“The nation formerly known as Libya has split itself into three: the emirates of Fezzan, Cyrenaica, and Tripolitania”
Musa al-Gharbi : Libya – two years, three states, two civil wars? ■ The NATO intervention in Libya was an unmitigated disaster. At the outset, Washington policymakers believed that the people would rise up en masse against Gaddhafi, and embrace the new “democratic” government which was installed in the aftermath of his execution. This didn’t happen. Instead, NATO was pulled ever deeper into the theater because there were few military or government defections, Gaddhafi didn't buckle in the fact of direct Western intervention, and the people did not rise up against him in substantial numbers; they would not even support the rebels with food, water, or supplies. Despite the no-fly zone, his forces continued to close in on Benghazi, forcing NATO to expand its military involvement, to include arming and training the rebels. Ultimately, the tide was turned by the participation of AQIM; an al-Qaeda detainee released from Guantanamo Bay became one of the most prolific leaders of the rebellion. The organization offered their support to the rebels early on in the protests—and why shouldn’t they have? The government was moving in on their territory. According to the CTC, Libya provided the highest number of foreign insurgents in Iraq, per capita; most of these hailed from east, a la Benghazi. But even the influx of al-Qaeda fighters was insufficient to “close the deal.”
F. William Engdahl: Libya in anarchy two years after NATO Humanitarian Liberation