Popular discontent with the repressive nature of security institutions and security forces in North Africa was the precipitating cause of the uprisings that composed the Arab Spring. Across the region the security apparatus was structured to protect regimes from their people. Security ministries, military and police were instruments of internal repression. Security forces operated with 
SSR Blog
Category Archive
Category | Libya
Security Sector Reform in North Africa: Why It’s Not Happening
By: Robert M. Perito | Wednesday, January 7th, 2015Is Military Intervention in Libya the Answer?
By: Raeesah Cachalia | Wednesday, November 5th, 2014Three years after the toppling of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, Libya is far from the democratic state many had envisioned and hoped for. Instead the country finds itself fragmented into an alarming number of armed groups, raising fears of a full-scale civil war.
Understanding the New War for Post-Liberation Libya
By: Eric Muller | Wednesday, September 24th, 2014Libya is entering a dangerous new phase in its post-liberation politics. While rival militias fight for key political and economic footholds across the country, those members of the legislature still occupying their seats and a number of senior government officials have decamped from Tripoli and fled to a Greek car ferry in the eastern town
Goodbye Libya, and welcome to the Islamic Emirate of Benghazi?
By: Simon Allison | Friday, August 15th, 2014Last week, Libya’s House of Representatives (representing who, exactly, in Libya’s fractured polity?) elected a new president. Aguila Saleh Iissa, an independent lawmaker from the eastern town of al-Qobba, is the country’s sixth head of state since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi.
Reforming Libya’s Post-Revolution Security Sector: The Militia Problem
By: David McDonough | Wednesday, May 21st, 2014Libya’s post-revolution government has experienced growing political instability in recent months, first with the kidnapping and then ouster of Libya’s first post-Gaddafi prime minister Ali Zeidan, followed by the abrupt resignation of his interim replacement Abdullah al-Thani after an attack on him and his family. Incoming Prime Minister Ahmed Maiteeq was only appointed following a
Post-Revolution Challenges to Libyan Border Security
By: David McDonough | Wednesday, April 16th, 2014Following the overthrow of Gaddafi, Libya’s new government confronted a steadily declining political and security situation. In Benghazi, where the 2011 revolution began, there has been an upward trend of violence. The capital Tripoli has seen armed men besieging government ministries and even storming Parliament. Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan was first kidnapped and more
A New Paradigm for Libya
By: Abdul Rahman AlAgeli | Tuesday, March 11th, 2014To understand security sector reform (SSR) and the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) of combatants in Libya, it’s important to think outside the sometimes constrictive box of theoretical frameworks and to instead analyse the issues from a rational and common sense perspective. Thus far, not many people have looked at SSR and DDR in such
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