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Earlier this month, Libya stopped issuing visas to citizens from many European nations, prompting condemnation from the European Commission.

Libya's move came after Switzerland allegedly blacklisted 188 high-ranking Libyans, denying them entry permits. The Swiss ban is said to include Mr Gaddafi and his family. The row began after the arrest of Mr Gaddafi's son Hannibal and his wife, Aline Skaf, in Geneva in July 2008. They were accused of assaulting two servants while staying at a luxury hotel in the Swiss city, though the charges were later dropped. Libya retaliated by cancelling oil supplies, withdrawing billions of dollars from Swiss banks, refusing visas to Swiss citizens and recalling some of its diplomats. In the same month that the Gaddafis were arrested, Libyan authorities detained two Swiss businessmen, in what analysts believe was a retaliatory move.

Oasis farmers by tradition, the Tibu supported the rebel side in last year's uprising against Gaddafi. Their opponents are ethnic Arabs who see the Tibu, a group that also lives across the border in Chad and Niger, as outsiders.

In the chaos since Gaddafi's fall, the south has become a smuggling route for weapons which are reaching al Qaeda militants deeper in the Sahara and Tuaregs who are staging a separatist rebellion in northern Mali.

It is also used for trafficking legal and contraband goods such as alcohol, cigarettes and drugs, and by African immigrants heading north in the hope of reaching Europe.

Without a genuine army, Libya's National Transitional Council has struggled to persuade the many militias who fought Gaddafi across the country to join the armed forces and police, limiting its ability to intervene quickly in troublespots.

Analysts say the fighting will not tear the country apart, but it underlines the insecurity. "There is very little the government is currently able to do to prevent further clashes from occurring, either in the same locales or in new ones," Geoff Porter of North Africa Consulting said.

"That said, the fighting does not pose an existential threat to the viability of the country. The fighting has not been motivated by explicit grievances with the state, it is not driven by secessionist tendencies, and it does not appear to be underpinned by political ideology.

Effective central control, meanwhile, is largely absent. And into this vacuum have stepped armed groups – whether politically, religiously or financially inspired matters little – all claiming sectional suzerainty over the multitude of fractured fiefdoms that was, until Nato barged in, a unified state.

Research published in June by the Small Arms Survey suggested that the emergence and influence of armed groups challenging national government and army was accelerating rapidly. The survey identified four distinct types including experienced revolutionary brigades accounting for up to 85% of all weapons not controlled by the state and myriad militias – loosely defined as armed gangs, criminal networks and religious extremists bent on exploiting post-revolution weakness.

In Misrata, for example, in addition to about 30,000 small arms, revolutionary brigades "control more than 820 tanks, dozens of heavy artillery pieces, and more than 2,300 vehicles equipped with machine-guns and anti-aircraft weapons." Misrata, scene of some of the worst fighting last year, has become a state within a state.

the Salafists who besieged the Benghazi consulate have also been involved in a wave of attacks on historic Sufi mosques and libraries and attempts to intimidate female university students who eschew the hijab.

western politicians who, just as in Iraq, jumped feet first into a complex situation without sufficient care or thought for the future.