Is Libya on the brink of a new civil war?

Over the past week, various international bodies have sent out the alarm. In a statement, the United Nations Support Mission in Libya said it was monitoring "with concern the recent mobilization of forces in various parts of Libya."

The organization, known as UNSMIL, urged "all parties to exercise maximum restraint and avoid any provocative military actions that could be perceived as offensive." On Thursday, the Delegation of the European Union to Libya expressed similar concerns. "The use of force would harm stability in Libya and lead to human suffering. It should be avoided at all cost," it said in a statement.

Longtime Libya watchers were more direct, suggesting that, after around four years of relative calm in the country, civil war might be about to break out once again. The warnings came in response to last week's large mobilization of militias affiliated with one of Libya's two rival administrations.

Since 2014, Libya has been split in two, with opposing governments located in the east and west of the country. A UN-backed administration known as the Government of National Unity, or GNU, is based in Tripoli in the west, and its rival, known as the House of Representatives, is based in the east, in Tobruk. At various times over the last decade, each government has tried — and failed — to wrest control from the other.

The government in eastern Libya is supported by former warlord-turned-politician Khalifa Haftar, who controls various armed groups in his area. It was Haftar's forces that appeared to be moving toward Tripoli late last week. In 2019, Haftar attacked the city but was eventually forced to sign a cease-fire in 2020.

Haftar said troops under the command of his son, Saddam, were marching in order to secure Libyan borders, to fight drug and human trafficking and to combat terrorism. However, military analysts suspected other plans.

Haftar's forces have wanted control of Ghadames airport and its surroundings for some time, Jalel Harchaoui, a North Africa expert with UK-based think tank the Royal United Services Institute, told French newspaper Le Monde. Controlling Ghadames "would significantly enhance his territorial stature in relation to Algeria, Tunisia and Niger," said Harchaoui, and would also block access for the rival GNU.

If Haftar's troops seize Ghadames, it "would officially mark the collapse of the 2020 cease-fire," Tarek Megerisi, a Libya expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in a post on social media platform X (formerly Twitter).

In response to the troop movements, a range of other militias that support the Tripoli government in the west were told to increase their combat readiness.

The day after Haftar's mobilization was sighted, a clash between two militias in Tajoura, on the coastal outskirts of Tripoli, left at least nine dead. However, local media later reported this had been motivated by an assassination attempt on one of the militia leaders.

And this week, the situation in Libya seems to have calmed again. But the danger remains, experts told DW. Emadeddin Badi, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who focuses on Libya, sees Haftar's latest moves as a kind of ongoing "brinkmanship."

"Many of the actors [in Libya] are engaging in this, to see how far they could go in kind of taunting, or sidelining, or undermining their opponents," he said. "A zero-sum mentality still prevails," he added, referring to the fact that opposing factions in Libya believe that one of them must eventually run the country, as opposed to working together for unity.

"Libya continues to unravel quietly, with indications mounting that rival governments are regrouping for something big," Hafed al-Ghwell, executive director of the North Africa Initiative at Johns Hopkins University's Foreign Policy Institute in Washington, wrote in an op-ed for the website Euronews last week. With all of the different militias, Libya is in danger of becoming a "mafia state," he said.

Both Libyan governments are also supported by an array of foreign powers. The government in the west is backed by Turkey; the administration to the east by Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Russia. Previously, the UN and others have pushed for various international backers of the two sides in Libya and their soldiers to leave the country.

However, as Badi explained, their presence is probably preventing further violence in Libya right now. "Ironically, the only thing that has really prevented a relapse into all-out war is foreign influence in the country," Badi told DW. "A balance of forces exists between the Turks and the Russians and others, and there's a loose geopolitical understanding about not engaging in full-scale conflict again."

Attempts to unite the two halves of the country by, for example, holding a national election, unifying security forces, administrative functions or a national budget, or setting up an interim unity government, have come to nothing. In fact, the international community has become accustomed to dealing with two administrations when working with Libya on oil supply or migration issues.

But analysts like Badi, al-Ghwell and Megerisi have all argued that simply accepting the status quo in Libya — where there are two separate governments supported by increasingly mafia-like militias — no longer works.

"Actors [in Libya] have been emboldened through the impunity that they have been afforded by the international community," said Badi. "Libya has largely been neglected by the international community since 2021 and many have deluded themselves into thinking that Libya could remain stable in the long run, either with this status quo or through facilitating deals between the factions that have carved the country up for themselves. But this policy of pretending that conflict can be contained, is not working," he said.

"And that mirage — that Libya is fine, it's stable — is slowly collapsing right now."