“Enough”: Western Libya Emerges From Darkness Into the Streets as the Dbeibah Government Reaps the Harvest of Years of Anger
Libya – Tuesday, 18 August 2026, was no ordinary day in western Libya. The burning tyres and blocked roads were not merely a fleeting reaction to power cuts and lawlessness. What spilled into the streets was the weight of anger accumulated over years—darkness merging with the soaring price of bread, disappearing fuel supplies with contaminated water, medicine shortages with a lack of cash, and the proliferation of weapons with the absence of the state. It seemed that citizens were no longer protesting a single crisis, but an entire “miserable” existence they had been forced to manage on their own.
From Tajoura and the Shatt Road east of Tripoli to Al-Harsha in Zawiya, and from Awlad Talib and Tiji in the Western Mountains to Misrata, the shortest and most telling slogan rang out: “Enough.” One word summed up years of promises and delivered a clear message to the Government of National Unity, headed by Abdul Hamid Dbeibah: the margin of public tolerance is narrowing, and citizens who have long endured division, corruption and militias can no longer withstand insecurity and the simultaneous loss of bread, water, electricity and medicine.
When Darkness Became a Mirror of the State
Over roughly 48 hours, western and southern Libya experienced three widespread power outages, with cuts in some areas exceeding ten hours a day amid an intense heatwave and growing demand for cooling and water. The crisis can no longer be dismissed as a technical malfunction to be contained by replacing an official or issuing a statement. Gas shortages, the insecurity that drove foreign companies to leave, and attacks on electricity infrastructure during repeated clashes were among the principal causes of the outages—and the government bears responsibility for these crises.
The latest drone attacks on facilities in Zawiya made the picture even darker. Explosive-laden drones caused fires in fuel tanks and the collapse of a petrol tank with a capacity of approximately 4.5 million litres. Electricity facilities were also targeted, prompting the US company General Electric to abandon its sites. These were direct attacks on an already fragile power grid, demonstrating how fuel and electricity supplies for millions of people can be disrupted while the security authorities remain unable to protect infrastructure that serves as the lifeline of daily life.
An Oil-Rich Country Searching for a Litre of Diesel
The contradiction is especially cruel in a country with Africa’s largest proven oil reserves, yet whose citizens are left chasing diesel tankers on the black market. The official price is no more than 0.15 dinars per litre, while citizens reported paying more than eight dinars when the crisis intensified. This calculation is not a minor economic detail: eight dinars is more than 53 times the official price—a difference of 7.85 dinars on every litre and an increase exceeding 5,233%.
That enormous difference does not simply vanish. It becomes wealth divided among monopoly and smuggling networks at the expense of citizens and the public treasury. While smugglers obtain subsidised fuel at an almost token price, bakers, farmers, transport operators and ordinary citizens pay dozens of times more. The cost is then passed on to bread, vegetables, transport and every other product reaching the market.
In her briefing to the UN Security Council, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Hanna Tetteh, said Libya spends approximately $1 billion a month on fuel imports even as its power stations face shortages, describing this as evidence that large volumes of subsidised fuel are being diverted from their intended destination. It is an equation that encapsulates a substantial part of the tragedy: the state pays in dollars, smugglers collect the profits, and citizens either stand in queues or buy what should be their right at more than 50 times the official price.
The Loaf That Broke the Barrier of Silence
When rising prices reach the loaf of bread, the crisis ceases to be a series of figures in economic bulletins and becomes a daily fear inside every home. Some bakeries raised the price of a long loaf to 750 dirhams—0.75 dinars—a level citizens described as the highest in living memory. The increase coincided with higher flour and diesel prices, growing operating costs and prolonged power cuts. In a country that imports more than 90% of its wheat requirements, any disruption in imports, distribution or the exchange rate poses a direct threat to the family table.
In the public consciousness, bread is not an ordinary commodity; it is the last line of security. When securing it becomes a burden, while employees cannot withdraw their salaries because of the cash shortage, people understand that the problem is no longer about standards of comfort but the ability to survive. Citizens may be forced to live with a damaged road or a dysfunctional administrative service, but they cannot ask their children to wait for government reforms before they eat.
Even Water and Vegetables Can No Longer Be Trusted
Citizens no longer fear only the price of food; they have begun to fear the food itself. Test results announced by the Office of the Public Prosecutor showed that approximately 65% of the agricultural samples examined contained residues of banned pesticides or substances internationally classified as carcinogenic or mutagenic, some of them above permitted limits. The revelations shook consumer confidence in fruit and vegetables, with citizens reporting that they had reduced their purchases or stopped eating some produce raw.
The figures on water are more complex and alarming. For accuracy, the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey conducted by the Bureau of Statistics and Census in cooperation with UNICEF did not state that more than 70% of Libya’s water was contaminated nationwide. The recorded rate of E. coli contamination in drinking water at the point of use was 46.4%, compared with 28% at the source. However, the rate exceeded 70% in specific areas, reaching 91.9% in Sirte, 85.1% in Jufra and 72.4% in Al-Margab.
