| New York Times | - |
SURT, Libya
- The Islamic State has established more than a foothold in this
Mediterranean port. Its fighters dominate the city center so thoroughly
that a Libyan brigade sent to dislodge the group remains camped on the outskirts, visibly afraid to ...
SURT,
Libya — The Islamic State has established more than a foothold in this
Mediterranean port. Its fighters dominate the city center so thoroughly
that a Libyan brigade sent to dislodge the group remains camped on the
outskirts, visibly afraid to enter and allowing the extremists to come
and go as they please.
“We
are going to allow them to slip out, because the less people we have to
fight, the better,” said Mohamed Omar el-Hassan, a 28-year-old former
crane operator who leads the brigade from a prefabricated shed on a
highway ringing the city.
“Why make the city suffer?” he said, trying to explain his delay more than 16 days after the brigade arrived in Surt.
Nearly four years after the ouster of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, Libya’s
warring cities and towns have become so entangled in internal conflicts
over money and power that they have opened a door for the Islamic State
to expand into the country’s oil-rich deserts and sprawling coastline. Libya has become a new frontier for the radical group as it comes under increasing pressure from American-led airstrikes on its original strongholds in Iraq and Syria.
While
other extremists organizations may have sought only to capitalize on
the Islamic State’s fearsome name, the contingent here in Surt has not
only taken over a major Libyan city but also demonstrated clear
coordination with the parent organization, also known as ISIS or ISIL and based in Syria.
A recent video depicting the beheadings
of Egyptian Christians kidnapped from Surt appeared to have been taped
on the Libyan shoreline, but it also featured the parent group’s
signature audiovisual sophistication, orange jumpsuits and ceremonial
knives. It was publicized in the main group’s online magazine, then
released under its media logo.
That
close cooperation so far sets the Islamic State group in Surt apart
from the wave of other militants who have pledged allegiance to ISIS from Afghanistan, Algeria, Nigeria and Egypt, or even in Libya’s southern and eastern provinces.
But
even after the international uproar over the video, no Libyan authority
has been able to take any effective action against the group. Two
warring coalitions of militias have divided the country, and each —
including the one that sent Mr. Hassan and his fighters, known as
Brigade 166 — appears more intent on fighting the other than on
thwarting the Islamic State. What is more, the battles have crippled
Libya’s oil exports so severely that there is now a risk that the
country’s currency and economy will soon collapse.
“A
currency collapse is less than two years away,” Musbah Alkari, manager
of the reserves department at the Central Bank of Libya, said in an
interview at the bank’s headquarters in Tripoli.
Western
governments are keeping a watchful eye. Fighters with Mr. Hassan’s
brigade at the edge of Surt pointed to what appeared to be a white
surveillance drone or airplane circling overhead — a daily visitor, they
said.
His
fighters used extreme caution when circling the city. Escorting a
Western journalist on a brief visit, they were careful not to enter the
city itself. To reach one point on the outskirts, Mr. Hassan brought a
half-dozen trucks for protection, some mounted with artillery, and his
fighters kept their guns elevated on constant alert.
His
brigade had established control of the airport, Mr. Hassan said. But
there were no signs that the fighters had set up checkpoints, even at
critical spots like the coastal road entering the city or the main road
to the airport. “See the jihad,” read graffiti on a wall along the main
road outside the city.
The
Islamic State controls the local radio station; during the recent
visit, all four stations on the dial were transmitting Islamic sermons.
“They use the radio stations to broadcast, and they are attracting a lot
of people to join them,” Mr. Hassan said wearily.
Detail area
Mediterranean Sea
Darnah
Tripoli
TUNISIA
Misurata
Benghazi
Bin Jawad
Surt
EGYPT
ALGERIA
LIBYA
100 miles
He
and other local militia leaders, citing informants inside Surt, said
they believed that the Islamic State fighters in the city numbered about
200 or fewer, while Mr. Hassan’s brigade can command hundreds. He
insisted he needed no reinforcements. But the Islamic State fighters
were deeply entrenched and stronger than expected, Mr. Hassan said.
“We came here with orders to go in and take over the city, but we were surprised by the numbers that joined them,” he said.
Since
arriving, his brigade had found time to apprehend some foreign workers
without visas trying to move through the area, Mr. Hassan said.
But
militants suspected of links to the Islamic State had nonetheless
carried out several successful attacks on nonoperational oil fields
south of the city, reportedly killing several Libyan guards and abducting nine foreigners. No one has claimed responsibility for those attacks.
