Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 23-8-Libya-20

C de Waart [email protected] In Confidence

Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 23-8-Libya-20

Al-Zawarhi said that he does not agree with the Islamic State (ISIS)’s contention that it is a caliphate unto itself, but he supports the group’s efforts to wipe out secular and Western influences in Iraq and Syria. The recording suggests that it was at least two months old as there was reference to former Taliban leader Mullah Mohamed Omar as still being alive. “It highlights how deep the division is between al Qaeda leadership and ISIS”, he said. The SITE Monitoring Service, which tracks jihadist statements, quoted al-Zawahiri as saying he hoped the protest movements that have overthrown leaders in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya would establish what he called true Islam.

Over recent months the situation in the Mediterranean has served as a dramatic reminder of what the leaders of Europe have tried hard to forget. The Syrian crisis has reached Europe.Although a lot of talk has been made over numbers and percentages of refugees that every country may or may not accept, let’s not forget that behind those numbers and the showy emotionalism of the politicians hides the ugly side of world politics.The plans to overthrow the “annoying” regimes in the Middle East began at the time when the war hawks of Washington and their European allies prepared the first Iraqi war. In a 2007 speech, US General Wesley Clark recounted a conversation he had back in 1991 with the then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. During that talk, the Secretary told the General that the Pentagon had already drawn plans in order to achieve the change of regimes in Iraq, Syria and Iran. “…We’ve got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet regimes – Syria, Iran, Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us.”

General Clark went on to reveal that six weeks after the attack on the twin towers in 2001, an official from the Department of Defense told him that the Pentagon had issued a classified document describing the strategy of the USA in order to overthrow the regimes of seven countries in the next five years. The beginning would be made with Iraq, followed by Syria and Lebanon, then Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finally, Iran.Those claims were confirmed by the former French Minister of Foreign affairs, Roland Dumas when he told a French television station that Great Britain used to train and suport Syrian rebels at least two years prior to the revolt aiming to overthrow Assad from power

The Libyan connection Back in September 2012, the US consulate in Benghazi and a CIA base located a mile from the consulate were attacked by local militias. The attacks resulted to the death of four people, including the American ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens.President Obama and Hillary Clinton were heavily criticized over the lack of security at the consulate and the delayed response.But the official narrative failed to address some key issues: why the CIA base was attacked and what was the exact role of the consulate in an area partially controlled by local militia?Officially the consulate’s role was to establish a cultural center and a library in Benghazi. But media reports indicate that the consulate had a much more obscure role.Soon after the war to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi in Libya began, in February 2011, the CIA set up a base for its spying operations in Benghazi. The CIA base was known as the Annex and according to the Wall Street Journal the sole aim of the consulate was to “provide diplomatic cover to the Annex”.The Sunday Times of London reported that the United States had been secretly purchasing the stockpiled weapons of Gaddafi — including anti-aircraft SA-7 missiles, anti-tank rounds, rocket-propelled grenades and mortar shells.

Via a connection with Middle Eastern countries that were already supporting various opposition groups in Syria some of these weapons were channeled to the rebels.Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh has also revealed that President Obama and the Turkish PM, Erdogan had reached a secret deal in the beginning of 2012.The deal was that the CIA and the British M16 would undertake to move Gaddafi heavy weapons out

1The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see. –Winston ChurchillCees de Waart: CdW Intelligence to Rent of 15

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of Libya and use them to supply the Free Syrian Army; Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar were to provide the funds for this operation that was covered under the auspices of an Australian entity.It is very likely that most of those weapons ended up in the hands of the Al-Nusra front – an extremist group that is linked to Al Qaeda in Syria. When the US and its European and Middle Eastern allies were channeling heavy weaponry to the rebels in Syria, up to 9 per cent of the Free Syrian Army’s total fighters belonged to the Al Nusra Front.In 2012 Washington Post reported that the jihadist group is growing fast “in part because it has been the most aggressive and successful arm of the rebel force” Indeed, by 2013, virtually all rebel areas controlled in Syria would be led by jihadists. Fragkiska Megaloudi is an independent journalist covering humanitarian stories and news from my home country of Greece.

Heavy fighting erupted over the weekend between forces from Libya's recognized government and Islamist militants in Benghazi, killing at least six and heightening tensions in U.N. peace negotiations.

TRIPOLI — Abdullah al-Thinni is Libya’s prime minister. From his office in the eastern city of Bayda, the 61-year-old former defense minister boasts an army, a suite of ministers and a host of challenges, including an Islamist insurgency and an economy in free fall.But Khalifa al-Ghwell, who sits in the capital, also is Libya’s prime minister. A civil engineer who took over when his predecessor was ousted earlier this year, Ghwell may not enjoy the backing of world powers, but he does have the advantage of support from the country’s most powerful militias.Libya finds itself today in the odd position of having two rival governments, each of them vying for international legitimacy and dwindling resources as the North African nation slips deeper into civil war. The country has two central banks, two national oil companies, and three anti-corruption commissions. British courts are now mulling which of the two Libyan investment chairmen has authority over the country’s $67 billion sovereign wealth fund.

September 19, 2015 Militants loyal to the extremist Islamic State group managed to penetrate an air base Friday on the outskirts of Tripoli that serves as the Libyan capital’s only working airport and launch an attack on the headquarters of an Islamist militia that is opposed to them.The attack by a suicide squad composed of at least four militants is one of the most aggressive forays the Islamic State has made on the Libyan capital. Four assailants were killed, according to a spokesman for the mainly Islamist upstart Tripoli-run government — the rival to the internationally recognized administration now in exile in the eastern Libyan towns of Tobruk and Beida.At least three members of the Special Deterrence Force, a 700-member militia loyal to the Tripoli government, were killed, rebuffing the assault. The Tripoli government issued a statement expressing condolences to the families of the SDF fighters killed and emphasized its determination “to fight and eliminate terrorism.” The attack comes as the U.N.’s special envoy to Libya, the Spanish diplomat Bernardino Leon, is seeking to hammer out a complicated power-sharing deal to rid fractious Libya of its parallel rival governments. Under the Leon deal the factions would form a government of national accord, but talks are faltering ahead of a September 20 deadline.

