SUMMARY
[Note to reader: this Country page primarily contains brief information about state-based violence during the period 1946-1974, and to some extent 1975-1988. For more detailed information on organized violence after 1989, please consult the specific Conflict and Dyad pages available on the left-hand side of this page. These pages contain (when applicable) more detailed information regarding all three categories of organized violence in this country from 1989 and onwards, as well as detailed information about state-based violence 1975-1988. The left-hand side menu also contains links to Actor pages for all groups involved in organized violence since 1989 in this country, as well as actors involved in state-based violence 1975-1988.]
Following the Arab Spring in 2011, Libya’s long-time authoritarian ruler Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown (see Libya: Government); Gadaffi had himself taken power by overthrowing King Idris in 1969. Following Gaddafi’s ouster, several interim governments have attempted to rule the country, but little political unity has been achieved. Starting in 2014, the political competition evolved into armed violence, as several armed factions have fought the government; for more on this, see Libya: Government. One of the government’s most prominent challengers was a rival, Tobruk-based, government dominated by the Libyan House of Representatives.
Parallel to the conflict over government, the Government of Libya also became engaged in a territorial conflict against the Islamic State (IS) in 2015 (see Libya: Islamic State). As in several other states where it had declared formal provinces (“wilayah”), IS attempted to take control over Libyan towns and territories, temporarily seizing the town Sirte. However, Libyan forces supported by airstrikes from the United States recaptured Sirte in late 2016, and managed to at least temporarily route much of the IS forces in the country.
Libya, a former Italian colony, gained independence in 1952 from UN trusteeship. After the discovery of major petroleum deposits on its territory in the end of the 1950s, it became one of the richest countries in Africa. In the mid 1970s, Libya occupied and annexed the uranium-rich Aouzou Strip in northern Chad adjacent to the southern Libyan border. The strip was claimed by Gaddafi on the grounds of a treaty between the former colonial powers, Italy and France in 1935, which had never been ratified though. Libya was forced to withdraw, when it was defeated in a short interstate conflict with Chad in 1987.
In the years preceding this interstate conflict Libya had been involved in the intrastate conflict in Chad as a secondary warring party. It alternately supported various Chadian non-state groups and the government. Libyan troops also backed the government of Uganda, from 1978 to 1979, and the Central African government, in 2001.
Since 1946 Libya has experienced the interstate, intrastate and one-sided categories of UCDP organised violence.
