London, United Kingdom – Sarah Mizran, a 32-year-old architect, was a teenager when Tripoli fell in August 2011, as opposition fighters swept into the capital.
It was the beginning of the end for Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Having ruled for 42 years, he was soon captured and killed near Sirte.
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Eight years ago, Mizran left the city for the United Kingdom.
“Libya loses more than just skills when young professionals leave,” she told Al Jazeera. “It loses a sense of possibility when an entire generation grows up feeling that they have to leave in order to build a future, and that leads to a loss of hope in the country itself.”
For people like Mizran, the battle set in motion a departure that is still unfolding 15 years on.
Already drawn to the concept of sustainable architecture and what it could mean for Libya, Mizran pursued a master’s degree in architecture in southern England.
“Leaving was a decision to invest in my own development, rather than a decision to leave (anything) behind,” she said. “Due to the situation and the conflicts that were taking place, that made returning to Libya and building a meaningful career even more difficult.”
She was 24 when she arrived in the UK on a scholarship to study at the University of Kent.
“I had to learn a different professional culture, a different way of working, and in many ways just find my place again. But that experience has given me perspective and skills that I would not otherwise have had,” she said.
She is far from alone.
Nader Elgadi, 36, was running his own media company in Tripoli when, in late 2014, fighting broke out around the capital’s airport during Libya’s second civil war.
He also came to the UK for a master’s degree and had planned to go home, but as threats to activists mounted, he stayed instead.
“I went from running my own business and living comfortably in Libya to starting my life from scratch in the UK,” he said. “The first two years were really hard.”
Elgadi founded Libya in the UK in 2018, a cultural charity “to create the Libya that we wanted to have after we managed to end the dictatorship”.
The group hosts events for the diaspora community trying to build “a sense of that country we always wished for”.
Home, ‘something we create again and again’
Fifteen years on, both describe the UK as home, even as Libya pulls at them.
“Home is not something we find once and keep forever,” Mizran said. “It’s something we create again and again.”
Elgadi calls himself “a nomad” who has stopped expecting to return for good, even as his consultancy still works with Libyan clients.
Whether that dispersal of talent has held Libya back is up for debate.
Tarek Megerisi, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said “tens of thousands of very good, technically proficient people” are still working in Libya’s ministries, but claimed they are blocked from doing their jobs by more senior officials with little interest in governing.
Much of that took root soon after the revolution, he believes.
“After the revolution there was a mass return of Libyans from all across the world. Many skilled young professionals, but also older Libyans, whose qualifications and whose experience were often vastly overstated, used their standing to secure political positions and promised to lead the country to democracy. Instead, they basically just acted like Gaddafi’s government did,” Megerisi said.
He said corruption plagues some ministries in an environment that has driven away the generation that came of age after 2011.
“Young professionals who gained qualifications and had early experience working in the late stage of Gaddafi’s Libya, which was a bit more open,” were genuinely excited the revolution might catalyse their careers, he said. “All of that kind of just got run into a quagmire.
“It’s very sad to see … now all the young generations who have any ambition for their life, they just want to leave the country.”
He summed up Libya’s governance by paraphrasing Kahlil Gibran’s poem, Pity the Nation, “Pity the country that has two governments and nobody interested in governing.”
Megerisi said the talent pool “would come back in a heartbeat should there be a real, valid, credible opportunity”.
Toby Chitayat, an associate at CRI Menas, a UK risk consultancy, is more sceptical that the brain drain is doing much damage.
Set against Libya’s east-west split, its volatile oil revenue and endemic corruption, he argued its effect on governance or investor confidence “is comparatively minimal” but acknowledged that it remains “far too early to say anything definitive about the prospect of serious re-engagement with the country.”
For those who left, calculus is more personal.
Mizran has spent recent years studying sites in Tripoli, working out what rebuilding the city might mean beyond simply putting up new buildings.
“Ultimately, as an architect, I want to be part of rebuilding Libya’s architectural landscape,” she said. “I don’t know exactly what that return will look like yet, but I know that remains part of the future that I’m working towards.
“A sense of stability in the country will prompt a stronger wave of the diaspora wanting to return,” she said. “You cannot simply just ask people to come back because their country needs them. You have to create a country they can believe in and build their lives in.”