Ulf Laessing - Understanding Libya Since Gaddafi

First published in the United Kingdom in 2020 by

C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd.,

41 Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3PL

Ulf Laessing, 2020

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United Kingdom

Distributed in the United States, Canada and Latin America by Oxford University Press, 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

The right of Ulf Laessing to be identified as the author of this publication is asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

A Cataloguing-in-Publication data record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 9781849048880
ISBN: 9781787384965 (e-book)

This book is printed using paper from registered sustainable and managed sources.

www.hurstpublishers.com

For Tahani, with love

I always wanted to write a book about Libya, as Tripoli was the most interesting and also the most intense posting Ive had as a foreign correspondent for Reuters.

Id like to thank Mary Fitzgerald and Umar Khan, two friends I made during my time in Libya, for urging me to go ahead with my plan. I would have given up without their constant encouragement. Mattio Toalda, Hend el-Amry and Ehab Abdulgader were also a great source of inspiration.

Jalel Harchaoui and Tarek Megerisi, two other distinguished Libya experts, and my former Reuters colleague, Ghaith Shennib, and the current Reuters team on the ground, Ahmed Elumami and Ayman al-Warfalli, gave me invaluable advice and shared their immense knowledge of Libya with me. Mary was kind to introduce me to Michael Dwyer at Hurst, who helped me finetune my original idea.

I would also thank my employer, Thomson Reuters, for allowing me to write the book. Of course, the views expressed here (along with any errors) are my own, and should not be attributed to my employer.

Id also like to thank my editor, Colin Cooper from Grand Apostrophe.

Finally, I cant thank enough my dear wife Tahani, and my parents, who have supported me throughout the project.

Libya combines within the borders of one country virtually all the obstacles to development that can be found anywhere: geographic, economic, political, sociological, technological.

Benjamin Higgins, UN-appointed economist, 1951

At first glance, one might think Libyas descent into chaos after the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi need not have happened. The North African country sits on Africas largest proven oil reserves and contains within its borders significant natural gas reservoirs. Its central bank had, by the time of the first anti-Gaddafi protests in February 2011, more than $120 billion in its coffers. The Libyan sovereign wealth fund owned assets around the globe in the form of Chinese bonds, stakes in Italian and Bahraini financial institutions and investments in tourism and agricultural projects around Africa worth a total of $65 billion.