Libya's Threat to Global Security

The deteriorating political and economic situation in Libya poses one of the greatest risks to global security in recent years and, unfortunately, the situation inside Libya appears likely to deteriorate in the weeks and months ahead.  As a result, it is becoming imperative that North African and European countries, with the backing of the United States, intervene in order to prevent the situation from becoming even more unstable.  This means that the international community will have to choose a side in Libya’s second civil war in four years and provide the military and economic support that the chosen side will need to defeat its rivals and secure control of the entire country.  If not, Libya’s internal strife will worsen and Libya will come to resemble a North African version of Somalia.

As no side in Libya’s internal conflict possesses the power to overwhelm its rivals at present, the fighting in the country has largely reached a stalemate, with four rival groups jockeying for territory in Libya. 

• First, the internationally-recognized parliament based in the eastern city of Tobruk, together with its allies, the Zintan Brigades, have lost control of Libya’s capital city, Tripoli, and many other strategic areas of the country, but remain a major force in the conflict and still control much of the country’s vital oil industry.
• So far, the major rival to the Tobruk government has been the alliance of the New General National Congress, an Islamist group, and the Libya Shield Force, a grouping of fundamentalist Islamic militant groups.  This alliance controls Tripoli and most of the key centers in the western half of Libya.
• Another key force in Libya’s conflict is the radical Islamist Ansar al-Sharia militant group that has driven forces aligned with the Tobruk government from Libya’s second city, Benghazi.
• Finally, militants claiming allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) have emerged as a growing force in a number of areas of Libya in recent months and now control a few strategic cities along the northern coast of Libya.

As the stalemate in the conflict in Libya shows no sign of ending, and as new groups with more radical agendas enter the conflict, the threat that the unrest in Libya poses beyond the country’s borders grows exponentially.  For Libya’s immediate neighbors, the threat is clear, as militants based in Libya have carried out attacks on targets in Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria in recent months, while they continue to target citizens of these countries currently living in Libya.  Furthermore, as the conflict in Libya continues, militant groups such as the Islamic State will use Libya as a base to spread their region-wide insurgency to at-risk countries such as Egypt and Algeria, as well as to the less stable countries to Libya’s south.  Finally, as we have seen in recent years, the five-and-a-half-years of conflict in Libya has allowed a steady flow of fighters and weapons to spread throughout North Africa and the Sahel, adding to the level of instability in these regions.

Libya’s conflict not only poses a threat to its immediate neighbors, but is also one of the leading threats to global security at present.  For example, the unrest in Libya has resulted in a major surge in illegal immigration from Libya to Europe, via the Mediterranean.  With militant groups gaining more territory in Libya, many European countries are fearful that this will allow militants to also cross the Mediterranean in order to carry out attacks on targets across Europe.  Moreover, radicalized Europeans will find it even easier to join with militant groups in Libya than to join the Islamic State in Syria (as Turkey closes many routes into Syria) and this will allow these radicalized Europeans to not only fight alongside groups such as the Islamic State in Libya, but to be trained to carry out attacks back in Europe. 

In order to prevent the conflict in Libya from carrying on indefinitely, or to allow one or more radical militant groups from seizing control of the entire country, the international community will have to choose sides in Libya’s civil war.  The most obvious choice is for the international community to back the government in Tobruk, despite its ties to the former Qaddafi regime.  However, it will take a significant economic and military commitment to allow this relatively weak group to retake control of the entire country.  So far, no country, with the possible exception of Egypt, appears to have the will to commit such forces.  If action is not taken soon, the Tobruk government may also lose control of the country’s main oil producing and shipping centers, a development that would dramatically strengthen the militants and enable them to gain even more territory in Libya and to fund operations around the region, a potentially major setback in the war against radical groups across the region.