Libya

Overview

Libya is a North African country on the Mediterranean Sea, between Egypt and Tunisia. Its three historic regions are Tripolitania in the northwest, Cyrenaica in the east and Fezzan in the southwest. Tripoli is its capital and largest political center; Benghazi is Cyrenaica’s principal city. Libya’s location connects the eastern Mediterranean, North Africa and routes across the Sahara. Oil gives the country substantial revenue, while the distribution of that revenue has repeatedly become a source of political and military conflict.^[1]

Libya became independent in 1951. Colonel Muammar Gaddafi overthrew its monarchy in 1969 and ruled as a dictator until the Arab Spring uprising and civil war of 2011 ended his regime. His fall did not produce a durable political settlement. Rival governments, militias and jihadi organizations gained territory and influence, and another civil war began in 2014. A nationwide ceasefire in October 2020 reduced major fighting without unifying the state. The continuing division has affected civilian safety, migration, oil production and security across Libya’s borders.^[7][8]

Geography

Libya has a long Mediterranean coast and an interior dominated by the Sahara. Coastal settlements contain most of its population. Tripolitania includes Tripoli and Misrata; Cyrenaica includes Benghazi and the ancient city of Cyrene; and Fezzan contains southern desert towns and routes toward neighboring African states. The great distance between population centers, combined with distinct regional political networks, has complicated attempts to govern from a single capital. Control of eastern oil fields and export facilities has proved especially important to competing authorities.

The country’s geography also gives its conflicts a reach beyond North Africa. The Mediterranean coast faces southern Europe, its eastern border meets Egypt, and southern routes connect Libya with the Sahel. Armed groups have used these routes for movement and supply. During the civil wars, outside powers sought influence through Libyan partners, while weapons supplied to combatants risked spreading beyond the country. For Israel, Libya’s position makes developments there relevant to Egypt’s stability and to the balance of influence in the eastern Mediterranean.^[8]

History

Cyrene was an important city of the ancient eastern Mediterranean, and Libya’s coastal regions passed through successive Greek, Roman and Byzantine periods. Arab armies conquered Cyrenaica in the seventh century and extended their rule westward. The Ottoman Empire took Tripoli in 1551 and ruled Libya until the Italian invasion of 1911. From 1711 to 1835, the Qaramanlī dynasty governed Tripolitania with nominal Ottoman allegiance; direct Ottoman rule resumed in 1835. These changes did not erase the distinct identities of Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and Fezzan.^[1]

Italian forces captured Tripoli and other coastal centers in 1911, but resistance delayed their conquest of the interior. Sanusi-led opposition in Cyrenaica continued into the early 1930s. After the Second World War, Libya moved toward independence and became a kingdom under Idris in 1951. On September 1, 1969, Gaddafi led a coup that abolished the monarchy and proclaimed the Libyan Arab Republic. Crown Prince Hasan as-Senussi was placed under house arrest. Gaddafi later presented his political system as government by the masses and ceased to hold a formal state office after 1977, yet he retained personal control. Opposition was suppressed and basic civil liberties were denied.^[1][5]

Gaddafi used Libya’s oil income to pursue regional ambitions and armed confrontation with Israel. At the December 1969 Arab summit in Rabat, he promised a substantial share of oil revenue to reinforce the Arab front. Libya became a major Arab destination for Soviet-bloc arms and a hub for weapons, training and funding for Arab organizations fighting Israel. After Egyptian president Anwar Sadat visited Jerusalem in 1977, Libya joined the Arab Rejection Front, which opposed negotiations with Israel. Gaddafi’s government was also implicated in violent confrontations abroad; British police constable Yvonne Fletcher was killed by gunfire outside Libya’s London embassy during an anti-Gaddafi demonstration in 1984.^[1]

In 2003, Gaddafi’s government pledged to renounce weapons of mass destruction. The decision opened a path toward improved relations with the United States, though the concentration of policy in Gaddafi’s hands raised concerns about lasting compliance. A claims-settlement agreement followed in 2008, and the two countries exchanged ambassadors in January 2009 for the first time in 37 years. Diplomatic normalization did not amount to domestic political reform. In another measure of the gulf between international status and Libya’s rights record, the UN Commission on Human Rights elected Libyan diplomat Najat Al-Hajjaji its chairperson in 2003 by 33 votes to three, with 17 abstentions. The United States had called for the vote and opposed the appointment.^[4][5][6]

Protests in 2011 became an armed uprising and civil war. Gaddafi’s forces attacked demonstrators and alleged opponents; the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Gaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam and intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi over crimes against humanity beginning on February 15. The regime fell later that year, and Gaddafi was killed. Armed groups that had fought him retained their weapons and local power. In October, interim-government head Mustafa Abdel-Jalil said a Gaddafi-era restriction on polygamy would be abolished, invoking Sharia. Disputes over political authority, regional interests and the place of religion in government accompanied the breakdown of central control.^[17]

