For observers tracking Libya’s frozen political transition, the real story is no longer simply which faction controls which town. It is how external supply chains and inventive sanctions evasion are reshaping the balance of power on the ground and locking the country into a longer, more dangerous stalemate. Over the course of 2024, Khalifa Haftar’s eastern authorities consolidated leverage over critical infrastructure and border corridors in ways that have been materially enabled by persistent violations of the United Nations arms embargo.
The practical mechanics of that enablement are now familiar to intelligence and naval analysts. Open reporting documented a visible pattern in early and mid-2024: cargoes originating from Russian logistics hubs, routed through Syrian ports and onto commercial vessels, have arrived at eastern Libyan ports where Haftar-aligned forces exercise control. Those consignments included heavy equipment and vehicles that, while sometimes presented as civilian cargo, are plainly useful for military operations and force projection. The pattern points to a deliberate effort to convert maritime commerce into a vector for rearming and entrenching proxies.
At sea and in the air, enforcement frictions compound the problem. The European Union’s Operation Irini and similar monitoring efforts continued to document suspicious flights and boardings in 2024, but the operational reality is that interdiction is hard, intelligence is imperfect, and legal thresholds for seizure can be high. Naval and air monitoring generated reports and recommendations, but each interdiction or inspection that failed to yield a clear legal breach served only as a signal that the supply chain could be nudged rather than stopped. That structural weakness has allowed material flows to persist even as they have become more covert and professionalized.
On land, Haftar’s control of eastern oil facilities and export chokepoints gives the LNA both revenue and bargaining chips. In October 2024 the eastern administration announced steps to resume production and exports at major fields after liftings of blockades earlier in the year, a reminder that control of hydrocarbons remains the most durable form of local power in Libya. That economic leverage reduces the marginal cost to Haftar of courting external patrons prepared to supply hardware, training or contractors in exchange for influence and access.
A declining taboo among regional and global actors is central to this dynamic. The UN Panel of Experts and public reporting in 2024 described the arms embargo as functionally ineffective. Member states and nonstate actors that once cloaked their assistance now permit or manage multi-leg logistics chains and training exchanges that are difficult to trace, much less to interdict. Where a generation ago transfers looked amateurish and episodic, they now resemble disciplined logistical campaigns calibrated to exploit gaps in international enforcement regimes.
The wider geopolitical payoff is obvious. For external patrons and private military companies, Libya is a low‑cost theatre in which to gain operational experience, test export routes into the Sahel, and secure political and economic returns tied to energy and migration leverage. For Haftar, the availability of dependable external logistics and contractor support reduces incentives to compromise at the negotiating table. The result is a feedback loop: arms and training improve battlefield posture, battlefield posture strengthens bargaining power, and stronger bargaining power attracts more external support. The country’s political trajectory becomes subordinated to durable networks of supply and patronage rather than to domestic reconciliation.
What does this mean for policy? First, it requires a reorientation from episodic interdiction to supply-chain denial. Nations and coalitions committed to reducing violence in Libya must target the logistics nodes rather than only the end points. That means better integration of maritime domain awareness with port-state control, more aggressive flag and registry enforcement, and legal instruments that can quickly detain or deny port access to vessels implicated in deception. It also means elevating interdiction authorities so that inspections which uncover militarily useful cargoes do not simply result in a paperwork review.
Second, sanctions and diplomatic pressure must be calibrated to the modern evasions: shadow fleet practices, rapid reflagging, and cargo transshipment through third countries. The international community should prioritize collective measures to identify and penalize broker networks, service providers and flag states that facilitate persistent evasion. Naming and shaming can be useful, but it must be matched with enforceable steps that make reflagging and spoofing administratively costly.
Third, the Western and regional approach to Haftar needs consistency. Outreach that oscillates between cautious engagement and rhetorical condemnation creates incentives for lateral hedging by target states. If partners intend to disincentivize patronage of armed actors, they must align commercial, financial and diplomatic levers over time to make the cost of backing violence higher than the expected return. That includes tighter monitoring of financial flows from oil revenues, and clearer consequences for states that enable militarization.
Finally, Libya’s trajectory is a reminder that arms embargoes are only as effective as the political will behind them. A sanctions regime without sustained, resourced, multilateral enforcement becomes a legal ornament rather than a tool of stabilization. If the international community wants Libya to converge toward a political settlement, it must treat the embargo not as a static rule but as an active campaign: integrated maritime tracking, intelligence sharing, joint port inspections, and legal reforms to chase down intermediaries who profit from conflict. Those steps are harder and more intrusive than issuing statements, but the alternative is a protracted militarized equilibrium in which local actors, regional patrons and private military providers all profit from fragmentation.
Libya’s blood and its oil remain leverage points for outside powers. The choices those powers make now will determine whether Libya becomes a durable hub for contested arms flows across the central Mediterranean and the Sahel, or whether the country’s polity can be nudged back toward negotiation and governance. The operational ingenuity of sanctions evaders is not a law of nature. It is a challenge of policy design and sustained political will. If the world wishes to prevent further consolidation of violence in eastern Libya, it must act on that realism with coordinated tools that match the sophistication of the evasion networks themselves.