The United Nations’ sanctions monitoring team warned last Tuesday that Libya wasemerging as a key stronghold for Islamic State close to the shorelines of Europe.
The warning aligns with assessments by US intelligence officials that the organisation’s franchise is entrenching itself in the midst of chaos in the north African country.
Isis’s expansion outside its heartlands in Iraq and Syria has raised questions about how more than a year of a relentless air campaign has affected it. The group has faced military defeats in north-eastern Iraq and Syria in recent months, but it also carried out large-scale international terror attacks.
More perplexing is that, as Isis faces increased pressure at home, many fighters are reportedly returning to Libya to shore up its franchise there. This has led some western officials to saythe group might be preparing to use the Libyan front as a fallback base in case of a defeat in Iraq and Syria.
The UN report stated that around 3,500 Libyan nationals had left the country to join jihadi groups in Syria and Iraq. Of those, 800 had returned to Libya to join the local affiliate. The relocation of Libyan fighters, in particular, deserves a closer look to examine Isis’s current calculations.
In Syria and Iraq, Libyan jihadis are widely credited with some of the group’s key operations, including suppressing a tribal rebellion in Deir Ezzor and taking areas in Kirkuk last year. The faction under which they fought, the al-Battar Brigade, was notorious for incessant suicide attacks and a merciless killing rampage after a takeover. Although most of its rank-and-file come from Libya, the faction includes foreign fighters from Europe, mostly from Belgium and France, and from Tunisia.
Along with Chechen and Uzbek fighters in other factions, the al-Battar Brigade, numbered in the hundreds, has acted as “special forces” or “commandos” for the group. Isis has few other organised groups that match its strength, including Jaish al-Khilafa, or the Caliphate Army, and Jaish al-Badiya, or the Desert Army. So it is puzzling that such an elite force would leave amid mounting pressure, which is perhaps why western officials suspect that it is an indication that Isis is looking for a fallback base.
However, Isis seems to be taking steps that indicate it is stable, rather than being under pressure and looking for alternative bases. For example, an Isis defector who spoke to the Daily Beast last month claimed that the organisation had recently begun to dismantle brigades formed almost exclusively along ethnic or regional lines, which could be a disruptive move at such a critical time. On the ground, the group has minimised its presence in towns under its control, sometimes even leaving whole areas altogether.
Despite the air campaign and ground offensives in some areas, the group is in fact facing less pressure than before. Clashes between Iraqi forces and Isis have been relatively rare in recent months, as a result of a political crisis in Baghdad over the reforms promised by the prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, and a dwindling appetite to fight Isis outside Shia areas. Even the Kurds’ takeover of Sinjar last month, widely hailed as a sign of the group’s weakness, was a final push in a losing battle for Isis, which had lost around 70% of the town a few months prior.
Isis appears to be focused on expanding its presence outside Syria and Iraq and on developing its international network. The bombing of a Russian airliner, the Paris attacks and the Libyan expansion are signs that the group wants to capitalise on its success on the ground in Syria and Iraq by expanding its international reach. That is hardly a sign of weakness.
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Hassan Hassan is an associate fellow at Chatham House thinktank and a non-resident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.
Photo: Isis vehicles parade in Sirte, Libya. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images