The
rival militia coalition, based in the eastern cities of Tobruk and
Bayda and under the loose command of Gen. Khalifa Hifter, describes
itself as fighting to rescue Libya from Islamic extremists, including
the Islamic State fighters. “Libya was becoming the funding house, and
they were going to export terrorism around the world,” said Saqr
al-Jaroushi, the air force chief under General Hifter.
But
the coalition’s leaders often characterize all of its opponents as
extremists, including regional militias like Mr. Hassan’s. Brigade 166
fighters displayed some evidence that General Hifter’s coalition had
been bombing their positions outside the city, even though in this case
Mr. Hassan’s brigade is on a mission against the same extremists.
In a pasture near the coast, the brigade fighters showed a journalist an unexploded cluster bomb,
identified from photographs as a Soviet-made RBK series, near one of
their positions. Similar munitions had evidently exploded nearby in
recent days and left fragments of shrapnel in cup-size holes blasted
into the dirt. Such weapons are banned under international law because
of their indiscriminate nature.
Frederic Wehrey, a researcher for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has said he saw evidence that General Hifter’s planes had dropped cluster bombs on a bank and other civilian targets during fighting in the coastal town of Bin Jawad as well.
The
coalition that sent Mr. Hassan, which is known as Libya Dawn and
opposes General Hifter, includes some Islamic extremist groups in the
eastern cities of Benghazi, Darnah and possibly elsewhere. Its
supporters often try to argue that the Islamic State fighters in Surt
are merely a front for Qaddafi loyalists or supporters of General
Hifter.
Qaddafi's Hometown In Rubble
In 2011, Ben Solomon reported from Surt,
Libya, Colonel Qaddafi’s hometown and the site of his last stand which
left much of the town in ruins.
Video by Ben Solomon on
Publish Date October 31, 2011.
Photo by Mauricio Lima for The New York Times.
“A
lot of people who have joined this group we call the Islamic State are
actually remnants of the previous regime we fought in 2011,” Omar
al-Hassi, prime minister of a provisional government set up by the Libya
Dawn coalition in Tripoli, said in an interview here. Mr. Hassi
dismissed the images of beheadings in Surt as “a fabricated
Hollywood-like video” concocted to stir trouble with Egypt.
Like
many in his coalition, he mentioned a television interview with an
influential Qaddafi cousin outside Libya, Ahmed Qaddaf al-Dam, who at
times applauded the Islamic State from an Arab nationalist perspective
for seeking to erase the border between Syria and Iraq. But Mr. Dam also
denounced the group’s medieval Islamist ideology, saying it “shows the
psychological state they are in and that they need mental health
treatment.”
Surt,
near Colonel Qaddafi’s birthplace, was the site of his last stand in
2011, when rebels from the city of Misurata joined a battle that
destroyed much of the city. They ultimately captured Colonel Qaddafi and
killed him.
Mr.
Hassan of Brigade 166, which comes primarily from Misurata, said that
history was one reason that his forces hesitated to move in. He said he
feared that aggressive military action against the Islamic State could
increase its support from local tribes who still resent Misurata’s
militias for the destruction of their city in 2011.
“If we went in with both guns blazing, we would have a backlash,” Mr. Hassan said.
He
and other militia leaders also acknowledged, though, that the core of
the Islamic State in Surt was from Misurata — a connection that could
test the loyalties of other Misuratan militiamen, who are typically
reluctant to fight against their neighbors or cousins.
After
Misuratan brigades moved into Surt in 2011, Mr. Hassan and others
acknowledged, some continued to occupy the city and eventually turned
into an extremist group, Ansar al-Shariah of Surt, a parallel to
organizations of the same name in Benghazi and Derna.
More
than two months ago, Mr. Hassan and others said, Ansar al-Shariah of
Surt split up in a dispute over pledging allegiance to the Islamic
State, and those who chose to ally with it emerged as the dominant
faction. “They are the nucleus,” Mr. Hassan said.
“You
can say that the leaders are from Misurata,” Mr. Hassan said, although
he insisted that would not deter his brigade. “I am not here as a
Misuratan.”
A
fighter named Suliman Ali Mousa, 58, raised the theory that the Islamic
State had become merely a “banner” for criminals or Qaddafi loyalists.
But
Mr. Hassan said that hardly mattered. “If they are raising the black
flag of the Islamic State and preaching Islamic State ideas,” he said,
“then they are the Islamic State.”
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