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The sobering reality facing Libya far surpasses mere political stalemate; it embodies the active calcification of a partitioned state. Two distinct centers of power now operate with parallel bureaucracies, military structures, and international recognition circuits, each solidifying its control over significant territory and resources. This is no theoretical fragmentation typically subject of erudite observations by scholars, but an operational division measured in concrete terms.

One administration commands the capital and its international legitimacy, while the other dominates about 60 percent of the nation’s landmass, including the lion’s share of proven oil reserves — Libya’s primary economic lifeline, responsible for over 90 percent of state revenue. Each entity fields its own armed forces, estimated in the tens of thousands collectively, backed by rival foreign patrons whose military footprints are expanding.

The division even extends beyond security; separate legislative bodies pass laws for their respective zones, while reconstruction efforts have devolved into competing, regionally siloed projects. An entrenched reality has settled, where daily governance functions independently on either side of a virtual iron curtain, reflecting a partition actively constructed and resourced, rendering the notion of a unified Libyan state increasingly unlikely.

Tripoli’s authority, nominally the UN-recognized Government of National Unity, is visibly fraying under the weight of its own internal power struggles and widespread popular rejection. Its attempt to violently purge rival militias in May, triggering intense urban warfare and displacing civilians, culminated in the resignation of influential ministers. Ultimately, Tripoli’s “fausse paix” was shuttered by urban combat spanning 72 hours and 11 districts, including the affluent Dhat El-Imad towers and seafront — zones historically insulated from conflict.

The clashes also displaced 2,500 civilians, halted operations at Mitiga International Airport for 48 hours, and stranded foreign nationals. Critically, the resignations of finance and economy ministers, architects of a state budget dependent on $20 billion in annual oil revenue, exposed the government’s evaporating fiscal control. The spectacle of rival militias, some state-funded while others operate extortion rackets, engaging in pitched battles across the capital also cast a glaring spotlight on the fragility of Tripoli’s control of its affiliated militias.

Now, the GNU’s sovereignty has become a facade maintained by force, not legitimacy, with its institutions hollowed out via state capture and endemic corruption, with multibillion-dollar state companies becoming battlegrounds for rival kleptocratic networks. Militias now treat state parastatal coffers as mere plunder, with one faction having seized control of Libya’s Post, Telecommunications & Information Technology Company, a $3 billion state entity, in a firefight that killed eight civilians and left 58 bodies abandoned in a militia-controlled hospital.

On the other hand, parallel security structures are a further mockery of governance: 27 officially funded militias operate in Tripoli alone, yet the state cannot mobilize 500 coherent troops without triggering inter-militia warfare. Worse yet, foreign backers compound the chaos. This duality, where “state” forces assassinate rivals in extrajudicial executions while citizens burn tires in protest, frames partition as simple arithmetic, as Tripoli’s authority dwindles, reaching no further than its allied militias’ checkpoints.

Each faction now monopolizes force within its domain.

Hafed Al-Ghwell

On the other side of the divide, Benghazi has meticulously constructed a de facto state apparatus in the east, seemingly achieving some level of internal cohesion and international normalization unimaginable just a few years ago. Exploiting Tripoli’s chaos and legitimacy deficits, the rival administration has leveraged relative stability and a unified military command structure under its Libyan Arab Armed Forces to attract wary international partners. The ensuing diplomatic shift is palpable: Over the past year alone, Benghazi hosted delegations from the US military, the Italian Interior Ministry and intelligence chief, Turkish generals, Philippine diplomats, the Vatican ambassador, French NGOs, and British trade missions.

It has not escaped notice that a dedicated “foreign ministry” in the east has since chronicled over 100 diplomatic engagements across 12 months via more than 200 official social media posts, averaging one every four days. Such expanding engagement signals institutional permanence, not temporary rebellion, and since then, military normalization has only accelerated with the participation of the Libyan Arab Armed Forces in the US-led African Lion 2025 joint exercises, while hosting Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yunusbek Yevkurov five times since August 2023.

Clearly, dual approaches, where 31 countries now treat eastern institutions as viable partners, proves partition transcends rhetoric. When foreign embassies relocate staff to Benghazi citing “prosperity and security,” and reconstruction contracts bypass Tripoli’s hollowed ministries, the de facto statehood of the east becomes irreversible arithmetic, and idyllic aspirations for Libya’s reunification remain just that — ideals.

Given the prevailing dynamics, it is possible to draw a fairly unambiguous picture of international actors no longer being mere observers of Libya’s debilitating bifurcation. They are now actively enabling and profiting from it. Previous models of exclusive recognition for Tripoli’s revolving door interim authorities have ceased to exist.

This “dual-track” engagement, replicated by Rome, Paris (hosting the eastern leader at the Elysee), and even Washington, reveals a cynical international consensus. Stability, narrowly defined as the absence of all-out war and the preservation of self-interested aims (migration “control,” construction contracts, oil and gas, Sahel access, and transnational networks), is prioritized over the messy pursuit of genuine national unification, democratic legitimacy, or the removal of foreign mercenaries.

What remains is an accelerating drift toward a redrawing of Libya’s map rather than a temporarily frozen conflict. Each faction now monopolizes force within its domain, while foreign fighters answerable to external powers bolster both sides, further eroding national sovereignty. What constitutional processes and fleeting hopes for elections that still remain are indefinitely postponed — deemed too destabilizing by elites and their international backers who benefit from the current rent-seeking arrangements.

However, average Libyans, suffering in a state on the brink of total collapse, see their demands for unity and accountable governance ignored by domestic warlords and foreign powers alike. Their protests, while newsworthy, lack unified leadership or international backing to overcome an entrenched militarized duopoly. Now, the global community’s comfort with this enforced status quo, prioritizing manageable instability over risky democratic restoration, is the most powerful engine of partition.

Without a fundamental shift from this external calculus of short-termism and economic opportunism toward a concerted, impartial push for inclusive elections, disarmament of militias, and the removal of foreign forces, Libya’s map risks being definitively redrawn — not by the will of its people, but by the interests of its fractured elites and their global enablers.

• 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