Libyan Civil War Research Articles

Migration Policy: An Assessment on the North Africa Emergency Provisions

Emergency rules temporarily modifying migration regulation can be seen as natural experiments that can be exploited to assess the effectiveness of migration policies. In 2011, the Italian Government released the North Africa Emergency Provisions (ENA) temporarily relaxing immigration policies for refugees who fled to Italy as a consequence of the Arab Spring and the Libyan civil war. To take advantage of this experimental opportunity, we run difference-in-differences regressions on an original dataset to estimate the effects of the ENA provisions on the probability of obtaining a residence permit. The dataset includes micro-data self-collected from an important charity in Milan (Casa della Carità) which regularly provides migrants with legal assistance so as to help them to comply with immigration rules. Estimates show that such provisions actually increased the number of residence permits released to migrants entitled to the ENA benefits. On the other hand, migrants who were not entitled to these provisions suffered from exacerbated difficulties in complying with standard regulation.

News Actor Representation: In the Headlines of the Two National Newspapers on the Libyan Civil War

News Actor Representation: In the Headlines of the Two National Newspapers on the Libyan Civil War

War/Photography': Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath

Temporary exhibition, Nov. 11, 2012–Feb. 3, 2013. Traveling exhibition, March 23–June 2, 2013, Annenberg Space for Photography, Los Angeles, Calif.; June 29–Sept. 29, 2013, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Nov. 8, 2013–Feb. 2, 2014, Brooklyn Museum, New York, N.Y. Anne Wilkes Tucker and Will Michaels, curators. War in the modern era is a beast—its grip on the human condition poorly understood, the breadth of its effects immense. From the time of Homer to the twenty-first century the struggle to comprehend the human propensity for war has been ongoing. Since the mid-nineteenth century, war photographs have occupied a central place in that endeavor. Given their immediacy, presumed authenticity, and audience effect, images of war may affect public attitudes even more than film or the written word, historians suggest. The images are capable of lodging in the public memory and, with time, may become meaning-bearing icons. In 2012 the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, mounted “War/Photography: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath,” an exhibition of nearly five hundred wartime images ranging from daguerreotypes of the Mexican-American War of 1846–1848 to photographs of the 2011 civil war in Libya. The display was unprecedented in its size and range; the interpretation was equally ambitious. Over the course of ten years of research Anne Wilkes Tucker and her associate curators examined two thousand images of armed combat to locate five hundred with the “capacity to mentally and emotionally engage viewers' interest and to provoke questions.” They traveled to ninety repositories in Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, and North America. The photographs selected were produced by 280 different photographers from twenty-eight nations. Spanning 165 years, the interpretation reveals the rapidly changing nature of warfare, the equally rapid development of combat photography, and the explosive development of the means of disseminating war photographs. Basic informational labels were placed on the photographs and supplemented when necessary. An exceptional exhibition catalog, War/Photography: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath (New Haven, 2012), includes all of the photographs as well as several essays and interviews exploring related themes. Historians will welcome sustained attention to the reception and dissemination of, and public responses to, war photographs.

Migration Policy: When an Emergency Rule Becomes the Rule: Evidence from Italy

Anecdotal evidence exists that migrants experience difficulties in complying with Italian immigration rules (i.e. permit of stay applications and renewals) because of an intricate and inconstant legal framework. As a consequence, migrants often need legal assistance in order to regularize their status. In 2011, in order to manage the exceptional flows of refugees escaping from countries involved in the Arab Spring and the Libyan civil war, the Italian Government released the North Africa Emergency Provisions (ENA) which temporarily relaxed immigration policies for some categories of migrants. By using data from an important charity in Milan (Casa della Carita) which provides legal assistance to migrants we perform diff-in-diffs estimations in order to investigate the impact of this emergency rule on the probability of legal status regularization. Results show that the emergency situation actually increased the number of successful applications in favor of immigrants who were entitled to the ENA provisions, while dramatically boosting the denial rate for all the other immigrants. This suggests that some migrants (those not benefiting from the ENA) suffered a sort of displacement due to the enactment of the emergency rules.

Hallidayean transitivity analysis: The Battle for Tripoli in the contrasting headlines of two national newspapers

Conflicting national media positions are often reflected in the discursive patterns used in news headlines. Perhaps nowhere has this been clearer than in the recent contrasting reports of the Battle for Tripoli during the Libyan civil war of 2011. Using data collected from online articles in the British national daily newspaper The Guardian and the Chinese national daily newspaper The People’s Daily, Halliday’s transitivity analysis is deployed to analyze these patterns in the light of critical discourse studies. The results demonstrate how differences in the national contexts between these two newspapers are affirmed in the discursive choices of their news headlines. These results also highlight the concepts of positive self and negative other construed in accordance with the national positions of these two newspapers in the global structure of political power.

