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Libya’s dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who ruled the country for 42 years, was killed on October 20, 2011 in his hometown Sirte. His death came at the end of a 7 month civil war at the hands of the rebels supported by NATO. The rebels were led by the National Transitional Council (NTC), with Mustafa Abdul Jalil as its chairman and Mahmoud Jibril as its prime minister.
The NTC was the interim authority in rebel-controlled areas during the Libyan Civil War. Gaddafi’s fifth son Mutassim, who had led the regime’s battle for Sirte, was captured by the Misrata militia and executed . Since Gaddafi’s death which the NTC called a relief Libya has failed to stabilise with ongoing internal fighting and the Libyan’s governed by two centres of power.
The latest episode in the precarious situation was the May 12,2025 killing of Abdulghani Kikli, a militia leader who had controlled swathes of Tripoli for years. His group Support Force Apparatus SSA had functioned under the Presidential Council that came to power in 2021. He was reportedly killed by a rival militia called the 444 Brigade, commanded by Mahmoud Hamza, on May 12, 2025.
His death triggered clashes between the SSA and the 444 Brigade across Tripoli that left at least six people dead. There were reports that his killing was engineered by the current Tripoli based Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh who vowed to eliminate all armed groups. The killing had led to major protests for his ouster and attempts to storm his office but the Prime Minister insisted that the elimination of all armed groups was an ongoing project. Three of his ministers had resigned in sympathy with the protesters.
Earlier there had been several efforts to replace him by force after clashes in Tripoli, and two years ago groups aligned with him had ousted another major armed group, the Nawasi militia.
In the aftermath of Gaddafi’s death a rebel council held elections for an interim General National Congress which created a transitional government. True power , however, remained in the hands of armed groups.
The General National Congress ,an Islamist-led elected body, ruled Libya for two years but sought to extend its mandate when the 18-month deadline to form a new constitution passed in January 2014 without any result. In late August 2014, a group of GNC members reconvened in Tripoli and claimed legislative authority over the country.
A House of Representatives was elected in 2014 as the national parliament with a four-year mandate to oversee a political transition. In August 2014, Tripoli was occupied by armed Islamist groups in what was called the Second Libyan Civil War. This led the House of Representatives to relocate to Tobruk.
A 2015 Libya Political Agreement was crafted after talks in Morocco leading to the creation of a High State Council as a consultative second chamber with an advisory role. In that year 2015 Islamic State, taking advantage of the chaos, had seized Gaddafi’s home town of Sirt in central Libya.
Subsequently Misrata -led armed groups and their allies formed the “Libya Dawn” coalition and took over the capital Tripoli. Libya’s two main rivals—the House of Representatives and the Tripoli-based Libya Dawn coalition—reached an agreement over the formation of a UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA), which took office in early 2016.
Tobruk was the base of General Khalifa Haftar. The Cabinet of Abdullah Al-Thani, approved on 22 September 2014 by east Libya's democratically elected House of Representatives, was known as the Tobruk government. The Libyan Supreme Court had however ruled that the cabinet was "unconstitutional" and Prime Minister al-Thani and his government offered their resignation on 13 September 2020.
The Libyan Political Dialogue Forum on 5 February 2021 had selected Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh to be the Prime Minister of the unity government till, as provided under the roadmap drawn up as part of the UN and USA initiative, national elections were held in December 2021. Subsequently a Government of National Unity was set up on 10 March 2021 to unify the rival Government of National Accord based in Tripoli and the Second Al-Thani Cabinet, based in Tobruk.
In 2022 protesters stormed and set fire to the parliament in Tobruk. There were rallies in other Libyan cities against continuing power cuts, rising prices and the political deadlock. In the capital, Tripoli protesters called for elections. Their demand was backed by the head of the unity government, Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, who said all the country's institutions needed to be changed.
Dbeibeh’s position had been contested since February 2022, after the Libyan House of Representatives selected Fathi Bashagha as prime minister. Dbeibeh rejected Bashagha's appointment as prime minister, stating that he would only hand power after a national election.General [16] Khalifa Haftar and his Libya National Army had welcomed Bashagha's appointment.
The timetable for the elections continued to get postponed. First the House of Representatives Speaker Aguila Saleh Laws came under criticism for issuing electoral laws in September-October 2020 for the conduct of the elections without a proper vote or quorum in Parliament. Confusion created by the uncertainty of whether his rules or the UN defined roadmap would hold, led to a postponement of the then scheduled December 2021 elections. And till date the elections have not been held.
The activities of General Khalifa Haftar had ensured the continuing division between eastern and western Libya. He had taken part in the coup in 1969 that had brought Gaddafi to power. Haftar was captured during Gaddafi’s war with Chad from 1978 to 1987. He, while in jail, had formed a group with other prisoners to overthrow Gaddafi because Gaddafi had abandoned him and the other Libyan prisoners of war who were captured by Chad. Possibly Gaddafi also saw him as a threat to his own position if he returned as a hero.
