UAE and Qatar manage shifting policies, fluid alliances in Libya

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar played an active role in the military campaign to overthrow Moammar Gadhafi back in 2011. Since then, Abu Dhabi’s and Doha’s approaches to Libya have evolved tremendously but have always been characterized by rivalry and an aggressive foreign policy that targets each other’s efforts, allies and proxies in Libya. 

Following the overthrow of Gadhafi, the Qatari-Emirati rivalry in Libya went through phases of competing aggressive policies inside Libya. This included targeted media campaigns, the funding of various Libyan media outlets and social media pages, the use of Twitter and Facebook bots, and at times even direct military and financial support to their Libyan proxies and allies.

Notably, Qatar and the UAE have adopted two very different approaches to the kind of alliances they sought to build in Libya. While Qatar developed alliances with Islamist and hard-line revolutionary currents, the UAE developed alliances with nationalist and non-Islamist leaning currents.

Islamists vs. nationalists