Libyan Civil War and NATO Intervention
Libya's uprising began in Benghazi in February 2011, after the arrest of a lawyer representing families of the 1,200 prisoners killed at Abu Salim prison in 1996. Protests spread within days across the east, and Muammar Gaddafi's forces fired on them. The east fell to the rebels quickly, and a National Transitional Council formed in Benghazi. Gaddafi's counter-offensive retook the coastal towns and by mid-March was at the edge of Benghazi, with Gaddafi promising on radio to find the rats house by house and show no mercy. The Security Council passed Resolution 1973 on 17 March authorising all necessary measures to protect civilians, with Russia and China abstaining rather than vetoing. A coalition led by France, Britain and the United States began strikes within two days, and NATO took command. The mandate was civilian protection; the campaign in practice provided close air support for a rebel advance, which Moscow and Beijing cited for years afterwards as a bait and switch that ended their willingness to authorise anything similar. Tripoli fell in August. Gaddafi was caught in a drainage pipe near Sirte in October, beaten and killed. No stabilisation force followed and the militias that had won the war did not disarm. The state fragmented into rival governments in Tripoli and the east, backed by Turkey and Qatar on one side and Egypt, the UAE and Russia's Wagner group on the other. A second civil war ran from 2014. Elections due in 2021 have not been held. Oil production, the only revenue, has been repeatedly shut down as a bargaining tool. Libya became the principal transit route for migration to Europe, with detention conditions the UN has described as crimes against humanity.
- Year: 2011 CE
- Category: Military
