RISE AND FALL?

THE RISE AND FALL OF ISIS IN LIBYA

Azeem Ibrahim U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE
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RISE AND FALL? 

THE RISE AND FALL OF ISIS IN LIBYA

Azeem Ibrahim

August 2020

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FOREWORD

Perhaps even more than in Syria and Iraq, the 

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has suffered a 

major defeat in Libya. Originally, Libya was to be the 

second province in ISIS’s caliphate, but by 2019 the 

group has been defeated militarily and eliminated as 

a political force. But this victory has not been matched 

by the formation of a stable government and, until this 

happens, ISIS or some other jihadist group may stage 

a return in the midst of the ongoing chaos. At the time 

of this writing, the military campaign by the Libyan 

National Army (LNA) has stalled outside Tripoli. 

Now is the time for the United States and the wider 

international community to step up and help Libya 

transition to a unitary government with conventional 

elections. If this fails to happen, the hard-won 

victory over ISIS in Libya may yet turn out to have 

been illusory.

DR. CAROL V. EVANS

Director

Strategic Studies Institute and

US Army War College Press

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SUMMARY

This report argues exploiting the military and 

political defeat of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria 

(ISIS) in Libya to eradicate the group completely from 

the country and weaken its capacity to act elsewhere 

in North and sub-Saharan Africa is now possible. 

In addition, the Libyan conflict continues to have 

consequences for the political stability of Europe via 

the pressure the migration flows are putting on the 

political infrastructure of the continent. In turn, this 

instability has implications for the United States’ 

European strategy, both insofar as commercial 

interests are concerned and in US capacity to contain 

Russian assertiveness on the edges of NATO territory.

Almost a decade after the fall of the Muammar 

Gadhafi regime, Libya effectively has no government. 

The UN-backed Government of National Accord 

(GNA) is notionally supported by three of the four 

main factions in the country, and Turkey is now the 

principal external supporter. But these parties are still 

squabbling over control of vital regions, the degree of 

federalism needed, and control of the military.

The situation is made worse by Emirati, Egyptian, 

Saudi, and now Russian sponsorship of the Libyan 

National Army (LNA) commanded by General 

Khalifah Haftar. The army is opposed to the Libya 

Dawn group having any role in the governance 

of Libya. In turn, Qatar is happy to fund a range of 

radical groups, including the Muslim Brotherhoodaligned Libya Dawn, as part of its dispute with the 

Saudis and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Libya has traditionally followed an austere form 

of Sunni Islam which, in the nineteenth century, took 

the form of the Sanusiyah, a movement that is still 
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influential. The Muslim Brotherhood established itself 

in Libya in the post–World War II era. Finally, modern 

Salafi-jihadist groups such as ISIS, al-Qaeda (AQ), and 

local versions tried to establish themselves using the 

chaos that has reigned since 2011.

Removing radical Islamist groups from Libya is 

therefore impractical. But it is important the influence 

of these groups be minimized within a functioning 

political system. The Islamic State emerged in Libya 

in the post-2011 chaos and thrived due to the lack of 

an effective central government. The group has been 

driven to the margins, but it can sustain itself from 

criminal activities, such as people smuggling, drug 

trafficking, and taxing trade across the Sahara, and it 

has easy access to weapons and the porous borders of 

sub-Saharan Africa.

 Establishing effective government in Libya should 

be a priority for these reasons. In effect, ending the 

civil war between the House of Representatives 

(HoR) and the LNA in the east and the GNA in the 

west is the key to preventing any return of ISIS. A 

pool of potential recruits to ISIS continues to exist 

due to economic hardship and real grievances, allowing ISIS to recruit, regroup, and reemerge. If we 

are to exploit the strategic defeat of ISIS in Libya, the 

overwhelming need is to support the formation of an 

effective government.
1

RISE AND FALL? 

THE RISE AND FALL OF ISIS IN LIBYA

INTRODUCTION

Background

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) managed 

to exploit the chaos in Libya after the fall of the 

Muammar Gadhafi regime in 2011 and briefly carve 

out a degree of control over some coastal cities, 

especially Sirte, in 2014. By 2016, ISIS had lost control 

of all territory apart from a few isolated regions in 

the far south. But the group, largely embedded in 

the criminal networks involving people smuggling 

and the drug trade, still has a presence in the country 

today. Military action by a combination of NATO, 

Gulf States, and local forces was enough to eliminate 

the threat ISIS might retain control of population 

centers and acquire oil revenues as it sought to add a 

second province to its caliphate. But framing either the 

emergence or the apparent defeat of ISIS in a vacuum 

would be a mistake.

The Islamic State’s opportunity arose out of the 

post-Gadhafi chaos, its brief period of ascendency 

in Iraq and Syria, and key dynamics within Libyan 

history and contemporary culture.1

 Understanding 

the dynamics that led to the rise of ISIS is essential to 

preventing them from returning as a significant threat 

in Libya or the wider sub-Saharan region.

1. Azeem Ibrahim, The Resurgence of Al-Qaeda in Syria 

and Iraq (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War 

College Press, 2014).
2

Although Libya has only existed as an independent 

country since 1951, it has historically been divided into 

three main regions: Tripolitania in the west, Cyrenaica 

in the east, and a region to the south reaching into 

the Sahara. But these regions have usually also been 

combined into one state. Although the tensions 

among the three regions are real and have had a major 

influence on modern Libyan history, the best solution 

would most likely not be to fracture the existing state. 

Figure 1 shows the provinces into which Libya is 

divided today.2

Figure 1. Map of Libya (showing the post-1963 

provincial borders)

Map from Congressional Research Service

Beginning in the fifteenth century, Libya was 

notionally part of the Ottoman Empire, but was largely 

2. Christopher Blanchard, Libya: Transition and US Policy, 

RL33142 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, April 

20, 2016), 5.
3

autonomous until the 1840s. Rivalry with European 

powers and Ottoman military weakness in Libya led 

to Italy claiming the region as a colony in 1911. The 

Italian invasion to reinforce this claim was a disaster, 

and the Italians signed a peace treaty acknowledging 

their withdrawal by 1919. But one of the first acts 

of Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime in 1922 was to 

abrogate the peace treaty and invade Libya again, with 

the Italians eventually claiming victory in 1932. Italian 

rule ended with the British occupation of Cyrenaica in 

1943. Libya became independent and its pro-Western 

monarchy ran Libya basically along federal lines, 

with the old regions having considerable autonomy. 

Although the discovery of oil reserves led to some 

corruption, much of the income was also used to 

expand social services, education, and infrastructure. 

But the country faced domestic pressure to align itself 

more closely with Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt. These 

pressures led to the 1969 military coup led by officers 

like Gadhafi, who were notionally committed to 

Nasser’s pan-Arabism; they briefly looked for a union 

with Egypt, but this approach ended with Nasser’s 

death. Nevertheless, Gadhafi’s rule quickly evolved 

into an authoritarian regime that seemed happy to 

support almost any violent movement in Africa, 

Europe, the Middle East, and beyond.

Since the fall of Gadhafi’s regime in 2011, 

governance of Libya has been fragmented. Initially, 

four major power blocs were in place. Three were 

notionally committed to the UN-backed Government 

of National Accord (GNA): the Sanusiyah-influenced 

General National Congress (GNC) and the House of 

Representatives (HoR), which are based in Tripolitania 

and Cyrenaica, respectively, and the Muslim 

Brotherhood-influenced Libya Dawn, with its power 
4

base around Tripoli. These regional and factional 

divisions made creating an effective government 

difficult. By 2017, the HoR and the LNA, backed by the 

United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt, and the Saudis, 

commenced a military offensive to capture Tripoli 

from the GNA and its allies (backed by the UN, Qatar, 

and Turkey). By early 2020, the offensive had stalled, 

creating an opportunity for a potential political 

settlement. But such a solution will not be easy, 

especially given the Emirati and Egyptian opposition 

to any dealings with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Radical Islamism in Libya

The Sanusiyah movement stressed the need for 

simplicity, piety, and the elimination of modern 

innovations from Islam. In theory, the movement had 

much in common with Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia, 

though in practice it proved to be more tolerant of 

other forms of Islam and other faiths. The movement 

formed the basis of the modernizing, pro-Western 

monarchy that ruled from 1951 to 1969.

The Gadhafi regime’s attitude to Islam changed 

over time. The regime started out as secular in a 

Nasserist mode, but later embraced its own form of 

Islam. Gadhafi saw the Sanusis as a major threat—

first as exiled supporters of the monarchy, and later 

as Islamist groups trying to overthrow the regime. 

Internationally, he backed an eclectic range of 

movements, running from the secular Popular Front 

for the Liberation of Palestine to Western European 

Marxist terrorist groups and Islamist movements in 

sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria (where the regime backed 

the movement that has since become Boko Haram), 

and the Philippines.
5

The religious turmoil created fertile ground that 

was later exploited, first by al-Qaeda (AQ), and later 

by ISIS. Although the Sanusiyah diverged from 

Wahhabism and its modern-day Salafi variant, the two 

ideologies have much in common.3

 Understanding 

modern Libyan politics requires understanding 

the relations between the Sanusiyah-inspired 

Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and the main 

international jihadist groupings.4 At a senior level, 

the LIFG has kept its distance from AQ and ISIS, but 

individual members have often moved to whichever 

jihadist group is seen to be the most effective. By the 

time of Gadhafi’s fall, the LIFG had been defeated in 

Libya and was moving away from terrorism toward a 

more political approach. As part of its wider network 

in Saharan Africa, AQ, however, had managed to 

establish a small presence in Libya prior to 2011.5

 This 

presence, which was limited to Sirte, mostly comprised 

ex-LIFG militants. Al-Qaeda played a minimal role 

in the revolt against the Gadhafi regime and sought 

to cooperate with other militant groups rather than 

supplant them.

The Islamic State developed its presence in Libya 

by exploiting the post-Gadhafi chaos and preventing 

North African militants from moving to Syria and 

3. Azeem Ibrahim, Radical Origins: Why We Are Losing the 

Battle against Islamic Extremism—And How to Turn the Tide (New 

York: Pegasus Books, 2017).

4. Library of Congress, Al-Qaeda in Libya: A Profile

(Washington, DC: Library of Congress, August 2012).

5. Center for International Security and Cooperation 

(CISAC), “Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” Stanford, updated 

July 2018, https://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/mappingmilitants

/profiles/aqim.
6

Iraq, thereby building its network.6 The Islamic 

State saw Libya as a potential second province in its 

caliphate and a region where it could access arms and 

supplies. Libya also provided ISIS a useful distraction 

from Western pressure in Iraq and Syria and a means 

through which to expand the group’s network in 

North Africa.7

ISIS’s presence also alienated most potential allies 

due to the group’s sectarian approach to other Islamist 

groups. The Islamic State was driven out of coastal 

strongholds by a combination of Western air strikes 

and local militias. The group never gained control of 

oil revenues, and it diverted funding and resources to 

back an Islamist revolt in the Sinai Peninsula, leaving 

its network in Libya short of funds. By 2016, its 

remaining fighters had fled to the south, and ISIS was 

reduced to extracting revenues from the trans-Saharan 

trade, people smuggling, and the drug trade.8

Options

Context matters, and even a modern movement 

like ISIS or AQ is embedded in the existing politics, 

history, and culture of a region. To ensure neither has 

a route to return to prominence in Libya, one must 

6. House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Libya: 

Examination of Intervention and Collapse and the UK’s Future Policy 

Options, HC 119 (London, UK: House of Commons, September 

14, 2016)

7. Charlie Winter, Libya: The Strategic Gateway for the Islamic 

State (London, UK: Quilliam, 2015).

8. Aidan Lewis, “Islamic State Shifts to Libya’s Desert Valleys 

after Sirte Defeat,” Reuters, February 10, 2017, https://www.reuters

.com/article/us-libya-security-islamicstate/islamic-state-shifts

-to-libyas-desert-valleys-after-sirte-defeat-idUSKBN15P1GX.
7

understand the reason Libya was so attractive to 

these groups.

One key issue is Libya has a long history of resisting 

external intervention.9 The pirates who preyed on the 

central Mediterranean from the fifteenth to the early 

nineteenth centuries were feted by both rulers and 

the wider populace. The money, slaves, and ransoms 

they brought from raids were the bedrock of the local 

economy; the loss of this revenue, after the end of the 

Napoleonic Wars, allowed the Ottomans to reassert 

more direct control in the 1840s. The successful 

resistance to Italian colonialism between 1911 and 

1919 and the scars of the brutal Italian rule in the 1930s 

are part of the national narrative.

Radical Islamism equally has long had a place 

in Libya, and the nineteenth-century Sanusiyah 

movement added a degree of religious revivalism and 

helped fuse religion with nationalism. This fusion has 

created an environment where the Sanusiyah-inspired 

movements have real ideological and practical 

differences from contemporary Salafi movements, but 

individual militants cross this divide easily, joining 

the group that seems best placed to accomplish their 

personal goals.

