Militant Jihadism

Front matter

Current Issues in Islam

Militant Jihadism Today and Tomorrow

Serafettin Pektas, Johan Leman (eds)

Contents

Note on translation and transliteration

Introduction Johan Leman & Serafettin Pektas

Salafism, Jihadism and Radicalisation: Between A Common Doctrinal Heritage and The Logics of Empowerment Mohamed-Ali Adraoui

CHAPTER 2 The Libyan Jihadist Outlook: Origins, Evolutions and Future Scenarios

Libya’s contemporary history has been dominated by the interplay between the perpetual dynamics of religion, tribalism, oil, nationalism and ideology, further aggravated by 42 years of rule by an oppressive, pervasive and sometimes irrational regime. With Libya hidden behind its regime’s curtain, it has been difficult from outside to understand the religious changes often happening under its surface.

Apparently, its social fabric shows little change: Libya - despite a fragile national identity — remains a very homogenous country from a religious point of view, with a huge majority of Sunni Muslims following the Maliki madhhab. Islamic identity arose as a preponderant element after the fall of the Qaddafi regime. With everyone recognising themselves as Muslim and with little conflict in the doctrinal sphere, Islam emerged as a legitimising element in society and in politics. At the same time, as representatives of this element of legitimacy, competition arose between new political parties, renewed religious figures (such as the Grand Mufti) and radical groups of various origins. Among these, jihadist groups, trying to impose the creation of a caliphate on Libya if necessary by using force, have found fertile ground due to the semi-anarchic situation.

Libya’s current crisis has deep causes and distant origins, ranging from a weak national identity to legacies from the civil war of 2011, which did not end with the killing of Colonel Qaddafi (Baldinetti, 2010). The fall of Qaddafi opened up new spaces for Libya’s Islamist groups, even those at the more extreme end of the spectrum. Libya is experiencing a very worrying phenomenon: it has rather quickly become a safe haven for local, foreign and international jihadist groups.

It is worth saying that all the attempts to rebuild the country after the fall of Qaddafi failed. There are multiple and complex reasons for this outcome: multiple identities (regionalism, localism, and tribalism), the progressive political polarisation after the failure of the “Arab Spring” — with Islamists fighting against military forces and nationalist movements. Above all, one should add the toxic role of international actors (Europeans included) that tried to favour the groups closer to them in an attempt to gain influence in the country.

Libya appears, now, as a fragmented composition of hundreds of militias, most of them divided into two coalitions: the first, the Faiz al-Sarraj’s Government of National Accord (GNA), supported by the UN; the second led by Khalifa Haftar and linked with the Tobruk parliament. After the failure of the national reconciliation processes — exclusively based on weak figures with no leverage on the militias, which have the real power in Libya — it seems we have entered a new phase. Therefore, now there is an attempt to try to broaden the consensus towards the peace process through both the actions of the UN special envoy Ghassan Salamé and the meetings convened by countries like Italy and France.

The consequence of this stalemate is that Libya is still a sort of failing state — and failed states are the perfect place for the rise of jihadist movements and radicalisation processes. The most dangerous group to have emerged in Libya has been Islamic State (IS), above all because it was the strongest opponent of any agreement between political forces in Libya. IS is only the most recent terrorist group to have found a place in Libya and the Maghreb but, because of its peculiar structure and way of acting and the impact that there could have been on Libya, it is worth analysing its spread.

The Genesis of Radicalisation in Libya

Thanks to the religious moderation of most Libyans, up to now the Islamic mainstream has been relatively “temperate” from a doctrinal point of view. The definition of Libyans as religiously moderate may appear debatable, considering the high numbers of Libyan jihadists that fought outside Libya. Under Qaddafi’s regime, jihadism represented one of the few practical responses available to personal religious or political dissatisfaction with the existence of a strongly illiberal system that prohibited activities by Islamist groups. In fact, global jihad outside Libya became a sort of substitute for Islamic activities within the country. This explains the high numbers of Libyan citizens (especially from Derna and eastern Libya) amongst Al Qaeda (AQ) groups or Salafi jihadist movements in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Libyan mujahidin form one of the most numerous national groups of foreign fighters.

