Conclusion

Since the 2011 NATO intervention, Libya has remained quite unstable as two competing militaries—that of the internationally recognized government, the GNA, and the forces of Gen. Haftar’s LNA—struggle for power. Both of these militaries are deploying airstrikes, and in turn they are supported by foreign countries that are also launching airstrikes. Crucially, despite multiple reports of civilian casualties, the countries and militaries conducting airstrikes in Libya have not reported any civilian deaths, and it’s unclear what each participant’s process is for investigating claims of civilian harm in Libya, where it can be hard to reach specific sites.

The GNA is supported by the United States, which carries out strikes against ISIS and al-Qaeda, while the outside Arab states involved in the aerial conflict—Egypt and the UAE—are carrying out their own strikes either in support of the LNA or against Islamist militias. France is also striking Islamist militant targets in Libya and has expressed support for cooperating with the LNA on combating terrorism, despite its commitment—and that of other Western nations—to shoring up the GNA.

The airstrikes by these four nations and the two competing Libyan factions are intensifying the conflict in an already fragile country. They are also setting a poor precedent for future conflict, as many of these strikes are not authorized by international bodies such as the U.N., NATO or the Arab League, as was the case in the 2011 NATO intervention.

Though the GNA has consented to U.S. airstrikes in Libya, and it’s possible France may have obtained some similar authorization, lawlessness still persists in the skies over Libya, exemplified by the neglect of the belligerents to report many of their strikes as well as any civilian casualties, and the absence of any international pressure to do so.

The airstrikes by these four nations and the two competing Libyan factions are intensifying the conflict in an already fragile country.

Egypt has defended Egyptian airstrikes in Libya using a self-defense argument that these strikes are aimed at terrorist groups that threaten their security; this is the same kind of argument the United States has made since 9/11 to defend its covert drone program aimed at suspected terrorists in the tribal areas of Pakistan along its border with Afghanistan. The UAE has made no such arguments and its military operations in Libya seem aimed at curbing the power of Islamists without, it seems, the agreement of the GNA, nor with a known self-defense justification.

The United States is the most transparent of all the belligerents, and has sought to limit its involvement in Libya beyond the major campaign against ISIS in Sirte in 2016. Reported civilian harm from U.S. actions is relatively light, although this might be explained by the difficulty of reporting in areas like Sirte that experience high volumes of airstrikes, and by the low level of local monitoring capabilities among Libyans.

Comparatively, in Syria, local monitoring of civilian harm through citizen journalists and organizations such as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Syria 24 is much stronger. In the 2017 New York Times report “The Uncounted,” journalists determined that civilian casualties in Iraq were likely 31 times higher than the coalition was admitting. Our study similarly uncovered previously undisclosed cases of strikes and casualties, but the figures presented are almost certainly lower-end estimates due to the limitations of local monitoring and the dearth of international reporting on airstrikes in Libya.

A lack of international reporting on the air war has helped to obscure the fact that the countries involved in Libya elect not to report their airstrikes, including France, the United Arab Emirates and, at times, the United States and Egypt. Less than 50 percent of all reported airstrikes are officially declared.

Overall, reported civilian harm from airstrikes in Libya is relatively low when compared to higher-intensity conflicts in, for example, Iraq, Syria, or Yemen. This may indicate a local under-reporting of the issue.

Gen. Haftar’s LNA, while not the internationally recognized government of Libya, has nevertheless been relatively transparent in declaring its own military actions. Even so, like the United States, it has failed to accept responsibility for any civilian harm—undermining the legitimacy of its conduct at a local level.

Since 2014, Libya has increasingly become an arena for proxy warfare by multiple states. As in Syria, such proxy warfare not only has costs for Libya, its civilians and its stability, but it also may escalate the conflict within Libya or even outside Libya’s borders.