Libyan city is first outside Syria, Iraq to join ISIS | Haaretz |
On a chilly night, bearded militants gathered at a stage strung with colorful lights in Darna, a Mediterranean coastal city long notorious as Libya’s centre for jihadi radicals. With a roaring chant, they pledged their allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State group.
With that meeting 10 days ago, the militants dragged Darna into becoming the first city outside of Iraq and Syria to join the “caliphate” announced by the extremist group. Already, the city has seen religious courts ordering killings in public, floggings of residents accused of violating Shariah law, as well as enforced segregation of male and female students. Opponents of the militants have gone into hiding or fled, terrorized by a string of slayings aimed at silencing them.
A new Islamic State “emir” now leads the city, identified as Mohammed Abdullah, a little-known Yemeni militant sent from Syria known by his nom de guerre Abu al-Baraa el-Azdi, according to several local activists and a former militant from Darna.
The vow of allegiance in Darna gives the Islamic State group a foothold in Libya, an oil-rich North African nation whose central government control has collapsed in the chaos since the 2011 ouster and death of longtime dictator Muammar Gadhafi.
Extremists made Darna their stronghold in the 1980s and 1990s during an insurgency against Gadhafi, the city protected by the rugged terrain of the surrounding Green Mountain range in eastern Libya. Darna was the main source of Libyan jihadis and suicide bombers for the insurgency in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion. Entire brigades of Darna natives fight in Syria’s civil war.
US express fears as Isis takes control of northern Libyan town | The Guardian |
Saudi Arabia’s Medieval Wahhabism vs. Moderate Sufi
More below the fold …
From my earlier diary …
US Administratons’ Failure to Distinquish Strands of Islam
by Oui | Booman Tribune | Sept. 15, 2012 |Saudi Arabia’s Medieval Wahhabism vs. Moderate Sufi by Pepe Escobar
(Asia Times) – Libya is now militia hell – from neighborhood-watch outfits to mini-armies. They won’t disarm. They refuse to be part of government security forces because their logic is tribal. They’re fighting one another. No weak central government in car-bomb-infested Tripoli will rein them in.
Another way to put it is that “liberated” Libya is now warlord country. Home of vendettas in the desert and tribal pogroms against other tribes – and even whole towns.
The Salafi-jihadis – with whom Washington, London and Paris were unashamedly in bed during their humanitarian bombing campaign – are based in Cyrenaica, eastern Libya. Some have come from Iraq. Some are shuttling back and forth to and from Syria, aiming to destroy yet one more secular Arab republic.
They include the heavily armed gang that attacked the US consulate – the self-described Imprisoned Omar Abdul Rahman Brigades, which surfaced only four months ago. Three months ago, hundreds of AK-47-equipped Salafi-jihadis held Benghazi hostage demanding sharia law.
The (disintegrated) police and army of “liberated” Libya could not possibly face them down. Local tribes don’t care. Salafi-jihadis have been attacking Sufi mosques and tombs; Sufi Islam is infinitely more moderate – and intellectually sophisticated – compared with medieval Wahhabism.
The training camps are near Derna – which has a history of being a top source of al-Qaeda-style jihadis, especially active in occupied Iraq. This does not mean all the Salafi-jihadis are affiliated with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM); it’s a much more local Libyan affair.
Libyan Leader Aims for Separate Cyrenaican State
(Libya Herald) – Federalist leader Ibrahim Jadhran is aiming to gain recognition from the Russian Federation in his efforts to establish a separate Cyrenaican state.
In a bizarre development in the increasingly critical stand-off between the Zeidan government and eastern federalists, the leader of the self-styled Political Bureau of Cyrenaica, has hired a Canadian-based Israeli lobbyist to present his case in Washington and Moscow.
The one-year engagement, worth $2 million, will see Montreal-based lobbyist Ari Ben-Menashe, who claims to have worked for Israeli intelligence, promoting the recognition of the break-way eastern federalist group.
In Benghazi and Derna, a campaign of targeted assassinations this past year led to the death of military officials, policemen, judges, journalists and local political figures numbered in the hundreds.
- ○ The Wrath of Libya’s Salafis | Carnegie Endowment |
○ Benghazi: Leader Ansar al-Sharia is Major Al-Qaeda Asset