ISIS Now Firmly Established in Libya

Matt Bradley and Benoît Faucon

February 2, 2015

Islamic State’s affiliate in Libya has capitalized on the battlefield failures and disillusionment among better-established, more moderate Islamist groups in the country, following the same formula that brought the radical movement success in Syria and Iraq, Western counterterrorism officials said.

A group calling itself Islamic State’s Tripoli Province claimed responsibility for an attack on Tuesday on a hotel that killed nine people, including an American. It was the first time the group came to prominence in Libya, raising concerns that the reach of the extremists is spreading beyond Syria and Iraq.

But the attacks also underlined the threat Islamic State poses to more entrenched Islamist groups such as Libya Dawn, a more moderate Islamist militia that is ideologically close to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and now fights secular insurgents in eastern Libya.

Oil-rich Libya has gradually slipped into chaos since rebels toppled strongman Moammar Gadhafi three years ago, with two rival governments now claiming to run the country and myriad competing local militias effectively in control on the ground.

In an example of the anarchy creeping into the country, the head of planning at the National Oil Co., Samir Kamal, was kidnapped two weeks ago before being released Sunday. The identity and motives of his kidnappers remain unknown.

The threat to Libya represented by Islamic State is on an altogether different scale. The North African nation’s experience with local militants pledging allegiance to Islamic State follows a pattern in which the group gains a foothold by seizing on the vulnerabilities of countries embroiled in chaos and war or with weak central governments.

Since its inception in Syria in 2013, Islamic State has behaved opportunistically, piggybacking on more powerful, more moderate Islamist groups. They appear to be following a similar pattern to capitalize on the conflict dividing secularists and Islamists in Libya, Western counterterrorism officials said.

“The secularists and the Muslim Brothers have been fighting each other and the Salafi-jihadists like Islamic State are taking advantage of that and are in the ascent” in Syria, Egypt and Libya, said a Western counterintelligence official. An umbrella of moderate Islamist political groups in the country, such as Libya Dawn, share an ideological affinity to the Muslim Brotherhood in neighboring Egypt while Islamic State and other extremists follow a hard-line ideology known as Salafism.

By hanging back from much of the front-line fighting, Islamic State’s affiliates have been able to save their strength while seizing recruits, land, weapons and other resources from the more moderate, religiously driven groups—aiming to build up until it is powerful enough to become the dominant Islamist force.

“Taking the upper hand from the Muslim Brotherhood is Islamic State’s priority,” said the Western counterterrorism official.

That strategy worked best in Syria, where Islamic State spent the first part of the civil war almost entirely disengaged in the fight against dictator Bashar al-Assad.

An Islamic State affiliate also appears to be gaining momentum in Egypt’s restive Sinai Peninsula by tapping into a vein of anger left over from the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi, the country’s first freely elected president who was pushed aside in a popularly backed military coup in 2013.

The group, which calls itself Province of Sinai, claimed responsibility for a coordinated assault against multiple Egyptian police and military targets Thursday night that killed at least 30 people.

If Islamic State’s attacks over the past week caused anxiety in the West, it is unclear how the leadership of Libya Dawn will respond to the challenge. The coalition of militias, which governs the capital Tripoli and much of the country’s lawless western half, has condemned the hotel attack. The coalition grew out of the remnants of Islamist parties that resisted leaving office after Libyans voted out the country’s first parliament last summer.

Since then, the group has fought against a secular-leaning militia led by Gen. Khalifa Hifter, a former Libyan army officer. Most of the international community backs Gen. Hifter and his rival parliament based in the eastern city of Tobruk.

Libya Dawn leaders blamed the hotel attack on their more traditional rivals: their secular-leaning groups in eastern Libya, elements of the country’s former regime and neighboring Arab governments that are hostile to Islamists.

Last week, few in Libya Dawn’s leadership were prepared to acknowledge that the attack may have actually come from Islamic State. Terrorism experts warn that Libya Dawn’s lack of focus on Islamic State’s expanding presence is only playing into the extremist group’s ambitions.

“The attack gave us an indication of the presence of terrorism, but I cannot confirm it was done by radical groups” because the investigation isn’t finished yet, said Mohamed Baio, a political adviser to Libya Dawn’s leadership.

Another leader insisted that the assailants didn’t speak like Islamists and seemed more like “drug addicts” employed by Gen. Hifter or remnants of Moammar Gadhafi’s ousted regime to sow mayhem.

Islamic State claims little allegiance among Libyan Islamists and controls little territory. But some intelligence officials worry that battlefield defeats of the larger Islamist militias, who carry the bulk of the fighting against secularists, could benefit the hard-core Islamic State.

The radical fighters are already capitalizing on the recent killing of the leader of the powerful Libyan Islamist militia Ansar al-Shariah, which Washington blames for killing U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens in the 2012 attack on the American consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi.

The death of the militia leader, Mohamed al-Zehawi, who died during a fight with secular-aligned enemies, increased the appeal of Islamic State, which still rarely wades into such fights, according to another Western counterterrorism official.

“Islamic State has taken roots in Libya, particularly in the eastern city of Derna, because Libya Dawn’s moderate Islamists and secularists supporting Gen. Hifter are focused on battling each other,” said Geoff Porter, head of political risk firm North Africa Risk Consultancy.

If Libya Dawn waits to police Islamic State elements within their midst, Mr. Porter and other experts say it may soon find it has waited too long to contain the extremist threat.