In the southwestern corner of Libya, deep in the arid hinterland of the Sahara desert, there is a city where the state’s slow motion collapse has precipitated a deadly tribal conflict. The city is named Ubari, in the southern district known as the Fezzan, and the battle between the Touareg and Tubu tribes encompasses not just the failure of Libya, but also the challenges facing North Africa as unrest in Nigeria, Mali and Niger drive streams of migrants north towards Europe.

The intervention was morally corrupt because the Western moral rage against dictatorships in the Global South is shamelessly selective.The four Indian nationals abducted in Libya by suspected Islamists last month were working in a


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university in Sirte, the hometown of the country’s slain dictator, Muammar Qaddafi. They were among the few thousand Indians who continued to work in the war-devastated country, which, under Qaddafi, used to be an attractive destination for Indian professionals because of its relative prosperity. But today’s Libya is a ghost of what it was five years ago. Sirte is now under the control of the Islamic State terror group, which is steadily expanding its influence in central Libya, exploiting the chaos that has prevailed in the country after the fall of Qaddafi. The country is effectively divided into the East and West, with two different governments in charge of each region.The government in Tripoli, which is backed by Libya Dawn, a loose coalition of various militia groups including Islamists, is in charge of the West. The Libyan Supreme Court supports this government, but it lacks international legitimacy. An alternative government is being run from the eastern city of Tobruk, which claims to be anti-Islamist and is recognised by most Western nations. Libyan National Army, a non-government force commanded by General Khalifa Hiftar, a Qaddafi-era renegade who later became a CIA operative, is supporting the Tobruk government, and has launched a “war against Islamists” known as Operation Dignity. Misratans, a militia group from the Western city of Misrata which is a major contingent of the Tripoli-based Libya Dawn, is opposed to Hiftar’s campaign, leading to a low-lever civil war between these two forces. Benghazi, the cradle of the anti-Qaddafi protests of 2011, is now a battleground between jihadists such as Ansar Al-Sharia and their opponents like Dignity. It’s a complete mess. How did Libya, one of the most stable countries in Africa till a few years ago, slide into such an abyss?

Hijacked revolutionThere are several actors responsible, including the Qaddafi regime itself whose failure to reform the political system might have contributed to the rise of the anti-government rebellion in the East which snowballed into the civil war; the militia groups which refused to disarm themselves after the regime fell; dreaded Islamists who want to turn Libya into a religious state; and power hungry politicians who, in alliance with militias, continue to fracture the country. But what proved to be a catalyst for the destruction of the Libyan state was none of these. Qaddafi was trying to defend the state he built; the anti-regime rebellion had never gathered enough political capital to effect any systemic change; and the militias on their own were not a potent challenge to the Qaddafi troops. What changed the balance of power in Libya was the months-long bombing campaign carried out by a multinational coalition under the NATO.If the history of external interventions has taught the international community any definite lesson it is that wars sponsored by foreign actors do not solve domestic political crises. Iraq is a burning example. Nation states are shaped by a historical process and strengthened by years, if not decades, of socio-political mobilisation. A great power can bomb and destroy a weak state in a few weeks, but rebuilding one is not an easy process. Despite several examples in history, the Atlantic capitals never took this lesson seriously. They bombed Yugoslavia in the late 1990s which led to the fragmentation of the country. They bombed Iraq in 2003, which has effectively destabilised larger parts of West Asia. And they did the same mistake in Libya in 2011. Even if one overlooks this historical argument against invasions, the bombing campaign in Libya was particularly problematic. The case built against Qaddafi in the wake of anti-regime protests, which was used as a pretext for the war, was factually incorrect and morally corrupt, and the war was strategically disastrous.The West’s argument was that they intervened to stop Qaddafi from massacring his own people in Benghazi. This argument was untenable. Firstly, as Hugh Roberts of Tufts University pointed out in his London Review of Books essay, they were holding Qaddafi “guilty in advance”. They punished his regime not for its mistakes, but for the mistakes it might commit in the future. Secondly, there’s no credible evidence to suggest that Qaddafi was on course to massacre his people. Within weeks of the rebellion breaking out, the government forces had recaptured all cities but Benghazi. And in those cities, the government troops had narrowly targeted the combatants, not the civilians. The battle for Misrata, Libya’s third largest city, was an example. When government troops took the city back after seven weeks of fighting, the casualty was 257, according to a report by the Human Rights Watch.


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While the loss of 257 lives is certainly a tragedy, it’s a tiny fraction of the city’s 300,000 population, which suggests that the claim that Qaddafi’s troops were indiscriminately killing civilians was baseless. Also, the HRW report says it can’t confirm how many of this 257 were killed by the government troops and how many by rebel forces.

Selective moralityThe intervention was morally corrupt because the Western moral rage against dictatorships in the Global South is shamelessly selective. They had supported (they still do) several dictators in Africa and West Asia during the Cold War, many of them much worse than Qaddafi. The support for Mobutu Sese Seko during his three-decade long rein of terror in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) was particularly repulsive. Even in the case of Arab protests, this selective morality was at play. The West didn’t have any problem when the Saudis sent troops to Bahrain to brutally remove anti-regime protestors from Manama’s Peal Square in March 2011. But in Libya, they were appalled by the crimes Qaddafi was likely to commit. It shows despite Qaddafi’ earnest efforts to patch up with the West after the Iraq war, he remained, in the views of the Atlantic capitals, a “mad dog of the Middle East” (as Ronald Reagan once called him).But this narrative is fundamentally flawed. Qaddafi was not a fool. He ruled Libya for 42 years not just with an iron fist. Libya was hardly a united nation when Qaddafi took power through a coup against King Idris in 1969. Idris, a British protégé, was more interested to keep the country away from the radical currents of pan-Arabism than integrating Libya which consisted of multiple ethnic and religious groups such as Arabs, Berbers Tuaregs and Toubous. While the Arabs were historically closer to the Maghreb and West Asia, ethnic groups such as Tuaregs and Toubous had strong cultural ties with people in African countries such as Niger, Mali and Chad. Qaddafi’s primary task was to unify these groups under Libyan nationalism and build a legitimate state. His model was a mix of the Sanussiyya religious order existed in the East with the pan-Islamist currents of the West. The new state was absolutist in terms of political power, but adopted a “distributive” economic philosophy aimed at addressing the inequalities of the society; “anti-imperialist” foreign policy, which aligned it ideologically with the Third World, and was tolerant of the cultural diversities of the country, which became the foundation of the State. That the State Qaddafi built survived 42 years, and was toppled only by an external intervention, itself shows that there was something right about the model for the country. But those who bombed Libya lacked any understanding of these complexities, nor did they have any viable replacement for Qaddafi’s state. They just wanted him out, and were least prepared for the crisis that followed his ouster.

