The world hardly needs reminding of what follows when states are allowed to fail. Whether it was Afghanistan offering safe haven to Al Qaeda before the events of September 11, 2001, Somalia fostering the scourge of piracy or Syria’s chaos allowing the rise of ISIL, the consequences of failed states rarely stay neatly within their lawless borders.
All this explains why the international community has a clear self interest in Libya emerging from its post-Qaddafi nightmare and fulfilling its considerable potential. Signs of progress have been emerging from the country, such as the announcement that a referendum on the new constitution will go ahead as planned in December. But the fact that the announcement was made in Tobruk because Tripoli has become a battleground between rival militias speaks volumes about Libya’s problems.
On one hand, the country is blessed with natural resources such as oil and gas, as well as having one of North Africa’s best educated populaces – many of whom are now in self-selected exile. But four decades of Muammar Qaddafi’s autocratic and nepotistic rule meant it had effectively no civil society to provide stability and continuity after his downfall.
Complicating this further is the violent legacy of Qaddafi's overthrow, which saw arms flow into the country and the creation of battle-hardened militias that see little incentive to hand over to civilian rule. The fierce five-week battle for Tripoli's international airport between mostly Islamist fighters and a nationalist militia showed that.
As history has shown time and again, rebuilding societies takes much longer and is much more difficult than destroying them. But equally obvious from any reading of history is that the alternative is unthinkable.
The crucial question is how to achieve this in Libya to prevent it becoming the next Afghanistan, Somalia or Syria. A return to constitutional government of the kind envisaged in the draft constitution is a start but that will not take root unless Libya is able to create a national military involving from most of the militias. Nobody should underestimate the difficulty of this but it can be done, as Lebanon showed after its bloody civil war.
The source of the assistance for Libya is equally important and this is a time for the Arab League to rise to the challenge. Egypt in particular has much at stake in preventing Libya destabilising the whole of North Africa. But as ISIL has shown, the international community as a whole has to act.