New Report: Blessing And Curse: Petroleum profits, control and fragility in Libya.

I'm delighted to announce the publication of my new report, 'Blessing And Curse: Petroleum profits, control and fragility in Libya.’ Written with Emad Badi for the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, the report looks at how Libya’s petroleum wealth has had both a positive and negative impact on the country's fragility. 

The benefits of oil are well known, with profits from petroleum sales providing citizens and the state with an economic buffer, offsetting the impacts of weak state capacity, chaotic politics and violence. 

However, the central economic importance of petroleum products has also led to negative impacts on fragility. This is not due to one single dimension, but rather a confluence of separate, though often reinforcing, dynamics. Perceptions of unfair resource allocation have led communities in oil and gas producing areas and regions to disrupt production, in order to press for jobs and a more equitable sharing of profits.  Conflict entrepreneurs have transformed the control of oil and gas infrastructure into an economic weapon.  The official entity tasked with protecting infrastructure and ensuring production, the Petroleum Facilities Guard, is a key part of the problem, with field units repeatedly halting production and transport of oil and gas.

The report delves into these dynamics in greater depth and sketches out a synchronized strategy to address them, involving targeted economic development, security sector reform, and national dialogue on resource sharing. 

The report ican be found here: http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/libyen/19331.pdf

New Chapter: Largely fleeting and hardly convergent: Libyas crime-terror nexus

I'm delighted to announce my latest publication: "Largely fleeting and hardly convergent: Libyas crime-terror nexus", authored in collaboration with Mark Micallef.

Since the 2011 revolution, Libya has been a state beset by conflict and fragility. Much of the international community's focus on Libya has been on ramifications of this weakness: terrorism, organized crime, and the risk of a crime-terror nexus. However, despite international concerns and ample opportunity for a nexus to emerge in Libya between terrorist organizations and criminal groups, the striking feature of the post revolution years has been the general paucity of engagement between the two types of actors. ISIS attempts in Sirte to profiteer from criminals failed, in part because the group's limited geographic footprint was easily circumventable by criminal actors. In Sabratha, contrasting incentives between ISIS and criminal groups, and the military power of the criminals, enabled the expulsion of the terrorists. In southern Libya, in contrast, AQIM has endured by pursuing a low-key approach, which accommodated local communities and armed groups. The cases presented underscore that Libya, saturated as it is with well-armed actors that depend on the black economy for their funding, is a difficult context to access for foreign terrorist organizations seeking to profit from the country's illicit economy.

The chapter is available here, though it is behind a paywall: https://www.elgaronline.com/view/edcoll/9781788979290/9781788979290.00023.xml

New Chapter: Extractive Resource Protection in Libya - The Challenge of Reforming and Supporting the Petroleum Facilities Guard

One important clause of Libya’s 2020 ceasefire agreement was the reform of the country’s Petroleum Facilities Guard.

 I delve into the substantial challenges to that goal in my new chapter, "Extractive Resource Protection in Libya - The Challenge of Reforming and Supporting the Petroleum Facilities Guard," contained within the DCAF compendium The Road To Stability: Rethinking SSR in Post Conflict Libya. 

The chapter looks at the evolution of Libya's PFG, details its current structure and operational challenges, and assesses the impediments and opportunities for reform.

The compendium, and information on the launch event, is available here.

Report Launch: Conflict, Coping and Covid: Changing human smuggling and trafficking dynamics in North Africa and the Sahel in 2019 and 2020

I'm delighted to provide my latest report for the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime: "Conflict, Coping and Covid: Changing human smuggling and trafficking dynamics in North Africa and the Sahel in 2019 and 2020."

Written in collaboration with Mark Micallef, Rupert Horsley, Alexandre Bish, Alice Fereday, and Peter Tinti, the report details human smuggling and trafficking trends (and broader organized crime, security and political issues around them) in Libya, Tunisia, Chad, Niger and Mali. It encapsulates the monthly reporting the GI has conducted on the subjects throughout 2019 and 2020 (and which remains ongoing).

The report can be found here: https://globalinitiative.net/analysis/smuggling-trafficking-sahel-2020/