Strategic disasterThe collapse of the state naturally undermined the social contract Qaddafi built over the years, leading to an implosion of the Libyan society. Its implications, both domestic and regional, were far-reaching. The crisis in Mali was a case in point. Qaddafi had ethnic Tuaregs from Mali in his forces. When the leader fell, they fled to Mali with whatever weapons they could carry. Mali has a historical Tuareg problem, and the well-trained Tuareg men came from Libya joined the local rebels and jihadists in Northern Mali and launched a full-blown rebellion against the government. This rebellion morphed into a powerful Islamist insurgency as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb outflanked the Tuareg nationalists and captured the entire northern Mali. In early 2013, France sent troops to Mali to fight the jihadists, a war which is still going on. The crisis in Libya had also strengthened the operations of the Islamic State (IS) in the region. Hundreds of Libyans have travelled to Syria and Iraq to join the IS. Several of them, after acquiring military training, returned to Libya to set up IS affiliates. IS has also reportedly set up training camps in Libya’s lawless parts from where trained militants are travelling to Egypt and Tunisia to carry out “jihad”. The sudden rise in Islamist violence in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula should be seen against this background. The gunmen who killed at least 58 people in two different attacks in Tunisia this year were also trained in Libya.This is the Libya the Western intervention has achieved: A country without a state; a fertile ground for jihadists and perpetual miseries for millions of its people. It’s too late to ask whether the Libyan


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political crisis of 2011 could have been solved through a negotiated settlement instead of a catastrophic war. But those who pushed Libya into today’s crisis have a historical responsibility to help Libyans rebuild their state. It can’t be done if outside powers take sides in the ongoing civil war between the two competing, legitimacy-hungry governments. Instead, the West and their Gulf allies should use their influence over their allies in Libya to facilitate real meaningful talks among the warring factions to form a unity government and disarm private militias. If not, it will only be a matter of time before Libya becomes a “Somalia on the Mediterranean”.

The Islamic State’s Uneven Trajectory in LibyaPublication: Terrorism Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 19 September 17, 2015 By: Nathaniel Barr

The Islamic State's Shari'a court in Derna was burned in an uprising against the group (Source: Twitter).As the Islamic State sought to expand geographically in the months following the declaration of the caliphate in June 2014, Libya initially appeared to be the organization’s most promising frontier outside of Syria and Iraq. Libya’s civil conflict—which has pitted the Libya Dawn military coalition, allied with the Tripoli-based General National Congress (one of Libya’s two competing legislative bodies), against units aligned with the Libyan National Army, commanded by polarizing former Qaddafi military officer Khalifa Haftar and affiliated with the Tobruk-based House of Representatives (Libya’s internationally recognized parliamentary body)—had divided Libya geographically and sent the country spiraling into a state of chaos. The Islamic State quickly seized upon these anarchic conditions, establishing a presence in the eastern city of Derna in the fall of 2014, and then expanding into the central city of Sirte in February 2015. These bases in Derna and Sirte were critical to the group’s organizational success, as they provided the organization with a springboard from which to expand into other parts of North Africa. Some supporters also saw the Islamic State’s foothold on the southern shores of the Mediterranean as possible rear bases from which to launch attacks into Europe. [1]But recent developments in Derna and Sirte have revealed the challenges that the Islamic State faces in trying to consolidate and expand its presence in Libya. In particular, the organization has struggled to harness and capitalize upon political grievances in Libya, a Sunni-majority country where religious sectarianism, an issue that the Islamic State has manipulated to great effect in Iraq, has only minimal resonance. At the same time, the group’s heavy-handed governing style, its indiscriminate use of violence against Muslim civilians and its liberal application of takfiri doctrine (i.e., declaring a Muslim an apostate, an offense punishable by death) have alienated many Libyans and sparked resistance from Libya’s tribes, who are perhaps the strongest social organizations remaining in Libya. The entrenched presence of al-Qaeda-linked militant groups in Libya has also constrained the Islamic State’s expansion in the country, forcing the latter organization to fight its way to power against far more established, and in some cases popular, militias. Though the Islamic State will remain a potent player in Libya’s fragmented security environment so long as the broader civil conflict in the country persists, significant obstacles now lie in its path to expansion in Libya.The Derna UprisingThe first major challenge that the Islamic State encountered in Libya came in June 2015 in Derna, a city with a reputation for Salafist-Jihadist militancy dating to the 1980s. Ever since Libyans fighting with the Islamic State in Syria returned to Derna and formed the Islamic Youth Shura Council (IYSC) in spring 2014, the relationship between these militants and other militias in the city, several of whom


