I find the North African front in WW2 very strange because compared to every other major combat zone in the war, either in Europe or Asia, I never seem to hear anything about how it effected the local population there. Half the time it can seem like the Italians, British and Germans were fighting a war in an almost perfect environment for war game enthusiasts where there's vast flat plains of unobstructed desert terrain with no civilian population to concern oneself over, just armies politely facing off against each other in mobile operations.
I suspect this is nowhere near the whole story, I know that before the war the Italians had fought a protracted campaign to completely pacify a lot of the mobile tribes in Libya and that German troops persecuted the Jewish community in North Africa during their time there, but I know next to nothing beyond this. Were Amazigh and Arab forces pressed into service by either side? Was there any kind of refugee crisis or famine related to the war time deprivations? Did resistance groups to European imperialism attempt to leverage the situation to their advantage? Just generally how did the population who lived there, whether Amazigh, Arab, Jewish, or anything else react to their countries becoming battlegrounds between the Europeans?
There is little info, but I know that Jewish people in Libya were subjected to persecution from the SS once Rommel's Afrika Corps had a presence there. The North Africa campaign had a "Clean Wehrmacht" myth due to this lack of info but this has been refuted on this front. The Italian government had restrictions of Jewish people in public offices and by 1942 the Nazis were ordered to transfer Jewish people into concentration camps.
The Italians recruited Libyans into service, though I could not find anything on conscription. The mounted Savari police were not supporters of the war effort while some Muslims did not mind joining. Keep in mind, the Italians had used concentration camps for Libyans who were seeking meaningful resistance to colonial rule. Incentivizes for recruitment included continuation of the pre-existing policy of giving some Libyans limited Italian citizenship 1939.
I know that Egypt, despite having a pro-UK government after achieving de-jure independence in 1922 but still de-facto ruled like a dominion country (so pseudo-independence), did not mobilize its forces, which included future Presidents Gamal Abdul Nasser and Anwar al-Sadat. I think this is because mobilization (despite the presence of invaders in a supposedly semi-independent country) would provoke Egyptians seeking complete independence. I read that some Egyptians civilians prepared to have Italian and German flags to replace their British flags if the Axis were able to seize Cairo, Alexandria, etc.
Given that Libyan population was limited to the coast while most forces tried out-flank each other more inland and limited information on civilian casualties, civilian causalities were presumably limited. Specifically, only the north-eastern Libyan coast had sides frequently change in 1941 and 1942 and probably had the most civilian casualties and the rest of coast was seized by the Allies in a matter of weeks.
In short, native North Africans, Arabs, and especially Jews under the Italians faced typical colonial government persecution and military service was voluntary due to lack of loyalty.