Lessons from Libya

Far from the broken cities of Mosul and Raqqah, the future of Islamic State is playing out in the Libyan city of Sirte on the glittering Mediterranean. Sirte is best known for being the birthplace of Muammar Gadhafi, but IS declared a third arm of its caliphate from there in February 2015, heralding its arrival with the execution of 21 Coptic Egyptians on the beach. From this early indicator of depravity, Sirte has been a microcosm of the dizzying rise of IS. But just as the city was the site of Gaddafi's squalid death—he was dragged from a gutter and executed by a militia fighter from the nearby city of Misrata—so too might it witness the end of IS's territorial hold in Libya. Today, its forces are trapped in the city centre by Misratan militias and close to defeat. And as Misratans, supported by the west, continue to inch forward, Libya will be a case study of what comes next after IS suffers territorial defeat.

The parallels with Raqqah and Mosul run strong. IS-Libya did not emerge from the ether. In the wake of Gaddafi's death, Sirte was left destroyed, populated by dispossessed and disenfranchised tribes and Gaddafi loyalists. Ignored by a Libyan government caught up in internecine warfare, Islamist networks exploited the frustration to take control, eventually allowing IS to walk into the city in 2015. As in Mosul and Raqqah, they exploited isolation and bitterness, tapping into networks of local conflicts and grievances, tackling the endemic lawlessness and filling the vacuum left by an eroded state.

From its bloodless conquering, IS-Libya worked hard to implement a state and project an image of governance, stability and military capability. Its media releases stressed territorial control of Sirte; it had brought the third element of caliphate into existence, and the Libyan soil it controlled was testament to the movement’s millenarian perfection. Information on the situation inside Sirte was hard to come by, but IS-Libya were thought to have several thousand fighters, and to have ruled via a developed Sharia court system and police. It was a powerful and focused enemy, instantly at home in the unwinding civil war of Libya.

An abortive attempt earlier this year to expand from Sirte towards Misratah and the oilfields put paid to that image. Threatened by its expansion, Misratah finally girded its loins and its militias rapidly pushed IS back to the centre of Sirte, puncturing its appearance of superiority. There IS remains, barricaded in, close to the streets where Gaddafi was captured and executed. But unlike the dictator, IS-Libya is ready to fight to the death.

The death of Gaddafi reverberated around the Arab world, dealing a fatal blow to the invincibility of Arab dictators. IS's defeat in Sirte will be a similarly powerful stroke to its narrative of blessed invincibility. Once Sirt becomes the first Caliphate capital to fall, the threat to Mosul and Raqqah becomes more vital. In the face of this, the senior leadership of IS has laid the ground for a move to a new kind of warfare. Its emir in Syria, Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, rejected the previous conceptual underpinnings of the Caliphate (terrority and governance) in a May press release, instead focusing on the eternal, eschatological insurgency against infidels.

When Sirte falls, we will find out what sort of insurgency IS will fight, and who will fight it. Defeat there does not mean total defeat for IS-Libya—it claims to have placed cells across the country, as well as having declared groups in the eastern cities of Benghazi and Derna. With its focus moved from building the caliphate in Sirte, Libya's phenomenally weak state becomes a greater target, as it will in Iraq and Syria when Mosul and Raqqah fall. And, as in Iraq and Syria, little capable opposition exists to prevent them. All three countries are striated by competing armed groups and centres of power—the unitary government in Tripoli barely exists, and cannot harness forces nationally to fight an insurgent IS. Instead, in Libya, a patchwork of militias and armed groups, at best loosely affiliated with the government, at worst in direct competition with the state and each other, will fight against IS.

The lack of opposition provides crucial opportunity for US. A simple path suggests itself for the campaign in Libya—faced by weak and incoherent opponents, IS can easily strengthen its insurgent tactics, targeting the institutions of state to prevent it ruling; the markets and commercial areas of cities to cripple local economies; and, finally, the competing militia factions to sow discord and mistrust between them. The chaos will enlarge the space IS has to exist, in time giving it a safe space for further attacks in Libya and abroad. Given continued poor opposition, it may even have the chance to regenerate a territorial caliphate. And this may breathe new life into the IS brand. What emerges from Sirte may be even more dangerous and alluring—a narrative not just of invincibility, but rebirth.

As the UN and western countries have identified, military support needs to be matched by political. For that reason, IS leadership in Syria and Iraq are watching Libya along with us, to note the success of any insurgent tactics and, more importantly the willingness of international partners to support and insulate the fragile Libyan state. What lessons, they may ask, have we learned from Afghanistan and Iraq? Is the international community prepared to see Libya descend into utter chaos? And, if not, what are we prepared to invest to defeat IS?

And, finally, what of the foreign fighters? IS-Libya's soldiers have yet to drain away. But IS forces in Sirte also relied on North and sub-Saharan Africans. As the noose tightens, we will find out whether foreign fighters will continue to seek to die, either in their frontlines or home countries, or whether their personal jihad finished in the ruins of Sirte. That, no doubt, is one question we all seek the answer to. The future of IS, and our security, lies in Libya.