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have links to al-Qaeda, has been tenuous. When the IYSC publicly pledged allegiance to Islamic State amir Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in October 2014 and redubbed itself Wilayat Barqa (Barqa refers to the eastern coastal region of Libya, or Cyrenaica), the Abu Salim Martyrs Brigade (ASMB)—a hardline militant group with ties to al-Qaeda that was commanded by Salim Derbi, a former member of the al-Qaeda-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group—announced its disapproval, stating that it would never pledge allegiance to a group based outside of Libya. [2] In the following months, Wilayat Barqa engaged in tit-for-tat fighting with ASMB and other militias, and in December 2014, ASMB and several other militias established the Derna Mujahideen Shura Council (DMSC), a military coalition intended both as a counterweight to Haftar’s Libyan National Army and as a bulwark against further Islamic State expansion in Derna (al-Akhbar, December 13, 2014).While tensions between Wilayat Barqa and other militias intensified in Derna, the Islamic State’s iron-fisted approach and excessive use of violence also alienated local populations in the city. In April 2015, the group launched a vicious assault on the al-Harir family, which belongs to the influential Obeidat tribe based in northeastern Libya. Members of the al-Harir family fought back and killed several militants before the family compound was overrun, the first concrete signs of local opposition against the Islamic State’s local branch (Der Spiegel, September 4). According to a statement by the DMSC, Wilayat Barqa militants killed six members of the al-Harir family, including two unarmed women who were killed after the fighters originally promised that the women could go to the hospital to receive treatment. [3] Other acts of Islamic State brutality also angered Derna residents. According to one news account, the organization beheaded and then dismembered a man in April 2015, after the man’s father failed to pay 300,000 Libyan dinars (over $200,000 at the current exchange rate) in protection money (al-Sharq al-Awsat, July 13). This attack, and other similar atrocities, prompted many Derna residents, including prominent tribal figures, to flee the city.Local disillusionment with the local branch of the Islamic State extended to the group’s approach to governing the city. For instance, according to a DMSC statement, Wilayat Barqa looted a bank in Derna, and also began taxing local merchants against their will. [4] Derna residents also particularly resented foreign fighters from Tunisia, Egypt and other North African countries, who had flocked to Derna to join the Islamic State there, imposing foreign customs upon the local population (Der Spiegel, September 4).Tensions between Wilayat Barqa and other factions in Derna came to a head in June 2015, when Islamic State gunmen assassinated Nasir Atiyah al-Akar, a key leader within the DMSC. Al-Akar’s death sparked clashes between the two groups, which resulted in the death of Salim Derbi, DMSC’s top commander, and prompted DMSC to declare jihad against the Islamic State (Twitter, June 9). Derna residents immediately demonstrated their support for the uprising against the Islamic State, revealing the extent of local hostility toward the group. Just days after al-Akar’s death, demonstrators took to the streets of Derna after Friday prayers to demand Wilayat Barqa’s expulsion from the city; seven protesters were killed and approximately 30 were wounded when Islamic State fighters opened fire on the marchers (Reuters, June 12). As the uprising against the Islamic State branch gained momentum, local residents replaced Islamic State flags with the Libyan national flag and torched the building that the organization had used as its Shari’a court (Twitter, June 18).With local backing, the DMSC drove the Islamic State out of Derna within a week, and the organization’s remaining fighters withdrew to al-Fata’ih, a suburb in the hills south of Derna. In recent weeks, the Islamic State has tried to fight its way back into Derna, though it has been rebuffed and consequently remains largely confined to the city’s suburbs.The uprising against Wilayat Barqa in Derna exposed the vulnerabilities of the Islamic State’s governing strategy in the city. Though the organization’s religious ideology is not necessarily at odds with the sentiments of the local population—several of the militant factions that now govern Derna also adhere to a Salafist-Jihadist worldview—the Islamic State’s brutality, disregard for local customs and inability to collaborate, or at the very least cohabit, with other militant groups created the conditions for a local rebellion. The local branch’s failure to either dominate or co-opt entrenched


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militant factions in Derna, strategies that have worked well for the Islamic State organization in Syria and Iraq, left the group vulnerable to a coordinated DMSC military offensive. Meanwhile, Wilayat Barqa’s alienation of the local population in Derna virtually ensured that any group that stood up to the group would receive public support.Instability in SirteWith Derna out of the Islamic State’s hands, the militant group’s center of gravity in Libya has shifted to the central city of Sirte, Mu’ammar Qaddafi’s hometown. The branch in Sirte is known as Wilayat Tarablus, which refers to the historic region of Tripolitania in northwestern Libya, and this group has had success in establishing a foothold in Sirte is attributable in large part to the group’s ability to exploit political conditions in the city. Since the fall of the Qaddafi regime, Sirte, like Derna, has been a stronghold of hardline Islamist groups, most notably Ansar al-Shari’a of Sirte, a Salafist-Jihadist militant group affiliated with, but organizationally distinct from, groups in Benghazi and Derna that share the Ansar al-Shari’a moniker. The Islamic State organization has ties with militant groups in Sirte dating back to June 2013, when Turki al-Binali, now one of the group’s top religious scholars, delivered a series of lectures in Sirte and also recruited fighters in the city to join the Islamic State in Syria. [5] When the group began to overtly expand its presence in Libya in the fall of 2014, it was able to tap into the longstanding relationships that al-Binali and others had established. One report claims that members of Ansar al-Sharia in Sirte began defecting to the local branch of the Islamic State as early as October 2014, and in January 2015, Ansar al-Shari’a in Sirte split into two factions, with the dominant group allying with the Islamic State (New York Times, March 10). [6] The defection of most of Ansar al-Sharia in Sirte eliminated a potential source of resistance and cleared the path for the Islamic State to move into Sirte in February 2015.Though there is no evidence indicating that Wilayat Tarablus encountered significant opposition from Sirte residents when it first moved into the city, the group’s draconian governance tactics in Sirte eventually sparked blowback from local residents. As Aaron Zelin of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy has noted, the Islamic State is now in a “state-building stage” in Sirte; the group has begun providing services and conducting public works projects in the city, in addition to its dawa (preaching) activities. [7] However, there is also a darker and more violent side to the organization’s operations in Sirte; the local branch of the Islamic State has begun implementing punishments, including amputations and executions, against those who violate Shari’a law, looting the homes of local politicians and demanding that Sirte residents who previously served in the military or police seek repentance from the group. [8]It was this latter demand that ultimately ignited tensions between the local population and Wilayat Tarablus. During Friday sermons on August 7, Khalid bin Rajab Ferjani, a Salafist preacher from the Ferjani tribe and the imam at the Cordoba mosque in Sirte, spoke out against the Islamic State, claiming that the group did not represent Islam and that repenting before the group was forbidden (Middle East Eye, August 14). It appears that Ferjani’s speech was intended to coincide with a larger uprising against the organization in the city; on August 4, a Facebook page allegedly representing Neighborhood 2 in Sirte issued a communique calling for an uprising against the Islamic State on August 7. [9] On August 11, Ferjani was assassinated by Wilayat Tarablus fighters, triggering the anticipated uprising. Members of the Ferjani tribe, Salafists and former members of the security forces in Sirte all mobilized in Neighborhood 3, one of the few remaining areas in Sirte not fully under the Islamic State’s control, and began driving back the group’s forces.However, the local uprising was short-lived. Islamic State fighters in Sirte called in reinforcements from Nawfaliyah, a town approximately 150 kilometers east of Sirte that is also under Wilayat Tarablus control, and members of the resistance soon found themselves outmatched and outgunned by the heavily armed Islamic State contingent (Twitter, August 12). In short order, Islamic State fighters quelled the uprising and then retaliated massively against those suspected of participating or assisting in the rebellion. According to news reports, the organization killed dozens to hundreds of Sirte residents, including several people receiving treatment at a hospital, and publicly crucified several


