Libya’s Long Reach: Transnational Repression and the Infrastructure of Disappearance

Executive Summary

Authoritarian states increasingly reach beyond their borders to monitor, intimidate, and disappear their critics abroad. Libya is among the states that best exemplify the use of transnational repression, including enforced disappearance, to silence detractors. Libya’s two rival authorities, the internationally recognized Government of National Unity in Tripoli and the eastern Government of National Stability dominated by Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan Arab Armed Forces, have relied on regional partners to locate and detain opponents in neighboring states and to regulate the political activity of diaspora and exile communities. They do so, as their predecessors did, through formal security cooperation and informal channels of influence, drawing in the armed groups aligned with each. The resulting cross-border infrastructure extends Libya’s internal rivalries across North Africa and the Mediterranean while also attracting neighboring governments. The centrality of disappearance within existing security structures conditions not only the behavior of diaspora communities but also the ability of external actors to engage responsibly with Libyan security institutions.

The continuing practice of enforced disappearance degrades the institutions on which a settlement between Libya’s rival authorities would depend and distorts the negotiations meant to produce one. A durable political settlement depends on three things: that enforced disappearance is curbed, that accountability is strengthened, and that longer-term institutional rebuilding is supported. As Washington re-engages with Libya through new security and energy partnerships, it has both the interest and the leverage to ensure that its engagement strengthens accountable institutions rather than the structures that sustain disappearance.