Whatever happened to Libya?

More than a decade after the butchery of Muammar Gaddafi, Libya lies marooned between the wreckage of revolution and the mirage of reconstruction. What was once trumpeted as the dawn of liberation has disintegrated into a cruel deadlock: dueling governments, hollow parliaments, and a shredded national soul.

Beneath the sand rests Africa’s richest oil bounty, yet its black wealth corrodes rather than binds. The 2020 ceasefire silenced the guns but mummified the decay.

Institutions remain broken, power parcelled to warlords. Ordinary Libyans stagger through a wasteland of hunger, corruption, and dread, stalked by the spectre of violence reborn. Can a nation drowning in riches, bleeding from disunity, claw its way back to life?

Two governments, one nation: A country divided

Libya festers beneath the weight of its fracture. Two thrones, two flags, and two lies of legitimacy. In Tripoli, the UN-blessed Government of National Unity, a hollow façade under Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, clings to the west.

In Benghazi, the rival Government of National Stability, armed by the House of Representatives and Haftar’s brutal machine, clutches the east.

Militias and foreign patrons pull the strings, carving the nation like a trophy. This bifurcated power structure strangles governance, smothers elections, and corrodes hope. On paper, Libya is one state. In reality, it is two hostile fiefdoms, trapped in a brittle, festering stalemate.

Oil wealth, political poverty: Libya’s resource curse

Libya squats atop Africa’s largest oil hoard, forty-eight billion barrels of buried treasure. Yet this wealth, instead of salvation, has become a curse.

Warring factions bleed the pipelines to arm militias and feed their thrones. Blockades and sabotage choke production, turning oil into a hostage.

The National Oil Corporation, a battered pawn, is dragged between rival capitals while smugglers thrive in the shadows. The black gold that was meant to build is wielded as a weapon of ruin.

Foreign firms circle, drilling through chaos, but without a nation, profit becomes plunder. Beneath the desert lies abundance; above it, only paralysis and decay. Libya’s oil enriches everyone but Libyans.

Elections deferred, democracy denied

Libya has not glimpsed a genuine ballot since 2014, despite endless pledges and hollow UN schemes. The vote promised for December 2021 collapsed in rancour, shattered by quarrels over candidates and laws.

Rival camps, petrified of each other’s victory, claw at constitutions but never agree. Local elections sputter in villages, but the nation itself remains voiceless.

The people,  desperate to speak, desperate to choose, are gagged by delay, deception, and dysfunction. Their sovereignty is bartered away by men who fear the judgment of the governed. Without a shared legal spine, democracy in Libya is a mirage: postponed, corrupted, and endlessly deferred.

Foreign hands, local wounds: The role of international actors in Libya’s conflict

Libya’s war is no longer its own. Regional and international powers arm and influence the two governments. Italy and France, blinded by oil lust, play duplicitous games that poison any path to unity. These patrons deepen the fracture, calcify the stalemate, and drown sovereignty. NATO’s 2011 bombs toppled Gaddafi but opened a void that predators rushed to seize. Now foreign hands script Libya’s fate, their fingerprints visible on every ministry, every militia. Libyan voices are drowned out, silenced beneath imperial ambition. Peace is not delayed. It is stolen.

The ceasefire that froze progress

Libya’s October 2020 ceasefire, brokered by the UN’s 5+5 Joint Military Commission, silenced the guns and reopened the oil fields and airports. It was praised as a turning point. Yet the promise of unity became a paralysis.

Foreign mercenaries lingered, thumbing their noses at deadlines, while talks collapsed in endless recriminations. The ceasefire carved out silence but birthed no future.

Militias still lord over streets; rival governments dig deeper trenches. What was billed as peace became only a suspension, a pause in slaughter, not a step toward nationhood. Calm lies heavy, but beneath it, ruptures fester, waiting to explode.

Militias and money: Who really controls Libya?

Libya’s oil empire lies shackled by warlords, not statesmen. Pipelines, refineries, and terminals each bend beneath the shadow of armed gangs masquerading as guardians.

In Tripoli, militias like the SSA are folded into government robes, a grotesque theatre of legitimacy. In the east, Haftar’s legions squat on oil fields and choke the ports.

At the heart of it all, the Central Bank, swollen with petrodollars, becomes a battlefield of greed, shutdowns, and blockades that bleed production by hundreds of thousands of barrels. Ministers speak, technocrats plan, but power rests in the hands of gunmen. Oil does not serve the nation. It serves the militias.

Can oil unite what politics divided?

Oil is Libya’s bloodstream—over ninety-five percent of state revenue, the lone artery of survival. Wells gush, investors return, production climbs. Yet beneath the numbers lurks a peril. Politics, fractured and venomous, corrodes every promise of stability.

In Tripoli, the GNU trumpets expansion; in the east, factions that grip pipelines and ports wield a veto through blockade. Without a covenant to share the wealth, every barrel fuels new resentments, every dinar feeds rival thrones. Oil could rebuild shattered cities, stitch together a torn nation, and seed reconciliation.

Instead, it risks becoming the accelerant of another inferno. Libya’s lifeline doubles as its landmine, ticking in the sand.

The road to reunification: Is there a way forward?

The UN-led schemes, the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum, and Geneva constitutional talks creep forward in inches, yet mistrust runs deep.

Committees cobbled from the House of Representatives and the High Council of State draft frameworks for elections, but venomous disputes over candidate eligibility fester. Foreign powers inject confusion, and local factions cling to spoils.

The ceasefire, fragile and brittle, holds only as a mockery of progress. Reunification is not impossible, but only if Libyans, at long last, subordinate tribal and factional appetites to the nation. A road exists, yet it winds through ruins, mined by ambition and guarded by entrenched, corrupt authority.

Libya’s lost decade: A nation in limbo

Since Qaddafi’s fall in 2011, Libya has tumbled through a decade of chaos, civil war, shattered institutions, and foreign exploitation. Dreams of democracy decayed into militia fiefdoms, corruption, and lawlessness.

The Benghazi attack of 2012, Haftar’s 2019 onslaught, and endless postponed elections are the scars of a nation frozen in crisis. Fleeting moments of hope flicker, only to be smothered by greed and ambition. Without a shared vision or powerful institutions, Libya drifts through its deserts and oil riches, offering promise.

At the same time, its people remain trapped in cycles of failure, violence, and fragile, illusory peace.

Read More