A glimpse of the Libyan civil war

Introduction: The Libyan civil war was an armed conflict in the North African state of Libya, fought between forces loyal to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and rebel forces. It lasted for a total of eight months and six days (15th February to 23th October 2011). The war resulted in the death of Muammar Gaddafi and the overthrow of his government. Anti-Gaddafi forces took control of all major Libyan cities and interim control was assumed by the National Transitional Council.

Kidnapping of Chinese in Africa – What can and what should Beijing do?

The year 2012 began with more news on kidnapping of Chinese workers in African states, the latest and highest numbers being in Sudan and in Egypt. As our Weekly Briefing reported, Chinese road workers were kidnapped by rebels in Southern Kordofan, an oil-rich, rebellion-racked state of Sudan. China's Vice Foreign Minister, Xie Hangsheng, expressed that he was “deeply shocked" by the abductions and China sent a Foreign Ministry-led working group to Sudan to assist the rescue of the 29 workers. Another group of 25 Chinese taken hostage in Egypt was freed the same week. The hostage-taking was not directed against Chinese actions. Rather, conflict groups used international hostages that they could easily get hold of. It is more than likely that we will see more incidences of kidnapping or other dangerous situations for Chinese in the nearer future. What does this mean for Chinese investments and Chinese policies? Linked to the incidences described above, the Chinese Foreign Ministry warned Chinese nationals and overseas companies to be more wary of safety risks, strengthen preventative measures and contact China's diplomatic missions in emergency situations, reported China Daily. In fact, in the Chinese publications monitoring China-Africa relations, we have seen a number of more cautious statements after the civil war in Libya led to the evacuation of around 34,000 Chinese, which was, in the first place, a scary experience for those directly affected. It also, however, was a costly exercise with presumably included great losses of investments, too. In other words: There are two dimensions in this increasing number of incidences: the individual and the political.

The Arab Spring and Social Media Audiences

Although popular media narratives about the role of social media in driving the events of the 2011 “Arab Spring” are likely to overstate the impact of Facebook and Twitter on these uprisings, it is nonetheless true that protests and unrest in countries from Tunisia to Syria generated a substantial amount of social media activity. On Twitter alone, several millions of tweets containing the hashtags #libya or #egypt were generated during 2011, both by directly affected citizens of these countries and by onlookers from further afield. What remains unclear, though, is the extent to which there was any direct interaction between these two groups (especially considering potential language barriers between them). Building on hashtag data sets gathered between January and November 2011, this article compares patterns of Twitter usage during the popular revolution in Egypt and the civil war in Libya. Using custom-made tools for processing “big data,” we examine the volume of tweets sent by English-, Arabic-, and mixed-language Twitter users over time and examine the networks of interaction (variously through @replying, retweeting, or both) between these groups as they developed and shifted over the course of these uprisings. Examining @reply and retweet traffic, we identify general patterns of information flow between the English- and Arabic-speaking sides of the Twittersphere and highlight the roles played by users bridging both language spheres.

From the Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe to the Arab Spring: Lessons for Democratic Transition

The last two years have witnessed an unexpected series of events unfolding in the Arab World leading us to make comparisons with the fall of Communism in 1989. Developments in the Middle East and North Africa made headway at a rapid pace. The overthrow of governments in Tunisia and Egypt, the civil war in Libya and the ongoing inner conflicts in Bahrain, Syria and Yemen were just as unexpected and stunning as the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. It is ironic that many observers attempting to make sense of these events have chosen the term 'Arab Spring' to define this movement, which somehow recalls the Eastern European analogue 'Prague Spring' in 1968. Many political scientists and analysts viewed these events taking the fall of Communism as a common point of reference. The Arab Spring is reminiscent of the Eastern European Revolutions in 1989 in many respects, yet a deeper analysis shows that significant similarities are outweighed by key differences. This paper attempts to address the recent wave of democratization which has swept across the Arab world in a comparative context and discuss the similarities and differences between the Arab Spring in 2011 and the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989.

Fallout in the Sahel: the geographic spread of conflict from Libya to Mali

This article seeks to examine the commonly-assumed notion that the Libyan Civil War generated the current conflict in Mali. It seeks to apply the causal mechanisms from the theories of escalation and diffusion/contagion to the Libya-Mali case, to determine if such a link can be made. Using Lake and Rothchild's (1996) framework, this article finds that, with some modifications to include non-state actors, mechanisms from both theories were at play in this case. Conflict in Mali did occur as the result of escalation and diffusion/contagion mechanisms from the Libyan Civil War. The article then proceeds to outline how these mechanisms could be applied to determine if conflict could spread outwards from Mali.