E. coli indicates possible recent faecal contamination, which may result from sewage leakage, shallow wells being located close to cesspits, or the poor transportation and storage of water in unclean tanks. In other words, citizens may receive water that is relatively safe at its source only to drink it contaminated in their homes because of an entire system of neglect—beginning with the absence or deterioration of sewage networks across wide areas and extending to water tankers and household storage tanks.
Cancer Patients Caught Between Waiting for Medicine and Waiting for Death
There is no need to exaggerate the tragedy surrounding medicines; the reality is painful enough. Despite periodic announcements that shipments of cancer drugs have arrived, patients repeatedly complain of shortages in essential medicines and disruptions to treatment schedules. Some are forced to buy their medication on the private market or travel abroad if they can afford it, while others have no option but to wait.
The importation of cancer medicines has been the subject of investigations and allegations of procedural and technical violations, making the matter far more serious than a temporary shortage in a warehouse. Patients do not need a shipment delivered in front of television cameras; they need a continuous system that guarantees the medicine’s safety, effectiveness and validity, as well as fairness in its distribution. In diseases where the success of treatment depends on precise scheduling, a delayed dose can turn an administrative failure into a harsh sentence on a human life.
Dollar Salaries for Syrian Mercenaries—and Fears of Resettlement
While citizens search for dinars trapped in the banking system, Syrian mercenaries stationed in Tripoli gathered outside the Police Officers College to demand overdue financial payments, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Locally circulated footage showed armed men firing into the air, while local sources said Abdul Salam Al-Zoubi, an undersecretary at the Government of National Unity’s Defence Ministry, intervened to return them to their camps after promises that the payments would be settled. No adequate official disclosure has been issued explaining the amount demanded, the source of the funds or the legal basis for the continued presence of these fighters.
This scene cannot be separated from another wave of anger witnessed in Tripoli and other Libyan cities in recent months, when protesters rejected irregular migration and what they described as attempts to resettle migrants in Libya. Objections have focused on the continued return to Libyan territory of migrants intercepted at sea and on policies that protesters believe facilitate the long-term presence of large numbers of migrants in the country instead of returning them to their countries of origin. For parts of the public, the issue has shifted from a humanitarian and security matter to a question involving sovereignty, demographic composition, and the state’s ability to protect its borders and impose a clear migration policy.
The scene alone was enough to ignite anger: a foreign mercenary demanding his salary in dollars while carrying a rifle, as a Libyan citizen is unable to withdraw his salary in dinars or secure a loaf of bread. At the same time, public fears are mounting over thousands of irregular migrants remaining in the country and being returned there by the Dbeibah government’s Interior Ministry after interception at sea. The issue is not merely financial or security-related; it concerns the meaning of sovereignty, the ordering of priorities, and the question Libyans have repeated for years: Who protects citizens and the state’s borders when weapons become the fastest way to secure demands, while the issues of mercenaries and irregular migration remain without final solutions?
Nearly Fifteen Years of Militias
Since 2011, Libyans have lived under the weight of armed groups whose names and loyalties change while they retain their weapons, influence and ability to obstruct institutions and close roads and facilities. Governments have come and gone, and there has been repeated talk of integrating or dismantling these formations and building professional military and police forces. Yet citizens continue to hear gunfire in their neighbourhoods and see armed convoys and unofficial checkpoints.
Over time, weapons have ceased to be merely a security problem. Under the Dbeibah government, armed influence has spread into the economy, politics and public administration, with some groups wielding power over ports, airports, fuel, contracts and institutions. Insecurity therefore means more than the possibility of another armed clash; it also means that public money, services and state decisions can be subjected to those who possess force rather than those who possess rights.
Corruption Fed by the Absence of Transparency
Alongside the daily crises are mounting allegations involving fraudulent letters of credit, the smuggling of subsidised goods, uncontrolled spending, monopolised privileges and contracts, and the lack of transparency surrounding revenues from vital sectors, including telecommunications and fuel. Professional standards do not permit every circulating allegation to be presented as fact without documents and court rulings. Yet the government’s failure to publish detailed disclosures identifying ultimate beneficiaries, contracts and spending leaves the door open to suspicion and makes the government responsible for providing answers.
A state that asks its citizens for patience must, in return, disclose where the money went, who obtained the letters of credit, how the telecommunications and fuel budgets were spent, who monitors the movement of subsidised goods, and why crises keep recurring despite the flow of oil revenue. Silence does not dispel allegations; it gives them more room to grow.
From Tajoura to Al-Harsha and the Mountains, the Street Says “Enough”
In the hours leading up to Tuesday, 18 August, roads were closed in Tajoura, along the Shatt Road and in areas south-west of Tripoli. Protesters also took to the streets in Al-Harsha in Zawiya, while Awlad Talib and Tiji in the Western Mountains witnessed demonstrations against deteriorating services and living conditions. Tyres were set alight, slogans were chanted, and other areas threatened to widen the protests.
These people did not take to the streets to demand exceptional privileges. They came out for electricity that does not disappear, water that does not make their children ill, fuel that is not monopolised by smugglers, bread they can afford, medicine available when needed, salaries they can withdraw and roads not controlled by armed groups. These are the most basic functions of any state, yet in Libya they have become a list of wishes.
