Two Rival Governments, No Responsible Authority in Libya

"Bodies are everywhere, inside houses, in the streets, at sea."

"Wherever you go, you find dead men, women, and children."

"Entire families were lost."

Emad al-Falah, Benghazi aid worker, Derna

 

"If there would have been a normal operating meteorological service, they could have issued the warnings."  

"The emergency management authorities would have been able to carry out the evacuation."

World Meteorological Organization head Petteri Taalas

People look for survivors in Derna, Libya, Wednesday, Sept.13, 2023. (AP Photo/Yousef Murad)

Streets in Derna, the worst-hit eastern Libyan city devastated by flooding were being combed by search teams among the wrecked buildings and even in the sea, for bodies. The massive flooding that spelled catastrophe in Libya killed over 11,000 people, although the number of dead is expected to rise. Those in charge of the area -- in a country truncated by two competing governments that installed themselves in a country completely administratively dysfunctional which had left vital infrastructure to deteriorate -- struggled to provide aid to the coastal city of Mediterranean Derna following the deluge on Sunday that washed away access roads.

 

Those aid workers that did manage to reach the city found devastation at its center, and thousands of people missing, while tens of thousands had been left homeless. Storm Daniel was responsible for deadly flooding in many eastern Libyan towns on Sunday, but Derna was the poster-town of utter devastation. The city in the mountains above two dams that burst and collapsed and floodwaters washed down the Wadi Derna River, through the city centre sweeping entire city blocks before it.

In the deluge, waves rose up to 7 metres. The water was so deep it reached to the second storey of buildings. One man described what he saw from the rooftop of their apartment building where he and his family had rushed to escape the oncoming deluge. People below, women and children among them were simply washed away by the tide: "They were screaming, help, help. It was like a Hollywood horror movie", he said from a Derna field hospital.

 

AP Photo: Yusuf Murad

 

Only two roads remain passable located from the south, involving a long-winding route through the mountains where Derna sits on a narrow coastal plain on the Mediterranean Sea, steep mountains running along the coast. Using that route through the mountains, aid teams carrying supplies arrived finally, even as eastern Libyan authorities saw to the repair of the coastal access routes that were washed away, but which allowed much faster access to the stricken area.

Whatever rescue equipment was available was being used by local emergency workers with search teams combing through shattered apartment buildings to retrieve the dead, some floating offshore in the sea. The city centre was split by collapsed bridges over the river. While over 11,000 people were declared dead, another 7,000 were injured in the city, field hospitals set up by aid agencies treating the injured. At least 9,000 people are missing even as teams deploy, collecting bodies from the buildings, the streets and the sea.

The storm's intensity was responsible for the utter devastation in its wake. Yet the divided country with its rival governments, one east, the other west, was also responsible for the disaster in its neglect of vital protective infrastructure. The flooding displaced at least 30,000 people even as the city of Derna became close to inaccessible for humanitarian aid workers to enter and set up operations in aid of the traumatized population.

Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia, along with Turkey and the United Arab Emirates sent rescue teams and aid to their neighbour in distress. The United Nations is prepared to provide additional support. Bulldozers work to fix and clear roads to enable the delivery of humanitarian aid and heavy equipment. International aid began arriving on Tuesday to Benghazi, 250 kilometres from Derna.

The Resurrection of Slavery

"Slavery has no place in our world and these actions are among the most egregious abuses of human rights."
"[The perpetrators must be brought to justice; appropriate UN bodies are] to actively pursue this matter."
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres

"[I plan to establish a] commission to investigate these reports in order to apprehend and bring those responsible to justice."
Ahmed Metig, deputy prime minister Government of National Accord, Tripoli, Libya

Migrants rescued from the Mediterranean arrive at a naval base in Tripoli in October.   CNN

CNN has unleashed its findings on an active slave market in action in Libya, raising outrage in the West and the usual expressions of shock and denunciation in the United Nations, while Libyan authorities of course had no idea that anything of this nature was being carried out and they will immediately launch an investigation to get to the source of the problem. And then, of course, initiate steps to immediately resolve it to everyone's satisfaction.