Islam and the Arab awakening

One of the most important developments in the modern history of the Middle East, the so-called Arab Spring began in Tunisia in December 2010, bringing down dictators, sparking a civil war in Libya, and igniting a bloody uprising in Syria. Its long-term repercussions in Egypt and elsewhere remain unclear. Now one of the world's leading Islamic thinkers examines and explains it, in this searching, provocative, and necessary book. Time Magazine named Tariq Ramadan one of the most important innovators of the twenty-first century. A Muslim intellectual and prolific author, he has won global renown for his reflections on Islam and the contemporary challenges in both the Muslim majority societies and the West. In Islam and the Arab Awakening, he explores the uprisings, offering rare insight into their origin, significance, and possible futures. As early as 2003, he writes, there had been talk of democratization in the Middle East and North Africa. The U.S. government and private organizations set up networks and provided training for young leaders, especially in the use of the Internet and social media, and the West abandoned its unconditional support of authoritarian governments. But the West did not create the uprisings. Indeed, one lesson Ramadan presents is that these mass movements and their consequences cannot be totally controlled. Something irreversible has taken place: dictators have been overthrown without weapons. But, he writes, democratic processes are only beginning to emerge, and unanswered questions remain. What role will religion play? How should Islamic principles and goals be rethought? Can a sterile, polarizing debate between Islamism and secularism be avoided? Avoiding both naive confidence and conspiratorial paranoia, Ramadan voices a tentative optimism. If a true civil society can be established, he argues, this moment's fragile hope will live.

R2P–Principle and Practice? The UNSC on Libya

This article explores the international politics regarding Muammar Muhammad Gaddafi's regime and the civil war in Libya in a context of liberalization and democratization of the Arab Spring. The study presents the varying positions taken by the five permanent member states of the UN Security Council, and their levels of adherence to the spirit of Responsible to Protect (R2P). The analysis explores the content of Resolutions 1970 and 1973, and statements made by external parties before, during, and after those resolutions were enacted. It is argued that although R2P has been proclaimed to be a core principle for human security, the Libyan crisis shows much discrepancy and confusion by the international community regarding how that principle should be applied to enduring dictatorial regimes.

Migration Policy: When an Emergency Rule Becomes the Rule Evidence from Italy

Anecdotal evidence exists that migrants experience difficulties in complying with Italian immigration rules (i.e. permit of stay applications and renewals) because of an intricate and inconstant legal framework. As a consequence, migrants often need legal assistance in order to regularize their status. In 2011, in order to manage the exceptional flows of refugees escaping from countries involved in the Arab Spring and the Libyan civil war, the Italian Government released the North Africa Emergency Provisions (ENA) which temporarily relaxed immigration policies for some categories of migrants. By using data from an important charity in Milan (Casa della Carita) which provides legal assistance to migrants we perform diff-in-diffs estimations in order to investigate the impact of this emergency rule on the probability of legal status regularization. Results show that the emergency situation actually increased the number of successful applications in favor of immigrants who were entitled to the ENA provisions, while dramatically boosting the denial rate for all the other immigrants. This suggests that some migrants (those not benefiting from the ENA) suffered a sort of displacement due to the enactment of the emergency rules.

The battle for the Arab Spring: revolution, counter-revolution and the making of a new era

On December 17, 2010, a Tunisian man set himself on fire after the police seized the vegetable cart by which he earned his living. This single act by an unknown figure sent a wave of revolt through the Arab world. It led to the overthrow of governments in Tunisia and Egypt, civil war in Libya, prolonged unrest in Syria and Bahrain, and massive public protests across the region. In this deeply informed and accessible book, Lin Noueihed and Alex Warren draw on years of experience in the Middle East and North Africa to explain how the events of the Arab Spring spread so widely and with such staggering speed. What suddenly drove ordinary Arab people to rise up against their long-entrenched rulers? Noueihed and Warren contend that, although the exact causes were different in each country, an explosive mix was common to all: widening economic inequalities, pervasive corruption, lack of political freedom, and access to independent TV news, social media, and mobile phones. The authors explore these economic, political, and media developments, consider the impact of Western responses to the uprisings, and discuss the possibilities for a free, democratic Arab world in the future.

Crisis Mapping Intelligence Information During the Libyan Civil War: An Exploratory Case Study

AbstractThroughout the Libyan Civil War, Twitter users took the initiative to collect and process data for use in the rebellion against the Qadhafi regime, including map overlays depicting the situation on the ground. These data, in some cases, were processed in a way to make it easily consumable by NATO and coalition forces in their eventual enforcement of a No Fly Zone over Libya in mid‐2011. This paper investigates whether the information collected and disseminated by Twitter users constituted tactical military intelligence. Some argue that to take advantage of open source information available through the Internet, organizations like NATO must first tackle the challenge of “determining how to deal with the huge amount of unstructured data in a useful and/or meaningful way.” On the contrary, this article shows how some crisis maps created during the Libyan Civil War met the minimum requirements to be considered tactical military intelligence.

