Economic Violence

Abstract

In October 2013, ten gunmen in the Libyan city of Sirte intercepted and robbed a cash transfer vehicle carrying $55 million from the Libyan Central Bank (Laessing and Shennib, 2013). This robbery was just one — certainly high profile — example of the spiralling violent crime rate in Libya since the brief civil war in 2011 which ended the 42-year dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi. Officially the murder rate has increased by 500 per cent in the two years following the fall of the regime (Libya Herald, 9 January 2013). Although crime rates in societies emerging from authoritarian regimes and war are notoriously unreliable, there is general acceptance that crime has increased dramatically in Libya in recent years (OSAC, 2013). The rising crime rate could be the result of many factors, not least of which are the porous borders with Sudan, Chad, Niger and Algeria, the release of some 15 000 prisoners during the war and the ubiquitous presence of weapons in Libyan society. Two other factors can be added to these explanations and both these factors are closely associated with Libya’s experience of civil war: firstly, the presence of armed, organised groups in society that were protagonists during the war and have not been disarmed or decommissioned. They have retained their guns and their networks which could now be applied in pursuit of violent crime in the absence of a political cause.