government had to fall back from the capital to Tobruk, which Khalifa Haftar was responsible for the security of.

From then on, Egypt and the UAE played a leading role in the Libyan crisis, weaponizing and financing Haftar’s troops, sending air support to the Battle of Benghazi and endeavoring to gain the Tobruk (HoR) government’s legitimacy in the international arena.

Libya for the UAE functions as a field where the Emirates, which is aiming to become an economic and military power in the region, can act as an independent actor and defend its foreign policy interests. The Emirates started playing a big role in shaping the geopolitics of the region, adding their military forces to the equation on top of their foreign politics and impacting regions outside the Gulf.

Egypt hasbeen another significant actor as a neighboring state to the region since the international military intervention on Libya in 2011. However, following the 2013 coup, Libya became an area of much greater interest due to the economic resources that the newly established authoritarian regime needed.

On the other hand, the political dialogue period that was initiated in the summer of 2014, carried out by the UN and outlined in 2015 with the Libyan Political Agreement in Skhirat, Morocco, ground to a halt due to France and Italy revising their foreign policies in favor of military leader Khalifa Haftar, especially after the Paris Summit in May 2018 and the Palermo Summit in November 2018.

In a period where security is becoming a central theme in the Mediterranean for both countries, the