It is interesting to note that this “jihadist attitude” is linked more to a traditional way of expressing discontent and dissatisfaction with the domestic situation (rooted in the Qaddafi period) than to real theological extremism. As has been shown (Torelli and Varvelli, 2014: 45-71), it seems to be a sort of “functional jihadism” more than a doctrinal one. However, there are indications that Libyan jihadists active in Afghanistan and Iraq — who have been exposed to the message and proselytism of Eastern movements such as the Deobandis and the Tablighi Jama’at — represent a channel of diffusion for radicalism, strictly based on their dogmatic approach to Islamic orthopraxis. At the same time, their rigid approach to ritual personal purity and absolute adherence to a very strict interpretation of Shari‘a principles may further radicalise their activism and their militancy. According to documents seized by US forces in Iraq, Libyans formed the second-largest group among 700 foreign fighters who joined the al-Qaeda offshoot, Islamic State in Iraq (ISI), between August 2006 and August 2007. In relation to national population, the Libyans were first by a long way. Even more telling were the cities they came from. More than half originated from Derna.

Consequently, Libyan jihadists form the largest group per capita of foreign fighters supporting AQ and the other militias in Iraq and, since 2012-2013, in Syria. The important role of returnees in expanding the jihadist network across the Middle East (and in Western countries, too) is well known and has been widely studied. Jihadists returning from the front line to their towns and tribes are generally afforded greater status as mujahidin. They are, therefore, in a position to radicalise their original environment, with extremist proselytism being the favoured method; to create new jihadist groups and cells; to carry out the training of new members and upgrade local militants’ combat capability; and to enlarge extremist networks, with the diffusion of Salafi jihadist ideology, thus delegitimising traditional local authorities.

According to Wolfram Lacher (Lacher, 2015), in the last 20 years three successive generations of Libyan jihadists have been shaped by very different experiences, and consequently responded differently to the possibilities opened up by Qaddafi’s demise. The first generation began its formative experiences with the armed struggle in Afghanistan during the 1980s and 1990s. The second generation of Libyan jihadists was radicalised during imprisonment at Abu Salim prison or during the 2003 Iraqi war. Here they came into contact with what was then the most radical branch in jihadism. During the 2011 revolution and after the fall of the regime the third generation mobilised. Their radicalisation largely occurred during the struggle against Qaddafi when they came into contact with the other two generations and with other revolutionaries. After the fall of Qaddafi, jihadists benefitted from relationships created during the revolution. Many of them, for example, found places in parastatal units inside the new Libyan administration.

A good example of this merger is Ansar al-Sharia, the group responsible for the murder of American ambassador Christopher Stevens in 2012. Since its “birth” in 2011, Ansar al-Sharia has been not just a terrorist group. It also seems to be striving to gain the population’s support through da’wa, or charitable works, and control of the territory as a replacement for the state, welfare state and Libyan institutions, with the aim of becoming something very similar to Hamas in the occupied Palestinian territories or Hizbullah. Since the 11 September 2012 attack, for instance, Ansar al-Sharia has shown some openness and willingness to work within the boundaries of the state, trying to distance itself from accusations of being a member of al-Qaeda's network or even being merely a cover name for al-Qaeda. Although thousands of people took to the streets in Benghazi after the 11 September attack to demand the removal of the radical militias and show solidarity with the US, it is also true that Islamist militants in Libya are perceived as legitimate actors thanks to the role they played in the revolution. These militias also have an important role in territorial control and the provision of security in the power vacuum created by the collapse of the regime. During the post-Qaddafi period, the Libyan governments utilised many of them as part of the security forces, even if they were acting and operating quite independently (Torelli and Varvelli, 2014: 45-71).

