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Libya looked like the latest fragile blossoming of the Arab spring

Army commanders, mostly of Arab Bedouin origin, refused orders to shoot the protesters

the revolutionaries cobbled together a National Transitional Council (NTC) claiming to represent all of Libya

Volunteers from students to bank managers took up arms, joining popular militias and only sometimes obeying the orders of defecting army commanders trying to take control

In August Western bombing of government bases surrounding Tripoli cleared an avenue for the revolutionaries to take the capital.

Recognised abroad, popular at home and enjoying the benefits of healthy oil revenues—97% of the government’s income—the NTC was well placed to lay the foundations for a new Libya

he judges, academics and lawyers who filled its ranks worried about their own legitimacy and feared confrontation with the militias which, in toppling Qaddafi, had taken his arsenals for their own.

militia leaders were already ensconced in the capital’s prime properties

The NTC presided over Libya’s first democratic elections in July 2012, and the smooth subsequent handover of power to the General National Congress (GNC) revived popular support for the revolution.

Islamist parties won only 19 of 80 seats assigned to parties in the new legislature, and the process left the militias on the outside

The Homeland party, founded by Abdel Hakim Belhad

tried to advertise its moderation by putting an unveiled woman at the head of its party list in Benghazi

The incumbent prime minister, Abdurrahim al-Keib, a university professor who had spent decades in exile, fretted and dithered

He bowed to militia demands for their leaders to be appointed to senior ministries, and failed to revive public-works programmes

which might have given militiamen jobs

Many received handouts without being required to hand in weapons or disband, an incentive which served to swell their ranks

the number of revolutionaries registered with the Warriors Affairs Commission set up by the NTC was about 60,000; a year later there were over 200,000. Of some 500 registered militias, almost half came from one city, Misrata.

In May 2013 the militias forced parliament to pass a law barring from office anyone who had held a senior position in Qaddafi’s regime after laying siege to government ministries.

In the spring of 2014, Khalifa Haftar, a retired general who had earlier returned from two decades of exile in America, forcibly tried to dissolve the GNC and re-establish himself as the armed forces’ commander-in-chief in an operation he called Dignity

The elections which followed were a far cry from the happy experience of 2012. In some parts of the country it was too dangerous to go out and vote

Such retrenchment has been particularly noticeable among women. In 2011 they created a flurry of new civil associations; now many are back indoors.

Turnout in the June 2014 elections was 18%, down from 60% in 2012, and the Islamists fared even worse than before

Dismissing the results, an alliance of Islamist, Misratan and Berber militias called Libya Dawn launched a six-week assault on Tripoli. The newly elected parliament decamped to Tobruk, some 1,300km east

Grasping for a figleaf of legitimacy, Libya Dawn reconstituted the pre-election GNC and appointed a new government

So today Libya is split between two parliaments—both boycotted by their own oppositions and inquorate—two governments, and two central-bank governors.

The army—which has two chiefs of staff—is largely split along ethnic lines, with Arab soldiers in Arab tribes rallying around Dignity and the far fewer Misratan and Berber ones around Libya Dawn.

Libya Dawn controls the bulk of the territory and probably has more fighters at its disposal.

General Haftar’s Dignity, which has based its government in Beida, has air power and, probably, better weaponry

the Dignity movement proclaims itself America’s natural ally in the war on terror and the scourge of jihadist Islam

Libya Dawn’s commanders present themselves as standard-bearers of the revolution against Qaddafi now continuing the struggle against his former officers

Ministers in the east vow to liberate Tripoli from its “occupation” by Islamists, all of whom they denounce as terrorists

threatens to take the war to Egypt if Mr Sisi continues to arm the east. Sleeping cells could strike, he warns, drawn from the 2m tribesmen of Libyan origin in Egypt.

Yusuf Dawar

The struggle over the Gulf of Sirte area, which holds Libya’s main oil terminals and most of its oil reserves, threatens to devastate the country’s primary asset

And in the Sahara, where the largest oilfields are, both sides have enlisted ethnic minorities as proxies

ibya Dawn has drafted in the brown-skinned Tuareg, southern cousins of the Berbers; Dignity has recruited the black-skinned Toubou. As a result a fresh brawl is brewing in the Saharan oasis of Ubari, which sits at the gates of the al-Sharara oilfield, largest of them all.

Oil production has fallen and become much more volatile

oil is worth half as much as it was a year ago

The Central Bank is now spending at three times the rate that it is taking in oil money

The bank is committed to neutrality, but is based in Tripoli

Tripoli may have a little more access to cash, but is in bad shape in other ways

Fuel supplies and electricity are petering out

Crime is rising; carjacking street gangs post their ransom demands on Twitter

In Fashloum

residents briefly erected barricades to keep out a brigade of Islamists, the Nuwassi

“No to Islamists and the al-Qaeda gang” reads the roadside graffiti

Libya’s ungoverned spaces are growing,

Each month 10,000 migrants set sail for Europe

On January 3rd, IS claimed to have extended its reach to Libya’s Sahara too, killing a dozen soldiers at a checkpoint

The conflict is as likely to spread as to burn itself out.

the Western powers

have since been conspicuous by their absence. Chastened by failure in Afghanistan and Iraq, they have watched from the sidelines

Obama washed his hands of Libya after Islamists killed his ambassador

Italy, the former colonial power, is the last country to have a functioning embassy in Tripoli.