Effectively, radical Islamism in one form or 

another, allied with Libyan nationalism, is not going 

to disappear. As long as radical Islamism remains, the 

risk of a revival by either AQ or ISIS is real, especially 

when both groups can exploit real grievances and the 

problems stemming from weak governance.

Creating an effective government must be the 

first priority. The GNA is weak and fragmented 

9. Ali A. Ahmida, The Making of Modern Libya: State Formation, 

Colonization, and Resistance (New York: State University of New 

York Press, 2014).
8

among the three major political factions in Libya. 

This situation is exacerbated by the external influence 

of the UAE and Egypt, which sponsor the LNA as a 

counterweight primarily because of their opposition 

to the Muslim Brotherhood (as well as Qatar’s backing 

of the brotherhood). The UN has recognized the GNA 

and has urged all external powers to stop sponsoring 

individual factions and to try to force dialogue 

between them.

Once formed, a central government will need 

substantial help, but this help should be provided 

on Libya’s own terms. In effect, the government 

should be able to request what it needs, rather than 

have solutions imposed on it. Many experts and 

professionals have either left the country or been 

killed in the unrest, and many fear ISIS and AQ have 

infiltrated the weak structures that do exist.

THE CONTEXT OF MODERN LIBYA

Up to the late Middle Ages, the political geography 

of the land that is now modern Libya was one of 

relatively isolated coastal cities engaged in both trade 

and piracy across the Mediterranean with a nomadic 

tribal population in the regions reaching into the 

Sahara. At times, Libya was largely independent, 

while at others, it was effectively ruled by its neighbor, 

Egypt. At other stages, the various coastal cities 

formed local alliances based on the long-standing 

divisions of the two coastal regions of Tripolitania in 

the west and Cyrenaica in the east.

From the fifteenth century to 1911, Libya was a 

province of the Ottoman Empire, though at times the 

area was largely independent. Direct Ottoman rule 

was reestablished in 1835, but the Ottomans only 
9

controlled a few towns in the south for the purposes of 

trade oversight. By the start of the twentieth century, 

Ottoman authority was notional rather than effective 

in this region.

The Italian invasion in 1911 set off a long period of 

war and revolt within the country until it was finally 

conquered in the early 1930s. The period of Italian rule 

was an economic disaster marked by frequent revolts 

and a net reduction in the population.

After the Second World War, some attempted to 

create an independent Cyrenaica, but Libya emerged 

as a unitary state under a constitutional monarchy in 

1951. Initially the regime was pro-Western, allowing 

substantial US, French, and British military bases, 

and it stayed out of the various Arab-Israeli wars in 

the 1950s and 1960s. But the country had also become 

reliant on Egypt for technical aid and experienced 

professional workers, which resulted in a growth in 

support for Nasser’s brand of Arab socialism.

The resulting military coup in 1969 brought 

Colonel Gadhafi to power. Initially, this regime 

remained pro-Egypt and turned to the Soviet bloc for 

aid and weaponry, but, by the mid-1970s, the regime 

had broken its links with Egypt and was an unreliable 

ally of the Soviets. Combined with a foreign policy 

more oriented toward Africa than other Arab states, 

the regime was left isolated and seen as a major 

regional problem by other Arab countries. Terrorist 

attacks organized or funded by the regime also led to 

growing conflict with the United States in the 1980s.

In the aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein, 

Gadhafi offered to stop developing chemical and 

nuclear weapons and to cooperate with Western 

powers against AQ and linked groups. The Libyans 

provided close intelligence cooperation, primarily 
10

aimed at members of the LIFG. The new political 

relationship was emphasized, with visits to Libya by 

the British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the French 

President Nicolas Sarkozy. Domestically, the regime 

remained repressive, which led to a major revolt 

as part of the wider Arab Spring in 2011. Gadhafi’s 

regime fell in 2011, and he was killed in Libya in 2012. 

His sons fled into exile or were arrested or killed. Since 

then, Libya has been plagued by conflict between 

several power centers and Islamist militias, including 

ISIS and AQ.

Islam in Libya

Islam arrived in Libya in the seventh century with 

the wave of Arab conquests in North Africa, and was 

initially limited to the coastal cities. The inland tribes 

retained their pagan beliefs before converting in the 

eleventh century. Some elements of the old belief 

systems were retained well into the twentieth century, 

including, in places, a matriarchal social system.10

Libyan Islam was overwhelmingly Sunni, but split into 

different strands. Although a relatively austere strand 

of Sunni jurisprudence dominated, Sufism retained a 

strong grip and, to some extent, fused with pre-Islamic 

beliefs. Libya was affected by the wider Islamic revival 

in the nineteenth century when the Sufi-influenced 

Sanusiyah movement came to prominence. This 

movement had close links with a similar form of Islam 

in the Sudan and shared an opposition to the growing 

Western colonial interests (which were often linked to 

the spread of Christianity).

The Sanusiyah movement was concentrated in 

Cyrenaica. Although the movement promoted an 

10. Ahmida, Making of Modern Libya.
11

austere form of Islam and called for a return to the 

purity of early Islam, it also rejected the sectarian 

approach of the emerging Wahhabi doctrine in 

Arabia.11 As had happened earlier in Sudan, this new 

strand of Islam fused with nationalist sentiment and 

became a source of national dissent first aimed at 

Ottoman rule and, later, against Italian colonial rule. 

The Sanusiyah movement also sought to challenge 

the perceived French sponsorship of Christianity 

across the Saharan region, as this was believed to be a 

prelude to the imposition of colonial rule.

Demographics

At the end of the nineteenth century, the 

population of Libya was around 1.6 million, mostly 

concentrated in the coastal cities, and largely of Arab 

or Berber descent. The exception was a substantial 

Tuareg minority in the south. The long war with 

Italy, followed by the brutal occupation, reduced the 

country’s population to around 861,000 in 1940. As 

a result of a policy of encouraging migration from 

Italy during the occupation, about 12 percent of the 

remaining population in 1940 was Italian, and of the 

rest, almost all were Arab or Berber.

After World War II almost all Italians left the 

country, but Libya’s population still increased 

fivefold, from 1.13 million people in the late 1950s 

to 5.8 million people in 2006, mainly as a result of 

the granting of citizenship to Palestinian, Tunisian, 

and Egyptian immigrant workers. Some of these 

workers arrived to staff the new civil administration 

and education systems created in the 1950s, but most 

came after the expansion of the oil and gas industries 

11. Ibrahim, Radical Origins.
12

in the 1960s. Although estimates indicate 3 percent 

of the population by 2011 was foreign workers, in 

reality, first- and second-generation migrants who 

have already been granted citizenship make up a 

substantial portion of the population.

These arrivals changed the demographics of 

Libya and affected domestic politics. Many teachers 

and university lecturers arrived from Egypt and 

brought with them support for Nasser’s forms of Arab 

socialism and nationalism.12 This shift in views had 

consequences when the Libyan government chose 

neutrality during the 1967 Six-Day War. Rioting broke 

out in Benghazi and Tripoli, with attacks on the US 

and United Kingdom (UK) embassies and the Libyan 

Jewish community. This neutrality added to growing 

complaints about both corruption and perceived proCyrenaica policies, creating a substantial movement 

increasingly opposed to the monarchy.

The dramatic population increase had significant 

effects on Libyan politics and its tribal influences. 

Many Libyan nationals are now first- or secondgeneration immigrants who have retained dual 

nationality or have close family members living in 

nearby countries. These dual nationals were among 

those most attractive to AQ and ISIS because of their 

ability to cross borders and readily return to their other 

country. This mobility, along with the relative loss of 

control over Libya’s borders, provided the means for 

groups like ISIS to send its militants throughout North 

Africa in pursuit of its wider goals.

12. Gerasimos Tsourapas, The Politics of Egyptian Migration 

to Libya (Tacoma, WA: Middle East Research and Information 

Project, March 17, 2015).
13

Early Modern History

Coastal Libya was briefly occupied by Ottoman 

troops in the early seventeenth century, reasserting 

Ottoman control. But this direct control did not last 

long, and a revolt saw formal Ottoman influence 

significantly diminished. A new ruler, Ahmed 

Karamanli, took control and opted to accept some 

degree of Ottoman protection, declaring himself the 

pasha of Tripoli in 1722. He and his sons managed 

to take control of the main towns and trading routes 

to the south. In the search for revenues, he and his 

successors deliberately sponsored piracy in the central 

Mediterranean region, extorting protection money 

from other nations in exchange for not raiding their 

ships. These acts led to war with the United States in 

1801–5, which ended with the United States paying a 

ransom for its captured sailors.13

The end of the Napoleonic Wars brought the 

renewed attention of outside powers to the problem 

of piracy. The British sent a fleet to force the release of 

Christian slaves in 1816 and, by 1820, the British and 

French had ended the payment of protection money. 

The loss of revenues from piracy, combined with the 

need to pay debts imposed by the British and French, 

led to a series of revolts within Libya.

In response, the Ottomans intervened, overthrew 

the king, and restored direct rule in 1835. The 

renewal of direct Ottoman rule was beneficial for 

coastal Libya. Ottoman approaches to jurisprudence, 

administration, and education were introduced, 

and slavery was abolished in 1889. By the 1880s the 

13. Khalil Matar and Robert W. Thabit, Lockerbie and Libya: 

A Study in International Relations (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & 

Company, 2003).
14

economy had declined, as trans-Saharan trade routes 

were interrupted and agriculture in Tripolitania faced 

a prolonged drought. In addition, the weakening 

leadership of the Ottoman Empire and growing 

unrest across its wider territory meant Libya became a 

backwater nation, forced to spend most of the locally 

raised revenues on the military (see table 1), at a time 

when military demands were increasing.

Table 1. Ottoman state expenditures in Libya, 188114

Type of Expenditure Amount (in Piasters)

Interior department 998,600

Finance department 468,202

Religious courts 99,840

Justice department 946,188

Education 31,396

Other salaries 409,236

Quarantine office 1,200

Postal office 103,190

Military 6,785,140

The need for a substantial military presence to 

hold onto the main cities in the south created a major 

problem. Despite growing wealth, keeping up with 

the increased costs was difficult for the Ottomans 

and, as a consequence, they ended the practice of 

exempting foreigners from taxation in 1902. See table 2 

for a breakdown of tax categories. The revenues of the 

province were significantly greater than in the decades 

before, but so were the costs.

14. Ahmida, Making of Modern Libya, 58.
15

Table 2. Ottoman state revenues from Libya, 

1881 and 190615

Types of Taxes 1881 (in Piasters) 1906 (in 

Piasters)

Livestock 150,025 478,428

Production 5,000,000 11,291,858

Military 43,350 241,748

Property ― 9,104,088

Profit ― 79,770

Income from 

state property ― 14,000

Court fees ― 147,874

Over a 25-year period, the Ottomans expanded 

manufacturing to the point where it became the 

dominant source of state revenues in Libya and 

introduced an effective system of property taxation.

From 1900 to 1951

The decision to tax foreigners specifically 

affected Italy because the Bank of Rome had actively 

encouraged Italian settlement and the buying of land. 

The Italians invaded in 1911 and faced substantial 

resistance as the Young Turk regime then in power in 

Istanbul sent money and weapons to the local rebels. 

The Sanusiyah movement galvanized the people and 

ensured resistance to the Italian occupation was both 

nationalist and religious. As a result, Italian gains in 

Libya were initially limited, and by April 1915, Italy 

15. Ahmida, Making of Modern Libya, 64.
16

had suffered a major defeat to the rebels in the Battle 

of Qasr bu Hadi.

Encouraged by their Ottoman backers, the rebels 

then attacked British-occupied Egypt upon Turkey’s 

entrance into the Great War. The invasion was soundly 

defeated in 1916, resulting in an accord between the 

British and the Sanusis to end the expedition. By 

1918, the Libyans had effectively defeated the Italian 

invasion. A Libyan Republic was proclaimed in 

November 1918, followed by a peace treaty with Italy 

in April 1919. The deal recognized the head of the 

Sanusis, Idris I, as ruler of Cyrenaica and the south. 

This deal led to a civil war, partly on regional lines 

and partly because of the religious divisions between 

the Sanusis and the other forms of Islam. In the end, 

Idris notionally became ruler of Libya, but his hold on 

power was short-lived.16

Citing the need to protect its citizens and 

commercial interests, Italy deployed troops to Libya 

and reoccupied the city of Misratah in January 1922. 

Once Mussolini had established his fascist regime 

in Rome later that year, one of his first acts was to 

discard the 1919 peace treaty and expand the Italian 

occupation into a full-scale invasion of Libya. Again, 

the Italians made slow gains. The Libyans set aside 

their differences to form a united front in 1924 and 

waged both a guerrilla and a conventional war. By 

1930, the Italians took Fezzan, and by late 1931, they 

had defeated the last organized Libyan army. Pietro 

Badoglio, the Italian governor, declared Libya an 

Italian province in January 1932.

