Soldiers fight to stop Islamic State growth in Libya
Militants gain ground because country besieged by fighting among rival governments.
MISRATA, LIBYA A car dodges the sand and concrete blocks that slow vehicles approaching the Abu Grayin checkpoint, the front line in a war with Islamic State militants. Soldier Mohamed Shalgam grows fearful as he wonders if the driver is a suicide bomber.
“It is much more difficult than in 2011,” said Shalgam, 26, who fought with rebels who overthrew longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi. “At that time ... we fought (openly). Now, these cars, how can I know if there are families inside or terrorists?”
Abu Grayin, about 60 miles southwest of this military bastion for the Tripoli-based government, marks an invisible border with territory held by the Islamic State. The city of Sirte, Gadhafii’s hometown and the militants’ stronghold for the past year, is less than 65 miles away.
Shalgam and his 15 other border guards know that protecting the Abu Grayin outpost is critical if they are to prevent an estimated 2,500 to 3,000 Islamic State fighters from expanding their reach in this chaos-riddled country, where the militants have fled to escape Western airstrikes against them in Syria and Iraq.
Shalgram said he is counting on the international community to come to the soldiers’ aid soon to help defeat the Islamic State, also known as ISIL or ISIS. But analysts warn that Shalgram shouldn’t get his hopes up because of the near anarchy that reigns here: Libya is besieged by fighting among rival governments — one in the capital, Tripoli, the other in Tobrok — as well as other militias and the Islamic State.
“Libya is mired in a period of protracted chaos,” Stratfor, an intelligence company based in Austin, concluded in a recent report. “Jihadists aligned with al- Qaeda and the Islamic State now control substantial portions of the country. Thanks to their connections with other militant groups in the region, there is a network that provides training and weapons reaching from the Sinai Peninsula to West Africa.”
Statfor said the United States and its allies are gearing up for an intervention in Libya as the Islamic State threatens to seize the country’s oil resources.
On Feb. 19, U.S. warplanes struck an Islamic State camp in western Libya, killing dozens. The strike targeted a top militant linked to attacks in Tunisia.
At the checkpoint, Shalgam warily approaches the car as it pulls up at the checkpoint. Instead of terrorists, he finds a young couple with two children crammed into the front seat, with the back seat full of luggage. The family is fleeing Sirte.
“It is catastrophe over there,” said the driver, Abu Imad. “There are no more schools, no more surgeons in the hospital.” On Feb. 12, he said, the militants killed three men in a public square allegedly for using drugs. “And they forced us to watch,” he said.
Imad’s family is taking refuge in Misrata with about 1,500 other families fleeing Sirte, according to the Sirte local council, now based in Misrata.
“Seventy percent of the population left. (Islamic State’s) work is killing, whipping and stealing money,” said Makhlouf Aksa, a lawyer and a former Sirte local council member. He said the militants are brainwashing children in Sirte schools where “they explain to the children that it is good to kill Westerners and all Muslims who talk to them.”
Imad said the Islamic State is letting people leave Sirte so they can fill their abandoned homes with new foreign fighters. “Foreign countries can destroy the entire city. It is not my city anymore,” he said.
Milad Ahmed, 42, father of a 14-month-old child, didn’t make it. He was shot and hanged on a makeshift cross on a road in Sirte on Jan. 16 because he supported the Tripoli-based government.
“He knew (the Islamic State) was looking for him. That is why he hid himself and didn’t go out at all,” his mother, Um Milad, said as she held up photos of her son, who was killed on his wedding anniversary. “But one day, they found him and took him, at dawn.”