Origins of the Libyan Conflict

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Title
Is foreign interference in Libya one of the main causes of the civil war following the 2011
revolution?
Description of the Topic
Libya which is a mostly desert and oil-rich country comprising of an ancient history,
has currently gained significant level of attention due to the 42-year regulation of the
mercurial Colonel Muammar Gaddafi as well as the subsequent turmoil that has followed his
overthrow in 2011 (Bellal 2015). The recent development of the Libyan National Army
(LNA) on Tripoli in the regime of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar has led the nation to get
involved in an extensive conflict on southern edge of the European region. With the spread of
war reaching deep into Libya’s southern suburban regions, the European Union along with its
member states have shown robust inclination in avoiding the situation from developing into a
nationwide conflict in Libya. This has led Europeans to understand overseas dynamics of the
intensifying violence manifesting in Libya (Carboni and Moody 2018). Nations like the
United States, European allies along with the United Nations have been determined to show
greatest hesitation over the untiring disagreement and halt of Libya since armed aggressive
groups attempted to make a division in the country between political and tribal lines.
Rationale
The political change of Libya, from Gaddafi to Haftar has faced disturbance by armed
non-state groups and has become susceptible to the uncertainty as well as backbiting of the
provisional leaders. The Libyan Crisis referred to the repeated war taking place in Libya that
has been prompted from the Arab Spring protests in 2011 that caused civil war along with
foreign intervention and the overthrowing and demise of Gaddafi (Eriksson 2016). However,

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the primary cause of civil war following the 2011 revolution has been due to the civil war’s
aftermath and the proliferation of armed groups across the nation thus instigating the renewal
of civil war in 2014. The chosen topic is of great importance to know if foreign intervention
is still the main cause of the civil war in Liby following the 2011 revolution. The topic draws
great importance as both the conflicts have led to the output of the country’s economically
chief oil sector which collapsed to a minor segment of its ordinary level with most of its
services been broken down or damaged by the opponents.
Review of Literature
The political changeover of Libya, from Gaddafi to Haftar has faced trouble by armed
non-state groups and has become susceptible to continuing uncertainty and internal conflict
of provisional leaders. Blanchard (2016) in his study has mentioned that election for
Parliament and a legal drafting assemblage had been organized with a distinctive
administered in 2012 and 2014. As he argues, insecurity has been highly predominant in
Libya after the 2011 revolution and further intensified in 2014 due to the intersecting
philosophical and international oppositions. Meanwhile Costantini (2016) has mentioned that
the developments in Libya post 2011 conflict has countered the arguments as per to which oil
distant resource inclined towards separatist forms of war and stimulates a development of
centralisation in the state construction as well as the security machine. Furthermore, the
changeover in administration from Gaddafi to Haftar and conditions related to separatist wars
found certain uncertainties. These uncertainties were related to the possibility of analysing
post-2011 Libya as a separatist war. In relation to the outburst of post 2011 conflict,
complaints over spreading of armed groups has been seen as one of the primary causes of the
conflict. By drawing insights from previous research on post 2011 conflict, it has been noted
that the Libyan conflict has drawn particular importance as it is seen as proxy conflict

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amongst influential regional actors, the Libyan National Army and General National
Congress (GNC) . Additionally, like Syria, the Libyan war has been threatening to develop as
a double proxy war whereby alignments as well an animosities have been showing higher
level of animosity and challenging to unravel (Reeve 2015). In the view of Reeve (2015), the
proxy war which has triggered the Libyan civil war since 2014 has been seen as a vital part of
the extensive counter-revolutionary reaction to the Arab Spring revolutions. Similar views
have been shared by Gartenstein-Ross and Barr (2015) that with the extensive prevalence of
indecision concerning internal diminuendos of the Dignity and Dawn coalitions, the
consequences of the conflict on regional stability have become more and more strong.
Moreover, Eriksson (2016) has claimed that the Dignity and Dawn coalitions have been one
of the major causes of post-2011 Libyan conflict. It gave rise to ungoverned areas which have
been excessively and illegally used by militant groups in which the Islamic State has been
distinct among them in 2015. Dawn and Dignity coalitions have been instigating the presence
of Jihadist groups chiefly in Derna and Sirte. This presence has been significantly
complicating the situation in Libya. As claimed by Pedde (2017), although international
organizations have continued their policy links, Tripoli has been encountering threats of an
extended conflict of attrition by General Hifler. Furthermore, considering the
uncompromising risks, the post 2011 conflict possibly will worsen into an extended Syria-
like, if non-sectarian, civil conflict by making way for new opportunities for ISIS along with
other terrorist groups like the al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb as well as Ansar al-Sharia in
order to take benefit from the recurrent chaos. As a result, the extent of ISIS in Libya
signified a new devastating concern of the nation’s institutional flaw and security
disintegration.
On the other hand, in 2013 and 2014, the pressures coming from Ansar al-Sharia did
not portray any actual danger to the security of Tripoli as well as Benghazi since they have

