A U.S.-led coalition is grappling over how to fight
the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed allies in Libya and beyond without taking
its eyes off Iraq and Syria.
A violent extremist group in Libya has
pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and kills in the name of the Islamic
State, but U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration is torn on whether it
is, in fact, part of the Islamic State.
Declaring a brutal
branch of the Libyan militant group Ansar al-Sharia to be an official
offshoot of the Islamic State could potentially compel
reluctant nations to use military force against extremists in Libya, further
weakening the already faltering fight against the network. Washington is
sharply divided, with U.S. officials describing a debate over the extremists’
growth in Libya as recent intelligence shows Islamic State leaders and fighters
heading there from strongholds in Iraq and Syria.
Allies in Europe and the Mideast are
similarly conflicted. As the Islamic State’s reach continues to spread, some
countries now feel more threatened by the outcropping of extremists across Asia
and in North Africa than by those based in Iraq and Syria.
But confronting what the Islamic State
calls its “distant provinces” could come at a high cost: Diverting limited
funds and focus to Libya likely would pull from the fight in Iraq and Syria,
where extremist leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is steadily seizing territory in
his quest to establish an extremist Sunni caliphate. In the past few days
alone, the group has captured Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s Anbar province, and
the strategically important Syrian city of Palmyra.
In a clear illustration of Washington’s divide, one
senior U.S. official said, “There is no question that there are ISIL fighters
present in Libya” — including some taking orders directly from Baghdadi.
In a
clear illustration of Washington’s divide, one senior U.S. official said,
“There is no question that there are ISIL fighters present in Libya” —
including some taking orders directly from Baghdadi. The official said it’s impossible to know how many, since some
simply label themselves as Islamic State for propaganda gain. Some estimates
conclude that as many as 5,000 fighters in Libya identify themselves with the
Islamic State.
By contrast, a U.S. intelligence
official downplayed the Islamic State’s scope. The group’s influence “has
undoubtedly grown in Libya,” the official said. But “despite some defections to
ISIL, Ansar al-Sharia has to date largely maintained its identity as a distinct
extremist group,” he said.
Three U.S. officials and all of the
foreign diplomats interviewed for this report spoke to Foreign Policy on condition of anonymity to discuss the debate more frankly. ISIL
stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the Islamic State’s former
name.
Baghdadi’s caliphate, by almost every
measure, is growing. Recent intelligence indicates that the Islamic State’s
headquarters in Iraq and Syria have sent funds to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula,
fighters to Tunisia, and advice to Boko Haram militants in Nigeria. A Mideast
diplomat, who refused to be identified by his nationality, said the group is
now operating in as many as 16 countries, including Algeria, Afghanistan, and
Pakistan.
In Libya, meanwhile, militants claiming
allegiance to the Islamic State continue to rampage through the country, and on
Thursday its Barqah division reported launching a suicide attack against
security forces near the village of Harawa, not far from the coastal city of
Sirte. A day earlier, extremists claiming to be part of the Islamic State’s
Tripoli division said they had seized military bases near Sirte and published
photos showing off vehicles, weapons, and ammunition they claimed to have
captured after heavy clashes with local militias, according to SITE
Intelligence, which monitors online jihadi messaging.
For the White House, though, such
pictures may not be enough to convince senior administration officials that the
militants in Libya are directly linked to Baghdadi. The administration has
clear political reasons for avoiding a formal, public pronouncement that the
Islamic State has spread to Libya: That would further embolden critics who
believe Obama was too slow to confront the militants in Iraq and Syria and
hasn’t devoted enough military resources to the fight there.
“Within the Obama administration, the
stronger party is focused on Iraq,” the Mideast diplomat said in a recent
interview.
“They are so occupied with Syria and Iraq,
they are not focused on ISIL
affiliates in Libya.”
It’s also true, however, that defeating
the Islamic State in its own backyard would deliver a crippling, if not fatal,
blow to the entire network. “To get at ISIL, you have to strike at the
caliphate,” a senior U.S. official said.
The question of how to deal with the
Islamic State as it spreads across Asia and Africa will be front and center at
a June 2 meeting in Paris of diplomats who are part of the global coalition to
defeat the extremists. Their debate over the “distant provinces” of the
militant network is just the latest hurdle confronting the 60-nation alliance,
which is beset by political rivalries and has little to show for its efforts
since its creation last summer.
In Libya’s case, the spiritual leader
of Ansar al-Sharia, Abu Abdullah al-Libi, pledged bayat, or allegiance, to the Islamic State this past March. Once bayat
is pledged, the group is officially considered part of the Islamic State, said
Robert Ford, a leading Arabist and former U.S. ambassador to Syria and Algeria.
