Long Arms of Libya: How Regional Ties Create Libya’s Arms Trafficking Challenges

Long Arms of Libya:  How Regional Ties Create Libya’s Arms Trafficking Challenges

Preamble

Since the Arab Spring began in 2011, Libya has grown into a regional hub for trafficking small arms including guns, shoulder mounted missiles, and mortars.  Weapons have been trafficked in from external nations including the United States of America and the State of Qatar.  Caches of weapons have also been looted from depots that were formerly under control of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi before he was killed and overthrown.

Since then, weapons have also been trafficked out of Libya in many directions, including to Egypt in the East and to Algeria, Mali, Niger, and Chad in the West and South.  The networks used to bring these weapons in by land, air, or sea before dispersing them across Libya and North Africa has, thus far, been under-studied and misunderstood.

A Network Analysis

I want to answer the following question: what are key social connections in the North African context that facilitate weapons to be transferred to conflict zones other than the ones they were intended for?  Are tribal or family relationships the strongest indicator of arms networks?  Or are political or religious affiliations better indicators of illicit network channels?

Why is this Important?

This is important because the crisis in Libya is likely continue through the coming years.  The relationships between armed groups will be important for containing the conflict and will also be an indicator of how to look for networks of influencers, information, alliances, and money.  The information would also be predictive of where conflict might arise in the future.  For example, if there is an area of Mali that currently has regional conflict but limited weaponry but has tribal ties shared with people in Libya, would this be an indicator that the Mali region might soon experience further conflict due to access to weapons through a tribal network?

Without better understanding the networks that allow for the State of Libya to become a hub of illicit weaponry, this small country of about six million individuals will likely remain a distributor of arms and centerpiece of instability for years to come.

Data Required

The data for this project will rely on several forms of research.  1) ACLED conflict data set which contains information on what kinds of weapons were used and by which groups in North Africa, 2) anthropological and sociological data on where different tribes, political, terror, and religious groups overlap. 3)  Newspaper and terrorism watch journals to identify overlap of weapons traffickers and different identity groups.

Details of the Network Analysis

The network analysis will focus on the following methods:

   Sub-group analysis: What are the historic tribal, political, business, and religious networks in Libya and how do they overlap with surrounding countries?

   Betweeness: Which groups sit in the path of major choke points (cities, ports, roadways, etc)?

   InDirection:  Monitor for groups, like Qatari proxies who exclusively bring weapons into Libya.

   OutDirection:  Monitor trade groups on the Egyptian border that exclusively take arms out of Libya.

   BiDirectional:  Groups that both gather and distribute weapons.

Next Steps for Further Analysis

Core issues that are unlikely to be addressed by this network analysis but that should be followed up in future analysis include:

Further research would include comparing connectivity of networks for weapons in North Africa to networks that trade other good whether illicit like drugs, human trafficking, or legitimate activities like oil and natural resources, commodities, and textiles.

Similarly, it would be useful to see how networks of diaspora Libyans work into the illicit weapons trade in the country and how diaspora networks in the Libyan context compare to illicit arms trafficking in other regions, such as the Irish diaspora for the Irish Republican Army.