Three and a half years after Qaddafi’s fall, Libya is both in the midst of a civil war and facing a new campaign against ISIS camps on its territory. Here’s how it got here.

Libya is back in the news again as Egypt began bombing the country after ISIS beheaded a group of Egyptian Coptic Christians in the Libyan city of Derna, just over the border the two countries share.

An Egyptian fighter jet lands in Egypt

Egyptian Defense Ministry / AP

That — understandably — could leave you confused. ISIS has been operating in Iraq and Syria, where they've carved out a sizable chunk of territory and the U.S. and other countries are fighting them. But now Libya? Egypt?

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Back in 2011, at the apex of the "Arab Spring," Libyans rose up in protest again longtime ruler Muammar al-Qaddafi. The United States, France, the United Kingdom, and the rest of NATO got a United Nations mandate to launch a No-Fly Zone to prevent the mass murder of civilians in the eastern city of Benghazi. That mission soon expanded, however, and ended with Qaddafi being overthrown, captured, and murdered on camera by rebels.

NATO initially declared their Libya campaign a success. A transitional government was installed and the country declared itself a democracy, holding historic elections. It also tried to rebuild a civil society that had gone stagnant under Qaddafi.

An election worker explains a ballot to a woman at a polling center during parliamentary elections last June

Mohammed Ben Khalifa / AP

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