The southern Libyan region of Fezzan has for years been a structural pressure point in Libya’s fragmented political order. What was once framed as periodic protest and localized sabotage has, by 2025, started to look like the early stages of a resource contest in which water itself is becoming a tool of leverage. This is not a sudden phenomenon. It is the predictable result of depleted aquifers, overcentralized water infrastructure, and political marginalization intersecting with a marketable capacity to disrupt national lifelines.
Two technical facts anchor the emerging dynamic. First, Libya relies heavily on nonrenewable groundwater in the south for agriculture and as a strategic reserve. Analyses of the Murzuq aquifer system and modelling of irrigation abstractions show a deeply stressed basin with limited prospective recharge, and projections that intensive abstraction will lead to severe drawdown in the coming decade unless abstraction regimes change.
Second, the Man-Made River project and the Al-Hasawna well fields remain both the country’s most important water-transfer infrastructure and a vulnerability. The system supplies population centers far from the Sahara wells that feed it. Repeated incidents of vandalism, looting and even blasts on pumping stations and transmission lines have already reduced output and forced emergency rationing in coastal cities. Those attacks show how fragile national-level water provisioning is when security and maintenance are not guaranteed.
Those technical and infrastructure realities meet politics in Fezzan. The region sits on major oilfields such as Sharara and hosts communities that long complain of poor service provision and exclusion from national revenue streams. In earlier years local groups successfully used shutdowns of the Sharara field and other oil infrastructure to press demands over fuel, investment and public services. The same grievance logic can be, and increasingly is, applied to water. The incentive structure for local actors is clear. Water infrastructure is visible, relatively easy to target, and when impaired produces immediate, high-profile effects in the north.
What we are witnessing is not yet widespread conventional combat over water resources, and it is important not to sensationalize. Most incidents have been sabotage, theft and protest backed by local armed groups rather than interstate military campaigns for aquifers. Nonetheless the pattern is alarming for three reasons. First, groundwater depletion in basins such as Murzuq reduces the margin for coping with interruptions and increases competition at the local level. Second, the politicization of water protection squads or brigades means water wells become de facto assets controlled by armed actors, which raises the chance that disputes will escalate. Third, attacks on the Man-Made River have direct national economic and humanitarian consequences, amplifying the strategic value of controlling or disrupting southern water fields.
Regional and external actors are not yet openly fighting over Fezzan water. But the convergence of energy politics, militia patronage networks and transnational smuggling routes in the Sahara creates pathways through which third parties can exploit local grievances. That matters because Libya’s southern borderlands are also transit corridors linking Sahel states, which have their own water and land stress problems. A local Libyan water crisis can therefore have spillover effects on migration, banditry and regional tensions. The strategic conclusion is straightforward. Water insecurity in Fezzan is both a domestic state-building problem and a regional risk multiplier.
Policy responses must accept that purely technical fixes will not suffice. Three priority lines of action would reduce the probability of escalation. First, protect critical water infrastructure through a mix of community contracting, neutral multilateral oversight and better-resourced local security arrangements that avoid simply recreating militia patronage. Second, implement rapid demand management and resilience measures including repaired and decentralized distribution points, emergency reservoirs, and targeted subsidies for household-level storage and treatment so supply interruptions do not immediately translate into crisis. Third, pair protection and resilience with a political compact for the south. Investments and revenue-sharing agreements that credibly tie southern communities to long term benefits will undercut the incentive to weaponize water. International partners should offer conditional technical assistance and monitoring while insisting on civilian control and transparency of any security arrangements.
Longer term Libya needs a strategy to shift water intensity away from unsustainable groundwater abstraction. That will require diversifying supply through coastal desalination, investing in efficiency for agriculture which consumes the lion’s share of water, and instituting robust groundwater management regimes. Those are expensive and politically difficult choices, but the alternative is a slow, grinding attrition in which the south becomes a permanent bargaining chip and occasional flashpoint for national disruption. The security cost of postponing these investments will almost certainly exceed their fiscal cost.
The cautionary takeaway is this. As of May 8, 2025 the dominant manifestations of the Fezzan water crisis are sabotage and protest seeking leverage, not interstate ‘‘water wars.ʼ Yet the underlying hydrogeological stress, the strategic centrality of the Man-Made River, and existing patterns of grievance and militia control create a credible pathway toward more intense resource-driven conflict. Policymakers should treat the problem as a strategic security challenge and act with urgency to de-escalate incentives for violence while building the technical resilience that Libya will need if it is to avoid water becoming a permanent fault line in its fragile state order.