Libya Is The Latest Islamic State Conquest

A fighter from armed group Operation Dawn fires a weapon during clashes with rival group the Zintan brigade, on the outskirts of the city of Kklh, southwest of Tripoli Oct. 21, 2014. (File: Reuters)

Libya Has Become The Latest Isil Conquest -- The Telegraph

Extremists have declared Libya part of the Isil caliphate. Former Libyan militant Noman Benotman examines what's gone wrong

Libya is now in the throes of an extreme political crisis. If the conditions remain unchallenged and, hence, unchanged, it will turn into another Syria or Iraq.

While ISIL has managed to capture the attention of the international media with its powerful propaganda and its violent tactics, the world’s has ignored the equally threatening Islamist groups and movements that have prospered in North Africa in the post-Arab Spring vacuum. Nowhere is this threat more profound than with the rise of radical Islam in Libya.

Since 2012, the capital, Tripoli, has principally been controlled by an Islamist-dominated General National Congress and an array of Islamist militias. In the east, Ansar al-Sharia (AS), the group made infamous for its involvement in the killing of US Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi in September 2012, and designated by the USA as a terror organisation, has grown in military power and political influence. Since early 2013, the city of Benghazi has been plagued by political violence. Assassinations are happening almost daily, and bombings and kidnappings have been a regular feature. Islamist militias, including AS, have been blamed for the violence. The dynamics of Islamism in the eastern region of Libya are a cause for huge concern. We must respond.

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My Comment: Libya is rapidly becoming a failed state .... and the Islamic militants know that .... Militants flock to Libya’s remote south to train -- Gulf News/AFP