Libya

There is a likely (around 65%) chance that Libya will experience significant armed conflict within the next three years, most plausibly through sustained militia fighting in western urban centers and/or a serious southern-border escalation rather than a renewed nationwide east–west war.

Over the next year, Libya is likely to remain in a tense, negative-stable equilibrium with episodic clashes and coercive signaling, especially in Tripoli and its approaches. Key triggers are leadership shocks, contested security appointments, and fiscal/payment disruptions to armed groups. The south faces elevated risk of lethal border incidents and retaliatory operations that could threaten local stability and nearby energy assets, but is more likely to stay localized than become a unified national front.

Over five years, absent credible elections, unified fiscal governance, and enforceable security-sector arrangements, Libya is likely to cycle between managed fragmentation and periodic escalations. The highest recurring risk remains western urban conflict around Tripoli’s coercive and revenue nodes, with chronic southern volatility linked to Sahel spillovers and trafficking. A renewed nationwide war remains constrained by external tripwire deterrence, but could rise if patron balances shift or oil-revenue governance breaks down.

Time frame and definition Covers the next three years. “Significant armed conflict” means sustained, organized violence above the current baseline of episodic clashes: prolonged urban combat (not hours-long incidents), multi-neighborhood fighting with heavy weapons, or major contests that disrupt governance, oil infrastructure, or national-level security arrangements.

Threat drivers Libya remains a dual-authority, fragmented-sovereignty system in which coercive power is decentralized and partially institutionalized through payrolls and official titles. This makes political bargaining failures operationally dangerous: disputes over security appointments, detention authority, budgets, and control of revenue-adjacent institutions can rapidly translate into armed mobilization.

Western Libya remains the primary escalation engine. The structural pattern highlighted in recent assessments is “negative-stable” deterrence: calm is maintained by mutual fear and transactional payoffs rather than enforceable command-and-control. That equilibrium is vulnerable to leadership shocks, elite splintering, or perceived shifts in international engagement.

A secondary driver is the political economy of rents. Oil revenue is both a shared dependency and a coercive lever; fiscal or institutional disputes can incentivize blockades, coercive bargaining, or attempts to seize strategic nodes. Arms-embargo leakage and the persistence of autonomous armed formations increase potential lethality and duration if clashes expand.

A third driver is southern and cross-border volatility. The Fezzan border belt remains porous and contested by trafficking networks and armed groups; recent lethal attacks on LNA-linked border posts near Niger underscore the risk of localized conflict intensifying and threatening nearby oil fields or supply routes.

Resilience and systemic firebreaks Key stabilizers still favor containment over decisive war: the 2020 ceasefire line largely holds; the 5+5 Joint Military Commission provides limited deconfliction; and external patrons create a tripwire balance that raises the cost of a renewed nationwide offensive. International engagement (UN, EU, and some bilateral efforts) also prioritizes economic stabilization and institutional coordination, reinforcing incentives to avoid actions that crash oil exports.

Net assessment New evidence reinforces, rather than overturns, the baseline: the most probable pathway to “significant conflict” is a western relapse into sustained Tripoli-area fighting and/or a serious southern-border escalation. A full east–west conventional campaign remains less likely than localized but major conflict driven by militia competition, governance deadlock, and revenue shocks.