Significantly, the demonstrations were no longer confined to a single demand over public services. They assumed a broader political character, with slogans holding the Dbeibah government responsible for the deterioration. This shift is what should concern the authorities: when the public moves from asking, “When will the electricity return?” to asking, “Why is this government still in power?”, the crisis has moved beyond the limits of a technical repair.
In Misrata, an Illuminated Festival and a City Asking About Electricity
In Misrata, Dbeibah’s hometown, the protest tent outside the municipal council stood as evidence of the widening opposition. Part of the anger focused on the Al-Arar Festival, scheduled for 18–22 August with the participation of government and local bodies and extensive preparations.
Protesters and local pages circulated a figure exceeding 70 million dinars as the festival’s alleged cost, but the organisers did not publish a detailed budget that would allow the figure to be independently verified. The absence of a confirmed figure does not invalidate the question. A festival is not in itself a crime, and culture is not the enemy of the citizen, but the timing, scale and transparency of public spending become legitimate issues when neighbourhoods are plunged into darkness and people cannot secure bread and medicine.
For protesters, the scene was provocative: a huge stage, lights and celebratory preparations set against homes without electricity and families calculating the price of the morning’s bread. When the authorities fail to explain their priorities, every light illuminating a festival stage becomes a reminder of a darkened home.
The Citizen Who Became His Own State
Over the years, Libyans have learned to find their own solutions to every crisis. They buy electricity generators, water tanks, black-market fuel and medicines from abroad. They pay for private education for their children, treatment at private clinics and guards to protect their shops. When they need their salaries, they search for a bank with available cash or accept losing a portion of their money in exchange for obtaining banknotes.
Citizens pay taxes and fees while the state rests on enormous oil wealth, yet at the end of the day they must finance a private substitute for every public service the government has failed to provide. When a person is required to become an electricity company, water authority, bank, hospital and security agency at the same time, the state is not merely weak; it has effectively withdrawn from that person’s life.
Blocking roads has become the final option for some citizens who feel that statements, complaints and waiting no longer reach anyone. It is a painful tactic that harms other citizens, but it reveals the depth of despair: when effective channels of accountability disappear, the street becomes the only institution people believe might make their voices heard.
Has the Countdown to Losing Control Begun?
The question is no longer whether the Dbeibah government can contain the anger, but how long citizens will continue to be forced to pay the price of its failure. These citizens were not parties to weapons deals, did not benefit from suspicious letters of credit and did not participate in dividing influence and revenues. Yet they have always been the first to receive the bill for corruption and the last to receive public services.
They slept in darkness while billions were squandered, stood outside banks searching for a portion of their salaries, chased fuel on the black market, bought bread at prices they had never known before, and feared vegetables because of pesticides, water because of faecal contamination, hospitals because of missing medicine, and roads because of uncontrolled weapons. When every avenue narrowed around them, the street became the only place left to say that the situation was no longer bearable.
This anger was not born overnight, nor was it ignited by one additional hour without electricity. It is the harvest of years of humiliation in daily life, government failure and corruption protected by weapons. For years, the Dbeibah government spoke of achievements while citizens used their own money to construct an alternative to the state: generators for electricity, tanks for water, private healthcare, private education and black-market fuel. They came to finance their lives twice—once through public money whose destination they do not know, and again from their own pockets to obtain services the government was supposed to provide.
The political division long used to justify failure can no longer obscure the truth. The Dbeibah government controls the institutions, resources and revenues of western Libya and spends billions of dinars. It therefore cannot evade responsibility for cities sinking into darkness, citizens unable to obtain fuel, bread and medicine, or armed men imposing their presence in the streets while security remains absent from people’s lives.
For this reason, “Enough” was not merely an angry chant. It was the verdict on an entire period in which promises collapsed and the government lost what remained of public trust. It is the voice of citizens who are no longer demanding prosperity but fighting for their most basic rights, and who no longer wait for the authorities to acknowledge suffering they experience every day in their homes, banks, bakeries and hospitals.
Libyans have been patient for long enough. They have paid more than any people living above one of Africa’s richest lands should have to pay—in years of their lives, their money and the security of their children. If the demonstrations spread in the coming days, it will not be because the street has spun out of control, but because the government lost control of its duties long ago and abandoned citizens to face darkness, rising prices, illness and weapons alone.
When burning roads become the people’s last means of proving that they still exist, the problem is not public anger but an authority that failed to hear their suffering until it became a scream. What is happening today in Tajoura, Zawiya, the Western Mountains and Misrata may be only the beginning of a moment when citizens realise that silence no longer protects them and that rights denied by the government can be reclaimed only through their own voices.
People took to the streets because they felt they had nothing left to lose: no fuel, no affordable bread, no safe water, no guaranteed medicine, no cash and no security. After the Dbeibah government failed to protect lives that citizens themselves have come to describe as “miserable”, it is hardly surprising that people are beginning to seek their own salvation—or that the slogan “Enough” may grow from a word written on walls into a popular wave capable of writing the political ending of a government that has left behind a wealthy country and a citizen exhausted by need.
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