The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s beheading of 21 Egyptian Christians in Libya was a violent reminder that the group’s reach is expanding even in the face of intense pressure against its strongholds in Iraq and Syria.
U.S. officials had already warned that the group was trying to establish a foothold in other countries, particularly Libya, before the videotaped beheadings of the 21 workers was released on Saturday.
“If I had to identify one of the greatest areas of emerging concern to counterterrorism it would be Libya … What’s made the environment there even more difficult is that [the Islamic State] has looked to also take advantage of the chaos in Libya and establish a foothold there as well,” Nicholas Rasmussen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday.
Now the question is what to do about it.
Egypt wants the United Nations to organize an international coalition to intervene militarily and establish order in Libya, which has fallen into chaos since Moammar Gadhafi was overthrown in 2011 with the help of U.S. and allied bombing.
Cairo, which also faces a deadly terrorist campaign in the Sinai from Islamist militants who have sworn allegiance to the Islamic State, launched airstrikes Monday on the group’s strongholds around the port city of Derna in retaliation for the beheadings.
“There is no other choice, taking into account that the Libyan people must agree, that we act to restore security and stability,” Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi told France’s Europe 1 radio.
But in a joint statement Tuesday, the United States, with Britain, France, Italy, Germany and Spain, called for a political solution.
“Terrorism affects all Libyans, and no one faction can confront alone the challenges facing Libya,” the statement said.
“The United Nations-led process to establish a national unity government provides the best hope for Libyans to address the terrorist threat and to confront the violence and instability that impedes Libya’s political transition and development.”
The Islamic State has been able to resist months of airstrikes by a U.S.-led coalition and hold on to much of the territory it captured in Iraq and Syria when it moved onto the international scene last year out of al Qaeda in Iraq.
More than 20,000 foreign fighters have made their way to Syria to join the Islamic State, most of them through Turkey, Rasmussen told the House Homeland Security Committee. That figure includes at least 3,400 Westerners, among them more than 150 Americans, he said, with even more trying to join the group.
He and other officials said the “unprecedented” flow of fighters is fueled partly by the Islamic State’s mastery of social media to reach young Sunni Muslims and others interested in its message — a mastery that has not been sufficiently curbed by coalition efforts to attack the group’s ideology.
“[The Islamic State], in addition to the advances in Iraq, is now saying it’s expanding. Over the past few days it has shown that it might be on the ascension again,” said Hassan Hassan, an analyst at the Delma Institute in Abu Dhabi and co-author of a just-released book about the Islamic State, ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror.
Libya offers the group a strategic location in a country that is rich in resources, along with the opportunity to become a serious competitor to al Qaeda, Hassan said in a Middle East Week podcast on Tuesday.
The group’s growth is fueled by the movement of foreign fighters from Syria and Iraq and is likely to expand to other countries, such as Tunisia, he said.
“We’re going to see more of that in the future,” Hassan said. “They go back and forth and they learn from each other.”
There are signs the group also has its eye on countries outside of North Africa as well.
In Afghanistan, a U.S. airstrike on Feb. 9 killed Abdul Rauf Khadim, a former Taliban commander who had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State and was recruiting others to join.
But Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said the Islamic State’s presence in Afghanistan was “more aspirational than anything else at this point.”