Between 2012 and 2014, Ansar al-Sharia groups expanded their activities in Derna, Benghazi, Ajdabiya and Sirte. Although the relationship between IS branches in Libya and Ansar al-Sharia is very controversial, the dividing line between them was progressively seen as fluid. Both Ansar al-Sharia and its various allied militias, especially those with younger members, appeared to admire the rise of IS in Iraq and Syria, creating ideal conditions for its diffusion in Libya. Between 2014 and 2015, parts of Ansar al-Sharia joined forces with returnee jihadists to work under the flag of the Islamic State, especially in Sirte and Benghazi. Elsewhere it continued to exist as an autonomous group.

The Case of Derna

In Cyrenaica and Derna, a city of 80,000 on the Mediterranean coast, radicalisation has become well established over the past decade. However, the Syrian/Iraq campaign has significantly boosted it, creating a wave of veteran fighters that had a disastrous effect on the security situation in Libya. In October 2014, a local jihadist group, the Islamic Youth Shura Council (Shabab al-Islam), claimed Derna in the name of IS, thus showing IS’s ability to break with traditional notions of territorial contiguity by creating an enclave outside its “borders” in Syria and Iraq. The Islamic Youth Shura Council was composed of elements of Ansar al-Sharias Derna branch and several other militias: the Rafallah al-Sahati Brigade; the February 17th Martyrs Brigade; The Shield of Libya; and Jaysh al-Mujahidin.

IS leadership accepted the proclamation a few weeks later and formally annexed the city. This seems to be the result of an expansion plan formulated in Syria and Iraq. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s first militants arrived in Libya in the spring of 2014, when the men of the al-Battar Brigade, composed entirely of Libyan volunteers, began returning from the war in Syria and Iraq. In Libya, the brigade was composed of 300 jihadists who had previously been deployed in Dayr al-Zur (Syria) and Mosul (Iraq). The Derna branch of IS was composed of about 800 fighters and operated in half a dozen camps on the outskirts of the town, having larger facilities in the nearby mountains as well (Benotman, 2014).'

In September 2014, aiming to help the al-Battar Brigade, al-Baghdadi sent to Derna one of his senior aides, Abu Nabil al-Anbari, an Iraqi veteran.* The city had an autonomous administrative organisation governed by a little-known Saudi (or Yemeni) preacher, Muhammad Abdullah, whose zom de guerre is Abu al-Bara’ al-Azdi. Like many militiamen who founded the ‘Province of Cyrenaica (wilayat al-barq), al-Anbari and al-Azdi fought in Syria. Derna became the major new hub where fighters from North Africa, primarily Tunisia, are recruited. Out of the at least 3,000 Tunisians who have joined IS many have found protection in Libya (UN OHCHR, 2015).

However, under the name of the Mujahidin Shura Council (MSC), local Islamist militias, including the strong Abu Salim Martyrs’ Brigade, created a coalition in order to confront and defeat IS (Heras, 2014). The Abu Salim Martyrs’ Brigade mainly consists of Libyan fighters and was formed during the revolution. Its stance and ideology are very clear: it wants to establish an Islamic government in a Libya ruled by Islamic law. The Brigade provides and secures fuel supplies, protects banks from robberies and was led by ‘Abd al-Hakim al-Hasidi and Salim Derby. From a general point of view, the disputes between the groups are based, of course, upon an ideological difference: “local jihad” versus “global jihad”. The Abu Salim Martyrs’ Brigade is a local movement that seeks to establish an Islamic government in Libya, while the Shura Council of Islamic Youth in Derna is part of a global movement, “exogenous” to the Libyan tradition (The Maghrebi Note, 2015). In June 2015, Nasir ‘Atiyya al-‘Akar, a prominent al-Qaeda-linked jihadist in the Mujahidin Shura Council was murdered. The assassination, claimed by IS, set off a round of fighting. The MSC assaulted Islamic State positions around the city. A few of IS’s key leaders in Derna were reportedly killed or captured. The two groups repeatedly clashed in the following months in disputes over power and resources. In July 2015, IS was driven out of a large part of Derna and, finally, in April 2016, definitively expelled from the area (Sehmer, 2016).

