Islamic State in Libya has massacred Christian Egyptians on a local beach, publicly flogged criminals in Sirte, stormed oilfields, and attacked a five-star hotel in Tripoli.
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“Libya is the affiliate that we’re most anxious about”, remarked Patrick Prior, a former top DIA official, at recent D.C. counterterror conference, the report says.
The report also quoted a curious statement from Daniel Serwer, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a scholar at the Middle East Institute, who said: “Our level of commitment to Libya was always modest”.
“Member states indicated that ISIL was preparing to launch a more organized “taxation” system in Sirte, and that it even envisaged establishing a state-like system in Libya, inspired by its quasi-bureaucratic organization in the Syrian Arab Republic and Iraq”, the report said.
The experts monitoring United Nations sanctions against al Qaeda and spinoff groups said in the report that ISIS is benefiting from its “appeal” and notoriety in Iraq and Syria and poses “an evident short and long-term threat in Libya”.
Speaking to Voice of America during an interview at Kelley Barracks, in Stuttgart, Germany, Vice Admiral Michael Franken, the deputy for military operations at AFRICOM, said IS manpower in Sirte now stands at 2,000, up from 200 in February.
Another explanation offered was that Gadhafi’s plan to stop selling Libyan oil in US dollars and to demand payment in gold-backed dinars instead, was the real reason the United States turned against him. However, it is likely ISIS will experience many challenges and will come against strong al Qaeda forces.
The report states that it will be more hard for ISIS to raise money from oil in Libya than in Syria and Iraq, and that it has so far followed a strategy of sabotaging Libya’s oil infrastructure rather than trying to profit from it. The terrorist organization calling itself the Islamic State has its pilots trained in Libya’s city of Sirte, the Asharq al-Awsat newspaper said on Wednesday, adding that high-tech simulators were being used in the process. But that allegiance switch has been seen as insignificant because the well-established al-Shabab terror group has attacked those who pledged loyalty to ISIS, said Franken.
But Libya may not offer quite as fertile territory as Syria and Iraq.
The group’s central command views Libya “as the “best” opportunity to expand its so-called caliphate” from Syria and Iraq, the experts said.
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They said that ISIS is asserting its control over some of the country’s oil wealth, allowing it to buy more weapons, and that Western military strategists say there are few good options to contain ISIS in Libya.
