In November last year, the U.S. carried out its first air strike against the Islamic State (IS) in Libya, > killing Abu Nabil, an Iraqi-born, al-Qaeda-trained operative of the jihadist group in the country. The Pentagon hoped that the killing of Nabil would “degrade [IS’s] ability to meet the group’s objectives in Libya”. Three months down the line, the U.S. had to send its bombers again into the country to attack an IS training base in the western city of Sabratha, in which over 40 people were killed. The U.S. and Britain have in recent weeks deployed special forces in the North African country besides drones and intense reconnaissance by American, British and French warplanes. A 5,000-strong, Italian-led international force is also ready to be deployed in Libya to fight terrorists.
The reason behind this enhanced focus on the IS in Libya is the growing fear that the group is expanding its operations fast in this lawless, civil war-stricken country which the U.S. and its allies invaded nearly five years ago to oust > Muammar Qaddafi ’s regime. The group already controls Sirte, a strategically important coastal city, and has presence in eastern cities Benghazi and Derna. Though the group’s gains in Libya are limited compared to its near-total dominance of large areas of Iraq and Syria, it’s a growing force in the country, and, if left unchecked, could further destabilise West Asia and Africa.
Setting up base From the advent of the Syrian civil war, Libyan jihadists were fighting alongside the opposition rebels against the regime of President >Bashar al-Assad . The Battar Brigade was prominent among them. When a group of Battar militants returned to Libya in 2014, the IS took it as an opportunity to expand the group’s influence to Africa. It sent senior militants, including Nabil, to establish a new Wilayat of the ‘Caliphate’. The Battar militants formed a radical outfit, Majlis Shura Shabab al-Islam, in Derna, a hotbed of the Libyan rebellion, and in October 2014, announced the Derna Wilayat. It was the same strategy the IS used in Syria. When the Syrian rebellion started, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the IS, sent his men from Iraq to Syria where they set up a base in the eastern city of Raqqa, fought alongside al-Qaeda against the regime before turning against other Islamist groups and establishing a proto-state.
But unlike in Syria where al-Qaeda and the IS initially cooperated, the latter faced strong resistance from other militant groups in Libya. For example, Derna was already the base of the Abu Salim Martyrs Brigade, an al-Qaeda-affiliated faction founded by former members of a Qaddafi-era Islamist militant group. The Brigade launched an all-out campaign against the IS. In less than a year, they managed to push the core of IS out of Derna.
Sirte, Qaddafi’s hometown and the heartland of his Qadhafa tribe, was the IS’s next choice. By the time it was defeated in Derna, the IS had made some advances into Sirte, mainly through the disaffected members of the Qadhafa tribe and a group of disgruntled Qaddafi loyalists. This is the strategy the IS used in Iraq where it recruited Saddam loyalists and Baath party members to build its terror organisation. By late May 2015, the IS had captured the city’s airport and within a month, seized the whole city. Once they established total control over Sirte, the IS core in Syria sent more militants to Libya. The group has announced three Wilayats in Libya so far — Tarablus, along the western coast; Barqah in the east; and Fezzan in the southwest. Sirte is its capital in the country.
From the IS’s point of view, Libya is its best bet outside Iraq and Syria. It lost territories in Iraq and is feeling the heat of >American and Russian air strikes in Syria . On the other side, today’s Libya is a classic case of a failed state. There’s no central authority and a central military command. There are two Parliaments in the country, one based in Tripoli, the Qaddafi-era capital city, backed by an Islamist coalition; and the other in the eastern city of Tobruk, supported by a private militia run by Khalifa Haftar, a Qaddafi-era general. The economy is in free fall, leaving millions in misery.
Libya is also strategically important for the IS. It’s a Mediterranean gateway to Africa, a continent where the IS and al-Qaeda are competing for terror supremacy. While the recent terror strikes in Mali and Burkina Faso show the growing clout of al-Qaeda in the continent, the Boko Haram of Nigeria has declared allegiance to the ‘Caliphate’. If it sets up a strong base in Libya, the IS could also exploit the large lawless swathes of the African territories (something which the al-Qaeda is doing now) and keep its terror project afloat even if it suffers major setbacks in Iraq and Syria. More important, Libya’s oil wealth is a potential target of the IS.
Stateless nation The question is whether the IS could build on its momentum, like it did in Syria, and meet its long-term goals in Libya. The U.S., after last month’s air strikes, said that it would go after the IS in any country. But it’s easier said than done. In Syria and Iraq, it took years for an effective >anti-IS strategy — which is still fragile — to evolve. In both countries, air strikes support ground attacks on the IS — by the Iraqi army and Shia militias in the case of Iraq and Syrian army and Kurdish rebels in the case of Syria. It’s only after an air strike-ground war combination started taking on the IS that the jihadist group’s positions were weakened (though they are still strong at the core of the ‘Caliphate’).
In Libya, the major challenge is the country’s internal contradictions. Qaddafi’s state, however repressive it had been, was the unifying factor of the country’s diverse tribes and ethnic groups. He built his authoritarian but redistributive state on Libyan nationalism. Those who destroyed the state did not have anything to replace it with. In the absence of the central authority, the power vacuum was filled by different tribal, religious and extremist groups. And the IS, being the most brutal and organised among them, has a better chance to leverage this chaos and strengthen itself. Unless the non-jihadist groups are unified and the Libyan state is rebuilt with monopoly and legitamacy over weapons, it is impossible to launch a credible war on the IS in Libya. That’s the greatest challenge both the Libyans and those who plunged the country into today’s chaos face.
stanly.johny@thehindu.co.in
