{"id":24355,"date":"2016-04-04T01:42:43","date_gmt":"2016-04-04T01:42:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/libya-could-replace-syria-and-iraq-as-main\/"},"modified":"2016-04-04T01:42:11","modified_gmt":"2016-04-04T01:42:11","slug":"libya-could-replace-syria-and-iraq-as-main","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/libya-could-replace-syria-and-iraq-as-main\/","title":{"rendered":"Libya could replace Syria and Iraq as main Islamic State hub"},"content":{"rendered":"

{\u201cThe bottom line is that Islamic State has found the perfect storm from where to hunker down and build its power away from the main stage in Syria and Iraq,\u201d expert says}<\/p>\n

If attacks on Islamic State continue to weaken the group in Syria and Iraq, it could relocate its headquarters to Libya\u2019s northern coastal town of Sirte, its Libyan headquarters since early spring 2015, an Israeli expert on Africa said on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Prof. Yehudit Ronen, a leading expert on Libya and the African Sahel region at Bar- Ilan University, said the Syrian regime and Russia\u2019s military victory in retaking the ancient city of Palmyra from Islamic State was a watershed defeat for the group.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs Islamic State losses continue, the attractiveness of Libya as a rear and alternative base could gather momentum and become reality,\u201d said Ronen, a political scientist and author of the acclaimed Qaddafi\u2019s Libya in World Politics.<\/p>\n

\u201cLibya\u2019s Mediterranean coast is a highly important strategic location for Islamic State, which it penetrated in 2014,\u201d noted Ronen. \u201cThe organization is well aware that the coastal strip\u2019s oil and gas-rich infrastructure and ports are turning Libya into an effective jump-off point to expand jihadist terror to the European continent.\u201d<\/p>\n

The unrest in Libya\u2019s can be seen in the broader context of the jihadist plagued Maghreb and Sahel regions where terrorism is transversing borders, affecting governments from Algeria to Tunisia to Egypt, she continued.<\/p>\n

Moreover, she said, \u201cLibya\u2019s governmental void and violent chaos, lacking any effective military and security systems, further aggrandize the attractiveness of Libya to the Islamic State.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the summer of 2014, Libya has had two rival governments: The self-declared one in Tripoli, and the elected and internationally recognized government in Tobruk, she explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis week, the third unity government backed by the international community, appeared in the political arena, yet, [without] succeeding to become an effective actor.<\/p>\n

Besides ceremonial gestures, the new unity government lacks any effective authority and still is bickering over a base in Tripoli, while in the meantime the economy has collapsed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Western powers are backing the unity government, hoping it will become an address to cooperate in confronting the Islamic State militants, deal with illegal migratory flows from Libya to Europe, and restore oil production to shore up Libya\u2019s economy and thus stabilize the country and curb the export of jihadist militancy and terror activities,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The West has been looking to politically and military back the unity government, which is supposed to lead by consensus, however, the West cannot move until it has a legitimate political pillar to collaborate with, asserted Ronen.<\/p>\n

In a twist, Muammar Gaddafi\u2019s daughter, Aisha, from her safe haven in Algeria, reiterated the message that her father gave before his fall; that the country would fall to Islamist groups if his regime were toppled.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe state of the rats didn\u2019t work. The rats don\u2019t build, they eat each other,\u201d said Aisha, as quoted in Al-Ahram Weekly.<\/p>\n

\u201cLibya has fallen into the tentacles of imperialism,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Ronen points out that Aisha\u2019s father \u201cwarned the West that what is happening now would happen if he was toppled from power. He ended up being right.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bottom line is that Islamic State has found the perfect storm where it can hunker down and build its power away from the main stage in Syria and Iraq, expanding on its ambitions to implement the caliphate vision deeper into the African Sahel and Maghreb as well as in Egypt and Sudan,\u201d said Ronen.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{\u201cThe bottom line is that Islamic State has found the perfect storm from where to hunker down and build its power away from the main stage in Syria and Iraq,\u201d expert says} If attacks on Islamic State continue to weaken the group in Syria and Iraq, it could relocate its headquarters to Libya\u2019s northern coastal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[2538],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-24355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-the-jerusalem-post"],"bylines":[{"id":2538,"name":"The Jerusalem Post","slug":"the-jerusalem-post","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2538,"name":"The Jerusalem Post","slug":"the-jerusalem-post","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24355\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24355"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=24355"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=24355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}