The Libyan quagmire and foreign interference

Libya has never lacked for foreign meddlers, yet few have shaped its dysfunction as profoundly as the UAE. A chaotic post-Qaddafi era created an opening for assertive actors seeking pliable allies and geopolitical footholds. Abu Dhabi stepped into that opening with unmatched ambition, treating Libya as a proving ground for a regional model of power projection that prizes influence over stability, armed clients over institutions and tactical gains over long-term order.
The results have been corrosive: a fractured political arena, empowered warlords, militarized patronage networks and a state unable to reclaim its path to sovereignty and, perhaps, some form of democracy. At the core of Abu Dhabi’s strategy remains Khalifa Haftar’s entrenchment and the fragmentation of national authority. Haftar’s strategy relies heavily on external supply lines, with the UAE delivering money, weapons, mercenaries and political guarantees.
As such, the UAE’s backing has allowed Haftar to consolidate a personalized chain of command, marginalize civilian authorities and harden rival institutions. That empowerment comes with a predictable cost. National reconciliation has become hostage to the ambitions of an aging strongman whose authority derives less from internal legitimacy than from foreign patrons. Libya’s parallel central banks, dueling governments and splintered armed forces are just a few symptoms of an engineered imbalance.
Moreover, Haftar’s foreign sponsorship provides insulation from political compromise, giving him the bandwidth to reject power-sharing frameworks and derail negotiations. Empowered by Abu Dhabi, Haftar has consistently refused to meaningfully integrate his forces, bolstered his reliance on secrecy and coercion, and clung to a dependence on ad hoc external forces, including foreign fighters and mercenaries, to fill gaps in manpower. Naturally, this has led to the creation of a durable ecosystem of unaccountable armed actors that no coherent state could reabsorb.
As a result, a country of barely 7 million people now hosts more than 20 major armed groups, multiple “sovereign” institutions and parallel security forces funded through competing channels, including parallel currency printed by the Haftar clan and used to buy dollars on the black market to finance its insurgency.
The economic burden is staggering. Estimates indicate that Libya has lost more than $150 billion in cumulative oil revenue since 2011 due to blockades, institutional splits and insecurity, dynamics closely tied to the cycles of conflict driven by Haftar’s offensives and the countermobilization they have forced. Each armed surge fed the survival logic of militias in the west, prompting them to dig in, deepening the very dysfunction Abu Dhabi claimed it was helping to neutralize.
Even more troubling, the forays into Libya previewed a template for a broader Emirati strategy that fuses counterdemocratic instincts with an almost experimental use of hybrid forces. A reliance on mercenary conglomerates has created a model that rewards pliable strongmen, sidesteps multilateral oversight and opens channels of plausible deniability. 

Libya will not stabilize through the empowerment of a single faction, no matter how heavily armed or externally backed.

Hafed Al-Ghwell

Moreover, the “Libya sandbox” also inspired Emirati strategies of merging commercial infrastructure with military utility in a way that few middle powers have managed to execute. Since 2012, Abu Dhabi has channeled about $60 billion into ports, logistics hubs and supply chains from Senegal to Somalia.
In Eritrea, the port of Assab hosted an Emirati military base that functioned as the logistical backbone for Yemen operations while simultaneously handling commercial cargo. This same dual-use logic applies to Berbera in Somaliland, where a $442 million port deal included provisions for Emirati naval access and facilities for training local coast guards. Such arrangements allow Abu Dhabi to project power without the political baggage of formal bases, while the commercial veneer insulates the operations from international scrutiny.
Perhaps more visible is the illicit gold trade fueling the atrocious war in Sudan, which is now a hallmark of Abu Dhabi’s hybrid model for overseas adventurism. Dubai refineries process about $8 billion in gold sourced from the African continent annually, but customs discrepancies suggest much of the gold reaching Emirati markets first passes through informal smuggling networks controlled by the very militias the UAE later contracts for regional operations, such as Haftar’s forces or Chad’s sprawling mercenary networks. What emerges is a closed loop where revenues from illicit resource extraction finances paramilitary partners that, in turn, secure the interior corridors in parts of Africa where Abu Dhabi seeks to project power.
The regional spillover is no abstraction.
Support for the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan closely mirrors patterns already seen in Libya: a well-resourced outsider enabling paramilitary units accused of atrocities, including the El-Fasher horrors. The same transactional logic appears in parts of the Sahel, where mercenary flows, arms transfers and political interference also echo Emirati adventurism in Libya. Reports of Abu Dhabi’s ambitions in the Horn of Africa also reflect a similar mindset. Port deals, political sponsorships and security pacts appear motivated less by strategic clarity than raw influence projection, an approach that risks destabilizing already fragile states.
A striking feature of the UAE’s forays into Libya and elsewhere is a strategic blindness to long-term outcomes. Abu Dhabi sought a friendly autocrat who could suppress extremists, control borders and align with its vision of regional order. Instead, the pursuit of that ideal produced a centrifugal state with weak institutions, proliferating armed groups and a governance crisis that now threatens regional stability. Libya’s porous borders have allowed arms to travel south into the Sahel, fueling insurgencies and bandit economies in Niger, Mali and Chad. Human trafficking networks flourish in zones of lawlessness and flow into Europe.
Regional actors now face a hard truth. Libya will not stabilize through the empowerment of a single faction, no matter how heavily armed or externally backed. Stability requires a shift from foreign sponsorship of rivals toward coordinated diplomacy aimed at unifying critical institutions, security forces, the central bank, the national oil company and the electoral framework. Abu Dhabi’s preference for militarized solutions obstructs that shift. Emirati sponsorship of electoral engineering, quiet attempts to shape constitutional sequencing and pressure campaigns on UN mediation processes all contribute to a political environment where Libyan agency is routinely sidelined.
A recalibration is possible, but only if influential Arab states step in. Saudi Arabia offers a contrasting approach rooted in stabilization, economic development and de-escalation rather than factional engineering. Riyadh’s restrained posture in Libya, its improving diplomatic ties across North Africa and its growing interest in security coordination in the Red Sea basin provide an alternative to the destabilizing adventurism witnessed over the past decade by its neighbor.
A Saudi-led orientation toward responsible regional stewardship could help shift Arab diplomacy toward supporting unified national institutions as a precursor to stabilization and helping countries like Libya regain their sovereignty rather than deepening fault lines.

• Hafed Al-Ghwell is senior fellow and program director at the Stimson Center in Washington and senior fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies.
X: @HafedAlGhwell