On Friday (13/2/15) Sheikh Qassem Sweidan al-Janabi - an Iraqi Sunni tribal leader - was travelling through Baghdad when his three vehicle convoy was stopped at a fake police checkpoint. The masked gunmen then proceeded to execute Sheikh Janabi and his bodyguards on the spot. His nephew Zeid al-Janabi - an Iraqi MP who was also travelling in the convoy - was kidnapped and later released alive in the overwhelmingly Shia Sadr City district of Baghdad.
Despite there being no claim of responsibility for the attack or any indication of who may have carried out beyond the location of Zeid al-Janabi's release Iraq's Sunni tribes have blamed the incident on Shia militias. As a consequence Iraq's Sunni MP's have withdraw from the Iraqi Parliament plunging the fragile government into further chaos.
While the attack on Sheikh Janabi's convoy was taking place the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) was conducting an offensive in the predominately Sunni province of Anbar which culminated in the capture of Al-Baghdadi and an attack on the US Marines based at Ain al-Asad airbase. In response to this fresh offensive Anbar's Sunni tribes who are allied with the Iraqi government in the fight against ISIL have expressed serious concerns that they are not being adequately protected against ISIL and may end their alliance with the Iraqi government as a result.
So while I'm very interested to hearing any evidence to the contrary I think that it is most likely that ISIL carried out the attack on Sheikh Janabi in an effort to drive a further wedge between the Sunni tribes and the Iraqi government in order to bring about a collapse that will allow them to advance further into Anbar. After all US President Barack Obama is still foolishly making unity between the Iraqi government and the Sunni tribes a pre-condition to fighting ISIL which obviously gives ISIL a weak point to attack.
On Sunday (15/2/15) ISIL released another one of its gory propaganda videos. Entitled "A Message Signed With Blood to the Nation of the Cross" this video was very similar in style to a sequence in the 16/11/14 video of the murder of US hostage Peter Kassing in which 18 Syrian airmen were beheaded in unison. This latest video again showed hostages in orange jumpsuits being marched and lined up by masked captors who armed with knives them beheaded the hostages at the same time. The lead captor then gestures out across the sea behind him and warns that ISIL will soon be striking at European capitals and Italy's Rome in particular.
It was that last message that was the most shocking element of the video because it hadn't been filmed in Syria or Iraq but in Libya before being edited and released by ISIL's central command in Syria. The victims this time were not Syrian airmen but Coptic Christians from neighbouring Egypt who had been kidnapped in Libya whilst working as migrant labour.
Although I've been trying to avoid putting ideas into their heads one of the main reasons why I have been urging the US -led coalition to strike hard and fast in order to quickly defeat ISIL in Iraq and Syria is that to delay allows them time to move personnel and resources out of Iraq and Syria and set up operations in other nations. This would turn a short, local fight to defeat ISIL that really should have been over by now into a much longer term, enduring conflict where the coalition is forced to chase ISIL across the globe for years if not decades to come.
Libya is probably the worst place for ISIL to be allowed to establish itself because the western overthrow of the Libyan government in 2011 triggered a large-scale Islamist insurgency in near-by Mali and the creation of an Islamic state roughly the size of France or the US state of Texas.
Although Mali's Islamists were quickly defeated by French forces in 2013 the two years they were allowed to operate helped strengthen Boko Haram in Nigeria. Boko Haram have now grown to the point where they have declared an Islamic state roughly the size of Switzerland (twice the size of New Jersey) and begun to attack the neighbouring states of Cameroon and Chad.
As a result if ISIL are allowed to establish themselves in Libya it will present a multi-regional threat affecting not only north Africa and sub-Saharan west Africa but also southern Europe.
Fighting ISIL in Libya is also going to be a lot more difficult then fighting them in Syria and Iraq. You may remember that Libya's last functioning government lead by Muammer Qaddafi was overthrown by western forces all the way back in 2011. In order to do this western nations and certain Gulf states (Saudi Arabia and Qatar) armed a wide range of disparate regional militias. Since then those militias have more or less ruled as the type of warlords you find in conflicts such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
What government there has been in Libya over the past four years has been forced to rely on support for the militias rather then the ballot box or even the tribes. In 2014 the Islamist elements of militias in western Libya including the notorious Misrata brigades unified to form the Libya Dawn coalition.
In August Libya Dawn seized control of Libya's capital Tripoli forcing the Libyan government into hiding first on a ship in Tripoli harbour and then into the eastern city of Tobruk. Libya Dawn then set up their own version of the Libyan Parliament that is stuffed with Islamists and is not recognised internationally. Between Tripoli and Tobruk you not only have the Islamist Libya Shield militia coalition controlling the centre but also Benghazi which is largely considered an Al Qaeda stronghold.
As a result the challenge of fighting ISIL in Libya is not one of building an international coalition of air-power although having been threatened directly Italy should at least be prepared to offer some of its NATO expertise. Instead the challenge will be building an internal coalition of the disparate tribes and militias to fight ISIL on the ground backed by air-power. Once that has been achieved I'm confident that even with Egypt alone providing air-support ISIL can be defeated in Libya in a matter of weeks. After all even in their stronghold of Iraq and Syria ISIL are nowhere near as strong as they and Obama would have use believe.
So while I fully appreciate and support Egypt's desire to retaliate for the murder of its citizen it is clear that ISIL carried out those murders in order to provoke Egypt into fighting them both on its western flank in Libya and on its eastern flank in the Sinai. As a result Egypt's retaliation may well be best delivered by things going very quiet for a few weeks only for everything to happen at once and ISIL's presence in Libya to come to an abrupt end.
21:00 on 16/2/15 (UK date).
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