‘Everything Goes to Tripoli and for the South,There’s Nothing’. EU Migration Externalization and Grievances in a Marginalized Southern Libya

I. Introduction

Even if there are lulls and peaks in Mediterranean crossings, Libya has, over the past decades, remained the principal transit country for migrants embarking on high-risk journeys from North Africa to Europe. Since the fall of the Gaddafi regime in 2011, Libya has been characterized by political fragmentation, institutional rivalry and armed conflict (Lacher, 2020), conditions that have exacerbated irregular migration and contributed to the proliferation of smuggling routes, detention facilities and associated violence (Eaton and Yousef, 2025). Migration has not only persisted in this context; it has become embedded within Libya’s post-revolutionary hybrid economy, where militias and formal state institutions overlap (Lacher and Tubiana, 2025).

In response to rising arrivals to Italy and other southern European states, the European Union (EU) and individual European governments have deepened their engagement with Libyan authorities, particularly those based in Tripoli and coastal western Libya. ¹ From 2015 onward, reducing migration flows across the Central Mediterranean became one of the few policy objectives capable of generating broad consensus across EU member states, an agenda ‘that all of Europe could get behind’ (Megerisi, 2020: 31). Externalization of migration control—relocating border enforcement beyond EU territory—thus emerged as a central organizing principle of European engagement with Libya (Pacciardi and Berndtsson, 2022; see also Cobarrubias and Lemberg-Pedersen, 2025; Vammen et al., 2023 for its historical embedment).

European support has taken various forms: development assistance, security-sector capacity building, training, equipment provision and operational coordination with the Libyan Coast Guard and migration authorities. These interventions have aimed to reduce departures, disrupt smuggling networks and stabilize communities. Yet they have also had unintended and contested consequences. Research shows that European engagement has normalized cooperation with actors embedded in Libya’s fragmented security landscape and, in some cases, empowered practices within the smuggling and detention industry that blur the lines between law enforcement and organized extraction (Al-Dayel et al., 2023; Horsley, 2025; Tinti, 2024; Vella, 2024). At the same time, brutality against migrants—including arbitrary detention, extortion, torture and forced labour—has become structurally entrenched in Libya’s migration regime and tacitly tolerated within the broader architecture of externalized control (Human Rights Watch (HRW), 2023; Lucht, 2024; Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), 2024).

While scholarship has analyzed the effects of EU externalization in northern coastal Libya—particularly in relation to maritime interception and detention centres around Tripoli and Misrata—southern Libya remains comparatively underexplored (Collombier and Lacher, 2023: 15; Stocker and Al-Fallani, 2023: 70; Wehrey, 2017, 2018). Yet Libya’s Fezzan region and southeast Cyrenaica constitute critical migration corridors, as widely recognized (International Crisis Group, 2017). Migrants from West Africa, East Africa and the Horn of Africa traverse these territories en route to northern labour markets or Mediterranean departure points. Southern Libya is therefore not peripheral to migration governance; it is foundational to it (see also de Lange, 2023; Tinti, 2024).

This article examines how EU migration externalization is perceived and negotiated in southern Libya. Based on fieldwork conducted in 2022 and 2023 in Kufra and towns across the Fezzan, it analyses how migration governance intersects with local political economies, hybrid authority structures and longstanding regional marginalization. The article argues that the EU’s geographical concentration of migration cooperation in northern Libya contributes to a sense of exclusion in the south. This exclusion is not merely fiscal but political: it concerns recognition, institutional consolidation and participation in decision-making arenas (Fernández-Molina and Casani, 2023). Externalization thus interacts with and may reinforce Libya’s internal hierarchies.

Rather than conceptualizing externalization solely as a strategy of border management, this article approaches it as a political economy intervention that redistributes partnership status, institutional legitimacy and material resources within a fragmented state. By foregrounding southern Libya, it demonstrates that the consequences of externalization are not only transnational but intra-state. EU engagement does not operate externally to Libya’s political order; it becomes embedded within it (Horsley, 2025; Lacher and Tubiana, 2025; Tinti, 2024).

The central research question guiding the analysis is: How does the EU’s externalization of migration management, and its geographic concentration in northern Libya, shape grievances, governance and conflict dynamics in southern Libya?