There is a certain situation which has been previously addressed and that address has resulted in certain consequences. The situation being an ongoing flood of refugees and opportunity-seekers from across the Middle East and North and West Africa to enter Europe and declare themselves refugees, in expectation of being embraced by humanitarian groups and ushered into the countries of their choice which just happen to have the most generous social services available to meet their urgent needs.

But since the European Union, in understandable distress and no little amount of stress emanating from the situation from among their disparate members, many of which have had their resources strained and others which refuse to have their resources used at all, convinced the Libyan government that their coast guard should undertake a strategy to hold back the living tide of people willing to risk death at sea for the opportunity to coast into Europe.

Migrants sit in a detention centre run by the interior ministry of Libya's eastern-based government, in Benghazi Credit: Reuters

The consequences for having stemmed that tide to a sizeable degree is that Libya is stuffed with migrants and refugees. They have been warehoused, their immediate subsistence needs met with donations from the source that refuses them entry and NGOs, and a new business venture other than smuggling the foreigners out of Libya and into Europe has arisen. New opportunities always seem to present themselves, and enterprising criminal elements waste no time taking advantage.

Just think of it: Arab governments failed the needs of their people; Arab governments oppressed their people and when a popular uprising resulted, those same governments went to war against their people, and aside from slaughtering the impudent discontents, created massive numbers of dispossessed, displaced from their familiar geography, along with refugees. And now that the victims have sought alternatives for their lives, Arab traders in human lives have surfaced to gain profit.

According to testimony from the International Organization for Migration and other humanitarian agencies, for months refugees and haven seekers have been crowding the auction blocks of Libyan slave markets to be sold as working slaves throughout the region, where West Africans are advertised as "big strong boys for farm work". Bidders eyeing the migrants succeed in their purchases for as little as $400 for each slave.

The Treeq Alsika Migrant Detention Center in Tripoli, where some migrants are held by Libyan authorities before they are repatriated.   CNN

So, then, it is not Arab governments at fault for creating these teeming numbers of refugees fleeing conflict, and migrants looking to find a promising future for themselves elsewhere than in their opportunity-scarce homelands, but the West, which has failed to continue absorbing migrants/refugees by their millions. If the smugglers in Libya cannot dispatch the refugees in those unseaworthy vessels taking all their available funds to do so, then they will make their hard-earned wealth by auctioning them off as slaves.

According to Alpha Conde, president of Guinea, chairman of the African Union -- the source of many of the migrants -- an inquiry and prosecutions reflecting the "despicable trade ... from another era", must result from these revelations, while the Senegalese government spoke of the slave market as a "blight on the conscience of humanity". Not a blight on Africa, on Arab and Muslim profiteers, but on "humanity", doublespeak for the West.

The International Migration Organization says it has gathered evidence of slavery in Libya   Getty Images

Not My Fault, Chum

"When I go back and ask myself what went wrong there's room for criticism because I had more faith in the Europeans, given Libya's proximity, being invested in the followup."
"The way I looked at it was that it would be our problem if, in fact, complete chaos and civil war broke out in Libya. But this is not so at the core of US interests that it makes sense for us to unilaterally strike against the Gaddafi regime."
U.S. President Barack Obama

"Prime Minister Cameron has been as close a partner as the president has had and we deeply value the U.K.'s contributions on our shared national security and foreign policy objectives which reflect our special and essential relationship."
Edward Price, White House spokesman

David Cameron and Barack Obama. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

There are times when frankness has its place, but never in the diplomacy of speaking of presidential peers in relation to shared responsibilities on the scale of the joint NATO closed skies cooperation that kept Libyan dictator Col. Gaddafi from strafing and bombing the hell out of his disaffected subjects. Of course, when France and England agitated for NATO's involvement to protect the anti-Libyan government forces they knew of the tribal and sectarian divisions and the dangers inherent in unleashing them should the Libyan strongman's authority be upended.