While Gaddafi had wanted Haftar’s soldiers to be returned to Libya the Americans sent them to Zaire from where many came back to Libya. In 1987 Haftar and the returning soldiers aligned with the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL), a U.S. supported opposition group. He was released in 1990 under a deal midwifed by the US and UN. He had used his contacts with American Intelligence to support attempts to overthrow Gaddafi. He stayed for nearly two decades in the USA at Langley. Many saw him as America’s proxy in Libya.
In 2011 he returned to Libya and participated in the overthrow of Gaddafi. In 2015 General Haftar was officially made commander of the Libyan National Army (LNA) by the internationally recognized House of Representatives .
The Libyan army split in two with Haftar’s Libyan National Army supported by Russia and its Wagner Group of mercenaries while the Libyan Army remained under the Government of National Accord (GNA).
The continuing turmoil in the aftermath of Gaddafi’s death had been exploited by Islamic State’s Libyan Branch which was one of the strongest outside its original territory in Iraq and Syria. It had taken over Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte.
Operation Dignity was launched under Haftar’s leadership and Islamic State was driven out. A combined air and ground assault against the pro-Islamic militias of Benghazi was undertaken , as well as a sustained heavy weapons attack against the Libyan parliament.
After three years of military campaigns, in early July 2017 Haftar announced in a televised speech that his forces had finally taken full control of Benghazi though many of his critics commented that the campaigns were merely an instrument to help him fulfil his political ambitions. They believed that while Haftar claimed to be anti Islamic extremism he had continuously taken the help of Salafii Muslims to help with the administration of areas under his control.
Since 2016, Haftar had refused to support the new United Nations Security Council endorsed Government of National Accord and some analysts had called him the "biggest single obstacle to peace in Libya" because he feared cooperation with the Tripoli government would weaken his hold over eastern Libya.
Then in 2019 General Haftar called on his Libyan National Army to march on Tripoli. He failed to take the capital despite support from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and reportedly the British, French, U.S. and United Arab Emirates air forces. There were reports that for many years prior to 2019 he had been supported by French advisers, clandestine operatives, and special forces helping the LNA's military operations in the east and south of Libya. He was said to have received tacit support from the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for the assault on Tripoli while Egypt's Sisi was said to have been very supportive of Haftar’s bombardment of Tripoli.
His rival, the GNA government in Tripoli was said to have had outright support from Turkey and Syrian mercenaries. Turkey was reported to have planned to deploy its navy to protect Tripoli and send troops to help train GNA forces. Turkmen rebel groups fighting in northern Syria and Syrian National Army personnel were positioned on the Tripoli frontline.
Earlier in February 2014, Haftar said on Television that the General National Congress(GNC), the elected parliament which had recently unilaterally extended its mandate, had been dissolved.[43]He wanted a caretaker government to oversee new elections, and called on Libyans to revolt against the GNC, the mandate of which was still in force at the time.
On the eve of the scheduled elections in 2021, Haftar announced that he was contesting the elections for the Presidency. Haftar provisionally quit his military position in line with a controversial electoral law to allow him to run for president. Eventually the elections did not take place.
The continuing conflict over decades had taken a toll on Libya, one of the major producers and exporters of oil in the Mediterranean region. General Haftar with his LNA had effectively taken control over Libya’s vital oil production areas in 2016.
According to the World Bank the Libyan economy had contracted by 2.9% in 2024 because of over dependence on oil revenue and the lower level of oil production. The World Bank expected that in 2025 and 2026 oil production would potentially reach 1.3 million barrels per day (mbpd). But the economy would remain vulnerable because of a lack of diversification beyond he oil sector and the continuing political turmoil. Fuel smuggling, estimated at $5 billion per year, had also affected the economy.
Under the existing arrangement 70 percent of the revenues of the National Oil Company were shared between the two governments. Oil revenues were centralized by the Libyan Central Bank in Tripoli. But the Tobruk based government had established its own monetary authority. Libyan assets of nearly US Dollars 65 billion with the Sovereign Wealth Fund had been frozen under international sanctions.
The setbacks to the economy had affected the youth among whom there was growing frustration. The World Bank had said political stability and strategic efforts to diversify the economy beyond hydrocarbons were essential for long term growth stability. In 2025, the inflation rate in Libya was likely to be around 2.3%. Youth unemployment was a major problem with rates among the highest in the world. 51% of Libyan youth (1.1 million) were said to be unemployed leading to social unrest, increased crime rates and a heightened risk of political instability.
It is anybody's guess about what the future holds for the people of Libya. With so many foreign players involved in the ongoing tussle between Tobruk and Tripoli it seems unlikely that the contentious issues, born of the ambitions and egos of the rulers and Tripoli and Tobruk, would be resolved in the near future. US President Donald Trump too has still to reveal plans, if any, for Libya.