The article proceeds as follows. First, it outlines the trajectory and scope of EU support mechanisms in Libya. It then engages with the relevant literature on migration externalization, hybrid governance and Libya’s conflict economy, and regional and racial marginalization in the south. After presenting the methodological approach, it analyses empirical findings structured around three themes: local perceptions of EU externalization; hybrid governance and the migration economy; and political grievances and racialized exclusion. The discussion situates these findings within broader debates on externalization and political economy, and the conclusion reflects on the implications for EU policy and Libya’s fragile political environment.

II. European Union Support Mechanisms in Libya

The EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF) for Libya was launched in 2015–2021 as part of the broader EUTF for Africa (European Union, 2022), which aimed to address the root causes of irregular migration and displacement in regions such as the Sahel and Lake Chad, the Horn of Africa and North Africa. Officially, the EUTF sought to stabilize communities, improve governance and create economic opportunities in order to reduce migration pressures. In Libya, the fund focused on migration management, border control, coast guard support and humanitarian assistance, particularly for migrants and internally displaced persons.

During this period, the EUTF provided substantial support for migration management. Funding was channelled toward training and equipping the Libyan Coast Guard, improving the functioning of detention centres and supporting return programmes implemented by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) (see Brachet, 2024, for IOM’s ‘ambiguous’ role in Libya) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Resources were also allocated to community stabilization initiatives, including support for municipalities and local service provision. While the EUTF formally concluded in 2021, its policy architecture has not disappeared. Its objectives were largely incorporated into the North Africa Window under the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument (NDICI) (see Cassarino, 2025, for an overview of EU aid as leverage).

In parallel, EU civilian missions under the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), including the European Union Border Assistance Mission in Libya (EUBAM Libya), continue to provide advisory and technical support. Moreover, EUNAVFOR MED Operation IRINI maintains a naval presence in the Mediterranean, with a mandate primarily focused on enforcing the UN arms embargo on Libya, while also monitoring smuggling networks and supporting the capacity-building of Libyan maritime authorities (EEAS, 2026).

This institutional continuity indicates that migration containment has become embedded in the EU’s external action architecture rather than remaining a temporary crisis response (Cobarrubias and Lemberg-Pedersen, 2025; Fakhoury, 2022; Reslow, 2019). Cooperation with Libyan security institutions is no longer ad hoc; it is structured and ongoing. Migration management and containment have become a central organizing principle of EU–Libya engagement. Libya occupies a pivotal position within this containment logic. Its geographic proximity to Italy and Malta makes it a key departure point for Mediterranean crossings. The development reflects a pragmatic calculation: despite institutional fragmentation and documented abuses, Libyan actors exercise de facto control over segments of the migration route.

Criticism of this cooperation has been substantial. Human rights organizations, journalists and international bodies have documented severe abuses in Libyan detention facilities and against migrants intercepted at sea. The 2023 report of the UN Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Libya concluded that there were reasonable grounds to believe that crimes against humanity had been committed against migrants, including arbitrary detention, murder, rape, enslavement and enforced disappearance (Human Rights Council, 2023; see also Amnesty International, 2017; Farge and McDowall, 2023). The report noted that institutions implicated in these abuses, including the Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration (DCIM) and the Libyan Coast Guard, received ‘technical, logistical and monetary support’ from the EU and its member states.

European officials have maintained that engagement aims to improve standards, strengthen institutional capacity and ensure the protection of human rights. When questioned in the European Parliament regarding the UN report, Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi responded that the EU’s ‘constructive engagement with the Libyan authorities’ would continue in pursuit of ensuring the protection of human rights in the context of migration (European Parliament, 2023). This position reflects an unresolved tension at the heart of EU externalization policy: cooperation is justified as a means of improving governance and human rights, yet elements of government are themselves embedded in systems of coercion and extraction.

Importantly, EU engagement in Libya is not limited to migration control. Humanitarian assistance, municipal support and stabilization initiatives operate in parallel. In southern Libya, projects implemented through UN agencies and international non-governmental organizations have supported local services and infrastructure. However, migration containment remains one of the most politically salient dimensions of external cooperation and ‘region-building’ (Fakhoury, 2022; see also Talleraas and Vammen, 2025; Vella, 2024).

