Internal and external dimensions of the foreign intervention: The case of Libya following the Arab Spring

Unlike Tunisia and Egypt, the uprising in Libya was more violent, which made it the target state for the first application of the principle of responsibility to protect (military intervention against the will of the targeted state under the pretext of protecting civilians). Although it was called a humanitarian intervention, it was participation in humanitarian disaster consisted eight months of civil war that ended with the killing of Gaddafi and the overthrow of the regime. This was the starting point of a complex and continuing state of instability which Libya is suffering from. The aim of this study is to investigates the role of the major factor in Libya after the uprising (external interventions) in prolonging the state of instability without neglecting its interaction with the domestic circumstances. This study includes three chapters: first, the theoretical framework that provides the theoretical knowledge required to achieve the objectives of the study, such as the definitions of the external interventions, the position of international law on them (their legitimacy). It also examines the internal circumstances that attract the interveners (Interventional environment), in addition to the foreign policy motives of the countries intervening in Libya, and the role of external interventions and their impact on the duration of civil wars. Second chapter will be the case study that concentrate on how internal and foreign parties interacted throughout Libya's four major events over the previous decade. Finally, the last chapter provides an analytical understanding of the interactions between the external interveners and the domestic parties through the past decade, which shows how the intervening parties exploited internal conditions such as political division and security weakness to interfere in the internal affairs of Libya and obstruct the constitutional path, to be the main reason for prolonging the transitional process and continuing the state of instability. Keywords: civil war domestic; circumstances; foreign interventions; Libya; state of instability; Uprising.