Libyan civil war (2014–2020)

Overview

The Libyan civil war of 2014–2020 was a struggle among rival governments, military formations and armed groups for control of Libya after the collapse of its post-Gaddafi political transition. It followed the Libyan civil war of 2011, which ended the rule of Muammar Gaddafi but did not produce a durable settlement. By 2014, a loose western alliance centered on Tripoli and Misrata faced an eastern coalition associated with the House of Representatives in Tobruk. Khalifa Haftar commanded the eastern coalition’s Libyan National Army (LNA). The rival sides fought over political authority, territory and armed force, while jihadist groups exploited the fragmentation.

A United Nations-brokered agreement established the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) in December 2015 under Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj. The agreement did not resolve Haftar’s place in the political order or bring his forces under civilian control. The eastern government, backed by the House of Representatives and aligned with the LNA, remained a separate center of power. Haftar’s April 2019 offensive against Tripoli began another major phase of the war. Foreign support helped both coalitions sustain the fighting; direct intervention by Turkey enabled GNA-aligned forces to reverse the LNA’s gains in 2020. The rival sides signed a nationwide ceasefire that October.

Background

Gaddafi’s overthrow in 2011 removed the regime that had dominated Libya for decades. During the preceding war, NATO air operations prevented the defeat of forces opposing Gaddafi, while those forces developed their organization and combat capacity. Victory over the regime left armed groups with substantial power and Libya without an agreed means of settling competing claims to authority. Tribal, geographic and ideological divisions fractured the transition. Rival factions fought for control, and a second civil war erupted in 2014.

The western side initially comprised a loose alliance of militias. Forces from Misrata supported Tripoli’s Dawn coalition, and some militias in that alliance were affiliated with movements of Political Islam. Haftar’s Dignity coalition fought Dawn forces around Misrata and Tripoli during the 2014–2015 phase. In eastern Libya, Haftar’s Operation Dignity also fought Ansar al-Sharia and allied jihadist forces in Benghazi. These overlapping conflicts made the war more complex than a confrontation between two governments: local armed groups pursued their own positions even when they operated within broader alliances.

Haftar had served under Gaddafi before falling out of favor following a military expedition in Chad. He spent about two decades in exile in northern Virginia and returned to Libya in 2011. During the renewed civil war, he nominally commanded the eastern coalition and led the LNA aligned with the Tobruk-based authorities. The House of Representatives gave that force an eastern political base, but the LNA was not an uncontested national military. The internationally recognized GNA governed separately in Tripoli, and Haftar refused to place the military under the civilian control required by the Libyan Political Agreement.

Course of the war

Fighting in Benghazi illustrated the early war’s fragmentation and the threat from jihadist groups. On July 29, 2014, about 1,000 Ansar al-Sharia and allied fighters overran Camp 36 in the city’s Bou Atni district and seized military supplies. After the capture, Ansar al-Sharia leader Muhammad al-Zahawi declared Benghazi an Islamic emirate. Haftar’s Operation Dignity fought these forces, and on June 22, 2016, his troops launched an offensive against Islamic State and other jihadist positions in western Benghazi. Estimates cited in a 2018 human rights report placed deaths from LNA campaigns since 2014 in the hundreds and injuries in the thousands, including civilians.

The December 2015 Libyan Political Agreement created the GNA as a proposed route out of the institutional split. Sarraj led the new government from Tripoli, while the eastern government backed by the House of Representatives aligned itself with Haftar’s LNA. An eastern government supportive of Haftar later withdrew its recognition of the GNA. Haftar’s refusal to submit military command to civilian authority left a central part of the settlement unresolved. The competing governments and their armed partners continued to contest Libya’s future despite the agreement’s formal establishment of a unity government.

External powers strengthened opposing coalitions throughout the war. Qatar, Sudan and Turkey supported the western militia alliance. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Russia assisted Haftar’s eastern forces. Egypt viewed instability across its western border as a security threat and trained for risks arising there. It shipped weapons to Haftar’s army despite an international arms embargo; a United Nations report found Egyptian violations of the embargo in both 2014 and 2015. Haftar acknowledged close cooperation with Egypt, particularly in intelligence sharing. France’s position in the conflict also placed it against Turkey, which backed Sarraj. Foreign involvement supplied the rival sides with military capacity and tied Libya’s internal struggle to wider regional contests.

After another attempt to mediate between Haftar and the internationally recognized Tripoli government failed, Haftar launched a surprise offensive to capture the capital in April 2019 and extend his control across Libya. His LNA besieged Tripoli in a campaign that lasted for months. Misrata and Tripoli forces fought together against the attack, while conflict also intensified among GNA-aligned groups and other armed actors within the capital. The United Nations and international partners sought a cessation of hostilities and urged the factions to return to a UN-mediated political process. Failed mediation preceded Haftar’s decision to attack; the offensive initiated the renewed fighting around Tripoli.

Diplomacy did not immediately end the offensive. Haftar left ceasefire talks in Moscow without signing an agreement despite Russian pressure. Turkey and Russia called for a ceasefire in early 2020, and the Wagner Group withdrew from southern Tripoli. Both the LNA and GNA-aligned forces nonetheless continued to benefit from foreign military support. Thousands of Syrian, Russian and Sudanese mercenaries entered Libya to fight for the opposing sides, while Russia deployed fighter jets to assist Haftar’s forces during the 2020 fighting.

Turkey’s military intervention changed the battlefield in 2020. Turkish-backed GNA forces recaptured western towns and military bases that Haftar’s LNA had held. In June, LNA-aligned forces abandoned their prolonged offensive against Tripoli and other western cities and retreated to central Libya. After these losses, Haftar proposed a ceasefire and renewed negotiations. His proposal followed his refusal to sign the earlier Moscow agreement. The reversal ended his attempt to take Tripoli by force and made Turkey a central participant in the conflict’s final military phase.