The prioritization of maritime interception has institutional implications. Training, equipment provision and diplomatic engagement concentrate around coastal security actors capable of influencing sea departures. Border governance in southern Libya, while structurally essential to the migration route, occupies a less visible position within EU policy frameworks. This practical and symbolic association is politically consequential, especially in a fragmented governance environment. In Libya, where authority is contested and institutions overlap with militia networks, inclusion in international cooperation frameworks can confer recognition and status. Conversely, perceived exclusion from these frameworks may reinforce narratives of marginalization.

III. Literature

This article brings together three strands of scholarship: research on migration externalization, analyses of hybrid governance and conflict economies in Libya, and studies of regional and racial marginalization in southern Libya. Integrating these literatures allows migration externalization to be conceptualized not simply as a border-control mechanism, but as a redistributive political economy intervention within a fragmented state (see also Brachet, 2024).

Müller and Slominski (2020) conceptualize externalization as governance beyond borders: it shapes policy outcomes and border enforcement in third countries while maintaining formal distance. In the European context, this has included readmission agreements, funding for third-country border forces, training of security personnel, maritime interception cooperation and institutional capacity-building (Panizzon and van Riemsdijk, 2018; see, for instance, Müller and Slominski, 2020; Vammen et al., 2023). While often justified in terms of addressing ‘root causes’ or enhancing cooperative migration management, such arrangements raise fundamental questions about accountability, sovereignty and the reallocation of responsibility.

However, externalization is not merely a displacement of authority outward from Europe; it is also an intervention into the domestic institutional ecology of cooperating states. Externalization also entails internalization of local agendas and consequences on the ground, including ownership of governance failures (Cold-Ravnkilde and Nissen, 2020; Lucht, 2022). Delegated border governance involves selecting interlocutors, allocating funding, providing training and conferring recognition. These processes redistribute material resources and symbolic capital among institutional actors.

Recent scholarship emphasizes that externalization produces broader transformations than originally intended. Talleraas and Vammen (2025) describe these consequences as ‘rippling effects’—sociopolitical changes that extend beyond migration management to reshape governance practices and lived experiences. Ripples may be material, such as altered funding streams or enhanced enforcement capacity, or non-material, such as shifts in legitimacy, inclusion and authority. As Vammen et al. (2023) argue, externalization casts a ‘long shadow’ that extends beyond border enforcement, reshaping domestic governance arrangements and political hierarchies within ‘partner states’. Crucially, these effects are mediated through local contexts and actor strategies.

Externalization does not unfold in a political vacuum; European migration priorities intersect with domestic political economies, existing hierarchies and conflict dynamics. Local actors may strategically engage with migration governance to enhance their position, negotiate international recognition or secure financial flows. As Greenhill (2022; see also Reslow, 2019; Tsourapas, 2017) demonstrates, migration increasingly functions as leverage within international bargaining. Especially in asymmetrical power relations, the ability to control or disrupt mobility becomes a resource that can be instrumentalized. In contexts characterized by fragmented sovereignty, engagement with one institutional node may alter internal balances of authority, and externalization, therefore, functions as a redistributive mechanism, conferring legitimacy and partnership status unevenly.

Libya’s post-2011 order is widely described as characterized by hybrid governance rather than simple state collapse. Formal institutions coexist with militias embedded in patronage networks and revenue-generating arrangements (Eaton, 2018; Lacher, 2020). Authority is pluralized and negotiated. Armed groups often operate under official umbrellas while maintaining autonomous command structures and economic interests. Eaton (2018) conceptualizes Libya as a conflict economy in which control over state institutions, oil infrastructure, smuggling corridors and checkpoints generates revenue. Militias capture rents through embedding themselves in ministries, security agencies and local administrative structures. The distinction between licit and illicit authority is blurred, as institutional mandates are frequently instrumentalized for economic gain.

Migration has become central within this conflict economy. Lacher and Tubiana (2025) argue that migration control now constitutes a dominant arena of political contestation. Armed actors leverage their capacity to intercept, detain or facilitate migrant flows to accumulate political capital and international recognition. Control over detention centres and transit corridors generates revenue streams through taxation, extortion and smuggling facilitation (Eaton and Yousef, 2025).

