Benghazi: The Libya connection in the May 22 Manchester concert suicide bombing and Friday’s attack on Christians in Egypt has shone a light on the threat posed by militant Islamist groups that have taken advantage of lawlessness in the troubled North African nation to put down roots, recruit fighters and export militants to cause death and carnage elsewhere.
Libya has been embroiled in violence since a 2011 uprising toppled and killed Muammar Gaddafi.
Vast and oil-rich, Libya currently has rival administrations, an army led by a Gaddafi-era general as well as powerful Islamist militias that compete for territory, resources and political leverage.
At the peak of its power in Libya, Daesh controlled a 160-kilometre stretch of Libyan coastline and boasted between 2,000 and 5,000 fighters, many of them from Egypt and Tunisia.
It is that Libya that the alleged Manchester bomber, 22-year-old British citizen Salman Abedi, found when he and his family moved back from Britain after Gaddafi’s ouster in 2011.
Monday’s bombing left 22 dead, including an 8-year-old girl, and was claimed by Daesh. Abedi’s brother Hashim has been taken into custody in Tripoli and, according to Libyan authorities, has confessed that he and Salman were Daesh members.
In Egypt, President Abdul Fattah Al Sissi sent his fighter-jets to bomb terrorist positions in eastern Libya just hours after Daesh fighters shot dead 29 Christians on their way to a remote desert monastery. The military said the attackers were trained in Libya.
Egypt also has long complained that weapons smuggled across the porous desert border with Libya have reached terrorists operating on its soil. It also has claimed that militants who bombed three Christian churches since December received military training in Daesh bases in Libya.
The genesis of Libya’s militancy:
Hundreds of Libyan youths in the 1980s, travelled to Afghanistan to fight against the Russians. When they returned home after the war, Many of them wanted Sharia laws implemented in their country. They formed underground cells to escape the regime’s watchful eyes and unsuccessfully tried to assassinate Gaddafi.
After Gaddafi’s fall, veteran militants, Al Qaida sympathisers and Islamists of all shades formed militias that filled the post-Gaddafi power vacuum. Libya’s present woes are rooted in the failure of the very first transitional government to dismantle those militias and integrate them into a national army. Instead, they carved up Libya into fiefdoms.
Where are the militants now?
DARNA
The eastern Libyan city, where militant positions were targeted by Egyptian warplanes on Friday, has historically been a bastion of radical Islamist groups as well as highly respected Islamic scholars. Extremists made the city their stronghold in the 1980s and 1990s, protected by the rugged terrain of the surrounding Green Mountain range. It was the main source of Libyan militants for the insurgency in Iraq. Entire brigades of Darna natives are known to be fighting in Syria’s civil war.
During the 2011 uprising, residents formed the “Abu Saleem Martyrs” brigade to fight Gaddafi loyalists. It proved to be one of the most effective rebel outfits. Its ranks soon later swelled and its fighters seized the city, setting up the Darna Mujahideen Shura Council to replace the local government.
Daesh’s Libyan affiliate had a robust presence in Darna, but the Daesh faction eventually fell out with the council and was driven out. The Daesh fighters relocated to the coastal city of Sirte and Darna remains to this day under the control of the Mujahideen Shura Council.
BENGHAZI
Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city, was the first to fall under the influence of extremist Islamist militias. Many of those militias were formed to fight the Gaddafi regime in 2011 and were led by radicals, widely viewed as experienced and motivated.
Perhaps the most notorious of the Benghazi militias is Ansar Al Sharia, blamed for the killings of hundreds of former Libyan soldiers and for the death of the US ambassador in 2012.
For more than two years, the so-called Libyan National Army led by General Khalifa Haftar has battled an alliance of Benghazi’s militias. His forces have managed to secure most of the city, except for pockets of a seaside neighbourhood, heavily fortified and surrounded by fields of landmines.
SIRTE
Sirte was where Gaddafi and his loyalists made a last stand in the 2011 civil war. The city, Gaddafi’s hometown, was almost completely destroyed in the fighting. Furious over the city’s loyalty to Gaddafi, antigovernment rebels punished the city’s residents with extrajudicial killings and revenge attacks.
In 2013, Sirte fell under the control of Ansar Al Sharia, which made alliances with local tribes and an uneasy truce with other militias and the small number of remaining army troops. The group took over a sprawling former Gaddafi compound and boasted its own TV and radio station. Daesh also slowly infiltrated the city as terrorists from countries like Mali, Tunisia, Egypt and Syria moved in and later declared Sirte a so-called Daesh caliphate. Last year, militiamen from Misrata and other localities in western Libya, acting with the support of a UN-backed government in Tripoli, waged a protracted and bloody campaign to drive Daesh militants from Sirte. When fighting stalled, the government sought support from the United States, which responded with air strikes that sped up the collapse of Daesh in the city.
Daesh was finally defeated in Sirte and the fighters who survived the carnage fled to the vast deserts to the south.
SEBRATHA
Sebratha has earned a reputation as a small but tenacious stronghold of Islamist radicals, something that made it easier for Daesh terrorists to find a foothold there and spawned a lucrative business in human trafficking to Europe. The city is the main Daesh gateway due to its location near the Tunisian border. The jumble of various militias have helped Daesh keep a low profile in the city, but a 2016 US air strike that killed about 40 of the group’s operatives highlighted their presence in Sebratha.