Israel's conduct and the protection of civilians

Israel kept its distance from the fighting inside Libya. The war nonetheless mattered to Israeli security because instability threatened neighboring Egypt, jihadist groups could gain territory, weapons supplied to Libyan factions could spread beyond the country, and outside powers could deepen their influence in the Mediterranean. Egypt backed Haftar and responded directly to threats from Islamic State in Libya. Israel’s concerns therefore arose from the conflict’s regional effects rather than participation by Israeli forces in Libyan combat.

Libyan civilians bore severe costs from the offensive against Tripoli. Confrontations between April and August 2019 killed an estimated 1,100 people. About 44 migrants were killed when a detention center was bombed during that period. Indiscriminate shelling around the capital killed civilians and displaced others. Fighting among armed groups further endangered residents in a city already under siege. The United Nations pressed the parties to halt hostilities and resume political talks as the civilian toll mounted.

The danger continued into 2020. Intensified fighting around Tripoli killed at least five civilians and wounded at least 28 in April. Four days after a United Nations warning on April 20, shelling by Haftar’s forces killed three more civilians. His forces also bombarded a hospital intended for COVID-19 patients twice. These attacks came as the renewed war further damaged Libya’s weak health system and displaced people who needed access to care. Protection of civilians and medical facilities was an immediate concern during the campaign, not merely a consequence to address after it ended.

COVID-19 reached Libya amid civil war, displacement, a large refugee and migrant population, and deficient healthcare. By May 7, 2020, the country had performed only 2,338 tests, sharply limiting its ability to track infections. From April 17, the GNA imposed a ten-day, round-the-clock curfew in areas under its control. It also barred intercity travel and driving and closed Libya’s borders and airspace. Those measures depended on institutions already strained by fighting, while bombardment around Tripoli added pressure to hospitals and interrupted the conditions needed for an effective public-health response.

Terrorist tactics and propaganda

The civil war created openings for Islamic State and other jihadist armed groups. Islamic State murdered 21 Copts in early 2015, an atrocity that prompted Egyptian strikes against its strongholds inside Libya. Egypt bombed Islamic State outposts in Libya twice during the wider crisis. The murders demonstrated that the collapse of Libyan authority threatened religious minorities and neighboring states as well as the rival Libyan coalitions. They also made the fight against Islamic State a distinct part of the war, alongside the contest between Tripoli and Tobruk.

Ansar al-Sharia’s seizure of Camp 36 in 2014 combined a military gain with a claim of political and religious authority. Its leader’s declaration of an Islamic emirate in Benghazi followed the capture of a base and its supplies; the declaration did not settle who controlled the city. Haftar’s forces subsequently fought Ansar al-Sharia and allied jihadists there. The group’s proclamation and Islamic State’s violence showed how jihadist organizations used Libya’s fractured security environment to seize resources, intimidate civilians and present themselves as rulers of territory.

Outcome

The LNA’s withdrawal from western Libya in June 2020 marked the failure of Haftar’s attempt to capture Tripoli. Turkey’s intervention enabled successive GNA victories, while Haftar’s later ceasefire proposal reflected the loss of his battlefield gains. Foreign sponsorship remained decisive on both sides: support from Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Russia had assisted Haftar, while Turkey’s direct role strengthened the Tripoli government. The military reversal did not erase Libya’s eastern and western political division, but it ended the months-long siege of the capital.

In October 2020, the LNA and forces aligned with the GNA signed a nationwide ceasefire. A United Nations-backed Joint Military Commission brought generals from across the country into the ceasefire process; Misrata was among the western cities represented geographically after the agreement. The ceasefire halted the main phase of fighting covered by this war. It followed years in which a UN-brokered government, rival eastern institutions and foreign-backed armed coalitions had failed to produce a single accepted command or a durable political settlement.

Aftermath and legacy

The war’s effects extended beyond Libya’s borders through foreign military intervention and competing claims in the Eastern Mediterranean. On November 27, 2019, Turkey and Sarraj’s GNA signed a maritime delimitation agreement. Its proposed zones would cut off Israeli, Egyptian and Cypriot maritime zones from Greece and the rest of Europe. The Tobruk-based government linked to Haftar rejected the agreement, as did Egypt and Greece; Greece expelled Libya’s ambassador. A Libyan national court ruled that the memorandum had not been concluded by a competent authority. The arrangement intensified Turkey’s confrontation with Israel and its regional partners, Cyprus, Egypt and Greece.

The maritime dispute showed why control of Libya’s government mattered outside the civil war’s battlefields. Turkey’s alliance with the GNA gave Ankara a partner for claims affecting Eastern Mediterranean access and energy plans. Its subsequent military intervention strengthened that partner when Haftar’s offensive threatened Tripoli. For Egypt, the same war presented border-security risks, jihadist violence and a struggle over influence on its western flank. For Israel, the conflict raised concerns about Egypt’s stability, weapons proliferation and the balance of power at sea, even as Israel remained outside the Libyan fighting.

Libya’s second civil war demonstrated the limits of the settlement reached after Gaddafi’s fall. The 2011 overthrow ended his rule, but the transition fractured into rival institutions and armed coalitions by 2014. The 2015 political agreement established the GNA without resolving Haftar’s authority or civilian control of the military. The October 2020 ceasefire followed a costly campaign against Tripoli and a foreign-backed reversal of that campaign. Its legacy included civilian deaths and displacement, damage to healthcare during a pandemic, and an unresolved need to bring Libya’s competing political and military authorities under a common settlement.