The Case of Sirte

The context of Islamic State’s rise in Sirte is to a certain extent similar to the one that initially favoured IS’s expansion in Iraq. The Iraqi government under Nouri al-Maliki marginalised large segments of the Sunni Iraqi population, which caused many Sunni tribes initially to consider IS as the lesser of two evils. In this context, mounting sectarian strife has created favourable conditions for the noticeable return of sectarian violence in Iraq’s already fragmented society. Although Libya is not characterised by such a deep-rooted sectarianism, it is no coincidence that IS has expanded its activities in Sirte, the hometown of Muammar Qaddafi. On a beach in Sirte, IS beheaded 21 Egyptian Christians, as shown by the video circulated on the web in mid-February 2015. Sirte is a cradle of the Qaddafa tribe. Since Qaddafi’s fall, the tribe has been expelled and ostracised by the Tripolibased government. Other militias similarly accused it of conspiracy with the former regime. For this reason, it was eventually severely struck down. Part of the regime’s rearguard as well as some tribal youth have thus joined Islamic State’s cause mostly for political rather than ideological reasons (Varvelli, 2015). A consensus emerged about the evidence that IS attracted members from Ansar al-Shari‘a and from the segments of the population that have been marginalised in the “new” Libya. However, as is evident in the case of Derna, some local armed factions and jihadists regard Islamic State as an infiltrator and competitor.

In August 2015, tribal fighting in Sirte began after IS assassinated Khalid ibn Rajab al-Firjani, a prominent imam from the local al-Farjan tribe, a substantial force in many of Libya’s central coastal cities. Although the al-Farjan tribe has traditionally been strongly represented in the region’s Sufi orders, the assassination came after local Salafists and al-Farjan tribesmen had refused to pledge allegiance to IS. Hasan al-Karami, one of the Libyan leaders of IS in Sirte, has family ties with and belongs to the clan of Ismaʻl al-Karami, head of the anti-drug agency during the Qaddafi regime and a Qaddafi militia leader during the revolution. This seems to confirm the fact that some supporters of the Colonel were recycled in IS (TMAITIC, 2016). He appears in some video propaganda of IS in Libya, preaching to the crowd in Derna in December 2014;* patrolling Sirte’s market; speaking at a public meeting in which 40 officers of the Interior Ministry ask forgiveness for their lives (Raineri, 2015).

It is unlikely that IS will replicate the Sirte model in similar communities across Libya where there might be a perception of exclusion from the UN-led negotiations, but a potential risk persists. However the “tacit alliance” between IS and the tribal/local members appears to be very fragile. In April-May 2016, IS executed several members of the Qaddafa tribe in Sirte, demonstrating that tribes are not a monolith and support for the IS group is reversible.

On 5 May 2016 in Sirte, IS launched an offensive in eastern Tripolitania, named “Abu ‘Ali al-Anbari” after a senior IS leader who was killed in an American raid at the end of March 2016 in eastern Syria. The attacks began with several suicide vehicles targeting checkpoints manned by militias from Misrata. Altogether, IS launched this offensive with up to 2,000 jihadists. According to Wolfgang Pusztai, a security expert and former Austrian Defence Attaché to Libya, “the relatively low number of IS fighters in Libya makes it necessary to concentrate forces for offensive operations while accepting a calculated risk on other frontlines” (cited in Varvelli, 2016: 102). The objective of the IS offensive in eastern Tripolitania seems to be to secure the western flank of its territory around Sirte and to foster important land lines of communication between IS in Libya and Boko Haram in Nigeria, and further to gain freedom of manoeuvre in the east, in the direction of the oil infrastructures (Pack and Sizer, 2016).

From Sirte and Sabratha to Where?

