Islamic State Challenge

"[Islamic State weapons caches and training camps were the targets] to avenge the bloodshed and to seek retribution from the killers."
"Let those far and near know that Egyptians have a shield to protect and safeguard the security of the country and a sword that cuts off terrorism."
Egypt state radio

"Our life has been turned upside down."
"I watched the video. I saw my brother. My heart stopped beating. I felt what he felt."
Babawi Walham, Coptic Egyptian, el-Aour, Egypt

Egypt has a neighbour it would far prefer not be located right across the border. Living next to Moammar Gadhafi's Libya might have been troublesome, but what now prevails is downright dreadful. What now persists in Libya is a total dysfunction of human relations; a mass pathology of berserk religion-inspired fervour for fanatical jihad. And Coptic Egyptians who have traditionally sought employment in Libya now represent victims of jihad.

Libyan followers of Ansar al-Shariah Brigades and other Islamic militias hold a demonstration against film and cartoon denigrating Propher Mohammad. Mohammad Hannon/The Associated Press Files

Remove a ruthless dictator of a Middle East or North African Muslim country and you remove the constraints that bind the population into a nation, separating the tribal animosities and sectarian hatreds, by force of retribution lest they fail to obey the edict to live together in a semblance of harmony. Once that constraint has been removed, an unstoppable surge of tribal and sectarian rage surfaces resulting in violent carnage.

From Lebanon to Iraq, Syria to Somalia, Libya to Mali, Sudan to Nigeria, the forces of fundamental Islamism have prevailed and the bloodletting has created the world's largest influx of homeless, civilians fleeing the Islamist militia terrorist jihadis that march in conquering divisions to destroy whatever cohesion was installed in countries harbouring more simmering hatreds than civil obedience to living in peace.

Where government authority is imperilled, the forces of Islamism see their opportunity and are quick to take them and further disequilibrium occurs. At one time jihadis were claiming allegiance to al-Qaeda, but now that a more ferociously barbaric Islamist group has surfaced, Islamic State is the choice of union. In Libya with its divided governments, the coastal cities of Sirte and Darna, Tripoli and Benghazi give haven to Islamist jihadis.

Egypt's government is facing a seemingly unstoppable insurgency over its huge territory, but centred in the Sinai Peninsula where jihadists have declared their allegiance to ISIS. And where the Sinai Province of the Islamic State has trumped its conquests in attacks on Egyptian military positions and police stations. Weapons smuggled out of Libya are benefiting the Islamists to a degree that Egypt's military operations are strained by the daily stream of attacks.

The Algerian Soldiers of the Caliphate represent Algeria's offering to the support of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's Caliphate. Where a French captive was beheaded and the country's military succeeded in demolishing the strength of the Islamists for the present. Tunisia's Oqba ibn Nafaa brigade has also stated its support of Islamic State with a steady flow of recruits out of Tunisia to the Islamic State in Syria by way of Libya for training.

With just 800 kilometres separating Libya from Italy, Europe has been casting nervous assumptions of safety from jihadists to the winds. The concern for Italian authorities is that Islamist terrorists could slip into the country on smuggling boats out of Libya, crowded with legitimate refugees and migrants fleeing Syria, Africa and elsewhere, seeking refuge from the charnelhouse that the Middle East and North Africa have become.

Italian Premier Matteo Renzo pressed for United Nations intervention to somehow stem the dysfunction in Libya, much as Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi too has turned for action on a global response scale to the United Nations, to respond to the breakdown of order and security in Libya, sliding over into Egypt and beyond. France, with its large number of citizens joining Islamic State, worries over their return, toughening up counter-terrorism laws in hopes of stopping them.

Egypt dropped bombs from its American-made F-16 fighter jets over Darna, the stronghold of the Libyan jihadists swearing loyalty to Islamic State. The 21 Egyptian Copts who were beheaded days earlier suffered intolerably as knives were used to carve through their necks, no swift, merciful blow to expedite their deaths, but a slow, unmerciful agony of prolonged death throes.


In the Christian-majority village of el-Aour, relatives of the dead wept and cried out the names of the dead on Monday. Babawi Walham spoke of his 30-year-old brother Samuel, a plumber, whom his family saw on the news playing the video of the captives' deaths on Sunday night.