, “it would officially mark the collapse of the 2020 ceasefire,” Tarek Megerisi, a Libya expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in a post on social media platform X (formerly Twitter). In response to the troop movements, a number of other militias supporting the Tripoli government in the west were told to increase their combat readiness. Is another Libyan civil war looming? The day after Haftar’s mobilization was reported, a clash between two militias in Tajoura, on the coastal outskirts of Tripoli, left at least nine people dead. However, local media later reported that the incident was motivated by an assassination attempt on one of the militia leaders. And this week, the situation in Libya appears to have calmed down again. But the danger remains, experts told DW. Emadeddin Badi, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who focuses on Libya, sees Haftar’s latest moves as a kind of ongoing “brinkmanship.” “A lot of the actors (in Libya) are in this to see how far they can go in mocking, or pushing aside, or undermining their opponents,” he said. “There is still a zero-sum mentality,” he added, referring to the fact that opposing factions in Libya believe that one of them should ultimately rule the country, rather than working together for unity. “Libya continues to quietly disintegrate, with signs that rival governments are regrouping for something bigger,” Hafed al-Ghwell, executive director of the North Africa Initiative at the Foreign Policy Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, wrote in an op-ed for the website Euronews last week. With so many different militias, Libya risks becoming a “mafia state,” he said. Is foreign interference keeping Libya from the brink? Both Libyan governments are also backed by a range of foreign powers. The government in the west is backed by Turkey; the government in the east by Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Russia. Previously, the UN and others have urged various international backers of the two sides in Libya and their soldiers to leave the country. But as Badi explained, their presence is likely preventing further violence in Libya at the moment. “Ironically, the only thing that has really prevented a slide back into all-out war is foreign influence in the country,” Badi told DW. “There is a balance between the Turks and the Russians and others, and there is a loose geopolitical understanding about not getting into a full-scale conflict again.” Attempts to unite the two halves of the country by, for example, holding a national election, unifying security forces, administrative functions or a national budget, or setting up an interim unity government have come to nothing. In fact, the international community has grown accustomed to dealing with two governments when working with Libya on oil supplies or migration issues. But analysts like Badi, al-Ghwell and Megerisi have all argued that simply accepting the status quo in Libya — where there are two separate governments backed by increasingly mafia-like militias — no longer works. “Actors (in Libya) have been emboldened by the impunity they have been given by the international community,” Badi said. “Libya has been largely neglected by the international community since 2021, and many have convinced themselves that Libya could remain stable in the long term, either with this status quo or by facilitating deals between the factions that have carved up the country for themselves. But this policy of pretending that the conflict can be contained is not working,” he said. “And that illusion — that Libya is fine, that it is stable — is now slowly collapsing.” Edited by: Martin Kuebler