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mostly been protected in rural areas. According to Winer (2018), it has been due to the
regime of Haftar who have revitalised as well as re-legitimated the assemblage, by instigating
a movement counter to terrorism as well as jihadism that has been chiefly centred on the
supposition that all Islamist militaries have instigated the Al-Qaeda linkage. Furthermore, the
armed groups primarily caused an influence on the resident interpretation, with the accurate
goal of supporting the welfares of one party over another, in a zero-sum-game thinking of
war that has still not be resolved. On the other hand, the situation in Libya has challenged the
universal goals of encouraging stability, unity and democracy. Iqbal and Andric (2015) in
their research have mentioned that while United Nations has been playing a decisive role in
resolving this issue, there is a major challenge which relates to the amalgamation of
democratic organizations. Such a crisis is a test but also can be understood as an important
prospect of opportunity which might aid Libya to come out from its disturbed situation.
Serwer (2015) has shared similar views by claiming that the US officials along with
additional transnational actors have been putting efforts since 2014 in order to persuade the
Libyan groups as well as their regional cohorts with the understanding that wide-ranging,
representative government and cooperation are desirable for challenging attempts of attaining
dominance by means of armed forces. Furthermore, the war in Syria has negatively
influenced thousands of young Libyan men since 2012. They have been associated with the
rise of IS allied groups in Libya to the reoccurrence of some of those Libyan battalions from
Syria in 2014. In addition to the IS supporters have been still encountering a backlash from
aggressive militant groups along with other Islamists (Winer 2018).
By drawing relevance to previous research, it has been noted that Libyan armed
groups have been challenging war against the Islamic State and made it extremely critical for
the government to operate in areas like Sabratha (Blanchard 2016). They have been
challenging the development of ISIS in several areas across Libya. Similarly, Gartenstein-

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Ross and Barr (2015) have mentioned that the threat of civil conflict has been extensively
worsened by post-Gaddafi security setting characterised by a profusion of empowered armed
groups. The causes of the security disintegration which has restricted the political transition
in post-Gaddafi Libya has been largely fixed in domestic structural factors that obstruct the
emergence of democratic establishments. However, with the absence of the will or ability to
separate the militias, the new central government of Libya instead endeavoured to include
them into the state security structure which has resulted in the highly unsuccessful approach
(Romanet Perroux 2019).
The deterioration of Libya’s state can be observed through the absence of two of the
most significant organizations namely the police and the army. Rather than upgrading these
organizations from the scratch by means of preparation, equipment, subsidy as well as laws,
opponent political groups in control after 2011 legitimized, supplied and equipped their
individual groups of militias. Moreover, the spread of militias added to a climate of chaos or
disorder in certain parts of Libya. While, Algeria comprises of significant military abilities, it
has been unwaveringly contrasting to foreign interferences and would not appreciate
development of Egyptian, Saudi or French influence across its border. Meanwhile, according
to the study by Eriksson (2016), in order to produce results for diplomatic efforts,
internationals should function in accordance to circumvention of proliferation of armed
forces across the nation.
Brief outline of the chapters
Introduction
In the introductory section, the paper will discuss underlying factors related to the
proliferation of armed associations across the nation which has been activating the renewal of
civil war in 2014.