But there it is, they made a choice. They made a choice in Libya that they had no intention of repeating in Syria. And so the 'no fly zone' became their contribution. While it's true that Gaddafi unleashed his military to strike at the rebel militias and he was impeded mightily by NATO members' overflights protecting the militias from the air and bombing the regime's armoured vehicles to the militias' advantage, once Gaddafi was neutered (horribly, in line with Middle East tradition), the NATO allies decamped claiming victory.

The United States initially led the strikes against Gaddafi, launching hundreds of Tomahawk cruise missiles offshore from American ships along with the British, while the no fly zone component was pursued by other members of NATO, including France, Britain, Canada, Belgium, Italy, Norway, and one Middle East nation, Qatar. Once the rebel militias had prevailed, however, the foreign elements decamped and left Libya to its own devices.

Its own devices were led by a fractured nation which showed no signs of coalescing into a cooperative effort to rescue the country from its own proclivity to continue another kind of conflict; tribal and clan and sectarian warfare. A two-pronged government ensued, splitting the country into two major political factions, and the militias continued to harass the population, refusing to surrender their arms to a national force.

Five years later, nothing of benefit to the country has been resolved, and matters have been complicated by Islamic State moving into Libya, and an unregulated, irregular transit of black market oil has taken the place of the Libyan fisheries. Now, President Obama refuses, just like any other country that was involved in the conflict, to take responsibility for the outcome of a shattered country. The trouble with that tack is that the United States always leads, and always is expected to lead.

It did in this instance, then attempted to recede into the background, giving European countries the lead. But as the world's only superpower and conventionally its guide and leader, stepping down from that role and then disclaiming responsibility for unfortunate outcomes doesn't resound very convincingly. The matter of leadership failure falls more convincingly on Obama's shoulders than it does on Cameron's.

The chaos that represents Libya to this day is as much of America's making as it is of Europe's. The unleashing of a state of insecurity in Libya had its fallout in neighbouring African countries like Mali which had depended on the support of Libya's benefactor to North Africa, Col. Gaddafi. The fact that Libyan arms depots were left unsecured, along with its chemical agents, had much broader repercussions in the geography when it became a free-for-all grab for terrorist groups.

This is yet another incident where the United States has interests of its own in various parts of the world, has become involved in conflicts there, and then steps away from the responsibility of the consequences of its actions. On the other hand, the ungoverned and ungovernable mess that is Libya today makes one wonder what might have happened had the United States stepped authoritatively into the Syrian fray, supporting Syrian rebels.

Europe, for one thing, would not now be submerged in an unstoppable tide of Syrian refugees fleeing the carnage that its president has visited upon them. There would have been no chemical attacks, no barrel bombings, no starvation sieges, and no Russian intervention spurring on an increase in refugee movement into Europe to produce a humanitarian crisis of volcanic proportions. But then, what-ifs have never accomplished anything worth a damn.

"Allah Give Our Mujahedeen Angels"

"Allah break the backs of the tyrants and the oppressors and the unjust and those nations of the world that are with them."
"Allah they have gathered against us and are scheming against us, so scheme against them. Trick them, kill them."
"Our youth are waging battles in the Libyan east, youth, men who were honest in what they promised Allah. And so some of them died, and others are waiting. We are waiting for martyrdom in the name of Allah. And by Allah this is our path until we push back evil. We will not stop nor resign."
"Our honour, our money, our children, our wives, our family, all in the name of Allah [await martyrdom]."
Libyan Cleric Abdu Albasset Egwilla, Tripoli, Libya

Facebook   An attack killed Owais Egwilla , the son of a former Ottawa cleric, Abdu Albasset Egwilla

Islam was founded in the 7th Century as a monotheistic religion, based on Judaism and Christianity, the third iteration of the original some speak of as the Abrahamic trilogy. Islam's interlocutor with Allah was confident in informing his followers that god considered the third version his final opus, authorizing the Prophet Mohammad to instruct his followers in the Muslim faith to regard Islam's predecessors as outdated, but that the 'People of the Book', the Saturday and the Sunday people should be given the opportunity to convert to Islam before they are slaughtered.