LIBYA A YEAR LATER: SAD RESULTS

The world mass media absorbed recently by diplomatic somersaults round the Iranian nuclear program and the conflict in Syria, absolutely lost sight of Libya which appeared a year ago in focus of their attention. The number of articles devoted to Libya, published in 2011, exceeded number of the materials devoted to this country for the last thirty years. Meanwhile, since November of last year, mass media avoid Libya. Anniversary of antikaddafistsky revolution in Benghazi, begun on February 17, 2011, - a good occasion once again to talk about the reasons of bloody civil war in Libya and to sum up political activity of revolutionaries in this country.

Implementation of UN Resolution 1973, 2011 in Libya: The Medical and Ethical Concerns

The aim of this paper is to highlight some of the medical and ethical challenges that could be experienced by implementers of the United Nations Security Council Resolution, 1973, 2011 in Libya. The paper is written as action research, that is, writing the paper as events unfolded during the Libyan crisis, soon after the passing of UN Security Council Resolution 1973 on Libya. The paper relies on provisions of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 on Libya, print and electronic media reports, speeches made on radio and television, and military action broadcast live on television. The paper looks at the medical and ethical concerns that can arise from the implementation of the United Nations agreement by Member States. It is argued that the civil war in Libya can have negative medical consequences, raise ethical concerns and there could be atrocious casualties among the civilian population if rebels are let loose without the United Nations Security Council controlling their military activities. This paper sees the role of the United Nations Security Council as that of being a mediator or peace-maker and not a comrade-in-arms of rebels, or confederate of rebels or partisan fighter in support of the rebels. The rebels, like anywhere else in the world and by definition, do not belong to legitimate or registered political or ganisations or entities recognised at international law as authentic. The rebel group in Libya is faceless and there could be criminal and terrorist elements that operate in Libya under the guise of civil protests. It is contended in this paper that NATO should not fight alongside rebels, or take instructions from rebels about which Libyan government military sites to attack because NATO is a professional military organisation that is guided by medical and war ethics. In this context, Member States implementing the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, 2011 should seek to protect Libyan civilians and unarmed protesters. The Libyan army and armed rebels should be pushed away from civilians by NATO. Current and future studies could focus on peace initiatives, medical needs, war ethics and the investigation of factors that contribute to the escalation of civil war in Libya.

The Spread of Violent Civil Conflict: Rare, State-Driven, and Preventable

The 2011 U.S. intervention in Libya was unusual in a number of respects. It was, for instance, one of the few American military interventions in which humanitarian factors played a major role in policymakers’ decision-making. In one respect, though, the intervention was part of a strikingly typical pattern in American foreign policy. The Libyan civil war was the latest in a long line of violent civil conflicts in which Washington intervened, in part, out of the fear that the conflict might soon spread to other states, destabilizing the entire region and leaving an even bigger mess for the international community to clean up later. In his March 28 address to the nation justifying the intervention, President Barack Obama said, “A massacre [in Benghazi] would have driven thousands of additional refugees across Libya’s borders, putting enormous strains on the peaceful — yet fragile — transitions in Egypt and Tunisia.” In other words, if the killing in Libya had not been contained, it might have spilled over into two neighboring countries that were themselves in the throes of (mostly nonviolent) political instability.

Subaltern geopolitics: Libya in the mirror of Europe

In the wake of armed intervention and civil war in Libya, this commentary considers the changing ways that Libya has been represented in Western narratives. These include being part of a new ‘Roman Empire’ in Mussolini's geopolitics, loyal pro‐Western ally in the early Cold War after Libya's independence in 1951, ‘rogue’ and ‘terrorist’ state in the 1970s and 1980s, then success for Western sanctions and diplomacy and subsequently commercial opportunity and cooperative partner in constraining African migration to Europe in the 2000s. The commentary develops the category of subaltern geopolitics. It begins and ends however with issues of memory and massacre: in Libya and Lockerbie, Scotland.

Traversing the global oil summit (aka Hubbert’s Peak)

The monthly data for world oil production, published online by the authoritative United States Energy Information Administration, show that since the middle of 2004 production of conventional crude oil has reached a plateau at an average rate of about 74 million barrels (bbl) per day (see figure). During the past 7 years, production has exceeded that level only in April-May 2005, December 2005, February-March 2008, May-July 2008, and, most recently, July 2010 to February 2011. The highest-ever monthly global production - 75.3 million bbl/day - was achieved in January 2011. This peak was followed by a stage of rapid decline, surely explained by the events following the 'Arab Spring' uprising, particularly the Libyan civil war.