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citizens, including two Salafist clerics, acts intended to deter Sirte residents from rebelling in the future (Twitter, August 14). In the weeks since the uprising was crushed, the Islamic State has consolidated its control over Sirte, establishing new checkpoints and imposing new restrictions on both the educational and legal systems in the city.The Islamic State’s Prospects in LibyaThe uprisings in Sirte and Derna illustrate the Islamic State’s greatest strengths and its greatest weaknesses in Libya. It is apparent that the local branch’s heavy-handed tactics and indiscriminate use of force have alienated many Libyans and created fertile conditions for local revolts to take place. However, whereas Wilayat Barqa confronted a superior military force in the DMSC in Derna, the failure of either the Tobruk- or Tripoli-based governments to come to the aid of emboldened but poorly armed local residents in Sirte allowed Islamic State militants to quickly crush the uprising in that city.Indeed, this incident in Sirte is a microcosm of the Islamic State’s trajectory in Libya thus far. While the Tobruk and Tripoli governments have focused the vast majority of their military resources on each other, the Islamic State has gained ground and influence, using the civil conflict as a strategic opportunity. So long as the civil conflict persists in Libya and neither Tobruk nor Tripoli focuses greater attention and resources on this jihadist threat, the Islamic State, through Wilayat Tarablus and Wilayat Barqa, will continue to wreak havoc in Sirte and other areas where it maintains influence. However, if the uprisings in Sirte and Derna are any indication, the Islamic State’s ability to expand further in Libya will be constrained by the group’s religious dogmatism and brutality, and by its inability to garner widespread public support from the Libyan population.Nathaniel Barr is a threat analyst at Valens Global, a D.C.-based consulting firm that focuses on the global challenges posed by violent non-state actors. The author would like to thank Meghan Conroy for her excellent research assistance for this paper.Notes1. Charlie Winter, “Libya: The Strategic Gateway for the Islamic State,” The Quilliam Foundation, February 2015, http://www.quilliamfoundation.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/publications/free/libya-the-strategic-gateway-for-the-is.pdf.2. Aaron Zelin, “The Islamic State's First Colony in Libya,” The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, October 10, 2014, http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/the-islamic-states-first-colony-in-libya.3. “The State Organization -- Why We Fought Them, and Why We Forced Them Out of the City,” Derna Mujahideen Shura Council Facebook page, June 19, 2015.4. Ibid.; “O Evildoer, Desist -- A Response to the State Organization's Official Spokesman,” Derna Mujahideen Shura Council Facebook page, June 25, 2015.5. For video clips of Binali’s lectures in Sirte in June 2013, see https://justpaste.it/huch. See also, Kevin Casey and Stacey Pollard, “The Islamic State’s Strategy in Libya,” Sada, March 25, 2015, http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/index.cfm?fa=show&article=59488&solr_hilite.6. Aaron Zelin, “The Islamic State's Burgeoning Capital in Sirte, Libya,” Washington Institute for Near East Policy, August 6, 2015, http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/the-islamic-states-burgeoning-capital-in-sirte-libya.7. Ibid.8. Ibid.9. “Uprising in Surt: Al-Nahrawan Friday, 7 August 2015, To Cleanse Our City of the Renegades and Kharijites, Enemies of God -- Surt Is One Tribe,” Neighborhood 2-Surt Facebook page, August 4, 2015.

Files:TerrorismMonitorVol13Issue19_03.pdf


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Joint Statement on Libya by the Governments of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the

United Kingdom, and the United States Office of the SpokespersonWashington, DC September 18, 2015

The Governments of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States welcome the current round of the UN political dialogue in Skhirat, Morocco, and reiterate our full support for the UN process led by Special Representative of the Secretary-General Bernardino Leon. We strongly encourage all parties to continue to participate constructively in the talks at this critical stage of negotiations, in order to reach a comprehensive agreement. This includes reaching a conclusive decision on a package including the candidates for the Government of National Accord before September 20, to be endorsed by the parties before the end of September so that the latter may be seated within the shortest delay (or no later than October 21), as expected by all Libyans.The international community strongly condemns any kind of violence and of intimidation against any party involved in the dialogue process. Those, who are aiming to derail the process, shall be held accountable. Time is running out for Libya to address its critical humanitarian, economic, and security challenges including the spread of ISIL-aligned groups and of criminal organizations engaged in smuggling and trafficking in persons. Recognizing upcoming Eid celebrations, we believe it is essential that all parties in the process approve a final agreement and the leaders for the new Government of National Accord before the end of September. The Governments of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States reaffirm their support for a united, sovereign, and independent Libya. The international community stands ready to provide significant economic and security assistance to a united Libya as soon as the new government is agreed. It is clear that we are going towards a process of reconciliation in Libya, and no party should fear it.

Islamic State tightens grip on Libya Aug 15, During a June-July visit to Libya, I arrived to find that daily life in my home country has become even more depressing than it had been the year before. Tripoli no longer has an airport. It was destroyed in August 2014 during the battle for control of the capital between Islamist-backed Misrata militias and fighters from Zintan militias. An alternative airport, Mitiga, carved out of a former military base, serves direct flights from Algeria, Jordan and Turkey, but their unreliability makes the better option to fly into Djerba, the tourist resort in southern Tunisia, and then continue the journey overland. During this most recent visit, unlike previously, there were few tourists in Tunis because of this year's terror attacks in Tunis at the Bardo National Museum and Sousse, a beach town. In the past, the drive from Djerba to Tripoli usually took less than three hours, including the time wasted at the notorious security checkpoints inside Tunisia. Now, it can take up to 10 hours, so I was lucky to have made it in only seven. Taxi drivers in Djerba will no longer drive all the way to Tripoli. One Tunisian driver, Zubir, told Al-Monitor, “It is not safe anymore. I have not been to Tripoli since January 2011.”Because of the security situation in Libya, no Tunisian or even Libyan dares risk driving the entire distance. As a result, travelers have to take three different taxis to reach the Libyan border. Right before the border checkpoint, passengers must get out of the vehicle and walk into Libya. Power outages are chronic in Tripoli, on some days lasting for 12 hours. They have become part of the daily struggle, one among the many other difficulties Libyans must endure.By December 2014, almost all the embassies in the capital had closed, as countries withdrew their diplomats from the country. I was therefore surprised to see what appeared to be two guards sitting outside the Hungarian Embassy in the Ras Hassan district, southeast of Tripoli. There were lights on inside the building, so I asked one of them if the embassy had reopened, to which he replied, “I don’t really know. All I know is that I have been ordered to sit here.”The following evening, there were no longer any guards outside the embassy. When Al-Monitor approached some neighbors to ask about the embassy, one replied cynically, “The guards might have


