Libya's Fragmentation

Reviews / Votes

Wolfram Lacher has made a remarkable contribution to the literature on civil conflict and the Libyan civil war by putting forward the transformative effects of violent conflicts on communities. His work is crucial for political scientists and policymakers seeking to understand how the political and military landscape in Libya has fragmented and why the actors are still in dispute with each other. * LSE Review of Books * A remarkable combination of fieldwork and theory, Libya's Fragmentation is highly recommended for diplomats, journalists, and scholars. * Middle East Journal * Lacher's book is certain to become an essential reference on the North African country. * Politique Etrangere (Bloomsbury Translation) * This book is a rich, empirically informed treatment of an important and neglected topic. Wolfram Lacher sets out an intriguing puzzle about fragmentation in post-Qadhafi Libya. What makes the book stand out is the depth of the fieldwork - not only are there few academics or researchers working on the ground in Libya, but the research he conducted over the years is fundamentally non-replicable. This is likely to be one of the very few books of its kind, able to combine field research with theory to explain this period of Libya's history - with implications well beyond Libya. This book is unquestionably a milestone in research on Libya and conflict dynamics in the country. At the same time, its theoretical insights make a significant contribution to the study of violent conflict. This work is likely to become a standard reference not only on Libya, but in the study of civil wars more broadly. This could easily become the defining book on the crisis in Libya since 2011 Based on extensive fieldwork inside Libya, over 400 interviews and deep contextual knowledge, Libya's Fragmentation is a major contribution to recent scholarship on the war-torn North African country. Moreover, the book's insights into the dynamic interplay between armed actors and the social groups from which they emerge have resonance beyond the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Libya's Fragmentation is the only book available today which both takes Libya's complexity seriously, while attempting to say something more broadly about the nature of civil war and society, as such it deserves to become as staple of North African politics and civil war studies courses for years to come. Wolfram Lacher's book on post-Qadhafi Libya is sure to become an indispensable reference on the North African country. The many visits the author made to Libya since 2007 give him access to a large range of factual details and witness accounts. Lacher's meticulous work tangibly and vividly immerses the reader in the uncertainty and the extraordinary danger of these few weeks of 2011 that were so crucial in shaping the post-Qadhafi era. Lacher advances a novel theoretical framework that emphasizes the centrality of the process of Libya's unravelling. In doing so, he makes a significant contribution to scholarship on contemporary events in Libya and to conflict studies more broadly. The book masterfully retraces the breakdown of Libya's transitional process, the outbreak of a second bout of civil war in 2014, and the current governance crisis.