Here is a columnist in Forbes, Ethan Chorin, he probably has an idea of what is going on, excerpts:
Gaddafi overthrown:
.... But the hands-off approach by the U.S. and NATO encouraged states like Turkey and Qatar to steer national elections in Libya in favor of parochial groups and Islamist minorities. This development, once it was apparent, was deeply opposed by most Libyans, who were powerless to stop it. This was the immediate context for the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, drove the West out of Benghazi, and facilitated the city’s takeover by Al Qaeda and then, the Islamic State.
... Promising to deliver Benghazi from Islamic extremists, former Gaddafi-era general Khalifa Heftar created the Libyan National Army, which through a bloody war of attrition freed Benghazi from the ISIS-Al Qaeda grip in 2016. Although Heftar’s actions were popular within large parts of Libya, the international community has spurned Heftar as yet another authoritarian strongman and backed a U.N.-built political agreement, which arbitrarily took authority from an elected government and put it in the hands of an unelected, and still unratified body, hoping it would rubber-stamp Western air attacks on the emergent Libyan franchise of the Islamic State, and solve the migrant issue. It did neither: U.S. strikes were largely ineffective, and the refugee crisis eased only when Italy paid human traffickers – operating in the shadow of the Tripoli government – to keep migrants in Libya, under appalling conditions.
...
The authors warned at the start of the conflict in 2012 that NATO would have to deal with the Gordian knot of the Libyan militias sooner or later. And while many in the West realize it, few are willing to state the obvious: Heftar has been doing NATO’s dirty work. Turning a blind eye to this reality, now as in the past, carries significant risks: if Heftar manages to take control of Libya, the popular assumption will be that this was the West’s preferred outcome all along, and NATO and the West will have limited leverage over what comes next.
Read more at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ethanchorin/2019/12/03/libya-and-the-future-of-nato/#199f1f226b7f
In a nutshell, this is talking about the "vacuums" that often happen after intervention.
Good column and though, a member of OPEC, so a fair amount of oil and perhaps other valuable natural resources, Libya has a population of something like only 8, 10 million. So in that aspect, small per population. A lot of people wonder, do we want to make deep sacrifices over this?
Good analysis in the column though by Ethan Chorin.