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been protecting thieves inside the building, not diplomats.” It is apparently not unusual for thieves disguised as guards to break into foreign embassies, as happened in June with the kidnapping of some dozen Tunisian diplomats from their consulate compound in the Jarab district. Libya’s health sector is in shambles. The sick have been left to suffer in silence because of the lack of services, qualified nurses and medicines. Tripoli’s biggest hospital is full of patients unable to receive much by way of medical assistance. Those who have the means hire a private ambulance to take them to Tunisia for treatment. Such a journey costs anywhere from $1,000 to $3,000.Al-Monitor spoke to a man named Jalal, who refused to reveal his full name for fear of retribution. He has worked in human resources at the hospital for nearly a decade. Jalal said, “Recently the staff has actually increased by more than 200 people, but none of them are qualified to do anything.”On May 17, a group of five armed men had burst into the office of the hospital director and kidnapped him. When asked about the incident, Jalal said, “It’s likely that the unlucky director refused to employ certain people, so they sent their friends to fetch him.” There are of course no official figures, but kidnapping for ransom appears to have declined from the levels two years ago. Although they still occur, such operations have became more sophisticated, and according to Jalal, “professional, targeting rich people.”Despite high unemployment, estimated at around 20%, almost all Libyans are receiving some kind of financial assistance, including a monthly minimum wage of around 500 Libyan dinars ($300) from the government without actually doing any work. Some people with jobs don't even report to their workplace.One of the top managers at the National Oil Corporation (NOC), who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the oil sector had been “forced to employ between 4,000 and 6,000 individuals between 2011 and this year.” He said, “Most of them are unqualified young men lacking basic requirements and skills,” and added, “NOC is in dire need of qualified individuals, particularly in seismology, drilling and surveying. Even NOC’s library, which serves as the brain of the oil sector, has added 11 new librarians, except not one of them is really a librarian! Most of the newly recruited workers are either former “thwar” [rebels] or strongly connected to them.”All the international hotels closed their doors after the Islamic State (IS) attacked the five-star Corinthia Hotel by Tripoli’s seaside in January 2015. Thousands of foreign workers have left the country, while the number of illegal immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa appears to be growing by the day. The majority of them are like Musa, from Nigeria, who told Al-Monitor that he is in Libya waiting for a chance to get to Europe via the flourishing smuggling operations crossing the Mediterranean.Meanwhile, Libyans seem to have adapted to their daily struggles, complaining less about the troubles they confront, be it the chronic power shortages, lack of security or medical care.One thing that a visitor notices is the Libyan flag. The National Transitional Council adopted a new national flag in 2011, and many grew fond of its red, black and green stripes with a crescent and star in the middle. Full of hope and enthusiasm, Libyans at the time embraced the flag as a symbol of a new, free and flourishing country. It used to be displayed practically everywhere, in private homes as well as in taxis and government buildings.Hope, however, has long since turned to despair. The new Libya is lawless. The flag has been completely forgotten and can be found discarded in the most unpleasant of places, such as rubbish piles, which are mounting in the capital’s side streets. Some still flutter, ignored and worn out, over some buildings.Four years after NATO came to the assistance of the revolution that toppled the regime of Moammar Gadhafi and led to his murder, Libya continues its descent into chaos and toward possible disintegration. IS has consolidated its presence in Derna, in the east, Sabratha, in the west, and Sirte, in the center of the country.One Sirte resident told Al-Monitor that almost all the checkpoints leading into the city are manned by IS members from Tunisia, Algeria, Sudan and even some from the Caucasus. He said they are treating


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people “nicely and with respect, unless you are suspected of being pro any other militia.”

12 Aug The UN’s special envoy to Libya has called on the country’s two rival governments to conclude a peace deal by the end of August.Bernardino Leon told reporters during talks in Geneva that a unity government needs to be formed by the end of the month .“What Libya is facing now, is a deeper chaos and division of the country. So I hope all the Libyan actors will be wise, to avoid this scenario, to expedite the talks andto reach an agreement very soon,” he said. Abdullah al-Thinni, the prime minister of Libya’s internationally-recognised government, said in an interview on Tuesday that he would resign if asked to do so by the Libyan people. His spokesman later told the Reuters news agency that al-Thinni plans to stay in his post.Libya descended into chaos after the Western-backed ouster of Moammar Gaddafi in 2011.Militias seized the Libyan capital Tripoli a year ago, forcing al-Thinni’s administration to flee to the eastern port of Tirbruk. The militias, operating under the name Libya Dawn, set up their own administration, leaving the country divided. Terror group Islamic State have also seized territory inside Libya over the past year.

The rebel Libya Dawn forces have held the capital, Tripoli, for the last year, forcing the legitimate government to flee. In February they put on a show of strength ahead of a resumption of UN-brokered peace talks. Led by the Muslim Brotherhood, it is an Islamist coalition of militias and local armed units, and has been backed by Qatar, Turkey and Sudan. The internationally-recognised Libyan government redeployed to Tobruk, with the parliament in Al-Baïda. It has been supported by Egypt and the UAE. A year ago this parliament elected a president and a new parliament was elected last June, but the situation in Eastern Libya is particularly chaotic as government forces are in constant conflict with Islamist militias.The situation has been worsened by the arrival of Islamic State in the country, with its own particularly violent agenda and objectives. It has control of the city of Syrte, between Tripoli and Tobruk, and Misrata. Benghazi, the crucible of the Libyan revolution and where the spirit of optimism and change seemed to herald a new start for Libya, has become a theatre of street fighting and bombardments. Islamic State has a foothold here, too. Four years after the fall of Muammar Ghadaffi the only growth in Libya has been in refugees and smugglers looking to fill their boats bound for Europe. No one group has the strength to impose its authority, restore the rule of law, and control the country’s borders. It is a state of chaos in which the unscrupulous can, and do, thrive.

