Isis will be defeated in Sirte – but for how long?
Islamic State is facing its first major defeat – not in Syria or Iraq, but in Libya, said Daniele Raineri in Il Foglio (Milan). Last year the terrorist group succeeded in setting up a “caliphate” stretching 125 miles along the coast, with its headquarters in Sirte, the birthplace of Muammar Gaddafi. For a while, it seemed a secure haven for Isis fighters to retreat to if ousted from their other strongholds, in Mosul and Raqqa. Instead, Sirte is set to fall first. Earlier this year around 1,800 of Isis fighters – who include Syrians, Saudis, Tunisians and other foreigners – were driven back into the city by militias based in neighbouring Misrata. They’d been expected to flee south to fight another day, as Isis fighters did when Iraqi forces retook Fallujah. Instead, they’ve dug into defensive positions.
Sirte has become a “hell on the Mediterranean”, said Eugénie Bastié in Le Figaro (Paris). More than two-thirds of its residents have fled. Shops, schools and hospitals have closed. The Hisbah (religious police) patrol the streets, punishing those who smoke, listen to music or dress immodestly. Residents are made to watch executions in the public square. Alleged spies are shot, then left strung up in crucifixion poses. Sirte’s liberation will happen soon, but such is the power vacuum in Libya that it won’t bring peace, said Viju Cherian in the Hindustan Times
(New Delhi). The Misrata forces attacking Isis answer to the Un-brokered Government of National Accord, in Tripoli. But over in Tobruk, in the east of the country, is a rival government backed by forces loyal to the renegade general Khalifa Haftar. These are now battling the Islamist militants who last month downed a helicopter carrying three French intelligence agents. (France’s confirmation of their deaths was the first official admission that French forces are active in Libya.) Once Isis is kicked out of Sirte, it’s a matter of time before the forces of the rival governments are at each other’s throats.
As the first “caliphate capital” to fall, Sirte will help to explode Islamic State’s narrative of “blessed invincibility”, said Charlie Askew in Prospect. But Isis is already preparing for a new kind of warfare: in a May press release, Abu Mohammed al-adnani, its emir in Syria, abandoned the emphasis on capturing territory, in favour of a new vision of “eternal, eschatological insurgency” against infidels. That will probably involve an intensifying of insurgent tactics (Isis claims to have cells across Libya) and the targeting of state institutions, markets and commercial areas. A Libya in chaos, riven by competing factions, is ideal terrain for this. “What emerges from Sirte may be even more dangerous and alluring – a narrative not just of invincibility, but rebirth.”