The ambivalence of relations between local communities and jihadist groups remains a central point in the analysis of radicalisation processes in Libya. For instance, the majority of the Libyan population did not support the rise of IS in the country. On its part, the Tripoli government initially refused to acknowledge the presence of IS in Sirte and in Tripolitania, and even went on to accuse former Qaddafi militias of fostering jihadist groups and aiding foreign infiltration. In reality, according to data from The Soufan Group and Italian diplomatic sources, the majority of the IS militants in Sirte (around 80%) are actually foreign fighters, of which half appear to be Tunisian nationals (Varvelli 2016). However, their presence in certain areas rather than others demonstrates that endogenous conditions make a difference. The intervention of Libyan troops, predominantly from Misurata under the formal direction of the Government of National Accord (aided by American bombings), made it possible to liberate Sirte in the autumn of 2016. Nonetheless, a proportion of the soldiers of the self-proclaimed Caliphate — whose total number reached somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000 jihadists at the height of combat (a figure sometimes exaggerated by the media) — managed to flee and disperse outside the city. Afterwards, an American raid targeted some of them in January 2017 on a rebuilt operational base in the south of the city (Schmitt, 2017). In the same month, there were accusations of looting and property seizure by Misuratan soldiers in Sirte, which suggests that there may again be systemic marginalisation of certain populations (‘Trew 2017). These events mirror dynamics in Iraq and Syria where NGOs and human rights agencies accuse the anti-IS militias of committing serious crimes in areas retaken from IS.

Furthermore, the heavy presence of Tunisian jihadists in Sabratha characterised what could be defined as a “third model” (differing from Derna and Sirte) of territorial takeover by IS in Libya. In Sabratha, Tunisian fighters affiliated with IS controlled an anti-Tunisia training camp. In February 2016, an American raid on another training camp in the city killed 40 IS militants accused of planning two large-scale attacks on Western tourists in Tunisia. The raid revealed the large number of Tunisian foreign fighters in Sabratha, and justified the West's increasing concern about the creation of a new base for IS troops in an illicit trafficking hub. In fact, Sabratha is a Mediterranean outlet of the trafficking corridor that runs from sub-Saharan Africa through Fezzan to the Libyan coasts. Illustrating a very different strategy compared to those used in Derna and Sirte, Sabratha can be taken as the third model of IS development in Libya. Indeed, the group proliferated in Sabratha avoiding IS’s loud propaganda style with the aim of launching attacks into nearby Tunisia and not in Libya. The US air strikes had the immediate consequence of instigating military action by the local brigades against remaining IS troops, de facto ending a situation of omerta and tolerance towards the jihadist presence in the city. The local military council eventually forced IS to abandon Sabratha. According to a United Nations report, these IS troops are still operating in the area stretching from Tripoli to the Tunisian border, mainly in the rural zones. Some foreign fighters have crossed the Tunisian border, while others were retrenched in Sirte — at the time still in IS hands — in Tripoli and in the rural areas around Sabratha in the foothills of the Nefusa mountains. (UN SCR, 2016). This is a very worrying fact, more so because this area could become a recruiting base for terrorist attacks directed at Europe. Salman Abedi, the Libyan suicide bomber of the Manchester attack, travelled several times from Libya to Great Britain and had well-grounded connections in this area.

Militant Jihadists in Southern Libya

The southern region of Fezzan represents a different case, on the other hand. Radical groups tied to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), al-Murabitun and Ansar al-Din are still present and very active in this region, often engaging in illegal business. This evidence continues to make the area a possible “sanctuary” for criminal and terrorist organisations. In Fezzan, IS and AQIM conducted two rival campaigns while at the same time engaging in sporadic, circumstantial relations. Such relations were grounded on a substantial exchange of expertise, mostly regarding weapons, transport, and other fields of illegal trafficking (Shaw and Mangan, 2014). In January 2016, an AQIM video openly accused Italy of neo-colonialism for its attempt to mediate politically between the Libyan factions by hosting the Libyan summit meeting in Rome on 13 December 2015. The video featured Abu Yusuf al-‘Anabi, AQIM’s second in command. AQIM’s interest in Libya seems to indicate that al-Qaeda has not relinquished its role in the country. AQIM is probably delegating its regional organisation in North Africa to spreading its influence with particular attention to the Fezzan theatre. However, with respect to this communiqué, the strategy seems aimed at mustering the Libyan factions against the new “invader” evoked by old ghosts; AQIM here proposed itself as the unifier combatting new colonialism (ANSA, 2016).

