The greatest threat that the self-proclaimed Islamic State poses to the globe is its push into Libya, the Obama administration’s anti-Islamic State czar Brett McGurk told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday.
“I am very concerned about the situation in Libya,” McGurk told Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., at a hearing.
Royce charged that the Sunni militant group’s numbers have doubled to 6,000 in that Northern African country, which has descended into chaos ever since the U.S. helped anti-government forces topple dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. They “are close to Europe and have their sights on Libya’s oil, a tactic that made it the world’s richest terror group,” Royce said. “Despite years of warnings about Libya’s course, the [Obama] administration’s response has been feeble.”
The U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIL, as the administration refers to the group, has significantly shrunk the group’s territory and curbed its finances, McGurk said. However, eight pre-existing terrorist groups have joined the Islamic State network in the past year.
“The ISIL branch in Libya is the greatest cause for concern given its attacks to date in Libya and the threat it poses to our regional partners, such as Tunisia and Egypt,” he said.
The group is trying to establish state-like structures in Libya the way it did in Syria, McGurk said. If the Islamic State is allowed to plant roots there, it can expand its reach the way it has from Iraq and Syria, which is the gravest threat, he said. Therefore, administration officials are trying to establish a national unity government in Libya to help it effectively push back against Islamic State-affiliated militants.
When it comes to direct threats to the homeland, McGurk said President Obama has shown “he will take military action in Libya; that is why we killed the overall ISIL leader in Libya … and those sorts of things will be ongoing.”
Back in its stronghold of Iraq and Syria, Islamic State is also under tremendous pressure, McGurk said.
“ISIL’s only remaining outlet to the world remains a 98-kilometer strip of the Syrian border with Turkey,” he testified. “[L]oss of access to the border will deprive ISIL entirely of its only route for material and foreign fighters, including disrupting ISIL’s ability to [send] fighters back into Europe to conduct external operations.”
Its so-called “caliphate” headquarters in Raqqa, Syria, is no longer “a safe haven for ISIL,” he said.
And its revenues, which previously topped $1 billion annually, largely from black market oil sales, have dropped 30 percent since the U.S.-led air campaign began targeting its oil infrastructure and supply routes four months ago, he said.
Sorties also took out warehouses storing millions in cash that Islamic State used to pay its fighters, McGurk said.
However, the group still controls more than 80 percent of Syria’s energy resources, McGurk said.
Although the administration frequently touts the territorial gains won by the Iraqi military, Kurdish forces and U.S.-backed Syrian opposition groups, McGurk wouldn’t lay out a timeline for when they will retake Iraq’s second-biggest city, Mosul.
“Mosul will not be a D-Day like assault,” he said. “Nor will we announce when key events are to take place. But ISIL will feel increasing pressure inside this city—day-to-day and week- to-week.”