Jewish history

Libya had an ancient Jewish community, especially in Cyrenaica. Archaeological finds alone do not establish Jewish settlement there before Ptolemy Lagos ruled Egypt in the late fourth and early third centuries BCE. Historical accounts place Jewish settlers around Cyrene, probably as military settlers on royal land, by about 312 BCE. Jewish communities later appeared at Benghazi and other coastal centers, with rural settlements across Cyrenaica. In Roman times, the community maintained its institutions and links with Jerusalem. Jewish life also developed in Tripolitania and continued through Arab, Ottoman and Italian rule.^[1]

Italian rule initially allowed many Jews to retain their communal life, but fascist measures increasingly restricted them. Anti-Jewish racial laws introduced in 1938 removed Jews from public positions and schools. During the Second World War, thousands suffered forced labor, dispossession or deportation. About 2,600 Jews from the Benghazi area were sent to Giado, where 562 died during their confinement. The war’s end brought further danger: anti-Jewish riots in Tripoli and nearby towns in November 1945 killed between 121 and 187 Jews by differing estimates, and violence returned in 1948.^[1]

Most Libyan Jews left for Israel in the years surrounding independence. About 30,000 had emigrated by the end of 1951, leaving roughly 8,000 in Libya. Following the Six-Day War in 1967, anti-Jewish riots killed Jews and drove a near-total departure of those who remained. After Gaddafi seized power in 1969, his government confiscated Jewish property and canceled debts owed to Jews. The destruction of this centuries-old community forms part of the wider Jewish exodus from the Muslim world. Its history includes religious scholarship, commerce, village life and the movement of Libyan Jews and their descendants to Israel and elsewhere.^[1][18]

Government and politics

Libya’s post-2011 transition created elected and negotiated institutions without establishing a single effective state. Citizens elected an interim House of Representatives in 2014. The 2015 Libyan Political Agreement created the Government of National Accord, led by Fayez al-Sarraj, but it governed only a limited part of the country. The elected House of Representatives in Tobruk backed General Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army in the east. Haftar’s command remained separate from the internationally recognized Tripoli government and rejected the agreement’s civilian-control provision. International meetings in France in 2017 and 2018 and Italy in 2018 brought Haftar and Sarraj into negotiations without securing implementation of the agreement or elections.^[3][7]

A later transitional arrangement selected Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh and Mohamed al-Menfi in 2021, defeating a ticket led by former interior minister Fathi Bashagha and House of Representatives chairman Aguila Saleh Issa. Dbeibeh became prime minister of the Government of National Unity through a limited forum vote intended to lead to elections within about a year. When those elections were postponed, he remained in office beyond the planned mandate. International recognition did not give his government control of eastern Libya. That division was visible after the Derna floods: his administration could allocate funds but could not direct the response on the ground from Tripoli.

Control of state revenue has helped sustain the political divide. Oil profits flowed to the Central Bank, while Dbeibeh’s government distributed funds and salaries through arrangements with it. After Haftar shut the crucial eastern oil region for weeks, Dbeibeh agreed to replace the head of the National Oil Corporation and increase regional salary payments. Development spending in a proposed unified budget was tied to eastern and western institutions associated with the Haftar and Dbeibeh families. Dbeibeh’s nephew Ibrahim and Haftar’s son Saddam also emerged as prospective figures in a power-sharing arrangement. These bargains could move money and reduce immediate pressure, but they did not supply the elections and accountable government needed to settle Libya’s constitutional dispute.

Military and security

Misrata’s resistance to Gaddafi in 2011 provided a foundation for powerful armed groups that remained active afterward. Militia power soon threatened civilians in the capital: on November 15, 2013, members of a militia mostly from Misrata fired on a peaceful anti-militia demonstration in Tripoli’s Gharghur neighborhood, killing more than 40 people and injuring hundreds. The assault also killed a journalist, wounded two others and seriously damaged a television station. In the 2014–2015 war, Misrata groups supported Tripoli’s Dawn Coalition against Haftar’s eastern Dignity Coalition. Turkey, Qatar and Sudan supported western militias, while Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates supported Haftar’s forces. Russia later supplied support to the eastern side as well.^[3][7][9]

The terrorist organization Islamic State exploited the collapse of authority. It established a territorial stronghold in and around Sirte in 2015, using the city as a base for expansion and attacks. Its Libyan force was estimated at several thousand operatives, including recruits from other Arab and African countries. The group murdered 21 foreign Coptic Christians in the Sirte area in 2015. In 2016 it advanced around Abu Qarin toward Misrata, but forces centered on Misrata’s Bunyan al-Marsous operation pushed toward Sirte, retook its power plant and defeated the group’s territorial rule there by December. American air support assisted the campaign. The Islamic State’s loss of Sirte did not remove the danger of dispersed operatives or cross-border attacks; a raid into Tunisia from its Libyan network in March 2016 showed that reach. In May 2023, a Misrata court sentenced 37 people convicted in connection with the Copts’ killings.^[11][12][13]

