ANALYSIS: Anti-IS intervention in Libya a high-risk temptation
With Islamic State gaining ground, some analysts say confronting group is a matter of necessity, but others fear creating a new Afghanistan or Iraq
Widespread destruction in Libya, which has seen unrest since 2011, is helping to fuel the rise of IS (AFP)
With Islamic State gaining ground, some analysts say confronting group is a matter of necessity, but others fear creating a new Afghanistan or Iraq
Widespread destruction in Libya, which has seen unrest since 2011, is helping to fuel the rise of IS (AFP)
Simona Sikimic-Thursday 11 February 2016
If the Islamic State is left to its own devices in Libya, some analysts warn that the group could seize a stretch of the Mediterranean coast and the country’s key oil infrastructure within months.
As the group has proved difficult to defeat in Iraq and Syria, there are fears that the militants will become deeply entrenched in Libya, where they have gone from strength to strength over the past 18 months, sparking serious talk of an intervention.
“The threat imposed by IS in Libya is still gravely underestimated by many,” Wolfgang Pusztai, a freelance security analyst, told Middle East Eye. He warned that, if left unchecked, IS will rule much of the Libyan coastline “no later than late summer 2016”.
“The bottom line [is that] such an intervention to stop the expansion of IS is not a ‘war of choice’ but a matter of necessity,” he said.
Dozens of defence ministers from countries taking part in the US-led anti-Islamic State coalition met in Brussels on Thursday to discuss reinvigorating the drive against the militants. Spurred in part by the advance of IS in Libya, coalition members vowed to redouble their efforts to defeat IS, and NATO said it would look into joining the fight.
This week, the chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee said the Barack Obama administration was “on the verge of taking action”. Tunisia on Friday said that it was preparing for the influx of more Libyan refugees in the event of an anti-IS intervention.
But for all the talk of bomb dropping and obliteration, the reality of how an intervention in Libya might proceed – and the success it would actually have if it did – is much more complicated.
Some analysts even warn that any intervention would only make things worse.
“The various sides will hoodwink the international community into thinking that they are fighting the Islamic State when in fact they will use this new support to fight each other,” Anas El Gomati, director of the Sadeq Institute, a Libyan think tank, told Middle East Eye.
“The same thing happened in Afghanistan and Iraq and, 10 years on, the social fabric there has been ravaged because localised fighting was accelerated through international co-operation. It’s only adding fuel to the fire, and the same would take place in Libya.”