The result was disastrous for the local population. 

The Italians removed all civil rights from the native 

16. John Wright, Libya: A Modern History (Baltimore: Johns 

Hopkins University Press, 1982).
17

population, placed rebellious tribes into prison camps, 

and starved thousands of the rebels to death. At the 

same time, land was appropriated for the new Italian 

colonists as the Italian population of Libya increased 

from 50,000 in 1934 to 90,000 in 1939.

When Italy entered World War II alongside 

Germany, the British made full use of their existing 

contacts with the Sanusiyah hierarchy to offer Libya 

postwar independence. The fighting in Libya from 

1940 to 1943 added to its economic problems, leaving 

all major ports badly damaged and the countryside 

littered with mines. The destruction was particularly 

bad in Cyrenaica around Tobruk and Benghazi, while 

Tripolitania suffered relatively little war damage. 

The British imposed military rule in Cyrenaica after 

the Axis retreat, while Tripolitania gained a greater 

degree of local autonomy. Cyrenaica attempted to 

gain its independence from the British and the rest of 

Libya twice between 1945 and 1949. At the same time, 

Tripolitania was run by the nationalist party, which 

had no influence in the eastern region. Fezzan in the 

south had its own political party and was under French 

control. Because of the political fractures in Libya, the 

UN was initially unwilling to sanction independence, 

but agreed to do so in 1950 due to increased pressure 

and a lack of viable alternatives.

From 1951 to 1969

Independence

In 1951, Libya became an independent kingdom 

based around the three provinces of Tripolitania, 

Cyrenaica, and Fezzan. The new state was created as 

a hereditary monarchy with Islam as the state religion. 
18

The monarchy was liberal and allowed freedom of 

worship, a focus on individual freedoms, and an open 

approach to granting Libyan citizenship, which could 

be acquired by anyone who lived in the country for 

at least 10 years. Initially, the state was governed on 

a federal basis to reflect the historical divisions within 

the country, but was reorganized into 10 provinces 

in 1963. The constitutional document from that 

reorganization has since been suggested as a form 

of governance for the post-Gadhafi state, even if the 

actual monarchy is not restored.17

After gaining independence, the economy remained 

weak and Libya became reliant on substantial foreign 

aid. Both Britain and the United States supported 

Libya while operating several military bases in the 

country in exchange.18 Libya generally avoided close 

involvement with the Soviet Union and remained 

neutral during the 1956 Suez Crisis.

Oil and Gas

The Libyan oil and gas fields exist in three main 

clusters. The bulk of the fields are to the east of Sirte in 

Cyrenaica, a large group exists to the south of Tripoli, 

and a final group is located in the far south, west 

of Murzuq.19

17. Ali Cheaib, “Libya Foreign Minister Calls for Return of 

Monarchy,” Al-Monitor, April 7, 2014, https://www.al-monitor

.com/pulse/politics/2014/04/libya-foreign-minister-interview

-return-monarchy.html.

18. Matar and Thabit, Lockerbie and Libya.

19. Neil Thompson, “Libyan Oil: A Bittersweet 

Return?,” Foreign Policy Blogs, December 24, 2016, https://

foreignpolicyblogs.com/2016/12/24libyan-oil-bittersweet

-return/.
19

Libya had been suspected to have substantial oil 

reserves since the end of the nineteenth century, but 

the sites could not be explored or exploited with the 

technology available at the time. After World War 

II, oil exploration by mostly US, French, and British 

companies commenced, and reserves were found close 

to the Algerian border in 1955. The Libyan government 

established a system where the state took 50 percent 

of any profits, in addition to a 12.5-percent royalty on 

revenues.20 The closure of the Suez Canal after 1956 

and the existence of the perceived stable, pro-Western 

government led to substantial exploration along the 

Algerian border. By 1960, the reserves in the west were 

under development, and pipeline and port facilities 

had been constructed at Marsa al Burayqah and As 

Sidra. A larger terminal was constructed at Marsa al 

Hariqah near Tripoli in 1967.

An immediate advantage for Libya was that 

Libyan oil is a relatively light crude, meaning it needs 

little refining to produce consumable products. In 

1969, annual oil production was about three million 

barrels a day, yielding substantial revenues and giving 

Libya the highest gross domestic product per capita in 

Africa. Although the monarchy was not particularly 

corrupt and allocated a substantial amount of the new 

revenues to social, health, and educational programs, 

too little of this new wealth reached ordinary people. 

The inequitable distribution of this wealth created 

discontent among the growing professional and 

middle class. Coupled with the pro-Nasser nationalist 

politics of the people, this substantial political 

dissent led to the 1969 military coup that brought 

Gadhafi to power.

20. Ramadan Aburawi, “Half a Century of Oil in Libya,” 

GEOExPro 6, no. 1 (2009).
20

The new regime nationalized the oil industry in 

1970, and exports dropped to two million barrels a day 

within two years. In the aftermath of the 1973 Yom 

Kippur War, Libya joined the wider Organization of 

the Petroleum Exporting Countries plan to reduce oil 

sales, and production fell further to 1.5 million barrels 

a day. Libya’s growing international isolation linked 

to its sponsorship of international terrorism further 

reduced exports to just over one million barrels a 

day in 1988. Production partly recovered by the mid1990s to 1.4 million barrels a day, and then began to 

expand steadily once Gadhafi announced the end of 

his program to develop weapons of mass destruction 

and handed the accused perpetrators of the Lockerbie 

bombing over for trial in The Hague. After 2003, 

foreign investment began to pour into the country 

to improve Libya’s antiquated production and 

transport systems.21

By 2011, just before Gadhafi’s fall, oil production 

was about 1.6 million barrels a day, and production 

of natural gas was just under 17 billion cubic meters 

per annum.22 Libya had proven reserves of 48 billion 

barrels of oil and 1.539 trillion cubic meters of natural 

gas.23 Some experts also believe the complex geology 

of Libya means substantial, additional reserves exist to 

the south of Benghazi that have not been detected.24

The regime exercised control over oil and 

gas revenues in four ways. First, Libya’s foreign 

21. Waniss Otman and Erling Karlberg, The Libyan Economy: 

Economic Diversification and International Repositioning (Berlin: 

Springer, 2007).

22. “Libya Natural Gas—Production,” Index Mundi, last 

updated December 7, 2019, https://www.indexmundi.com/libya

/natural_gas_production.html.

23. “Libya Natural Gas.”

24. Aburawi, “Oil in Libya.”
21

investments improved as the regime sought to create 

an oil fund and remove assets from the country. 

Second, the country began substantial funding of its 

engagements in Africa and international terrorism. 

Third, the regime continued the policy the old 

monarchy had upheld of transferring some of the 

wealth into domestic social, educational, and health 

programs. Finally, Gadhafi and his immediate family 

and inner circle ensured a substantial sum was moved 

into their private bank accounts.25 One estimate 

speculates the regime’s corruption removed $120 

billion from the economy and invested the funds in 

European and Middle Eastern banks.26

From 2003 onwards, the regime also invested in 

improving its reputation in Western Europe, offering 

help to Italy after the 2009 earthquake at L’Aquila and 

investing in British universities such as the London 

School of Economics.27 The regime purchased a stake 

in the Italian football club Juventus, as ties with 

Italy had improved after the United States imposed 

sanctions in 1982. In return, access to Libya’s oil and 

gas reserves was granted to oil companies associated 

with perceived friendly regimes.

25. Tom Bawden and John Hooper, “Gaddafis’ Hidden 

Billions: Dubai Banks, Plush London Pads and Italian Water,” 

Guardian, February 22, 2011, https://www.theguardian.com

/world/2011/feb/22/gaddafi-libya-oil-wealth-portfolio.

26. Bawden and Hooper, “Gaddafis’ Hidden Billions.”

27. Graeme Paton and Steven Swinford, “Libya: LSE Feared 

‘Embarrassing’ Gaddafi’s Son over Donation,” Daily Telegraph, 

March 5, 2011, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews

/africaandindianocean/libya/8362602/Libya-LSE-feared

-embarrassing-Gaddafis-son-over-donation.html.
22

Gadhafi

A military coup in 1969 ushered in Gadhafi’s 

Libyan Arab Republic.28 For practical purposes, the 

regime was profoundly authoritarian. The regime 

silenced domestic dissent and was prepared to attack 

its perceived enemies when they were abroad. But, 

in terms of wider trends, the regime shifted focus 

three times.

• Until 1974, the regime could be considered Nasserist; it had the ostensible goal of union with 

Egypt and had sent a military contingent to 

help Egypt during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.29

• From 1974 to 2003, the regime was isolated 

within the wider Arab world and focused 

mostly on Africa and sponsoring a variety of 

international terrorist groups.30

• From 2003 through 2011, the regime found 

common ground with the United States, the 

United Kingdom, and other NATO countries 

by conflating its domestic opposition with 

the international struggle against AQ, ending 

its embryonic attempt to gain weapons of 

mass destruction, and increasingly welcoming international investment and a parade of 

Western leaders.31

28. Anna Baldinetti, The Origins of the Libyan Nation: Colonial 

Legacy, Exile and the Emergence of a New Nation-State (London: 

Taylor and Francis, 2014).

29. Matar and Thabit, Lockerbie and Libya.

30. Baldinetti, Origins of the Libyan Nation.

31. Flynt L. Leverett, “Why Libya Gave up on the Bomb,” 

Brookings, January 23, 2004, https://www.brookings.edu

/opinions/why-libya-gave-up-on-the-bomb/.
23

Despite this shift in international orientation, 

some common themes emerged. The underlying 

orientation of Gadhafi’s regime was toward his own 

version of socialism. When the US and UK military 

bases were closed, the regime adopted a broadly proSoviet foreign policy while avoiding close links with 

the Soviets and having to accept Soviet technicians 

for its military purchases. Although the regime had 

notionally nationalized the oil industry, in reality this 

was an extreme version of the monarchy’s practice 

of handing out exploration and exploitation licenses 

for five-year blocks and reassigning such licenses 

among competing providers. This practice gave the 

regime considerable discretion over the parties that 

were allowed to operate in the country, and US and 

European companies continued to operate in Libya up 

to the early 1980s, and again after 2003. An important 

part of the regime’s approach to international 

business was to use oil and access to it as a lever for 

political advantage and as a source of bribes for those 

in power.32

Domestic Opposition

Initially, the Gadhafi regime faced little organized 

domestic opposition and probably had the passive 

support of most of the population. Oil revenues 

enabled investments in social provision, education, 

and health, as well as the development of the 

infrastructure of major cities. The regime projected a 

veneer of democracy to help minimize dissent.

Initially, the opposition fell into two groups. 

Supporters of the monarchy mostly fled into exile, 

but retained some presence in Cyrenaica, where the 

32. Bawden and Hooper, “Gaddafis’ Hidden Billions.”
24

monarchy had always been more popular. A second 

group included individuals who had fallen out with 

Gadhafi and in turn were often murdered or forced 

into exile. Supporters of the old regime and people 

who had been alienated from the new regime were 

weak within Libya and mainly existed among the 

wider Libyan diaspora.

Within Libya, the most effective domestic 

opposition to Gadhafi’s regime from the 1980s onward 

came from Islamist-orientated organizations. The 

various Islamist groups either organized themselves 

as the LIFG or remained organizationally close to the 

Muslim Brotherhood. The latter retained substantial 

support in the region around Tripoli and reemerged 

as the Libya Dawn militia organization after 

Gadhafi’s fall.

The LIFG had its roots in supporters of the Islamist 

Sanusiyah movement. The LIFG’s ideology was based 

on the purification of Islam and the removal of Western 

influences, giving it some ideological overlap with the 

Salafi ideology of AQ.33 But these links were tenuous, 

as the LIFG’s focus was on the governance of Libya, 

not global jihad.34 Nonetheless, many individuals who 

were to become prominent in the LIFG had fled Libya 

in the 1980s and fought the Soviets with other jihadists 

in Afghanistan. In that country the LIFG made links 

with the emerging AQ and the wider doctrines of 

Salafi jihadism.35

Returning to Libya in the early 1990s, the LIFG 

first tried to build up its base in Benghazi and eastern 

33. CISAC, “Libyan Islamic Fighting Group,” 

Stanford, updated July 2018, https://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/

mappingmilitants/profiles/libyan-islamic-fighting-group.