Haftar’s forces fought the Islamic State and other jihadi groups in eastern Libya, including around Benghazi and Derna. The Libyan National Army also announced that a September 2020 operation in Sabha had killed the Islamic State’s North Africa leader and eight other commanders. Its broader campaigns, however, brought grave civilian harm. Estimates cited in a 2018 human rights report placed deaths from its campaigns since 2014 in the hundreds and injuries in the thousands. An International Criminal Court warrant targeted a field commander filmed executing ten people without trial. UN investigators and later human rights reporting identified arbitrary killings, detention, torture and abuses against migrants involving Libyan National Army-aligned groups and other armed actors. Armed groups aligned with the Tripoli authorities also committed unlawful killings. Operations against jihadi organizations do not erase responsibility for these abuses.^[3]

In 2019, Haftar’s forces launched an offensive against Tripoli while eastern parallel institutions challenged the Government of National Accord. Fighting in and around the capital killed an estimated 1,100 people between April and August, including about 44 migrants killed when a detention center was bombed. Turkish military intervention reversed Haftar’s gains and helped force his forces and allied Russian mercenaries to withdraw from the Tripoli offensive in June 2020. A nationwide ceasefire followed in October. It established a UN-backed Joint Military Commission with geographical representation from western cities including Misrata, yet Haftar retained control of eastern Libya after the ceasefire and formation of the Government of National Unity.^[9][10][14]

Relations with Israel

Gaddafi rejected peace with Israel and committed Libyan resources to Arab organizations fighting it. His pledge of oil revenue at the 1969 Rabat summit, the flow of Soviet-bloc arms to Libya and his later opposition to Sadat’s negotiations made that policy more than rhetoric. Libya’s Jewish exodus is another central part of the relationship: many Libyan Jews rebuilt their lives in Israel after violence and the loss of their community’s security and property.^[1]

Since 2011, Libya has mattered to Israeli security chiefly through its effects on neighboring Egypt, the prospect of jihadi sanctuary, the spread of weapons from its wars and the influence hostile powers might gain on the Mediterranean. Turkey’s alliance with the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord added a maritime dimension. Their 2019 boundary agreement challenged the plans of Israel, Cyprus, Greece and Egypt for eastern Mediterranean energy connections, including a proposed gas pipeline toward Europe. Greece objected that the agreement disregarded maritime rights associated with islands including Crete and Rhodes. Turkey’s battlefield gains in 2020 increased Ankara’s ability to sustain its Libyan position and project influence across the sea.^[8][10][15]

An unusual direct contact became public in August 2023, when Libyan foreign minister Najla Mangoush met Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen. Dbeibeh dismissed Mangoush after news of the meeting provoked backlash. Senior Libyan officials maintained that Dbeibeh had approved the talks in advance, while an Israeli official described coordination at Tripoli’s highest levels. The episode illustrated the political sensitivity of contact with Israel inside Libya’s divided system; it did not establish a change in diplomatic relations.

Economy

Oil is Libya’s principal source of state income and a central prize in its political struggles. The National Oil Corporation manages production and exports, while the Central Bank receives oil proceeds and finances public spending and salaries. Control over fields, ports, appointments and payments therefore affects both military leverage and civilian livelihoods. Haftar’s shutdown of the eastern oil region demonstrated how a regional force could pressure the Tripoli government through lost production and revenue. Institutional bargains over oil leadership and salaries subsequently tied economic management to the wider contest for authority.^[16]

The continuing split has hindered reconstruction and regular public services. Competing authorities have disputed budgets, while armed actors have used their control of territory and institutions to secure funds. The maritime agreement with Turkey linked Libya’s economic position to the eastern Mediterranean dispute over energy development. Proposed routes for Israeli and Cypriot gas toward Europe depended in part on maritime arrangements that Ankara challenged. Libya’s own oil wealth gives foreign governments an additional reason to seek influence, even as interruptions in production and political conflict impose costs on Libyans.^[15][16]

Society and religion

Most Libyans are Arabic-speaking Sunni Muslims. Amazigh languages and other local languages form part of the country’s social landscape, while migrants and foreign workers add further diversity. The long history of Libyan Jewry ended in near-total departure during the twentieth century. Christian communities, including Egyptian Copts, have also faced insecurity: the Islamic State’s murder of 21 Coptic Christians was among the most visible atrocities of the civil-war years. Religious freedom and civil rights have remained vulnerable where armed groups exercise power without effective judicial oversight.^[1][11][18]

Migrants and refugees crossing Libya have faced detention, violence and exploitation. In September 2018, government facilities held an estimated 8,000 to 9,000 people at roughly 20 sites. Reporting on the later conflicts documented abuses in facilities operated by armed groups, including elements aligned with the Libyan National Army. Arbitrary detention, torture and unlawful killings affected Libyans as well as migrants. Women’s freedom of movement also came under pressure when the Internal Security Agency under Dbeibeh’s government imposed travel restrictions following a religious ruling against women traveling alone. The distance between formal state institutions and the armed groups controlling daily life remains a defining condition for Libya’s society.^[3]