Libya

Libya exists as a single nation only because Italy wanted a colony and drew a line around three territories that had never been unified. Tripolitania, Cyrenaica, and Fezzan—separated by vast deserts, connected only by trade routes—were forced into unity in 1934 and have been trying to separate ever since.

The Ottoman Empire understood this geography. It governed these territories as distinct provinces from 1551, recognizing that the Mediterranean coast of Tripolitania looked toward Italy and Tunisia, while Cyrenaica's connection ran to Egypt and the Levant, and Fezzan's oases served trans-Saharan trade networks connecting to Chad and Niger. Each region developed its own tribal structures, economic patterns, and allegiances. The Ottomans never forced integration because integration made no geographic sense.

Italian colonization from 1911 to 1943 was brief but transformative. Rome wanted to recreate the Roman Empire, and Libya—directly across the Mediterranean—fit the imperial imagination. The colonizers merged the provinces, suppressed resistance with concentration camps that killed thousands, and attempted to settle Italian farmers on the coast. Omar Mukhtar's twenty-year guerrilla resistance ended at the gallows in 1931, but his struggle embedded anti-colonial identity into Cyrenaican tribal memory. World War II destroyed most infrastructure, and by independence in 1951, Libya was among the world's poorest countries—surviving on American and British military base rentals.

The oil discovered at Zelten in 1959 transformed everything and nothing. Esso's strike revealed reserves that would eventually reach 48 billion barrels—Africa's largest. Per capita income soared. But wealth concentrated in Tripoli, in the hands of King Idris and elite families, while the tribal east watched. When twenty-seven-year-old Muammar Gaddafi staged his bloodless coup in 1969, he drew support from that resentment. For forty-two years, Gaddafi balanced tribes against each other, rewarding loyalists, marginalizing rivals, building palaces while roads decayed. Oil revenues enabled dysfunction: with hydrocarbon exports funding everything, the state never needed to build institutions that collected taxes or delivered services.

The 2011 collapse proved how fragile that balance was. NATO's 26,500 sorties helped rebels overthrow Gaddafi, but no orderly transition followed. The same tribal fragmentation that had defined Libya since Ottoman times reasserted itself. By 2014, civil war returned. Since 2022, dual governments have crystallized: the Government of National Unity in Tripoli, the Government of National Stability in Benghazi, each controlling distinct territories and competing for legitimacy over oil revenues.

The 2024 Central Bank crisis exposed this modularity in action. When Tripoli replaced the central bank governor, eastern authorities blocked oil production—dropping output from 1.17 million barrels per day to 540,000 by September. UN mediation restored flows, but the mechanism demonstrated how easily oil infrastructure becomes a hostage. In May 2025, the assassination of a militia leader triggered clashes in Tripoli that killed 70 civilians, including an attack on central bank premises. Per capita GDP remains 35% below 2010 pre-war levels despite oil accounting for 97% of exports and 68% of GDP.

The 2026 outlook depends entirely on which fragility breaks first. Oil production may reach 1.3 million barrels per day, driving 8% GDP growth—but this wealth flows through institutional structures that exist only by agreement between rivals who have agreed to nothing permanent. Libya demonstrates what happens when colonial borders create nations that geography cannot sustain.