Hybrid governance, thus, complicates narratives of institutional weakness. Rather than an absence of authority, Libya exhibits layered authority, in which formal and informal structures overlap. Migration governance is embedded within these hybrid arrangements. Institutions such as the DCIM and the Coast Guard operate within networks that include militia actors. Externalization interacts with this landscape. Support to specific institutions—for example, coast guard units in Tripoli—may strengthen certain networks without resolving systemic fragmentation. Selective institutional consolidation may produce differentiated empowerment rather than coherent state-building. External migration engagement thus becomes part of the political economy of competition among institutional factions (Al-Dayel et al., 2023; Horsley, 2025; Tinti, 2024).

Southern Libya occupies a structurally marginal position within this hybrid order, and the region has historically experienced infrastructural neglect, limited political representation and economic underinvestment (de Lange, 2023; Stocker and Al-Fallani, 2023; Wehrey, 2017). Following the fall of Gaddafi, competition among armed groups intensified around control of cross-border trade routes linking Libya to Chad, Niger and Sudan. These routes constitute critical revenue sources in a context of state fragmentation and weakened central redistribution (Brachet, 2024).

Marginalization in the south is also racialized and plays into longstanding legacies of slavery and racism in North Africa (Arrouche, 2026; Hahonou, 2021; Menin, 2024). Toubou and Tuareg communities face longstanding discrimination, contested citizenship status, and limited inclusion in central institutions (de Lange, 2023; Hadjer, 2026; Wehrey, 2017). The 2023 Human Rights Council report documents patterns of exclusion and vulnerability affecting these groups. Episodes of ethicized violence have reinforced grievances and deepened mistrust toward northern-based authorities.

Migration governance is thus intertwined with cross-border trade economies and regional and ethnic politics. As we shall see, actors in border regions perceive themselves as bearing the burdens of migration governance without equivalent inclusion in partnership frameworks. These perceptions are politically consequential, particularly where they intersect with longstanding grievances rooted in marginalization and racial hierarchy. Externalization, therefore, operates not only across borders but within states. Its rippling effects are both horizontal—reshaping transnational mobility regimes—and vertical—reconfiguring internal governance hierarchies. Southern Libya provides a vantage point from which to observe these intra-state redistributive effects.

The empirical analysis that follows examines how these dynamics are articulated, experienced and negotiated by actors in Kufra and across the Fezzan.

IV. Methods and Positionality

This article is based on fieldwork conducted in southern Libya in 2022 and 2023. ² Research was carried out in Kufra and towns across the Fezzan region, including Sabha, Murzuq and Qatroun. These locations were selected because of their strategic position along transnational migration routes linking Libya to Sudan, Chad and Niger, and because they constitute key nodes in southern Libya’s cross-border political economy.

The empirical material consists of 32 semi-structured interviews conducted with a range of actors involved in or affected by migration governance. Interviewees included officers from the DCIM, police, customs officials, members of municipal councils, tribal representatives, civil society activists, human rights advocates, migrants and individuals with direct knowledge of detention facilities and smuggling networks. Interviews were supplemented by informal conversations and observations in administrative offices, border-adjacent towns and community settings.

Interviews were conducted in Arabic and subsequently translated into English. Given the political sensitivity of the subject matter—including discussions of militia involvement in smuggling, detention practices and financial flows—anonymity was guaranteed to all interlocutors, and certain locations have also been masked. Quotations are presented with occupational or positional identifiers rather than personal names. Where possible, interview accounts were cross-checked against secondary literature, international reports and journalistic investigations.

Access was shaped by security considerations and local power dynamics. Several interviewees expressed reluctance to speak openly about specific actors or financial arrangements, particularly where militia structures intersected with formal institutions. In some cases, interlocutors framed their narratives in ways that emphasized marginalization and exclusion, possibly reflecting strategic positioning in anticipation of external recognition or support. Following Fujii (2010) and Utas (2005), grievances articulated in conflict-affected settings are always socially situated forms of political narration shaped by relations of power, legitimacy and survival. Claims may therefore simultaneously reflect lived experience and constitute strategic efforts. These positional dynamics are acknowledged as part of the interpretive context of the findings.

Fieldwork in southern Libya necessarily entails limitations. Security constraints restrict mobility and access to certain actors. Detention facilities are difficult to enter, and informal smuggling networks operate clandestinely. The findings presented here should therefore be understood as grounded interpretations based on available access rather than exhaustive mapping of governance arrangements. However, taken together, the interviews provide insights into how local actors understand and navigate migration governance within their political and economic environment.