34. Library of Congress, Al-Qaeda in Libya.

35. Ibrahim, Radical Origins.
25

Libya. The LIFG commenced its campaign of armed 

resistance in 1995 and attempted to assassinate 

Gadhafi in 1996.36 This attack may have been funded 

by British intelligence, as the United Kingdom sought 

revenge on Gadhafi for the killing of a British police 

officer in 1984 and Libyan funding for the Irish 

Republican Army.37 British support for LIFG was to 

prove transitory and, by the mid-2000s, the United 

Kingdom began to arrest and transfer LIFG militants 

back to Gadhafi’s jails.38

Regardless of the source of funding, the 

assassination attempt provoked a round of repression 

and further violence, prompting the LIFG to send 

potential fighters to Sudan for training that used AQ 

bases. Further repression by the government meant 

that by 2000, most of the LIFG’s membership was in 

exile; as a result, militants either joined AQ affiliates or 

worked directly with AQ during this period. The LIFG 

kept its distance from AQ, mainly because the former 

believed nothing would come from attacking the West 

when its sworn enemy was Gadhafi.39 The LIFG did 

not back various AQ actions, such as the bombing 

of the USS Cole in 1998, and apparently warned AQ 

against attacking the US mainland in 2001.40

In 2007, the Gadhafi regime attempted to dampen 

domestic opposition by releasing some members of 

militant opposition groups, including the LIFG. In 

36. CISAC, “Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.”

37. Gary Gambill, “The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group 

(LIFG),” Jamestown, May 5, 2005, https://jamestown.org/program

/the-libyan-islamic-fighting-group-lifg/.

38. John C. K. Daly, “Libya and Al-Qaeda: A Complex 

Relationship,” Jamestown, May 5, 2005, https://jamestown.org

/program/libya-and-al-qaeda-a-complex-relationship/.

39. Library of Congress, Al-Qaeda in Libya.

40. CISAC, “Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.”
26

2009, the LIFG’s imprisoned leadership broke fully 

with AQ’s ideology and announced “that the use of 

violence as a means of overthrowing governments 

in Muslim countries was illegal from an Islamic 

point of view,” marking a substantial break from 

the normal ideology of Salafi-jihadist groups.41 This 

break was significant because the LIFG was well 

respected in wider jihadist circles, and it marked a 

final organizational and ideological split with AQ. 

The LIFG formally disbanded in 2010, though it has 

been suggested many militants joined the Libyan 

Islamic Movement based around Tripoli in 2011 or the 

emerging AQ network in the country.

Until 2003, the LIFG had attracted little attention 

outside Libya.42 Even in exile, its militants did not seek 

to attack the West, and the group’s relative distance 

from the core of AQ meant the LIFG was not an 

immediate target of Western intelligence services. To 

some extent, the group gained a degree of tolerance 

from foreign intelligence services because it was an 

enemy of the Gadhafi regime.

After the US-led invasion of Iraq, Gadhafi 

announced he would abandon his attempts to 

produce chemical and nuclear weapons.43 The reward 

was a lifting of UN sanctions and slowly increasing 

amounts of foreign investment, primarily in Libya’s 

oil industry. A secondary consequence was the British, 

in particular, started to arrest exiled members of the 

41. Library of Congress, Al-Qaeda in Libya, 9; and Ibrahim, 

Radical Origins.

42. Daly, “Libya and Al-Qaeda.”

43. Leverett, “Why Libya Gave up.”
27

LIFG and return them to Libya.44 Some experts have 

suggested this created an opening for AQ to establish 

itself in Libya as the LIFG fragmented and lost its 

leadership.45

Foreign Policy: The Arab World

In many ways, the regime was more notable for 

its shifts in international relations than its domestic 

policy. At first, reflecting the Nasserist base of much 

of its support, the regime sought to reinforce its proEgypt leanings by sending troops to help Egypt in the 

1973 Yom Kippur War with Israel. This improvement 

foundered as Anwar Sadat moved toward 

rapprochement with Israel. Relations worsened 

between Libya and Egypt as the two countries came 

close to war in 1974 and ended up in open conflict in 

1977. In response, first Sadat and then Hosni Mubarak 

reduced the level of Egyptian support to Libya (in 

particular of teachers) as they sought to isolate a 

regime they thought was out of control.46

Relations also suffered with Libyan neighbor 

Tunisia, which feared aggression and acts of statesponsored terrorism and wished to retain its proFrance policies. As a result of Libyan actions, the 

mainstream elements of the Palestinian Liberation 

Organization avoided any public engagement 

44. Peter Taylor, “UK Government ‘Approved Abdel Hakim 

Belhaj’s Rendition,’” BBC, April 9, 2012, https://www.bbc.com

/news/uk-17651797.

45. Ian Cobain, “MI5 Says Rendition of Libyan Opposition 

Leaders Strengthened Al-Qaida,” Guardian, January 29, 2015,

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/29/mi5

-rendition-libyan-oppostion-strengthened-al-qaida.

46. Tsourapas, The Politics of Egyptian Migration; and Matar 

and Thabit, Lockerbie and Libya.
28

with Libya, especially after the regime started to 

fund, support, and use a shifting coalition of small, 

extremist Palestinian groups as part of its sponsorship 

of international terrorism.

Despite the opposition, Gadhafi continued 

pursuing various unity schemes; these included 

attempts to forge close links with the pro-Western 

states in northwest Africa and with Syria. Attempts 

at establishing a political union with Syria failed, but 

the shared distaste for Egyptian policy toward Israel 

by the two regimes and their anti-Western ideology 

meant close links with the Hafiz al-Assad regime were 

established and sustained.

Foreign Policy: Africa

Libya’s relative isolation in the Arab world seemed 

to have little effect on the regime as it then chose to 

emphasize its Berber and Tuareg roots rather than 

see itself as a particularly Arabic state. The regime’s 

international focus then turned to concentrate on 

building relations with other African nations.

A major effort of this African focus was to lead 

the creation of the African Union (AU) in 1999 as a 

successor body to the Organization for African Unity.47

Over the next 12 years, Libya was the main financial 

backer of the AU. This support, added to direct 

47. Robert Nolan, “The African Union after Gaddafi,” 

Journal of Diplomacy (blog), Journal of Diplomacy and 

International Relations, December 5, 2011, http://blogs.shu.edu

/journalofdiplomacy/2011/12/the-african-union-after

-gaddafi/; and Karen MacGregor, “Gaddafi Muscles in on Mbeki’s 

Big Day as African Union Struggles into Being,” Independent, 

July 9, 2002, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world

/africa/gaddafi-muscles-in-on-mbekis-big-day-as-african-union

-struggles-into-being-183494.html.
29

investment in other African states, may have totaled 

as much as $150 billion. Gadhafi in particular pushed 

the AU to support the idea of a single state covering 

the whole of Africa. As a result of his support, the AU 

made several attempts to intervene during the Libyan 

civil war to prop up the Gadhafi regime and call for a 

cease-fire.

But Gadhafi was not just content to bankroll the AU 

and issue rallying calls for pan-Africanism. His regime 

also intervened directly; this included sending troops 

to sustain Idi Amin’s dictatorship in Uganda between 

1972 and 1979 and a series of military interventions in 

other North African states.48 Libyan actions included 

support for the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army 

in the 1970s, a direct invasion of Chad starting in 

the 1970s, providing training for terrorist groups 

in Liberia and Sierra Leone, and backing a Tuareg 

rebellion in Mali. These actions, combined with antiAfrican riots in Tripoli in 2000, left Gadhafi partly 

isolated, reliant on the support of other dictators like 

Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, and shunned by the 

more democratic states.

The poor relations with other nations had longterm consequences. In revenge for Libya’s earlier 

backing of Islamist rebels and calling for Nigeria’s 

partition, Nigeria voted with other members of the 

UN Security Council to support NATO’s intervention 

in the Libyan civil war, although other AU leaders 

maintained their traditional opposition to any attempt 

48. Adekeye Adebajo, “Gaddafi: The Man Who 

Would Be King of Africa,” Guardian, August 26, 2011,

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011

/aug/26gaddafi-legacy-meddling-africa.
30

by outsiders to intervene in the internal affairs of a 

member state.49

In the end, Gadhafi’s attempts to position himself 

as a lead player in African politics failed for several 

reasons. His clear preference for dictatorial over 

democratic regimes meant many states were cautious, 

especially when this was linked to his support for 

various extremist rebellions. Equally, his positioning 

of Libya as a Berber-Tuareg state led to racist attacks 

on black African workers and migrants as well as a 

loss of support among the Christian groups and states 

in sub-Saharan Africa. But his substantial funding of 

the AU meant he remained an important figure and, 

indirectly, the West gained from this. Libyan largesse 

allowed AU peacekeeping missions that have been 

important in Somalia, Burundi, and sub-Saharan 

Africa in dealing with various Islamist insurgencies.

The links forged in the Gadhafi era matter now, 

especially as ISIS in Libya looks to recover from its 

setbacks. The old regime had a long history of using 

the porous borders in the Sahara to send money, 

weapons, and fighters to fuel conflicts. Gadhafi also 

had close links to a range of violent groups engaged 

in conflicts across North and Central Africa. The 

regime externally had sought out and funded a range 

of Islamic groups engaged in localized disputes with 

their respective states.

International Terrorism

To many Western powers, the main reason the 

Gadhafi regime was problematic was its continued 

support for international terrorism. This support 

involved the killing of exiled Libyans by the regime 

49. Adebajo, “Gaddafi.”
31

in various Western countries and meant direct attacks 

on Western powers. The latter became more prevalent 

in the 1980s as Libya started to challenge the West 

more directly. Various terrorist acts were attributed 

to the regime, including the shooting of a British 

police officer in 1984, the bombing of a discotheque 

used by US servicemembers in Berlin in 1986, and 

the destruction of a Pan Am airplane over Scotland in 

1988 and a French plane over Niger in 1989.50

At the same time, the Libyans and the United States 

engaged in open military conflict in the Gulf of Sidra, 

which the Libyans claimed as territorial waters.51

Some of the terrorist attacks in Europe were probably 

in revenge for Libyan losses in this dispute, as well 

as for US acts of retaliation, such as the bombing 

raids in 1986.

Libya started to fund terrorist groups active 

in NATO countries, notably sending arms and 

funding to the Irish Republican Army in Northern 

Ireland and Euskadi Ta Askatasuna in Spain.52 In 

line with the regime’s support for the most extreme 

Palestinian groups, the regime may have sent 

support and provided training camps to groups such 

as the German Red Army Faction and the Italian 

Red Brigades. Since the latter also had close links to 

groups like the Popular Front for the Liberation of 

50. Simon Tisdall, “Gaddafi: A Vicious, Sinister Despot Driven 

out on Tidal Wave of Hatred,” Guardian, August 23, 2011, https://

www.theguardian.com/world/2011/aug/23/libya-gaddafi

-vicious-despot.

51. David Blundy and Andrew Lycett, Qaddafi and the Libyan 

Revolution (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1987).

52. House of Commons Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, 

HM Government Support for UK Victims of IRA Attacks That Used 

Gaddafi-Supplied Semtex and Weapons, HC 49 (London: House of 

Commons, May 2, 2017).
32

Palestine—General Command, support may have 

been provided using that connection.53 The regime 

may have also sent weapons and money to groups as 

diverse as the FARC in Colombia and Islamist rebels 

in the Philippines.54

Shifting Relations with Europe

From 1970 to 2000, the Gadhafi regime either 

carried out acts of terrorism or funded international 

terrorist groups in almost every major Western 

European power. Although this terrorist activity 

clearly led to tensions, it did not lead to a cessation of 

relations, mainly related to the West’s desire to access 

Libyan oil.55

Italy, for example, imported almost 22 percent 

of its oil from Libya in the late 1960s and the state 

oil firm, Eni, continued to operate in the country 

even after Gadhafi had expelled the final remnants 

of the colonial-era Italian population in 1970. When 

US and British oil firms lost their licenses after the 

1986 US-led air attacks, Eni stepped in to expand its 

holdings and Gadhafi continued to use oil exploitation 

contracts to reward international allies and ensure the 

development of Libya’s reserves.56 But when Silvio 

53. CISAC, “Red Brigades,” Stanford, updated June 20, 

2012, https://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/mappingmilitants/profiles

/red-brigades.

54. “Colombian President Claims Gaddafi Supported FARC 

with Money,” MercoPress, October 24, 2011, https://en.mercopress

.com/2011/10/24/colombian-president-claims-gaddafi

-supported-farc-with-money; and Tisdall, “Gaddafi.”

55. Tobias Vanderbruck, “Gaddafi’s Legacy of Libyan Oil 

Deals,” Oil-Price.Net, October 21, 2011, http://www.oil-price

.net/en/articles/gaddafi-legacy-of-libya-oil-deals.php.

56. Otman and Karlberg, Libyan Economy.
33

Berlusconi came to power in 1994, Italy radically 

expanded its ties with the regime.57 Over the next 

decade, Libya invested heavily in the Italian stock 

market; bought 7.5 percent of UniCredit, the country’s 

largest bank; and bought a large share in the Juventus 

football club. At the same time, Berlusconi was happy 

to welcome Gadhafi as an honored guest.

