Origins of the Libyan Conflict

Running head: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
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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,

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
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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