Since IS began its campaign in Sirte, it seemed to have different goals from al-Qaeda and the various local jihadist groups. At the same time, however, there were some tactical convergences on specific goals. IS sympathisers like Ansar al-Sharia and former al-Qaeda members came together and united as the Benghazi Revolutionaries Shura Council to fight Haftar in the city of Benghazi. Elsewhere, as in Derna, the various jihadist groups fought one another. On the other hand, it is also true that the demarcation line between IS and Ansar al-Sharia has become increasingly fluid over time. For instance, individuals or whole militias sided with IS, as the Sirte case demonstrated.

In the southern part of the country, the increasingly active pro-Haftar troops might once again facilitate a coalition among Islamic militias, the selfconfessed jihadist militias and former IS soldiers withdrawn from Sirte. Most of the transnational jihadists active in southern Libya have a long history of local knowledge, a fact that stems from the Sahel insurrections of the 1990s and the Algerian civil war. During the 2011 revolution, these groups established relations with local armed forces and jihadists in the north, particularly in the north-eastern area of Benghazi, Derna and Ajdabiya. Fezzan’s logistic corridor first shuffled groups of AQIM soldiers from the south towards the Ansar al-Sharia networks, aiding the arrival of jihadists from Algeria, Mali and the Sahel in the northern training camps, and subsequently in Syria. In response, Ansar al-Sharia stated that it had sent volunteers to Mali while training troops faithful to the Algerian jihadist Mukhtar Bilmukhtar, prior to the January 2013 attack on the Tiguentourine gas plant in Amenas, Algeria (Wehrey, 2012).

Local collaborators in Fezzan facilitated some of these movements. Among the most frequently cited in the UN report (UN SCR, 2016) on the jihadist presence in the area is the Border Guards Brigade 315, or Maghawir Brigade The Brigade is a militia based in the Tuareg-speaking city of Ubari and led by a former army officer and Islamist educator, Ahmed Umar al-Ansari, who resides in the southern part of the city along the route to Niger by way of the Salvador Pass. According to Frederick Wehrey (2017) from Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and several other analysts who were able to conduct on-site surveys, it should be acknowledged that enemies of the Tuareg have often exaggerated the gravity of extremist penetration in Ubari and Western areas of Fezzan. Despite the proven existence of jihadists and their camps around Ghat and in the mountain valleys of Aracus, this presence is mostly motivated by logistic reasons that can be traced to weak control by the government and the police rather than to widespread social support. For example, the group that conducted the attack on Amenas in 2013 passed through areas north of Ghat easily, precisely because the local brigades were unable to stop jihadist movement. For its part, although in the summer of 2016 AQIM appealed to its fighters to mobilise against Haftar’s forces, it seems to concentrate specifically on the Sahel as a primary area of expansion through exploiting Libya to acquire logistic depth.

When relations exist between jihadists and local armed groups, they are based less on ideological affiliations and more on common interests in keeping borders free of control. The penetration of radical ideology in the southern areas controlled by the Tuareg — or more widely in the social weave of the south - is minimal, despite what is stated by the forces tied to Operation Dignity’ and the Tebu population.‘ The various reports from the intelligence services of the different Libyan factions regarding the spread of IS after the fall of Sirte should be closely examined given their interest in depicting their adversaries as terrorists. In fact, IS never really extended its sphere of influence to southern Libya. Any attempt to influence or be present in the south will encounter not only a crowded market of armed groups tied to local communities and tribes, as already noted, but also networks affiliated with al-Qaeda. Even in north-eastern Libya, a good number of fighters who had defected from groups close to al-Qaeda or Ansar al-Sharia to join IS are now returning to al-Qaeda. How this dynamic will evolve in the southern part of the country remains to be seen.

