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Fourteen years since the revolution, Libya’s institutional framework has undergone near-total dissolution, as evidenced by the state’s effective surrender of responsibility for core sovereign functions to nonstate actors.

Clashes in Tripoli last month, triggered by the assassination of a militia commander in circumstances under the guise of negotiations, resulted in nine documented civilian fatalities and 47 injuries, all with absolute impunity for the perpetrators, reflecting a systemic pattern in which violence has been monetized by the ruling elites. This incident was not an anomaly but the inevitable byproduct of a rentier political economy dominated by kleptocratic networks and external sponsors.

Despite generating $50 million daily from the export of 1.2 million barrels of oil, Tripoli remains fractured, split into militia fiefdoms in which any nominal state authority depends entirely on 120-plus armed groups. These factions control informal and illicit economies, including human trafficking corridors that funnel thousands of migrants each year to Europe, municipal extortion rackets and parallel “customs” operations at ports such as Misrata.

Hydrocarbon revenues subsidize militia salaries and systems of patronage instead of funding public services, creating a self-perpetuating war economy in which institutional collapse is not a failure but a design feature to enable elite capture.

The Tripoli-based government’s fumbled “purge” last month constituted a predatory realignment, not a much-needed change or institutional reform. When state-aligned forces eliminated a rival militia commander during a purported negotiation, they seized control of Abu Salim, a district that controls vital central bank access points that are responsible for processing an estimated $1.8 billion a month in hydrocarbon revenues.

The maneuver exposed the Government of National Unity’s existential paradox: it exterminates competing factions while relying entirely on aligned militias such as the 444th Combat Brigade, which receives $15 million to $20 million a month from state coffers for “security services.”

The inevitable urban warfare last month demonstrated the ways in which violence services the competition between elites for dwindling resources. Libya’s $6 billion quarterly oil revenues remain captive to this cycle of predation, with the militias systematically diverting more than a third of the proceeds through fuel-smuggling syndicates that move more than 100,000 barrels a day. Meanwhile parallel “customs” operations at the Port of Tripoli impose a 25 percent “tariff” surcharge.

Taking control of Abu Salim alone secured illicit revenues worth $300 million a month, confirming militia consolidation as a resource grab mechanism through which state collapse enables elite enrichment.

Meanwhile, foreign engagement in Libya operates as a transactional marketplace in which external powers exchange military capital for access to resources, with zero regard for Libyan sovereignty or stability.

Turkiye’s 5,000-troop garrison and drone bases near Tripoli oversee hydrocarbon-rich maritime zones, while Russian mercenary forces at Al-Qardabiyah Airbase guard Libyan National Army commander Khalifa Haftar’s eastern oil terminals and are repaid with crude oil allocations worth about 80,000 barrels a day.

Such engagement fuels fragmentation, a strategy that Washington has also co-opted as part of its rather puzzling policy on Libya. On the one hand, the US expresses explicit support for the Tripoli-based parallel authority. On the other, it simultaneously makes diplomatic overtures to the eastern-based rival government — which is actively mobilizing troops toward Sirte, positioning it to seize $50 million per day in oil revenues — and holding joint military exercises that lend it legitimacy.

Hydrocarbon revenues subsidize militia salaries and systems of patronage instead of funding public services.

Hafed Al-Ghwell

With more than 12 foreign military bases now established, the disintegration of Libya is not collateral damage but the intended outcome of resource access opportunism masquerading as diplomacy.

Beneath this warlord calculus, there simmers the prospect of societal collapse as a result of deliberately engineered scarcity; 200 percent inflation eviscerates household purchasing power, while 18-hour-a-day electricity blackouts cripple critical sectors and industry, despite the billions of dollars of hydrocarbon revenue flowing in each year.

This systematic deprivation fuels mass dissent, as evidenced by the 4,000 citizens who chanted “neither east nor west” during protests last month, serving as a direct indictment of all ruling factions after 1,400 days of undelivered election promises.

Meanwhile, youth unemployment stands at a staggering 40 percent, reflecting generational abandonment, compounded by resource-hoarding by elites — such as the millions in embezzled dam maintenance funds, a direct result of which was the Derna dam collapses in September 2023 that resulted in at least 5,000 preventable deaths, a figure exceeding the number of front-line combat deaths.

As a consequence, public fury is on the rise, as evidenced by the nightly burning of tires and occupation of ministry buildings, protests that are often met with live militia fire.

Beyond Libya’s own borders, the disintegration of the country actively metastasizes into regional instability, with militia-controlled coastal networks dispatching thousands of migrants each year across the Mediterranean.

This human commodity market intersects with the implosion of Sudan, where 9 million displaced persons have fled conflict zones, alongside the funneling of small arms into and out of Libya through porous southern borders.

The concern, therefore, is that a renewed Tripoli-Benghazi civil war could trigger immediate and very grave consequences that would dwarf even the descent into conflict of neighboring Sudan. It would not only be a matter of the potentially unprecedented scale of human suffering it might cause, but the domino effect on the global economy of disruption to oil exports in a country that contains about 41 percent of Africa’s total proven reserves, while also accelerating refugee flows.

Appointments of UN envoys and ceasefire agreements remain largely performative when global powers are actively fueling conflict. The collapse of the Government of National Unity and the ascendance of Haftar prove that Libya’s “leaders” prioritize personal enrichment over the establishment of a credible and sustainable social contract.

With international diplomatic missions now fleeing Tripoli for Tunis and militias stockpiling weaponry, the question now is not whether the violence will escalate but when the spillover will force a reevaluation of the international complacency and a recalibration of approaches.

In the meantime, an accountability vacuums persist. Without the prosecution of those accused of embezzlement or war crimes, the demilitarization of cities and an end to foreign arms flows, Libya’s frozen conflict will thaw into a regional conflagration.

A forensic auditing process must commence before the next dam breaks because, every 3.6 seconds, another barrel of oil adds more funds to this engineered chaos, while the spark of regional ignition draws ever closer.

• Hafed Al-Ghwell is a senior fellow and executive director of the North Africa Initiative at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC. X: @HafedAlGhwell