V. Cross-border Economies and Authority in Southern Libya

Southern Libya’s political economy is structured around cross-border trade and control over mobility. The Fezzan region and the Kufra district have historically functioned as hubs linking Libya to sub-Saharan Africa; trade routes connecting northern Libyan cities to Chad, Niger and Sudan facilitate both licit commerce and illicit smuggling. Goods such as fuel, vehicles, electronics and food flow southward from coastal ports, while livestock and other commodities circulate in return.

Following 2011, the fragmentation of central authority intensified competition over control of trade routes. Armed groups established decentralized checkpoint systems, extracting fees from transporters and traders. These practices became embedded in local economies and governance structures. Consequently, struggles over dominance in smuggling corridors have been key drivers of conflict in southern Libya (Eaton and Yousef, 2025; Herbert et al., 2023; Horsley, 2025).

Since 2020, General Haftar’s Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF) has maintained strong control over Libya’s southern regions through a wide alliance with various other militia groups (Ahmed, 2025). With tribal zones of influence largely maintained, the LAAF’s battalions have asserted influence over each one of the southern cities in the Fezzan, with fighters mainly composed of individuals from each of the southern tribes. Magarha militias are controlling the northern part of the Fezzan, starting from the outskirts of Sabha to Brak Al-Shati, while Awlad Suliman maintains a strong presence in Sabha. Toubou militias have influence over areas from Murzuq to Kufrah and the towns in between, and Tuareg militias control the western part of Fezzan on the border with Algeria, particularly the towns of Ghat and Ubari.

Migration forms part of this broader cross-border economy. Movement of people, like the movement of goods, generates opportunities for extraction. Actors controlling transit corridors may demand payments from migrants directly or from smugglers facilitating their journeys. In some cases, the same networks participate in both facilitation and interception, profiting at multiple stages. The political economy of mobility thus involves layered forms of extraction (Al-Dayel et al., 2023; Horsley, 2025).

State actors formally representing the Tripoli government are present in the south, including DCIM branches, customs authorities, passport and immigration offices and police units. However, their authority frequently overlaps with or is subordinated to militia actors answering to the rival government of General Haftar. This hybridization produces a governance landscape characterized by negotiated authority rather than clear hierarchical control. Migration governance must be analyzed within this political economy. It is not an isolated security domain introduced by European policy, but a field embedded in longstanding practices of cross-border trade, taxation and hybrid authority. Externalization interacts with this environment, shaping and being shaped by existing patterns of competition and marginalization.

The next section turns to empirical findings from Kufra and across the Fezzan, examining how these structural dynamics are articulated by local actors in relation to EU migration externalization.

VI. Findings from Kufra and the Fezzan

The findings presented here are structured around three themes: (a) local views of EU externalization; (b) hybrid governance and its manifestations in the migration economy; and (c) political grievances and racialized exclusion in the south. While analytically distinct, these themes are deeply interconnected and overlapping. Perceptions of exclusion intersect with extractive governance structures and with longstanding regional and ethnic hierarchies.

VII. Discussion of Findings

This article set out to examine how EU migration externalization, and its geographic concentration in northern Libya, shapes grievances, governance and conflict dynamics in southern Libya. The empirical material demonstrates that externalization is not experienced in southern Libya merely as a border-management technique. Rather, it is interpreted through, and embedded within, a fragmented political economy characterized by hybrid governance, cross-border trade and longstanding regional inequality.

Three interrelated dynamics emerge from the findings. First, externalization redistributes recognition within Libya’s contested institutional landscape. In practice, maritime interception and detention management along the coast have become the most visible and politically important components of EU–Libya cooperation, while southern interlocutors repeatedly emphasized that they are not ‘at the table’, revealing that inclusion in migration governance is perceived as a marker of institutional relevance.

In a hybrid governance environment, where formal institutions overlap with armed actors and authority is negotiated, recognition carries great political weight. Inclusion in structured cooperation forums signals legitimacy and relevance. Conversely, exclusion reinforces perceptions of marginality. The grievance that ‘everything goes to Tripoli’ must, therefore, be understood as a claim about political centrality as much as about funding. This dynamic reflects how externalization operates beyond its immediate operational goals. The visibility of maritime interception within European political discourse further reinforces this geographic hierarchy, whereas southern actors see their role as border managers as undervalued within both national and international arenas.

