Among the many civil wars ravaging the Arab world – in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Egypt – the one Westerners hear the least about may prove the most dangerous: Libya. The civil war that has been raging in Libya since 2011 is, in many ways, a proxy war pitting Qatar and its Muslim Brotherhood allies against the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

The Qatari-Emirati rivalry, which became front-page news last week when Saudi Arabia and its allies severed diplomatic ties with Qatar, has been the significant factor in the continuation of the current Libyan Civil War, much more so than nationalistic or Islamist ideologies.