Libya’s Breakdown
By Tarek El-Tablawy | Updated Aug 11, 2016 5:35 PM UTC
The dictator’s unseemly end should have been a warning. The 42-year rule of Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi concluded with his capture and beating by an angry mob before he was killed. The 2011 uprising that led to his ouster unleashed hopes that the oil-rich country he’d turned into an international pariah would rebuild and lure investment. Instead battles between rival militias morphed into fighting between dueling governments. The turmoil devastated the country’s oil exports and helped fuel Europe’s refugee crisis, with Libyans fleeing and other asylum-seekers streaming through. The havoc also allowed militant groups, notably Islamic State, to take root. Libya's competing governments have agreed in principle to unite, but the country remains split among the two factions and a shifting patchwork of tribes, militias and Islamic State.
The Situation
A United Nations-brokered deal in December formed a unity government under Fayez al-Sarraj, a public servant and parliamentarian, but dissidents have prevented it from functioning with full powers. Islamic State has attacked both feuding sides, although militias backed by U.S. air strikes have diminished the area under its control this year. On one side of the Libyan divide is an Islamist group that took control of the capital, Tripoli, in mid-2014 and formed a rival parliament. On the other are lawmakers elected in June 2014, who relocated to Tobruk, in the east. They are allied with Khalifa Haftar, a renegade general who rose to prominence battling Ansar al-Shariah, an al-Qaeda offshoot blamed for the 2012 death of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi. More than 4,800 people, by one count, have died in fighting in Libya and as many as 435,000 have been displaced. The oil industry is a focus of competing forces, and oil output has fallen to less than a quarter of pre-2011 levels.
SOURCE: BLOOMBERG ESTIMATES
The Background
Libya’s long stretch of Mediterranean coastline brought occupation or colonization by Greeks, Romans, Persians, various Islamic dynasties and Italy before World War II. A block of desert about the size of Alaska, Libya has the world’s 10th-largest oil reserves. Its three traditional regions — Tripolitania, Fezzan and Cyrenaica — were brought together as the Kingdom of Libya in 1951. Qaddafi’s 1969 coup established a country defined by its dictator and guided by his Green Book — a philosophical tome about everything from menstruation to economics. Oil wealth transformed the country of 6.4 million people from one of the world’s poorest into one of the wealthiest in Africa, and it amassed more than $100 billion in reserves. Oil provided free education and subsidized food, fuel, housing and health care, along with weapon stockpiles. Qaddafi supported Palestinian militants and sponsored terrorist groups. He eventually accepted responsibility for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which led to the lifting of U.S. and European Union sanctions in 2003. The Arab Spring uprisings found fertile ground in Libya, triggering violence in February 2011 that led to NATO airstrikes on Qaddafi’s forces. The transitional government that replaced Qaddafi proved unable to stabilize the nation and rein in militias that doubled as police and de facto military forces.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/libyas-breakdown
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