France was also reliant on Libya for oil (16 percent 

of its imports in 2011 came from Libya), but generally 

refrained from closer links. The French posture toward 

Libya changed when Sarkozy became president. 

French arms sales to the regime grew, leading to a 

flurry of state visits and declarations of public support.

Other European countries were more circumspect. 

Germany and others relied on Libyan oil very little and 

showed little interest in developing closer relations. 

Others, such as the United Kingdom, suffered directly 

from Gadhafi’s sponsorship of terrorism, but after 

Gadhafi renounced weapons of mass destruction in 

2003, the British government started to support the 

regime. The United Kingdom was prepared to arrest 

and deport Gadhafi’s opponents and sell arms in 

return for lucrative oil deals. The oil and gas company 

BP benefited notably by being awarded a $900-million 

exploration and development contract after 2006.58 But 

both France and Britain turned on the regime after the 

Libya revolt of 2011 and have since sought to ensure 

their commercial interests in the aftermath of the 

revolution.

57. Paul Ginsborg, Italy and Its Discontents: 1980–2001

(London: Penguin, 2001).

58. Vanderbruck, “Gaddafi’s Legacy.”
34

Shifting Relations with the United States

Like the United Kingdom, the United States had a 

difficult relationship with the Gadhafi regime. Until 

1986, US oil companies continued to operate in the 

country, even after Libya had been designated as a 

state sponsor of terrorism in 1979. A trade embargo 

was put in place in 1986, which led to the regime 

canceling all US exploration rights. The embargo 

lasted until 2004, when US President George W. Bush 

repealed the sanctions. Soon afterwards, Exxon signed 

a major contract to exploit Libya’s offshore oil deposits, 

but, overall, US business interests in Libya remained 

limited when compared to British and French 

business interests.

THE FALL OF GADHAFI AND 

ITS CONSEQUENCES

Gadhafi’s improving international image did 

not remove domestic dissent. In 2006, a short-lived 

military coup in Benghazi occurred, and in 2008 and 

2010, riots occurred over corruption and reduced 

living standards. And despite the repression of the 

Muslim Brotherhood and the LIFG, both managed to 

retain a presence in Libya, providing the opposition 

with an organizational base that was to prove essential 

when open revolt broke out in 2011.

Civil War

In February 2011, a major revolt broke out and 

the eastern regions, especially Benghazi, overthrew 

their local governors. Following a UN Security 

Council decision to freeze Gadhafi’s assets and an 

Anglo-French intervention, the revolt spread across 
35

the country, leading to the collapse of the regime 

by August 2011.59 Unfortunately, failure to plan for 

the postconflict phase meant the country has since 

fractured on geographical and tribal lines, despite 

multiple attempts to mediate a solution.60

Although placing the Libyan revolt in the context of 

the wider Arab Spring of 2011 is common, the reasons 

for the rebellion were essentially local and related to 

the regime’s corruption and domestic policies.61 The 

revolt also quickly took on a regional characteristic 

as it started in Benghazi in February 2011 and spread 

across the country. In response, those Western powers 

that had, until recently, courted Gadhafi removed 

their support. The UN Security Council imposed 

sanctions on the regime’s elite and referred members 

of the regime to the International Criminal Court. 

As the fighting spread, the UN created a no-fly zone 

and authorized member states to use all necessary 

measures to prevent further attacks on civilians.

Briefly, the regime seemed to regain control, 

especially of Tripoli at the end of February, and offered 

a cease-fire partly mediated by the AU. At the same 

time, violence against the civilian population escalated, 

and by early March, the regime seemed as though it 

might win the immediate military struggle. A NATOled intervention halted a pro-government offensive 

toward Benghazi, and an uneasy international 

coalition maintained both a no-fly zone (under NATO 

control) and ground strikes on Gadhafi’s forces (under 

59. House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Libya.

60. Blanchard, Libya.

61. Larbi Sadiki, “The Arab Spring: The ‘People’ in 

International Relations,” in International Relations of the Middle 

East, ed. Louise Fawcett (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 

2017), 324.
36

the control of a wider international coalition that 

included some NATO members and air units from the 

Gulf Cooperation Council states).

The leadership of the Transitional National Council 

was acknowledged as the legitimate representative 

of the Libyan people in May 2011 by various states, 

including the United Kingdom and the United States, 

and by Turkey in July 2011. The regime made several 

offers of a cease-fire and a peaceful transition, yet 

NATO and its allies escalated its campaign by sending 

some ground troops and dropping weapons and 

supplies to rebel areas. Tripoli fell to the rebels on 

August 21–22, and by September 22, only Sirte, Bani 

Walid, and Al Fuqaha remained under regime control. 

Gadhafi was killed on October 20, 2011, after his forces 

lost control of Sirte.

The end of the regime did not bring peace. Due to 

disinterest and poor planning, the Western powers 

did little to restore governance, and the country 

fragmented into small areas held by various local 

militias.62 In places, a single group ran a town, but 

Tripoli was effectively under the control of several 

competing groups as well as the remnants of Gadhafi’s 

supporters. By 2013, militias controlled the various oil 

refineries and were selling oil on the black market as 

production dropped from 1.4 million barrels a day 

in late 2012 to just 160,000 barrels a day. Benghazi 

and Cyrenaica pushed for independence, and US 

Ambassador John Christopher Stevens was murdered 

in September 2012 at his residence in Benghazi as 

62. Patrick Cockburn, “Special Report: We All Thought 

Libya Had Moved On—It Has, but into Lawlessness and Ruin,” 

Independent, September 3, 2013, https://www.independent.co.uk

/news/world/africa/special-report-we-all-thought-libya-had

-moved-on-it-has-but-into-lawlessness-and-ruin-8797041.html.
37

radical Islamists attacked the US embassy to expand 

their power.

The Transitional National Council scarcely 

survived the fall of Gadhafi as the country splintered 

on regional and ethnic lines, with local militias seeking 

to secure oil revenues. This chaos created ample space 

for insurgent groups like AQ and ISIS to flourish.

Postconflict Governance

After the fall of Gadhafi, Libya splintered along the 

lines of its historical subdivisions and according to the 

militias or tribal groups that dominated in towns and 

regions. By 2015, the GNA was agreed to by the main 

factions and included the Tobruk-based HoR, the 

Tripoli-based GNC, and the Tripoli-based Libya Dawn 

militia groups, which were closely aligned to the 

Muslim Brotherhood.63 Although these groups were 

notionally committed to this process, progress stalled 

over disputes about the jobs and functions that should 

be allocated to each group. The HoR is unwilling to 

give up its control over the Libyan military, although 

groups aligned with the GNC have generally become 

more supportive of the GNA process. Equally, the 

HoR has de facto control of the regions containing 

most of Libya’s oil industry. Additionally, the LNA, 

backed by the UAE and Egypt and led by ex-Gadhafi 

general Khalifah Haftar, carved out its own area of 

control in eastern, central, and southern Libya and 

stands outside the GNA framework.

63. Giorgio Cafiero and Daniel Wagner, “The 

UAE and Qatar Wage a Proxy War in Libya,” HuffPost, 

December 14, 2015, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the

-uae-and-qatar-wage-a-_b_8801602.
38

By late 2017, four groups held power in different 

regions of Libya. The notional government, the GNA, 

had some power in Tripoli, but this was contested by 

both Libya Dawn and smaller militia groups operating 

in roughly the same area. The HoR controls the bulk 

of the oil industry around Tobruk, and the LNA sits 

outside the GNA’s control with a power base in the 

east and south. The situation is complicated by the 

foreign sponsorship of each faction. Egypt and the 

UAE originally backed the HoR and, more recently, 

the LNA, while Qatar and Turkey have supported 

the GNC and Libya Dawn.64 This international 

involvement has led to charges and countercharges 

among the various Arab states as to their respective 

goals, funding of terrorism, and promotion of the 

breakup of Libya.

External Involvement

During the civil war, foreign intervention started 

with French, British, and US attacks on Gadhafi’s 

troops and was initially designed to stop further 

attacks on civilians. Other powers were also involved, 

leading to the creation of a wider Libya Contact Group 

consisting of the United States, France, Great Britain, 

Italy, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, and Jordan. The Libya 

Contact Group was used to coordinate air strikes 

designed to weaken the regime, a more aggressive 

response than required by the UN resolution. Of the 

non-NATO members, Qatar and the UAE initially 

64. Karim Mezran and Elissa Miller, “With ISIS on 

the Brink of Defeat, Is Trump Planning a Surge in Libya?,” 

Newsweek, July 13, 2017, https://www.newsweek.com

/isis-brink-defeat-trump-planning-surge-libya-636226.
39

provided humanitarian assistance in Benghazi, and 

the UAE offered some direct military support.65

Postconflict, the initial response of the Western 

powers was to step back and repeat the errors 

that marred the Iraq War; this included excessive 

optimism about the simplicity of moving from an 

authoritarian regime to a stable, representative form 

of government.66 Western timidity seemed to be 

driven by a desire not to convert military intervention 

against the old regime into a long-term commitment 

to rebuilding Libya. In many instances, Western policy 

was driven by an overly optimistic hope Libya would 

transition from dictatorship to something akin to the 

limited democracies of some of the Gulf States in a 

short period, with the only issue being the allocation 

of new business contracts. The enduring problem 

of the refugee crisis and the presence of ISIS finally 

forced a reengagement, with the main goal of stopping 

refugees attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea 

into Italy. But in the meantime, postwar Libya had 

fragmented.

This fragmentation, as noted, is partly on 

geographical lines, partly reflecting an ideological 

split between the Muslim Brotherhood and 

Sanusiyah-inspired movements and partly reflecting 

the conflicts among the various external states now 

involved. The dispute between Qatar, the UAE, and 

65. Guma El-Gamaty, “Qatar, the UAE and the Libya 

Connection” Al-Jazeera, June 12, 2017, https://www

.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/06/qatar-uae-libya

-connection-170612080219306.html.

66. Mattia Toaldo, “Europe’s Options on Libya: No Easy 

Way Out,” European Council on Foreign Relations, March 2, 2015, 

https://www.ecfr.eu/article/europes_options_on_libya_no

_easy_way_out311250; and House of Commons Foreign Affairs 

Committee, Libya.
40

the Saudis extends beyond the borders of Libya, 

adding to the complexity of the situation. The QatariEmirati conflict (with the Saudis backing the UAE) 

mirrors similar disputes in Syria and Yemen as well 

as tensions between gulf-region powers.67 Adding to 

the external forces in the country is the determination 

of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s government in Egypt to 

prevent the Muslim Brotherhood from establishing a 

hold in Libya.

The role of Qatar has been particularly 

controversial. Along with other Arab states, Qatar sent 

humanitarian aid to help the anti-Gadhafi forces rather 

than the military intervention favored by the UAE.68

Even so, Qatar fully backed the rebels, even when 

their chances of success seemed limited, and supplied 

oil, food, and much-needed medicine to Benghazi in 

the aftermath of the uprising in February 2011. Qatar’s 

willingness to intervene was welcomed by the NATO 

countries involved because it represented substantial 

direct assistance at a time when they felt constrained 

by the dynamics of the UN Security Council, the 

UN mandates, and domestic concerns. According to 

a Reuters report, Qatar’s primary goal was to gain 

control over the export of Libyan oil and gas and use 

this to coordinate with its own production (in effect, 

to give Qatar more leverage within the Organization 

of the Petroleum Exporting Countries).69 But Qatar has 

characterized its engagement with the Tripoli-based 

67. Simeon Kerr and Katrina Manson, “Trump Points Finger at 

Qatar over Terror Financing,” Financial Times, June 7, 2017, https://

www.ft.com/content/995989b6-4a8a-11e7-919a-1e14ce4af89b.

68. Dmitry Zhdannikov et al., “Special Report: Qatar’s 

Big Libya Adventure,” Reuters, June 9, 2011, https://www

.reuters.com/article/us-libya-qatar/special-report-qatars

-big-libya-adventure-idUSTRE75826M20110609.

69. Zhdannikov et al., “Special Report.”
41

GNA as backing the peaceful process of helping the 

UN-supported government.

The greater dispute between Qatar and the Saudis 

has two basic causes. One is Qatar’s willingness 

and desire to normalize relations with Iran, with 

which it shares some oil fields, rather than the direct 

confrontation preferred by Saudis.70 Also, the Qataris 

have backed traditional Islamist groups, in particular 

the Muslim Brotherhood, at a time when the Saudis, 

the UAE, and the new Egyptian regime are determined 

to stamp out any emerging brotherhood power base.71

In supporting the GNA, the Qataris have funded 

elements within the brotherhood-affiliated Libya 

Dawn movement and retained close links with the 

Cyrenaica-based HoR.

