Libyan interlinked dynamics in multiple scenarios: spiral of chaos, disorder and violence

Abstract

Seven years after the Arab Spring and the fall of Qadaffi, Libya stands as a singular case of fragmentation, confrontation and violence. Libya constitutes an ungoverned space, defined by the dynamic and interdependent confluence of three different and twisted scenarios where multiple and diverse actors, with competing interests, fight for power, influence and resources to impose their respective objectives in the absence of state structures. One scenario of internal violence and fragmentation with two rival coalitions controlling different territories; a second scenario dominated by transnational trends and forces that generate complex and interlinked transnational networks of different nature—criminal, terrorist, even humanitarian—with significant power and influence to drag the external intervention of powerful regional and extra-regional actors in order to protect and impose their particular national security visions and interests in a context of unstable and precarious balance of power, conforming, thus, the third scenario, defined by the convergence of simultaneous proxy conflicts.