Second, the findings confirm that migration governance in southern Libya is embedded within hybrid authority structures. Formal institutions such as DCIM branches coexist with militia actors who control checkpoints, detention facilities and smuggling routes. Enforcement and facilitation are not mutually exclusive practices; they coexist within territorial arrangements structured around mobility control.

Yest, externalization does not create these hybrid arrangements. They predate EU cooperation and are rooted in Libya’s post-2011 fragmentation and in longstanding cross-border economic practices. However, migration’s elevated importance in EU–Libya relations increase the political salience of mobility control across the country. Actors able to demonstrate control over detention sites, transit corridors or border crossings may strengthen their bargaining position vis-à-vis national authorities. In this sense, externalization interacts with and charges the conflict economy rather than dictating it.

Third, containment strategies intersect with longstanding patterns of regional and racial marginalization. Southern Libya has historically experienced infrastructural neglect and limited representation in central political institutions. Toubou and Tuareg interlocutors articulated grievances linking ethnic discrimination, economic exclusion and absence from decision-making arenas. Moreover, southern communities perceive themselves as absorbing the social and economic pressures associated with containment while lacking corresponding influence in policy formation. Fear about EU motives in the south reflect compound these concerns about asymmetric burden-sharing. Externalization thus becomes embedded within pre-existing centre–periphery narratives rather than generating them independently. It is refracted through local political economies and historical grievances.

These findings contribute to debates on migration externalization by foregrounding its intra-state dimensions. Externalization is frequently analyzed in terms of legality, human rights implications or its effectiveness in reducing Mediterranean arrivals. The southern Libyan case highlights an additional dimension: how cooperation frameworks reshape perceptions of authority, recognition and inclusion within fragile partner states. Externalization, therefore, operates not only across borders but within domestic political geographies.

At the same time, caution is warranted. The findings do not demonstrate that EU migration cooperation causes marginalization or instability in southern Libya. Hybrid governance, militia entrenchment and regional inequality predate European migration engagement. Rather, the analysis shows how externalization is interpreted and negotiated within these structures. These interpretations matter because they shape local political narratives and perceptions of legitimacy, and consolidate certain actors and regimes.

VIII. Conclusion

This article has examined how EU migration externalization, or the ‘proxy war’ against migration (Bish, 2024), is perceived and negotiated in southern Libya. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in 2022 and 2023 in Kufra and across the Fezzan, it has shown that externalization operates within—and becomes embedded in—a hybrid conflict economy marked by regional inequality and racialized marginalization. In doing so, it has addressed how geographically concentrated migration cooperation shapes grievances, governance and political dynamics in Libya’s south.

These findings speak to broader debates on the ‘rippling effects’ of migration externalization (Talleraas and Vammen, 2025). Externalized migration governance does not remain confined to border control outcomes and the related humanitarian concerns. Its effects reverberate through domestic political structures, influencing how authority and recognition are distributed within fragile states. In southern Libya, externalization interacts with hybrid governance and regional inequality, generating political interpretations that extend beyond its immediate operational objectives. These ripples do not imply simple causality; rather, they demonstrate how external engagement becomes refracted through local political economies.

By foregrounding southern Libya, this article demonstrates that the consequences of migration externalization are not only transnational but intra-state. European engagement reshapes internal political geographies within partner states.

As migration has become a focal point of international engagement, the political value of mobility governance has correspondingly increased. Southern interlocutors are acutely aware of this shift. Their frustration at exclusion therefore reflects not only distributive grievances, but recognition that migration governance has become a key arena through which authority, legitimacy and political status are consolidated. Being sidelined from decision-making in a domain that unfolds on their own territory is experienced not merely as neglect, but as renewed political marginalization.

For policymakers, this suggests that migration cooperation cannot be detached from questions of recognition, governance and regional inequality. Sustainable engagement requires attention not only to deterrence outcomes and humanitarian assistance, but also to how partnership frameworks are perceived and negotiated within fragmented contexts. From a development studies perspective, attention to these intra-state dynamics is essential if external engagement is to avoid reinforcing the very fragmentation it seeks to stabilize (see Megerisi and Martini, 2023).