The Qataris are almost certainly funding Islamist 

groups within Libya.72 Qatar has had links with 

members of the Islamist LIFG, which had already 

publicly repudiated AQ and its basic ideology.73 Qatar 

has been accused of doing more than just funding its 

proxy factions, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, in 

a complex and divided dispute. Qatar has also been 

accused of directly funding ISIS in Libya.74 Little 

independent evidence of this support has been found, 

but some Libyan officials with links to the LNA have 

made regular claims Qatar has provided direct funding 

70. Zhdannikov et al., “Special Report.”

71. Nicola Pedde, “The Libyan Conflict and Its 

Controversial Roots,” European View 16, no. 1 (June 2017), https://

doi.org/10.1007/s12290-017-0447-5.

72. Khajil Ajdoud, “Qatar’s Sabotage Approach in Libya,” 

Asharq Al Awsat, May 31, 2017, https://eng-archive.aawsat.com

/khalil-wld-ajdoud/features/qatars-sabotage-approach-libya 

(site discontinued).

73. Blanchard, Libya.

74. Kerr and Manson, “Trump Points Finger.”
42

and facilitated the transfer of ISIS fighters from Syria to 

Libya. Adding to the confusion, US President Donald 

Trump recently praised Qatar for tackling the funding 

of terrorism only a few months after he endorsed the 

Saudi claims Qatar was funding ISIS.75

At an organizational level, a clear distinction 

exists between the old LIFG and AQ or ISIS, although 

many individuals have shifted loyalty according to 

the perceived dominance of each group. Equally, 

individual Libyans have been active in many recent 

attacks in Western Europe, including attacks in the 

United Kingdom in 2016 and 2017. Qatari support for 

individuals involved in the local branch of the Muslim 

Brotherhood or the LIFG means such individuals are 

also funding groups that have close links to people 

who have carried out attacks for ISIS. Having links 

with ISIS is not the same as directly funding it, but it 

does indicate a lack of concern for the consequences of 

the group’s dispute with the UAE and the Saudis.

Although the Qatari government might seek to 

differentiate between its support for groups aligned 

with the Muslim Brotherhood and non-Salafi radical 

Islamism, not all private citizens do so. Again, as in 

Syria, evidence has been found private individuals 

from various gulf countries, including Kuwait, the 

UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, have funded extremist 

groups with their own funds. External involvement, 

whether by a state or by rich, private individuals, only 

undermines the creation of a competent government 

in Libya and leaves open an opportunity for ISIS or 

AQ to stage a comeback.

75. Josh Lederman, “Trump Extols Qatar on Anti-Terror, 

Reversing Past Critique,” Associated Press, April 10, 2018, 

https://apnews.com/7dec03bc5b8148278a9f4dd42b3adba0.
43

Politically, the central issue in the UAE-Qatar 

dispute (and how it applies to Libya) is support for 

the Muslim Brotherhood rather than ISIS. The UAE is 

determined to eradicate the group and was quick to 

send aid to Egypt after Mohamed Morsi’s overthrow 

in 2013.76 Little doubt remains that after it failed to 

stop Libya Dawn from seizing Tripoli through air 

strikes, the UAE broke the UN arms embargo and 

directly armed groups the country believed shared 

its concerns.

For example, the UAE backed Egyptian attempts 

to bring General Haftar’s LNA to power, including 

air strikes on his opponents, despite his opposition to 

the UN-backed government. Haftar had served under 

Gadhafi until he defected in the late 1980s after the 

military defeat in Chad. He is accused by other factions 

of seeking to restore the Gadhafi regime, albeit without 

the inconvenience of the Gadhafi family. Thus, Qatar 

accuses the UAE of seeking to destabilize the country 

as part of the UAE’s intention that no Islamist groups 

be involved in the government. The UAE and Egypt 

are supporting, arming, and funding the only main 

faction in Libya that is openly opposed to the GNA. 

With its external backing, the LNA became a potent 

military force but lacked wider appeal, and its attempt 

to capture Tripoli in late 2019 failed.

THE RISE OF ISIS

Al-Qaeda in Libya

After the 2011 civil war, Libya was left without a 

functioning government and splintered into small 

76. Cafiero and Wagner, “The UAE and Qatar.”
44

units ruled by various tribal and militia groups. Not 

surprisingly, AQ sought to exploit the situation.77

The existing links between the LIFG and AQ 

are complex. At the level of organization and core 

ideology, the two groups differ in important ways, 

not least of which is the LIFG drew on the Sanusiyah 

movement that had dominated Libya and the Sudan 

in the nineteenth century rather than the Saudi-based 

Wahhabi and, later, Salafi beliefs.78 At a practical level, 

the LIFG leadership did not share AQ’s belief the far 

enemy (the United States) was the prime target; LIFG 

saw its struggle as one to remove Gadhafi’s regime 

and install an Islamist government in Libya.

Nevertheless, ex-members of the LIFG have moved 

to join AQ affiliates in other countries, especially as 

AQ was creating a network of groups across North 

Africa under the rubric of al-Qaeda in the Islamic 

Maghrib.79 This subgroup was formed in 2006 as 

part of the evolution of AQ’s strategy after it lost its 

bases in Afghanistan and brought together Islamist 

groups in Algeria, Morocco, and sub-Saharan Africa.80

Al-Qaeda had originally sought to cooperate with the 

LIFG, and although some individuals from the LIFG 

worked with AQ, their presence in Libya was limited. 

Consequently, prior to 2011, AQ only had a small 

network in Libya using the Ansar al-Sharia label. 

During and after the uprising, this group operated in 

a manner similar to the Syrian group the Al-Nusrah 

77. House of CommonsForeign Affairs Committee, Libya.

78. Gambill, “The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG).”

79. John C. K. Daly, “Libya and Al-Qaeda”; and 

Daniel L. Byman, “Libya’s Al Qaeda Problem,” Brookings, 

February 25, 2011, https://www.brookings.edu/opinions

/libyas-al-qaeda-problem/.

80. CISAC, “Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.”
45

Front to Protect the Levant. Ansar al-Sharia sought 

to cooperate with other Salafi groups sharing key 

elements of its ideology, rather than insist on total 

acceptance of AQ’s fundamental beliefs.

Estimates suggest by 2012, AQ had some 300 

members in Libya spread between Darnah, Sirte, and 

Al Kufrah, but with more influence among the other 

militias than these raw numbers would imply. By this 

stage, AQ probably had absorbed the element of the 

LIFG that remained committed to violent jihad. But in 

turn, AQ was to be overtaken by a new rival.

ISIS in Libya

The general strategy of AQ after the collapse of 

its efforts in Iraq in 2006 was to try to work with the 

wider collection of jihadist movements, even if these 

movements had significant differences in practical 

goals and ideology.81 But ISIS, AQ’s former franchise 

in Iraq, drew very different lessons from this defeat 

and decided it could tolerate no independent Sunni 

movements in territory it controlled. After ISIS rose to 

power in northern Iraq and came to dominate much 

of northern and eastern Syria by 2014, the group was 

seen as the dynamic new leader of global jihad. Along 

the way, the group absorbed former AQ networks as 

well as individual militants.82 Ironically, a movement 

that started by rejecting AQ’s enduring focus on the far 

enemy (the United States) in favor of gaining power in 

Iraq and Jordan, ISIS became a global movement in its 

81. Daniel L. Byman and Jennifer R. Williams, ISIS vs. Al 

Qaeda: Jihadism’s Global Civil War (Washington, DC: Center for the 

National Interest, February 24, 2015).

82. William McCants, “How Zawahiri Lost Al Qaeda,” Foreign 

Affairs, November 19, 2013, https://www.foreignaffairs.com

/articles/somalia/2013-11-19/how-zawahiri-lost-al-qaeda.
46

own right as it spread from Iraq and came to dominate 

the wider Salafi-jihadist movement.83

The Islamic State entered Libya to take full 

advantage of the chaos after the revolt of 2011. As in 

Syria, the group rejected the option of cooperating 

with other Salafi groups and instead tried to impose 

its own agenda and organization. The Islamic State’s 

enemy was as much other Islamist movements as the 

competing government forces.

The UK-based Quilliam think tank translated an 

ISIS document that described its initial strategy in 

Libya.84 To create a substantial cadre of militants, ISIS 

tried to build up its presence in part by stopping the 

flow of Libyan fighters to Syria and by fusing with 

some local militia groups that were sympathetic to 

ISIS’s goals, which were

• treating Libya as a new province of the caliphate;

• easing the pressure on the Syria/Iraq province, 

partly because it could reach both into Saharan 

Africa and across the Mediterranean; and

• gaining access to military supplies that could 

be used to fuel other conflicts, such as the 

one in Mali.

Although the ISIS document identified Libya as 

an important target, it also suggested the group faced 

a limited time frame in which it could consolidate its 

control. The Islamic State’s first presence in Libya was 

a base in Darnah in January 2013.85 This base was used 

83. Peter Beaumont, “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi: The ISIS 

Chief with the Ambition to Overtake Al-Qaida,” Guardian, June 

12, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/12

/baghdadi-abu-bakr-iraq-isis-mosul-jihad.

84. Winter, Libya: The Strategic Gateway.

85. Toaldo, “Europe’s Options on Libya.”
47

for multiple attacks, including the murder of Western 

tourists carried out by Tunisians who had returned 

home from working in Libya and the beheading of 21 

Egyptian Coptic Christians. The latter crime briefly led 

to a discussion of joint military action between Egypt 

and Italy, but other EU nations and the United States 

insisted on diplomatic actions and even maintained 

the existing arms embargo on the Libyan government, 

leading to the collapse of the Italian-Egyptian 

initiative. The EU and the United States were unwilling 

to intervene despite ISIS’s provocations because they 

feared ISIS would be able to exploit the presence of 

Western troops to generate additional support for 

its cause.86 Both Britain and France remained overly 

optimistic a stable government would be established, 

leading to rapid economic development.87

The Islamic State then established a presence in 

multiple coastal towns—mostly the same towns AQ 

had earlier infiltrated—particularly Sirte. The group 

took over the existing AQ network as it had in Syria by 

accepting AQ militants who had swapped allegiances. 

The overlap of ISIS and AQ from the perspective of 

individual militants appears important. Individual 

jihadists seem more willing to join the group or local 

Salafi organization that is deemed to be the most 

successful, so fighting for their version of Islam is far 

more important than the exact organization for which 

they fight.88 This willingness to join the most successful 

organization has important implications for the events 

86. Toaldo, “Europe’s Options on Libya.”

87. House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Libya.

88. Thomas Hegghammer, “Should I Stay or Should I 

Go? Explaining Variation in Western Jihadists’ Choice between 

Domestic and Foreign Fighting,” American Political Science Review

107, no. 1 (February 2013): 1–15.
48

that might occur once ISIS is effectively defeated in a 

given territory or region. As long as poor governance, 

corruption, and real grievances exist, some form of 

extremist jihadist movement will seek to exploit the 

situation.

For a period, ISIS was poised to dominate the 

country, as the group looked to take advantage of 

existing conflicts and imposed its own violent rule 

over the territories it controlled. Despite the lack of 

a strong Libyan government, ISIS’s grip on Libya 

was never as secure as its control over parts of Syria. 

One major reason was a lack of local manpower. Few 

foreign fighters went to Libya, and most active ISIS 

militants were those already based in North Africa or 

those with personal connections to Libya.

The Islamic State’s approach led to its isolation, 

even among other jihadist groups, and the funding 

sources in Libya were less secure than in Syria. The 

Islamic State’s brutality and sectarian approach 

provoked several local backlashes, and it briefly lost 

Sirte in late 2015 before regaining control of the city in 

early 2016. At that stage, ISIS had an estimated 1,500 

fighters in the city, significantly more than AQ in 2011, 

though after the United States began a campaign of air 

attacks, ISIS’s numbers in the city dropped to around 

1,000 fighters by August 2016.89 The drop probably 

indicated both losses in combat and the exodus of 

militants to other regions in North Africa.

The evidence indicates funding for ISIS in 

Libya, even at the height of its power, was tight 

89. Spencer Ackerman, Chris Stephen, and Ewen MacAskill, 

“US Launches Airstrikes against ISIS in Libya,” Guardian, August 

1, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/01

/us-airstrikes-against-isis-libya-pentagon.
49

and unreliable.90 The Libyan group’s early funding 

came from the core group in Iraq and Syria and 

was supplemented by stealing the reserves from the 

Central Bank of Libya (originally stolen by the local 

AQ franchise). Some members were able to retain their 

stipends provided by the GNC before they defected to 

ISIS. The Islamic State also taxed the earnings of the 

remaining state-paid officials in Sirte. But ISIS was not 

able to move beyond extortion from an impoverished 

community as the group failed to capture any oil or 

gas production. The organization also lacked a ready 

buyer; no regional state played the role for ISIS in 

Libya that Turkey had in Syria. A further drain on the 

group’s funds was the decision to divert substantial 

funding to linked groups in the Sinai region.

