Can oil money and fancy shopping malls finally unite Libya?

The bottom line is that Libya could not have asked for better circumstances than [those that existed] in 2022 or, so far, in 2023," says political scientist Jalel Harchaoui, an associate fellow with the UK-based think tank the Royal United Services Institute. Oil is pumping, and prices currently offer the country a good income. And the population that's sharing that money is comparatively small, at about 7 million.