David Sterman and Nate Rosenblatt for New America: The Arab Spring and its aftermath created opportunities for jihadists to organize and mobilize on a wider scale than previously possible. Jihadists quickly organized in the aftermath of the Arab Spring of 2011, creating the foundations for ISIS’ mobilization of fighters en masse.

• Libya and Tunisia, where governments fell during the Arab Spring, produced more fighters per capita than Morocco and Algeria, where governments survived local protests. Eighteen of the top 20 provinces ISIS fighters came from in North Africa were in Libya or Tunisia.
• In Tunisia, ISIS built upon local Salafi-Jihadist recruiting networks such as Ansar al-Sharia, which took advantage of the post-Ben Ali environment of political openness to openly promote jihad.
• In Libya, jihadists were able to operate and recruit openly amid the patchwork of militias that emerged following Muammar Ghaddafi’s fall. More than half of Libyan ISIS fighters reported having prior experience in jihadist conflicts, almost entirely in Libya.

Most provinces in North Africa with high rates of ISIS fighter recruitment were economically and politically marginalized. They had high rates of underemployment, lack of political representation, and poor access to social services compared to their national contexts. The geographic origins of ISIS recruits from North Africa suggest the group took advantage of long-standing frustrations in marginalized communities to mobilize fighters.