At this time, ISIS had not yet taken control of 

revenues from the gangs involved in people smuggling 

and the drug trade due to its lack of manpower.91

This situation was unlike ISIS’s preferred operating 

approach and left other criminal and political 

movements active in territory it controlled.

Despite these constraints, by late 2015, ISIS had 

control over multiple cities along the coast and in 

the sub-Saharan region. If the group had problems 

with manpower and funding, it still appeared to be 

dominant, as external military attacks were piecemeal 

and episodic.

THE FALL OF ISIS?

As in Syria, all the evidence shows ISIS overreached 

in Libya. The group’s sectarian approach to other 

90. James Roslington and Jason Pack, Who Pays for ISIS in 

Libya? (Oslo: Hate Speech International, 2016).

91. Roslington and Pack, ISIS in Libya?
50

groups alienated potential allies, and its framing of 

any struggle as being only about its aims has reduced 

popular support. As in Syria, the group was vulnerable 

to external military pressure. One way ISIS was able to 

survive in its strongholds was by exploiting the wider 

disputes about the governance of Libya. Although 

the other factions in Libya were threatened by ISIS 

for taking part in the GNA framework, they stood to 

make political gains if ISIS was defeated by their own 

forces; this meant the final battles against ISIS were as 

much a struggle for relevance between the potential 

victors as an effort to drive ISIS from Libya.92

Loss of Sirte

By 2016, ISIS was in retreat due to a combination 

of pressure from the main domestic Libyan factions, 

renewed US and NATO attacks, and loss of support 

from other Islamist factions in the country. Initially, 

as the group lost ground, the risk of outright conflict 

loomed among the HoR, LNA, and GNA, especially 

over Sirte.93 But conflict was avoided when combat 

units loyal to the GNA took Sirte in mid-2017 and 

the remaining ISIS fighters fled south.94 Even more 

than for AQ, the occupation of territory was a very 

important part of ISIS’s global appeal and underlies 

its relative dominance among the wider network of 

jihadist groups.95 The loss of its bases in Syria, Iraq, 

and Libya represented a major loss of face for ISIS.

But dispersion carries threats as well. Many of 

ISIS’s militants in Libya came from other North African 

92. Blanchard, Libya.

93. Blanchard, Libya.

94. Lewis, “Islamic State Shifts.”

95. Ibrahim, Radical Origins.
51

countries, either as workers during the Gadhafi period 

or to fight after 2011, and many of them have returned 

to their home countries and are not easy to track. 

Evidence of this dispersion exists. Some recent terrorist 

attacks in Tunisia seem to have been carried out by 

individuals returning from Libya.96 In addition, former 

ISIS members are not the only terrorists Tunisia has to 

worry about: The AQ-oriented al-Qaeda in the Islamic 

Maghrib has become entrenched in the mountains in 

the south along the Algerian border.

Since 2016, ISIS has suffered further setbacks in 

Libya, limiting its control to portions of a few desert 

towns.97 As a result, the group may have merged 

again with the remnants of the original AQ network in 

the country. But other reports suggest the two groups 

remain separate, with AQ continuing its strategy 

of focusing on local disputes in an attempt to gain a 

foothold by seeking local alliances, especially as its 

wider al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghrib franchise has 

mostly remained loyal and has a presence in Tunisia, 

Algeria, and the Saharan regions.98

As it retreated, ISIS also changed its funding 

strategy. Instead of its traditional practice of 

demanding payments for the use of roads and 

96. Daniel L. Byman, “Libya’s Al Qaeda Problem”; and 

Carlotta Gall, “Tunisia Fears the Return of Thousands of Young 

Jihadists,” New York Times, February 25, 2017, https://www.nytimes

.com/2017/02/25/world/europe/isis-tunisia.html.

97. Adam Nathan, “ISIL ‘Regrouping in Southern 

Libya with Support of Al-Qaeda and Preparing for Further 

Attacks,’” Daily Telegraph, March 1, 2017, https://www

.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/01/isil-regrouping-southern

-libya-support-al-qaeda-preparing-attacks/.

98. Rhiannon Smith and Jason Pack, “Al-Qaida’s Strategy in 

Libya: Keep It Local, Stupid,” Perspectives on Terrorism 11, no. 6 

(2017): 191–200.
52

transportation links, it came to embrace extracting 

revenue from criminal activities, especially from 

drugs and people smuggling.99 The ability to extort 

from criminals and the plentiful supply of weapons 

suggest the group has the capacity to retain a presence 

and potentially find a new route back to prominence.

The Remaining Threat

Individual ISIS fighters may simply shift to AQ 

supporting groups, or ISIS may find a means to 

maintain its presence in Libya. The latter would 

be particularly dangerous because Libya remains 

fragmented, despite further peace talks, leaving ISIS 

ample scope to take advantage of Libya’s enduring 

problems. The following are aspects of the remaining 

threat in Libya:

1. The Islamic State has created a network in 

the country, partly following the original AQ 

presence, that allows it to move its base to 

another district within the country.

2. As in Iraq, ISIS has apparently made an alliance 

with the remnants of the previous regime’s 

security network; this may give the group the 

means to infiltrate the weak state structures 

being set up and make it difficult to eliminate.100

99. Colin P. Clarke, “ISIS Is So Desperate It’s Turning to the 

Drug Trade,” RAND Corporation, July 25, 2017, https://www

.rand.org/blog/2017/07/isis-is-so-desperate-its-turning-to-the

-drug-trade.html.

100. Cyril Widdershoven, “ISIS Libya Foothold 

Threatens EU,” ES Updates, Journal of Energy Security, 

February 26, 2016, http://ensec.org/index.php?option=com

_content&view=article&id=592:isis-libya-foothold-threatens-eu&

catid=131:esupdates&Itemid=414.
53

3. The refugee crisis is another ready source of 

funding. Extracting money from migrants who 

are fleeing war, poverty, and persecution is an 

easy way to fund the group’s operations. In 

addition, this funding mechanism opens another 

route by which the group can send militants to 

Europe, especially now that the option to move 

between Syria and Turkey is limited.

4. Either unintentionally—as its fighters fled 

defeat around Sirte—or as a deliberate policy 

to disperse its militants across North Africa, 

ISIS sent its cadres from Libya to other states.101

Because the group built up its strength in Libya 

by preventing North African militants from 

traveling to Syria, many of these fighters are 

probably from nearby countries, such as Egypt, 

Tunisia, and Algeria.

5. Finally, Libya is awash in arms.102 The Islamic 

State can use this resource to arm itself or to 

sustain conflicts across North Africa and into 

sub-Saharan Africa. The group could exploit 

plenty of extant regional conflicts, giving it the 

scope to cause chaos across a vast region.

For example, ISIS could exploit the Tuareg’s 

belief they are being oppressed, especially in Mali, 

Niger, and Chad. The Gadhafi regime had a record of 

intervention in these conflicts—in particular, the civil 

101. Jack Moore, “As ISIS Flees Sirte in Libya, Tunisia Faces 

Greater Threat from Returning Jihadis,” Newsweek, November 27, 

2016, https://www.newsweek.com/2016/11/25/isis-flees-sirte

-libya-tunisia-faces-greater-threat-returning-jihadis-513719.html.

102. Francesco Strazzari and Simone Tholens, “‘Tesco for 

Terrorists’ Reconsidered: Arms and Conflict Dynamics in Libya 

and in the Sahara-Sahel Region,” European Journal on Criminal 

Policy and Research 20, no. 3 (February 2014): 343–60.
54

war in Chad.103 Given the links between ISIS and parts 

of the Gadhafi regime, the practice of exploiting these 

networks has probably been passed down to ISIS.

Haftar’s delicate relationship with Salafi groups, 

which have a similar ideology to that of ISIS, must also 

be a point of consideration. The renegade general has 

thousands of Madkhali-Salafi militiamen under his 

control. Haftar’s manpower shortages have allowed 

the groups to gain increasing prominence in parts of 

Libya under the LNA, even away from the battlefield 

and in the LNA administration.104 In the event of a total 

LNA collapse, these groups could give ISIS a boost. 

Ideological overlap would provide opportunities for 

fighters to move between groups, and radical shifts in 

either direction could destabilize the security situation 

in the country.

In recent years, ISIS detainees have been repeatedly 

used for their political capital by all sides in the 

Libyan conflict. Militias affiliated with the GNA are 

believed to hold some 400 ISIS prisoners in facilities 

in and around Misratah. The militias have indicated 

an inability to hold the prisoners securely in the event 

of further offenses by the LNA or a collapse of GNA 

ranks. Some militia members are believed to be highranking members of ISIS’s Libya franchise. Any policy 

moves must seriously consider detainees to prevent 

the undoing of hard-won gains against ISIS. Dozens 

of groups across Libya currently have captured ISIS 

103. Devon Douglas-Bowers, “The Crisis in Mali: A Historical 

Perspective on the Tuareg People,” Global Research, February 1, 2013, 

https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-crisis-in-mali-a-historical

-perspective-on-the-tuareg-people/5321407.

104. David D. Kirkpatrick, “A Police State with an Islamist Twist: Inside Hifter’s Libya,” New York Times, updated 

April 14, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/20/world

/middleeast/libya-hifter-benghazi.html.
55

members under their control, potentially giving the 

groups leverage, especially with international actors 

such as the United States and the EU. If ISIS fighters 

are to remain off the battlefield, then these groups 

may need to be accommodated. But policy makers 

must be wary of reports of detainee numbers, which 

may be inflated.

THE RESPONSE OF THE UNITED STATES

One frustration of US policy makers was the 

EU and European members of NATO neglecting to 

take the lead on Libyan reconstruction and security, 

which most likely will not happen because they fear 

sustained intervention and the issue of refugees has 

become entangled in the domestic politics of most 

EU states. Italy is most directly affected by Libyan 

turmoil because it is the main destination for refugees 

fleeing across the central Mediterranean, has some 

colonial links to Libya, and has made sustained 

efforts to mitigate the refugee crisis. Other EU states 

have provided some funding to help Italy with this 

burden, but, like the United Kingdom, tend to frame 

the issue as one of stopping migration across the 

Mediterranean, rather than providing safe passage. 

Though only briefly, Italy was prepared to take more 

direct action against ISIS in conjunction with Egypt 

before backing down under pressure from other EU 

states and the United States.105

Thus, without direct US leadership, the situation 

in Libya will most likely remain chaotic. The Islamic 

State has been driven out of Sirte and its other 

strongholds, but the situation will continue to offer the 

group opportunities. Libya remains a poorly governed 

105. Toaldo, “Europe’s Options on Libya.”
56

state with porous borders, copious stocks of weapons, 

and various sources of income ISIS can divert to its 

own coffers. The Obama administration was cautious 

about direct and substantial military intervention, in 

part because this might have provided ISIS with a 

cause and an easily reached enemy. The Islamic State 

may have also believed military intervention would 

derail the attempts to forge a government of national 

unity.106 Regardless, US military operations proved to 

be critical in driving ISIS from Sirte and have made it 

more difficult for ISIS to reestablish a presence in the 

south of the country.

The Trump administration has offered several 

policies on Libya. At various stages in 2017, the Trump 

administration mooted partition of the country, 

suggested a US withdrawal at a press conference 

with the Italians, and proposed a return to a mixture 

of diplomatic pressure to force a political agreement 

in Libya and military help in the fight against ISIS.107

Militarily, this shift in policy seems to be connected 

to a belief ISIS is on the verge of defeat, suggesting 

at least some promise for the long-term governance 

of Libya.108

106. Blanchard, Libya.

107. Stephanie Kirchgaessner and Julian Borger, “Trump 

Aide Drew Plan on Napkin to Partition Libya into Three,” Guardian, 

April 10, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017

/apr/10/libya-partition-trump-administration-sebastian

-gorka; Stephanie Kirchgaessner, “Donald Trump Remarks 

Raise Fears of US Disengagement in Libya,” Guardian, April 

21, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/21

/donald-trump-remarks-raise-fears-of-us-disengagement

-in-libya; and Barbara Starr, “US Military Considers 

Ramping up Libya Presence,” CNN, July 10, 2017, https://

edition.cnn.com/2017/07/10/politics/trump-us-military

-libya-strategy/index.html.

108. Mezran and Miller, “ISIS on the Brink.”
57

The important actors view the problems with Libya 

in different ways, creating conflict when identifying 

the overall problem. The European members of NATO 

tend to see the problem in Libya as a part of their wider 

issue with immigration. The Arab states are primarily 

concerned with the stability of the country and the 

management of various Islamic groups; the United 

States, although interested in security, leans more 

toward promoting its economic interests. Equally, 

Libya has become another region where Turkey and 

Qatar, who tend to be sympathetic to the Muslim 

Brotherhood, are at odds with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, 

and Sisi’s Egypt.

