Libya Asks Arab League Countries to Help Battle Islamic State
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Version 0 of 1. CAIRO — The Islamic State militants who control the Libyan city of Surt are resorting to mass beheadings, public crucifixions and other stark displays of brutality as they seek to crush an insurrection, the foreign minister of Libya’s internationally recognized government said Tuesday at a meeting of Arab diplomats here. The foreign minister, Mohamed el-Dayri, cited the violence in an appeal to the member states of the Arab League for military intervention against the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL. “Can Libyans now stop this flood in Surt represented by the Islamic State? I say the answer is no,” Mr. Dayri told the assembled Arab delegates in Cairo, arguing that a weapons embargo imposed by the United Nations Security Council at the start of the uprising against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi five years ago was now depriving the recognized government of “the most basic needs” in weaponry. “There is a siege on the Libyan Army and its children and its capabilities,” Mr. Dayri said, “by not equipping it to achieve the necessary triumph over this black darkness.” Others, though, argued that the struggle by the Islamic State to maintain its control of Surt also underscored the natural limits on the group’s expansion amid the Libyan chaos. The group was forced out of the eastern Libyan city of Derna this spring by a feud with a rival Islamist militia, and now one of the largest tribes in Surt, its remaining stronghold, has also risen against it. “Everything in Libya is hyperlocalized, and that holds true for ISIS as well,” said Frederic Wehrey, a researcher on Libya at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “There is only so far it can expand because it bumps up against these same forces.” Mr. Dayri’s appeal on Tuesday for military intervention now risks new regional entanglements in what is already at least a three-way conflict among the Islamic State and two rival Libyan factions, each seeking sway over Libya’s vast oil reserves and long Mediterranean coast. Over the last two years, both Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have initiated limited interventions inside Libya, both treating the fighting there as part of broader regional conflict with the forces of political Islam. A rebel provisional government in exile made a similar request to the Arab League five years ago for help to oust Colonel Qaddafi, and the league’s statement of support set the stage for the NATO airstrikes that ended his rule. The collapse of the Qaddafi government and the looting of its armories, however, left Libyans at the mercy of fractious local militias that emerged in the aftermath. By 2013, many of those militias had split into two camps in a broad civil conflict. On one side, some Islamist and other local militias were aligned behind a faction based in Misurata with its own provisional government in Tripoli, the capital. Other forces opposed to the Islamists lined up with an anti-Islamist military leader, Gen. Khalifa Hiftir, who presented himself as a national savior. Most of the elected Parliament and, thus, the internationally recognized government moved to the eastern towns of Tobruk and Bayda under his protection. With each side focused on battling the other, militants pledging allegiance to the Islamic State took full control of Surt, a coastal city, established a base at Derna, and became a third force in the bloody conflict. The Islamic State fighters feuded with other Islamists, carried out mass beheadings of Christian migrants, and threatened attacks across the Mediterranean as well. But no Libyan government or faction has yet focused its full capabilities on eradicating the group. In Derna, the backlash against the Islamic State began after the group’s fighters killed a revered leader of a powerful local Islamist militia, the Martyrs of Abu Salim Brigade. In Surt, the rebellion appears to have been set off by the group’s killing of a popular preacher. Yet one of the largest tribes in the area, the Ferghani, is said to have led the fighting against the Islamic State there. Reports emerging from Surt say the militants have tried to break the uprising with artillery fire, summary executions and by hanging dead bodies from lampposts. “The sons of Surt are being dangled from light poles and from the city’s bridges for no reason other than they refused to pledge allegiance to that group,” Mohamed Hadya al-Ferghani, a member of the tribe, said this week in an interview with a Libyan satellite network. “The knife was put on the neck of a whole tribe that refused to pledge allegiance to that group, and it is the beginning of the knife of the Islamic State being up against the neck of the world as well.” Mr. Dayri, the foreign minister, accused the Islamic State militants of beheading at least 12 people last Friday, exhuming and incinerating the body of an imam, and publicly crucifying three other preachers. Because of the Islamic State’s dominance over the city, none of the reports could be confirmed independently. In response to Mr. Dayri, the Arab League said in a statement on Tuesday that it would “ask member countries to help support Libya in its war against terrorism” and “help it with all means necessary to maintain security.” The United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain recently issued their own statement expressing deep concern about “the deplorable developments” in Surt, citing reports of the Islamic State’s “indiscriminate acts of violence to terrorize the Libyan population.” In contrast to Mr. Dayri’s appeal, the statement from the Western powers urged Libyans to support United Nations-brokered talks among the factions to form a unity government so it could provide security against violent extremists. “We reiterate that there is no military solution to the political conflict in Libya,” the statement said, “and remain concerned that the economic and humanitarian situation is worsening every day.” |