On March 12, I was among 17 exhausted and agitated passengers flying from Paris to Tripoli on the French-piloted Afriqiyah Airways Flight 8U900 — exhausted because our flight should have left at noon the day before, agitated because we had spent the entire previous day at Charles de Gaulle before we were transported to a nearby hotel for the night.

All the passengers were Libyan except for three Frenchmen and one American businessman. Being a small group, we got acquainted quickly and talked about everything except politics, upon my request. I thought it would be best to avoid the topic.

The Frenchmen were the least talkative and far less sociable among the group, while the young, blond American was more actively engaging. All of them were going to Libya for business. Some of them worked for big companies already operating there, while others had been sent by their companies to try to establish themselves in the oil-rich country.

Since the NATO and Qatari-backed rebels toppled the regime of Moammar Gadhafi in 2011, everyone seems to be trying to sell us Libyans something, be it industrial hardware, services, expertise, consumer goods or even training for our civil servants. Once on the ground in Tripoli, I noticed more Europeans who had just landed. Certainly, they were here for business. Who would risk coming to Libya if not for the money?