Indeed, the spread of IS through the south might have gone further. Last year independent sources reported that militants numbering between 60 and 80 were active near Girza, a town located 170 km west of Sirte. Another group of about 100 was located near Zalla and the Mabrouk oil wells (some 300 km south-east of Sirte). A third group was located in the al-Uwaynat area (near the border with Egypt and Sudan) (Lewis, 2017). IS demonstrated its ability to operate successfully in the area, as proven by the attacks on the power plants between Jufra and Sebha in 2017. In addition, as early as the summer of 2016, there were reports of the presence of pro-IS jihadists on the borders between Libya and Sudan, near the oases of Kufra and Tazirbu where the terrorist group — according to what was stated — reached an agreement with local smugglers to protect their northern supply lines (UN SCR, 2016).

ŞI

Recent Political Developments and the Future of Jihadist Groups

It seems clear that political developments in Libya will influence the room for manoeuvre of jihadist groups in the country. The jihadist landscape seems characterised by a repositioning process. Despite the defeat and consequent disappearance of the most violent radical groups from cities like Benghazi and Sirte, IS and al-Qaeda remain present and active in the country. According to the UN special envoy Salamé, these jihadist groups have conducted various attacks since then. At the end of January 2017, 30 people died in two terrorist attacks in Benghazi. Significantly, the explosions were limited to the al-Salmani area which is controlled by Haftar’s forces. Among the victims of the attack were, indeed, the officials of the local security services who responded directly to Haftar’s commands. Together with the growth in attacks carried out in the area, counterterrorism initiatives increased too, in particular those led by the US”

The aim was to prevent the jihadist groups from gaining ground in the proximity of the city of Ubari. The airstrike was coordinated with Tripoli’s GNA. While it was the first time that an attack had hit al-Qaeda members in the country, it followed the eight raids of the previous year that killed dozens of alleged terrorists mainly in the desert located to the south of Sirte. The attacks, conducted mainly with drones, helped to contain the terrorist menace which is still strong in this north African country. Both IS and al-Qaeda still retain the ability to conduct terrorist and other types of attacks. Consequently, they can undermine even more the already fragile and unstable security scenario. Nevertheless, the number of raids decreased compared to 2016 when 500 attacks were carried on in the city of Sirte in response to IS’s expansion in Libya.

To cope with this unstable situation, French President Emmanuel Macron organised a conference on Libya in Paris on 29 May 2018. The conference concluded with a joint declaration from Faiz al-Sarraj, the president of the Government of National Accord, Aquila Selah Issa, the president of the Tobruk Chamber of Deputies, Khaled Mishri, the president of the Tripoli High Council of State and General Kahlifa Haftar, the head of the Libyan National Army. The four committed themselves to holding legislative and presidential elections on 10 December 2018, to facilitating a referendum before the elections for the approval of the constitution and to passing the necessary electoral legislation by 16 September. However, no referendum was called and there is still no agreement on new electoral legislation.

From this standpoint, they are committed to supporting the work of the UN envoy Ghassan Salamé and the national electoral commission, as well as working towards unifying the military and police forces under the leadership of the legitimate government. This is not the first document of this type. Aside from specifying dates, it is not very different from the one that was issued at the beginning of 2018 by the “Quartet for Libya” (the UN, EU, African Union and Arab League). What is new is the inclusion of the president of the High Council of State in a meeting organised through national diplomacy. In the previous meetings held in 2017 by national governments (in Cairo in February, in Abu Dhabi in May and in La Celle-St-Cloud in July) the High Council of State was not represented. The exclusion of this body led to the failure of the agreement proposed in the Salamé Action Plan in late 2017.