Ansar al-Sharia is widely believed to be the largest of Libya’s jihadi groups, however, and U.S.
officials said not all of its militants followed the pledge.
Washington is also under pressure from
countries like Egypt and Italy, where leaders are worriedly watching what they
describe as the unmistakable rise of the Islamic State in Libya.
Islamic State fighters beheaded 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in Libya this past February, and the
group has threatened to attack Italy and potentially even the Vatican, as thousands of
North African migrants flee from Libya for safety across the Mediterranean Sea. The
Italian islands of Sardinia and Sicily are located just a few hundred miles
from Libya’s shores.
“Regarding in Libya, Italy is asking
that we should use all possible instruments and tools that are being developed
in the coalition” to counter the Islamic State, an Italian diplomat said in an
interview this week.
“Wherever
ISIL is trying to arise, we are asking our partners to enlarge the scope.”
“Wherever
ISIL is trying to arise, we are asking our partners to enlarge the scope.”
Specifically, the diplomat said, Rome
wants the 60-nation coalition to start focusing on how to limit foreign
fighters and funding from moving between Libya and other Islamic State havens,
including Iraq and Syria.
However, the Italian diplomat cited
likely insurmountable divisions within the coalition over using military force
against Islamic State fighters in Libya, where the 2011 NATO assault that
ousted dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi unleashed continuing violence and political
chaos.
Even in 2011, the Obama administration
had little appetite for getting deeply involved in Libya, and now it is far
more reluctant to do so without the help of any reliable government there. The
United Nations is trying to broker a political agreement among Libya’s interim government
and competing parties to create a lasting, democratic rule before the mid-June
start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, but almost certainly will fail to
meet that deadline. Libya’s legislature expires in October, and the United
Nations is feverishly working to schedule national elections before then.
The Italian diplomat insisted that
there is a “growing consensus” within the coalition to identify Ansar al-Sharia
militants as an Islamic State front in Libya — which, in turn, could force a
military response. But other European diplomats are taking a far more cautious
approach, arguing for focusing the coalition’s efforts solely on fighting the
militants in Iraq and Syria.
“If we start to have a Libya that is
totally taken over by militants who are actually not just saying, but are
having active and proven connections to Daesh in Syria and Iraq, we might have
to extend its definition,” said one Washington-based European diplomat, who
refused to be identified by his nationality.
Daesh is the acronym of the Islamic
State’s full name in Arabic.
Congress this year sidelined an Obama
administration proposal to use military force against the Islamic State, fearing that its open-ended scope could send U.S. troops across the globe
to fight any militant organization that flies the extremist group’s signature
black flag.
But lawmakers are also deeply divided over the limits of the president’s
authority to order military strikes, and House Speaker John Boehner this week said the White House should “start over” with a new plan in the wake of
Ramadi’s fall.
Those fears get to the heart of the
concerns over formally recognizing Ansar al-Sharia as an Islamic State
affiliate. To prevent just any extremist group from declaring itself a branch
of the Islamic State — and winning the jihadi prestige that this label brings —
the 60-nation coalition is trying to develop a set of criteria that must be met
before a group is seen as a broad, legitimate threat. A similar set of criteria
— including a command structure between core leaders and affiliates, and posing
a direct threat to the United States and Western interests — was
adopted by the U.S. government for al Qaeda as it metastasized during the last
decade.
One U.S. official this week predicted
that guidelines for identifying Islamic State offshoots will be introduced at
the June 2 meeting, though the coalition is not expected to specifically name
any affiliates.
Ford, the former U.S. ambassador, cast
doubt on Baghdadi’s ability to control the Islamic State’s distant provinces in
places like Libya or other locations where militants have pledged bayat. He
noted “varying degrees of integration of groups outside Syria and Iraq into the
Islamic State,” but said the oath of allegiance should be considered a deciding
factor as to whether they are an official affiliate.
“Once they’ve done that, to me, then
you have to put them on a list,” Ford said.
As recently as February, at least 33
extremist groups had linked themselves to the Islamic State, and that number
all but certainly has grown in the months since, the Mideast diplomat said.
Over the six-month period from August 2014 to February 2015, he said, coalition
forces killed an estimated 7,000 Islamic State fighters. But in that same
period, the Islamic State recruited 8,000 more.
“So whatever we are doing, it is not
effective, compared to the root causes of terrorism,” said the Mideast
diplomat. He said some countries want to directly confront Ansar al-Sharia:
“The fighters in western Libya have adopted the same methodology as ISIL, and
we should fight them all,” he said.
Meanwhile, “the U.S. position is, let’s
do this one at a time,” he said, predicting that there will be little, if any,
substantive progress made at the meeting in Paris.
“This is going to lead to nowhere
within the coalition,” he said. “We should do something before it is too late.
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