In Dabiq magazine, Islamic State complains about jihadist rivals in LibyaBY THOMAS JOSCELYN | September 13, 2015 | [email protected] | @thomasjoscelyn

The latest edition of the Islamic State’s English-language Dabiq magazine, which was released online on September 9, contains the usual litany of horrors. Two men, Norwegian and Chinese nationals, are offered for sale as slaves. The group proudly advertises the destruction of ancient archaeological sites in the Syrian city of Palmyra. The September 11, 2001 hijackings are celebrated as the “blessed operations.” Child soldiers are glorified as “lion cubs” of the “caliphate.” And on it goes.But look behind the usual gore and there are some details that are useful for understanding the Islamic State’s rivalry with al Qaeda-affiliated groups and other Islamists, especially in Libya.Dabiq features an interview with Abul Mughirah al Qahtani, who is publicly identified for the first time as the “delegated leader” of the Islamic State’s Libyan “province.”Qahtani surveys the Islamic State’s current operations in Libya,


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demonstrating that the “caliphate’s” representatives are fighting just about anyone who disagrees with them. The same is true, of course, for Abu Bakr al Baghdadi’s mother organization in Iraq and Syria.Whereas al Qaeda and like-minded jihadist organizations are attempting to build more popular support for their cause, modeling their operations after successful bottom-up insurgents of the past, the Islamic State’s strategy is totalitarian even with respect to its ideological cousins. Thus, anyone who does not fall in line and pledge allegiance to the Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the supposed “Emir of the Believers,” is deemed a foe.Several organizations, in particular, draw Qahtani’s ire. They are: Ansar al Sharia, the Abu Salim Martyrs Brigade (ASMB), the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), and the Libyan Dawn coalition.Ansar al Sharia is an al Qaeda-linked jihadist group that became notorious for its role in the September 11, 2012 attacks on the US Mission and Annex in Benghazi. The ASMB, which is based in Derna, is a jihadist organization that is also allied with al Qaeda and has been engaged in heavy fighting against the Islamic State. The LIFG waged jihad against Muammar Qaddafi’s regime during the 1990s, but some of the group’s key leaders fled for Afghanistan, where they mixed and mingled with al Qaeda. A number of LIFG members were imprisoned by Qaddafi’s government, only to be released during and after the Libyan uprisings. Al Qaeda’s senior leadership viewed their release as a boon for its efforts in the country. The Libyan Dawn (“Fajr Libya”) is an alliance of Islamist groups that is, in turn, aligned with one of Libya’s two rival governments.Qahtani confirms The Long War Journal’s analysis of Ansar al Sharia. While the Islamic State has successfully poached some of the organization’s members, including a high-profile sharia official, Ansar al Sharia’s senior leadership refuses to fall in line with the Islamic State’s exclusionary demands.“Many of the leaders and soldiers of [Ansar al Sharia] were from the first to pledge [bayat] in Libya to the Islamic State,” Qahtani says. And Ansar al Sharia “continues to have men who wish to implement” sharia law in the manner advocated by the Islamic State, Qahtani claims. But the group supposedly prefers “division to unity,” which has been made “most clear in its lack of a [bayat] to the [caliphate] and in its unity with ‘revolutionary’ movements linked to the apostate regime of Tarābulus [Tripoli] in some regions, as well as its acceptance in other regions of suspicious aid from filthy hands.”As Qahtani indicates, the al Qaeda-linked Ansar al Sharia does not seek to alienate other Islamist and jihadist groups in Libya in the same manner as the Islamic State. The organization prefers to embed itself within the “revolutionary” milieu.Qahtani also blames the “closeness” of some of Ansar al Sharia’s “leaders” with al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), an official branch of al Qaeda, for its supposedly “contradictory stances.” Qahtani notes that AQIM is “present in Libya.” Multiple other sources, including the United Nations Security Council, have confirmed that AQIM supports Ansar al Sharia’s operations.The Islamic State’s main man in Libya also blasts the Mujahideen Shura Council (MSC) in Derna, describing it as a joint venture between the ASMB and LIFG. In June, the Islamic State targeted the MSC’s leadership in Derna, sparking a jihadist feud. The Islamic State suffered significant losses in the weeks that followed and was pushed out of some of its strongholds in the eastern Libyan city. Qahtani confirms that the Islamic State “withdrew from the city center of Derna in the beginning of the battle and made the eastern entrance to the city (the area of al-Fatā’ih) a launch ground for its operations.” Since then, the MSC has announced the “Battle of Nahrawan,” targeting the Islamic State’s forces in that eastern area. Qahtani claims that his men “retook areas of the eastern coast side of Derna” in the “last few days.”Qahtani argues that the problems in Derna began when the ASMB deviated from the true path by, among other things, providing security for Mustafa Abdul Jalil, then the chairman of Libya’s National Transitional Council, “when he visited [Derna] and called to democracy.” Indeed, the ASMB referred the controversy over Jalil’s visit to Abu Muhammad al Maqdisi, a jihadist ideologue allied with al