Even under Qaddafi the country did not feel so cut off

Dignity is supported not just by Mr Sisi but also by the United Arab Emirates, which has sent its own fighter jets into the fray as well as providing arms

The UAE’s Gulf rival, Qatar, and Turkey have backed the Islamists and Misratans in the west

If oil revenues were to be put into an escrow account, overseas assets frozen and the arms embargo honoured he thinks it might be possible to deprive fighters of the finance that keeps them fighting and force them to the table

Until 1963 Libya was governed as three federal provinces—Cyrenaica in the east, Fezzan in the south and Tripolitania in the west

The old divisions still matter

the marginalised Cyrenaicans harked back to the time when their king split his time between the courts of Tobruk and Beida and when Arabs from the Bedouin tribes of the Green Mountains ran his army

Tensions between those tribes and Islamist militias ran high from the start.

July 2011 jihadists keen to settle scores with officers who had crushed their revolt in the late 1990s killed the NTC’s commander-in-chief, Abdel Fattah Younis, who came from a powerful Arab tribe in the Green Mountains. In June 2013 the Transitional Council of Barqa (the Arab name for Cyrenaica), a body primarily comprised of Arab tribes, declared the east a separate federal region, and soon after allied tribal militias around the Gulf of Sirte took control of the oilfields.

In the west, indigenous Berbers, who make up about a tenth of the population, formed a council of their own and called on larger Berber communities in the Maghreb and Europe for support

Port cities started to claim self-government and set up their own border controls.

Derna—a small port in the east famed for having sent more jihadists per person to fight in Iraq than anywhere else in the world

opposed NATO intervention and insisted that the NTC was a pagan (wadani) not national (watani) council

Some in Derna have now declared their allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the caliph of the so-called Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq.

In December the head of America’s Africa command told reporters that IS was training some 200 fighters in the town.

women should wear "appropriate" clothing when they go out.

There have been multiple mass sexual assaults on women during protests the past three years.

security forces dragged a female protester to the ground, pulled up her top to reveal her blue bra and stomped on her chest.

female protesters at the time were forced to undergo humiliating "virginity tests" when detained by the military.

Violence is a "very intimidating weapon" against women participating in public life

"If there is no democratic climate, how would you benefit from these beautiful laws?" said Abdel-Hameed. "It will be the same as under Mubarak: you have a beautiful law but it's not implemented."

The document explicitly enshrines equality between the sexes and women's rights to education, work and high political office.

"It's not just more progressive than the 2012 constitution, it's more progressive than the 1971 constitution . from the gender perspective,

Women have only been allowed to be judges since 2007

guarantees their right to hold high positions in the judiciary

2010 court decision barred women judges from the State Council, a powerful judicial body that regulates disputes between individuals and the state and reviews legislation.

January she wrote to the State Council demanding it take on women judges in light of the constitution.

The Council replied b

two percent of the seats in the last parliament,

sought criminal action against the National Council for Women.

"the mentality of the decision-makers

is the main obstacle to the carrying out the promises of the constitution.

low representation of women in government.

lowest in the Arab world

violated appropriateness and manners"

We're tired of the government and officials .

creation of a Commission on Discrimination with real judicial power

more women judges; a

he presence of women in parliament and local council

and the nullification of the draconian protest law,

gender issues should be mainstreamed across all government bodies.

activate a unit specialized in fighting violence against women and "the health sector should take into account reproductive rights.

h clinics should provide contraception and treatment for STDs

women's issues are never a priority for anyone

parts of the constitution may make enforcing the women's rights provisions harder.

Venezuela is one of the world's largest oil exporters, but thanks to economic mismanagement it was already finding it difficult to pay its way even before the oil price started falling.

Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter and Opec's most influential member, could support global oil prices by cutting back its own production, but there is little sign it wants to do this.

There could be two reasons - to try to instil some discipline among fellow Opec oil producers, and perhaps to put the US's burgeoning shale oil and gas industry under pressure.

Saudi Arabia needs oil prices to be around $85 in the longer term, it has deep pockets with a reserve fund of some $700bn - so can withstand lower prices for some time.

were to force some higher cost producers

In the 1980s the country did cut production significantly in a bid to boost prices, but it had little effect and it also badly affected the Saudi economy.

Saudi Arabia, Gulf producers such as the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait have also amassed considerable foreign currency reserves, which means that they could run deficits for several years if necessary.

Islamic State, capturing oil wells. It is estimated it is making about $3m a day through black market sales - and undercutting market prices by selling at a significant discount - around $30-60 a barrel.

"The growth of oil production in North America, particularly in the US, has been staggering," says Columbia University's Jason Bordoff.

It has been this growth in US energy production, where gas and oil is extracted from shale formations using hydraulic fracturing or fracking, that has been one of the main drivers of lower oil prices.

"Shale has essentially severed the linkage between geopolitical turmoil in the Middle East, and oil price and equities," says Seth Kleinman, head of energy strategy at Citi.

With Europe's flagging economies characterised by low inflation and weak growth, any benefits of lower prices would be welcomed by beleaguered governments. A 10% fall in oil prices should lead to a 0.1% increase in economic output, say some. In general consumers benefit through lower energy prices, but eventually low oil prices do erode the conditions that brought them about.