Although France and Britain would most likely 

take the lead in their former colonies in response to 

a security crisis, such as the France-led intervention 

in Mali, this does not apply to Libya. The former 

colonial power, Italy, left as part of a wider military 

defeat and has no real residual presence beyond 

commercial links. Italy is perhaps the European state 

most directly affected by the crisis in Libya, but it 

does not particularly see current problems in Libya as 

something on which it should take the lead.

This strongly suggests the United States cannot 

leave the Libyan problem to the EU or the European 

members of NATO. Ideally, the United States would 

work with both European and other Arab powers to 

help the rebuilding process, but some sort of coherent 

US response is needed. As noted, different external 

powers may be funding their own proxy movements 

in Libya, delaying any progress toward sound 

governance.
58

RECOMMENDATIONS

Policy Options

The damage caused by the Anglo-French 

indifference after the fall of Gadhafi has left Libya 

with practically no government; rather, Libya has 

two competing power groups that mirror the historic 

divisions within the country.109 By late 2016, the 

United States had lost patience with its European 

allies and used airpower and Special Forces to attack 

ISIS directly in its stronghold of Sirte.

But Libya offers ISIS far more than just a new 

region for its caliphate. On Libya’s borders, the wider 

tensions between Muslim and Christian communities 

in the sub-Saharan region are long-standing and 

exacerbated by the relative discrimination against 

the Tuareg across the region. Gadhafi intervened in 

these crises and civil wars in the 1970s and 1980s, so a 

precedent for Libyan interaction with the region exists.

In turn, tensions in Saharan Africa are worsened by 

climate change reducing crop yields and intensifying 

disputes over access to water.110 Conflict will continue 

or at least always be a possibility unless wider steps 

are taken to help sub-Saharan Africa manage its 

current problems. Without economic help, agricultural 

productivity will probably halve in the next decade 

in the region, triggering conflicts over the remaining 

sources of food and water. A report for the EU argued 

“for each dollar invested in safe drinking water, three 

109. House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Libya.

110. Any Freitas, “Water as a Stress Factor in Sub-Saharan 

Africa,” European Union Institute for Security Studies 12 (2013).
59

to four dollars are generated, depending on the region 

and technology available.”111

Within Libya, ISIS may well prove to be a 

transitory movement, but radical Islamism has long 

had substantial influence. Although the Sanusiyahinspired LIFG may have had ideological concerns 

about AQ’s Salafi mindset, individual militants found 

it easy to travel between the various groups. Radical 

Islamism in Libya was not imported by ISIS or AQ, 

and it will remain important in Libya even if those 

groups are defeated.

Framing the question of how to deal with ISIS in 

Libya as purely a localized matter needing the correct 

combination of military and diplomatic action is too 

limited an approach. Although ISIS must be removed 

from Libya, any response needs to take account of 

both Libya’s history and aspirations and the extent to 

which the dynamics in Libya are connected to wider 

issues across North Africa.

The Islamic State’s brief period of relative 

dominance was underpinned by militants drawn 

from across the region. At the height of its power, 

the group was able to divert funds to support the 

extremist groups operating in southern Egypt and the 

Sinai Peninsula, where a wider Berber demand for 

better treatment was taken over by ISIS, and the group 

has since diverted its militants to carry out attacks 

in Tunisia.

If the United States is serious about challenging 

ISIS in Libya and making progress in helping the 

country rebuild and remain autonomous, it must take 

the following steps:

1. The United States must assist Libya in rebuilding 

state structures and be aware of ISIS’s ability 

111. Freitas, “Water as a Stress Factor,” 2.
60

to infiltrate any emerging government. To 

accomplish these objectives, the United States 

should work with other Libyan groups opposed 

to Gadhafi and ISIS, regardless of whether their 

Islamist doctrine is palatable. The United States 

must remain aware tribal networks are not the 

only force in the new Libya.

2. The refugee crisis is both a potential source 

of revenue for ISIS and a way to send its 

militants into Europe. As long as the crossing 

of the Mediterranean is under the control of 

unscrupulous criminal gangs, it will remain a 

potential source of revenue. The United States 

must use whatever leverage it has in Europe to 

pressure the Europeans into establishing safe, 

official routes onto the continent for genuine 

refugees in need of asylum and aid Italy and 

the GNA in Libya to cope with the financial 

and logistical requirements of managing 

refugee flows.

3. Finally, ISIS and AQ are adept at manipulating 

genuine grievances for their own ends; as a 

result, attention needs to be paid to the range 

of conflicts across Saharan Africa. Nearly all of 

these conflicts can be exploited by ISIS, especially 

in regions where the conflict is also between 

Muslims and Christians, but all of these conflicts 

have their own local dynamics and causes. 

Seeking to defuse these grievances is a wider but 

necessary agenda for the United States, as well 

as the EU, and much can be done to prevent ISIS 

by helping the local administrations manage 

the increasing pressures created by climate 

change on water and food supplies, either with 
61

humanitarian aid or by providing technological 

and logistical knowledge and resources.

Diplomatic Options

Similar to the EU, the Obama administration 

was initially unwilling to intervene too directly 

in the military conflict against ISIS, preferring to 

pursue diplomatic initiatives to resolve the internal 

divisions that emerged after 2011. This approach 

was commendable, but it needed two key conditions 

to work. First, the process needed to be actively 

managed because the Libyan groups were unlikely 

to reach a compromise by themselves.112 Second, the 

process needed to be closed-ended. The latter point 

is perhaps the key criticism that can be leveled at the 

various UN and EU attempts so far. As noted above, 

the GNA structure has been agreed in principle, but 

the problem lies in implementation.

The Trump administration should support the UN 

in ensuring a unitary government that holds the country 

together emerges as soon as possible. Achieving 

this objective would help to facilitate elections at the 

earliest feasible opportunity to determine once and 

for all the entity that holds democratic legitimacy. 

Indulging the GNA, which has little influence outside 

Tripoli or the HoR, in its desire to keep control of key 

institutions and facilities risks repeating the problems 

that blighted Yemen after unification in 1990 because 

the state would permanently fracture into competing 

power bases. In Yemen, unification brought a division 

of responsibilities along north-south lines and the 

creation of dual structures so that senior officials from 

112. Blanchard, Libya.
62

both states kept their jobs.113 The short-term result was 

political and economic paralysis. In the longer term, 

this solution created the conditions first for the civil 

unrest between 2011 and 2012, and now for the civil 

war in the country. Libya must avoid these mistakes.

A related problem is, as in Syria, Libya is becoming 

an arena where the struggles between other powers are 

enacted. In recent years, the main focus has been on the 

Shia-Sunni conflict and how this is reflected, at a state 

level, as a fundamental antagonism between Iran and 

the Saudis. This focus has meant not enough attention 

has been given to the developing disputes between 

Sunni states, especially those among the UAE, Saudi 

Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey. These disputes 

have occurred partially for political reasons, as states 

seek to deal with groups they believe are linked to 

sources of domestic discontent. The Egyptians, since 

Sisi seized power, have supported the Benghazi-based 

HoR/LNA against the Tripoli-based GNA due to the 

presence of groups linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.

As a result, all states that are active in Libya 

need to back the formal UN process and an early 

plebiscite. Support for the GNA by the UN will 

not be unconditional because elements within the 

GNA clearly share the underlying Salafi views of 

ISIS and AQ, but the UAE, Russia, and Saudi Arabia 

continuing to sponsor the HoR/LNA would simply 

delay any return of formal governance to Libya. Now 

that the LNA’s attempt to impose military dominance 

has failed, a return to some form of mediated political 

process is essential.

113. Noel Brehony, Yemen Divided: The Story of a Failed State 

in South Arabia (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2011).
63

Military Options

As a significant military threat in Libya, ISIS 

has been defeated. A combination of local efforts, 

international airpower, and Special Forces has forced 

ISIS to the southern margins of the country. Like any 

well-motivated terrorist group, ISIS has the capacity 

to withstand setbacks, and driving the group from its 

last bastions may require significant effort. The Islamic 

State’s resilience suggests some military commitment 

within Libya, especially to provide the resources the 

local militias lack, is needed.

The more pressing requirement is linked to the 

need to ensure Libya can start to operate as a unitary 

state. To achieve this goal, in the short term, the UN 

arms embargo must be reimposed, and Turkey, the 

UAE, Russia, and Saudi Arabia must stop sending 

weaponry to the parties. Beyond these measures, 

the Libyan military needs to be placed back on a 

professional footing, and it needs to assist in the 

complex process of disarming local militias and 

ensuring the writ of the government is accepted across 

the country.

To avoid making the same mistakes that have been 

made in Syria and to repeat at least those aspects of 

the Afghanistan War that have been successful, the 

United States should be the sole agent providing the 

training and materiel for the new Libyan army so the 

country can control the army’s membership and keep 

away known jihadists.
CONCLUSIONS

The Islamic State’s brief opportunity to establish 

territorial domination in Libya has seemingly passed. 

As in Iraq and Syria, the military defeat of ISIS 

occurred because it overreached and alienated all 

potential allies with its sectarian policies. But the West 

cannot be complacent because many ISIS members 

in Libya are former members of the AQ network, 

and many come from other North African countries. 

These members may well disperse across the region, 

which has no shortage of existing conflicts, or switch 

allegiance again to a new jihadist group.

Within Libya, the criminality that was unleashed 

with the fall of Gadhafi remains unchecked. The 

focus of this criminal activity, at the moment, is arms 

and drug smuggling and extracting wealth from the 

refugees flowing through the country. The Islamic 

State and AQ can fund themselves effectively, either 

by extorting the criminals or by taking a share of 

this criminal activity to sustain some presence in the 

country. At the moment, ISIS has been defeated in 

Libya, but its ideology persists. As long as the group 

can exploit real grievances or find sponsors in the 

struggles between external powers, it may be able 

to reestablish itself. And if not ISIS, then a successor 

jihadist organization may well rise out of one or 

another conflict in North Africa and the Middle East.
65

APPENDIX

Table A-1. List of names and groups

General National 

Congress (GNC) Broad Islamist movement based around Tripoli.

Government of 

National Accord 

(GNA)

Notionally the current government of Libya 

backed by the United Nations, Turkey, and 

Qatar.

House of 

Representatives 

(HoR)

Broad Islamist movement based around 

Tobruk.

Libya Dawn

A militia that emerged in the 2011 rebellion 

against Muammar Gadhafi. Libya Dawn took 

control of Tripoli in 2014 and has close links to 

the Muslim Brotherhood.

Libyan Islamic 

Fighting Group 

(LIFG)

The principal Islamist opposition to Gadhafi 

during the period 1995–2010. Members had 

close links to al-Qaeda (AQ) but, as a group, it 

did not share AQ’s focus on international jihad.

Libyan Islamic 

Movement

Emerged in 2011, possibly with members who 

left the LIFG. The Libyan Islamic Movement 

is based near Tripoli and is part of the Libya 

Dawn militia group.
66

Libyan National 

Army (LNA)

Having emerged in 2014, the LNA is backed by 

the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, 

and Egypt as a counterweight to the growing 

importance of the GNA and GNC.

Popular Front for 

the Liberation of 

Palestine-General 

Command

A Marxist group within the wider Palestinian 

movement. The group was funded by Gadhafi 

and may have been used by the regime to 

transfer weapons and money to other terrorist 

movements in Western Europe.

Sanusiyah

A form of Islam that appeared in Libya and 

the Sudan in the late nineteenth century. The 

Sanusiyah influenced the 1951–69 monarchy 

and the basic ideology behind the Islamist 

LIFG in modern-day Libya.

Transitional 

National Council

The umbrella group that led the opposition to 

Gadhafi during the Libya revolt of 2011.

Table A-1 (continued)
RISE AND FALL? 

THE RISE AND FALL OF ISIS IN LIBYA

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Azeem Ibrahim, director of the Displacement and 

Migration Program at the Center for Global Policy in 

Washington, DC, and an adjunct research professor at the 

US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, holds a 

doctorate from the University of Cambridge.
US ARMY WAR COLLEGE

Major General Stephen J. Maranian

Commandant

∗∗∗∗∗

STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE

Director

Dr. Carol V. Evans

Director of Strategic Research

Colonel George Shatzer

∗∗∗∗∗ 

US ARMY WAR COLLEGE PRESS

Editor in Chief

Dr. Antulio J. Echevarria II

Marketing & Production Editor

Mr. Richard K. Leach

Copy Editor

Ms. Lori K. Janning

Consulting Editor

Dr. Laura M. Thurston Goodroe

Assistant Editor

Ms. Denise J. Kersting

Assistant Editor

Ms. Samantha Juliana

∗∗∗∗∗

Composition 

Mrs. Jennifer E. Nevil