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Qaeda who is also a staunch critic of the Islamic State. Maqdisi ruled that it was permissible for the ASMB to ensure Jalil’s safety given the circumstances.After the Islamic State announced its official expansion into Derna, Qahtani says, the “caliphate’s” court “ruled” that the ASMB had “committed apostasy and called its individuals to repentance.” But a “number of” the ASMB’s “followers and leaders repented whereas the remaining gathered together with the [LIFG] to form what they called” the MSC. (Although Qahtani doesn’t say it, AQIM has openly backed the MSC in its fight against the “caliphate’s” soldiers.)Qahtani and Dabiq’s editors are especially critical of the LIFG, which they allege has fallen into disbelief “due to its participation in the Tarābulus [Tripoli] government and the democratic process under the leadership of Abdelhakim Belhadj.” The Islamic State’s animosity for Belhadj has been made clear in the past, including in other editions of Dabiq.Belhadj is one of the LIFG’s historical leaders. His actions have been controversial in jihadist circles because he decided to play the political game in Libya after Muammar al Qaddafi’s fall from power. This is completely rejected by the Islamic State, which eschews anything remotely resembling elective politics, even if Libya’s dysfunctional political system is a far cry from Western-style democracy.Qahtani inveighs against the “Libyan Dawn” Islamist coalition, which he describes as the “military wing” of the General National Congress’s (GNC) “democratic government.” He says the GNC is “represented” by the Muslim Brotherhood and the LIFG, with Belhadj as the former’s leader.“These apostate forces wage war against Allah’s religion by abandoning the sharia laws and replacing them with manmade laws in addition to waging war against the people of tawhīd [the oneness of God], dragging them to prisons, and handing them over to the crusaders,” Qahtani says. It is for these reasons that the Islamic State “rose to repel their attacks against the Muslims and to implement the sharia, spread justice, and save the prisoners from harm.”A separate article in Dabiq lists jihadists around the globe who have supposedly abandoned their beliefs by working in national governments. A whole paragraph is devoted to the LIFG leaders, including Belhadj, who went from fighting Qaddafi to taking part in Libya’s political process.Former members of the LIFG, “whose leadership was based in Afghanistan before September 11th and whose fighters executed numerous operations in Libya against” Qaddafi and “his apostate regime,” have now joined a Libyan parliament, the Islamic State complains. “Many of these leaders had once accompanied Sheikh Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.” But now men such as Belhadj are “murtadd,” or apostates who have turned their back on Islam. A photo of Belhadj with a derogatory caption inserted by Dabiq’s editors can be seen on the right.The “caliphate’s” propaganda consistently describes its jihadist and Islamist opposition as belonging to the “sahwat,” or awakenings. For instance, the Islamic State’s spokesman, Abu Muhammad al Adnani, has described the MSC as being part of the awakenings, which received crucial assistance from the US during the fight against the Islamic State’s predecessor organization, al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). Qahtani repeats this allegation in Dabiq. Contrary to Islamic State’s claims, however, the MSC and other Islamists in Libya hardly belong to any “sahwat” effort.Regardless, Qahtani says the Islamic State’s opposition in Libya “will continue to be a target for our swords, which we will not hold back until they repent.”Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Senior Editor for The Long War Journal.

Regards Cees; An Administration with its Head in the SandBy DAVID ROMANO 17/9/2015This morning while reading the New York Times I came across the following statement: “The Obama administration was caught off guard by the Kremlin’s move into Syria, and Secretary of State John Kerry spoke on Tuesday with Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, for the third time in recent days to complain that it was unhelpful.” I thought to myself, “What a surprise – Mr. Obama and his team didn’t see something even my taxi driver could have predicted, and they are dismayed that


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not everyone shares their agenda.”

This is, of course, the same administration that has been going through the last seven years of foreign policy like a deer in headlights. They did not foresee the attack on their embassy in Benghazi, despite the ambassador and his staff’s repeated calls for more protection. They did not expect the Russian annexation of Crimea or moves in the eastern Ukraine. Mr. Kerry did not expect the Russians to jump on his words and get the Assad regime turn over its chemical weapons in return for a free hand to drop barrel bombs. Mr. Obama thought the Islamic State was a “Javee team” that did not pose much of a threat, until it overran Mosul and one third of Iraq of course. They thought backing Nuri al-Maliki and more centralization of power in Baghdad was a good idea, until it very clearly wasn’t. They expected that Turkey would join them in the fight against ISIS, rather than declaring war on the Kurds who were fighting ISIS. They were shocked by Israeli president Netanyahu’s acceptance of a Republican’s invitation to address Congress. They were surprised by the level of bitterness displayed by other allies, including eastern European countries who weren’t consulted about the removal of an American missile shield and Saudi Arabia’s reaction to their Iran policies. In the case of the missile shield, Warsaw heard the administration’s public announcement of its removal on the anniversary of the 1939 Russian invasion and takeover of Poland. Although I am tempted to add mention of the Iranian “Green Revolution” and “Arab Spring,” that might be unfair since almost no one saw those two events coming.Of course, the Obama administration has also enjoyed some apparent foreign policy successes. I was having a little trouble thinking of a fair listing of these, however, so I figured I would do the same thing I did to round out a list of foreign policy blunders: go on-line and look at someone else’s list. Instead of the American conservative anti-Obama web sites, this time a search for “Obama administration foreign policy successes” landed me on left-of center American web sites such as “thinkprogress.org.” The list I found was from November 2011 and featured these items, all capitalized: 1) KILLED OSAMA BIN LADEN, RAMPED UP CAMPAIGN AGAINST AL QAEDA; 2) MOBILIZED INT’L COALITION TO PROTECT LIBYAN PRO-DEMOCRACY DEMONSTRATORS; 3) ORDERED THE COMPLETE WITHDRAWAL OF U.S. FORCES FROM IRAQ BY END OF THE YEAR; 4) ISOLATED AND WEAKENED IRAN; 5) HALVED THE NUMBER OF RUSSIAN AND AMERICAN NUCLEAR MISSILE LAUNCHERS; 6) SUPPORTED DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION IN EGYPT; 7) KILLED SENIOR AL QAEDA LEADER ANWAR AL AWLAKI; and 8) STRENGTHENED U.S.-ISRAEL RELATIONSHIP.What a difference four years makes. Libya is now a basket case after we lost interest following Ghaddafi’s overthrow. Withdrawing from Iraq might have been good if it wasn’t so complete, meaning that Mr. Obama and his administration paid the country little heed after 2011 despite all the warnings (warnings which even appeared in this column at the time). Isolating and weakening Iran? Egypt? The Israeli-U.S. relationship? The drone strike that killed American citizen Anwar al Awlaki in Yemen raised troubling questions about due process and the massive increase in drone strikes under Mr. Obama – people started asking, “What if Russia, Iran and others start flying the new drones they are building and killing their dissidents abroad, without ever declaring war?” Killing Osama bin Laden even had its problems, given later accounts about how it may have occurred and the much better option of capturing him and bringing him to trial. From today’s vantage point, however, we might still credit the administration with some foreign policy successes. The nuclear deal with Iran is being celebrated in much of the world. Keeping American troops out of another grinding war abroad must count as a big success as well. Hopefully another four years from now the Iranians will not be bragging about their nuclear bombs and American troops will not be in the midst of an even worse war. In either case, I doubt the administration really sees these or anything else coming – from creeping totalitarianism in Turkey and an Iraqi central government that remains hopeless, to a Russia that will walk all over them and spied


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upon allies who no longer trust them. Administration officials may be too busy, after all, forcing their intelligence analysts to write reports that paint a rosier image of reality.David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since 2010. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and author of The Kurdish Nationalist Movement (2006, Cambridge University Press) and co-editor (with Mehmet Gurses) of Conflict, Democratization and the Kurds in the Middle East (2014, Palgrave Macmillan).


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Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 23-8-Libya-20

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