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Literature Review
The review of literature section will primarily incorporate evidence about militant groups
resulting in Post-2011 Libyan conflict and how dignity and dawn coalitions have been
escalating civil war. It will also incorporate information on the situation subsequent to the fall
of the Gaddafi regime in Libya (Ferrari 2015).
Results and Discussions
This section will offer concise presentation of the research findings.
Methodology- The paper will conduct a secondary analysis of qualitative data in order to find
answers to the developed research question.
Bibliography- This section will contain references of books, articles, research papers used
which will be used in the paper.
Methodology
The first step of the research methodology comprised of developing the proposal question
that is mentioned below.
Is foreign interference in Libya one of the main causes of the civil war following the 2011
revolution?
The following step included in the research methodology which contains literature
review by searching terminologies in relevance to the discussions and further creating
opportunities of theoretical research within the area of study. The progression of appropriate
search terminologies has enabled the extraction of apposite literature which has high
suitability to the research question. Google Scholar is used as the electronic database which
has been thoroughly searched to extract information (Ferrari 2015).

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The reference lists includes information from papers which have been searched in
manual approach, then used the snowballing procedure (Ali and Usman 2018). The reference
list of the academic articles along with formulating discussion of reference study has
permitted successful discovery of significant articles appropriate for the advanced research
problem. Terminologies used for searching articles have been used to retrieve scholarly
papers are ‘Libyan conflict’, ‘Post-2011 Libyan Conflict’, “Libya Civil War’, ‘United
Nations’, Armed groups’, ‘International alliances’, ‘foreign intervention’ which have been
given by using combination with Boolean operators such as AND, OR.
The last step has comprised of the selection criteria of inclusion as well as exclusion
for directing assessment of literature and has concentrated on the resource limitations.
Inclusion criteria Exclusion criteria
Articles which are mostly available in
English
Articles which are available in other
languages
Articles primarily available on or after 2015 Articles available before 2015
Articles covering information on Libyan
conflict’, ‘Post-2011 Libyan Conflict’,
“Libya Civil War’, ‘United Nations’,
Armed groups’, ‘International alliances’,
‘foreign intervention’
Articles focusing on employee performance,
‘HR practice implementation’
Obama's Libya intervention
Articles covering evidence on factor
related to Post-2011 Libyan Conflict and
Libya Civil War’
Articles which has been limited on
information on political risk of Libya
Factors on Post-2011 Libyan Conflict Case study

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Bibliography
Ali, N.B. and Usman, M., 2018. Reliability of search in systematic reviews: Towards a
quality assessment framework for the automated-search strategy. Information and Software
Technology, 99, pp.133-147.
Bellal, A. ed., 2015. The war report: armed conflict in 2014. Oxford University Press.
Blanchard, C.M., 2016. Libya: Transition and US policy (No. CRS-RL33142). Congressional
Research Service Washington United States.
Carboni, A. and Moody, J., 2018. Between the cracks: actor fragmentation and local conflict
systems in the libyan civil war. Small Wars & Insurgencies, 29(3), pp.456-490.
Costantini, I., 2016. Conflict dynamics in post-2011 Libya: a political economy
perspective. Conflict, Security & Development, 16(5), pp.405-422.
Eriksson, M., 2016. A fratricidal Libya: Making sense of a conflict complex. Small Wars &
Insurgencies, 27(5), pp.817-836.
Ferrari, R., 2015. Writing narrative style literature reviews. Medical Writing, 24(4), pp.230-
235.
Gartenstein-Ross, D. and Barr, N., 2015. Dignity and dawn: Libya’s escalating civil
war. International Centre for Counter-Terrorism-The Hague.
Gates, S., Nygård, H.M., Strand, H. and Urdal, H., 2016. Trends in armed conflict, 1946–
2014. Conflict Trends, 1, pp.1-4.
Haesebrouck, T., 2017. NATO burden sharing in Libya: a fuzzy set qualitative comparative
analysis. Journal of conflict resolution, 61(10), pp.2235-2261.

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Iqbal, S. and Andric, J., (2015). Hit Model United Nations Conference 2015 Chad’s Position
On Libya Crisis.
Pedde, N., 2017. The Libyan conflict and its controversial roots. European view, 16(1),
pp.93-102.
Reeve, R., 2015. Libya’s Proxy Battlefield.
Romanet Perroux, J.L., 2019. The Deep Roots of Libya’s Security Fragmentation. Middle
Eastern Studies, 55(2), pp.200-224.
Serwer, D., 2015. Libya’s escalating civil war. Council on Foreign Relations. Center for
Preventive Action. Contingency Planning Memo Update, 18.
Winer, J.M., 2018. Origins of the Libyan Conflict and Options for Its Resolution.