Of course, they also have the alternative of retaining their religious faith, quietly, without ostentation, but resolved to live obediently under Islamic rule, and taxed heavily for the privilege, as well as foregoing the privileges extended to those of the Muslim faith. Jews and Christians must always give way for Muslims, since they are inferior and must always know their place, as supplicants to a higher order. Under those circumstances, tolerance for their presence is allowed, but their places of worship will not be protected.

Islam is a religion of peace only as that peace pertains to life under Islamic rule. Since Islamist societies represent the 'House of Peace', and non-Muslim societies are identified as the 'House of War', Muslims who practise their faith as it is written in the Koran may never be at peace with non-believers. They are enjoined to enlist themselves without equivocation in holy war, jihad, to advance Islamic rule. Islam is a religion whose spread worldwide has not succeeded with cajoling soft words to convince the infidels that submission to Islam is to their benefit.

It is a religion of conquest, violence, both of which made astonishing inroads for Islam in the years following the Prophet's death. And since that time, his message to the faithful has been observed and honoured as an precious obligation; aspirational martyrdom is the most elevated status a believer can attain to. And this is what Owais Egwilla, formerly a Libyan living with his father, Abdu Albasset Egwilla, an Islamic cleric, in Ottawa aspired to, and achieved.

Imam Abdu Albasset Egwilla left Ottawa with his son Owais Egwilla. He did, however, in his praise for Allah, advise Libyans living in Canada that they should aspire to become shahids, martyrs for the cause, and they had no need to travel abroad to achieve that purpose, they could find their purpose right where they were, presumably in Canada. The battle "against the people of evil" has no bounds and no boundaries.

"Inside the mosque, it is not permitted at all [calling for jihad]. The mosque is for worship. It is for prayer."
"You want to talk about politics, take it to Tim Hortons. We have no room for this. This kind of behaviour is not accepted at all."
"Political tendencies can change from one moment to another. Nine years now (since Imam Egwilla left Ottawa, anything could happen."
Mohammed Mostefa, president, Assunnah Muslim Association

Since the Koran places jihad as the uppermost responsibility of pious Muslims, how can it be taken out of the mosque? What is described in that quote is 'politics' is in fact the essence of Islam. In fact, most sermons close with an admonition warning the faithful against the untrustworthiness of the kuffar and the responsibility of Muslims to counter their evil. These classical utterances out of Islam's holy book of instruction to the faithful are part of the Islamic liturgy, the divine precepts of Allah.

However, Mr. Mostefa insists that Imam Egwilla hadn't been preaching jihad throughout his time in Ottawa. So the imam who now issues fire-and-brimstone speeches to the faithful in Libya, railing against the current one-half government and the general leading its military speaks of jihad; he wants a unified country in Libya -- totally rent with sectarian and tribal violence with Islamic State making inroads -- but his version of unification includes Salafist Islamist Sharia, and the second government is clearly no better than the infidels.

His son had been with his fellow fighters in Benghazi when a barrel bomb unleashed by the forces of General Khalida Haftar, martyred them all. The Shura Council of Benghazi Revolutionaries posted a Facebook message that Egwilla and another man had perished "after a battle they waged against a group from the disbelieving forces", according to SITE.

Beloved of Allah

"It is one of the extremist groups. His father took him to Libya. In fact his father pushed him. Believe me, they should really open their eyes [ rather than succumb to blandishments by extremist Islamist clerics to engage in jihad]."
Libyan Ambassador to Canada Fathi Baja

"Abdu Albasset Egwilla] urged an audience of Libyan Islamist fighters to take part in jihad."
"Jihad today is simple and easily accessible, and does not require moving as in the past, as it was for Afghanistan and Iraq [urged the cleric, from his Ottawa pulpit]."
Report, Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre

"Apparently a bomb fell on that building [where former Ottawa resident Owais Egwilla was harbouring] and the building collapsed on them. He wasn't fighting."
"He was absolutely normal. He was in sports and mingling with his friends. He was part of the community here. He was a nice guy."
"He practically grew up here in Ottawa and he went back. About two years ago he came back here by himself and stayed for some time to study English, I believe, to try to go to school here."
"I don't really know if his father was the reason for encouraging his own son to go fight."
Khaled Misellati, Canadian Libyan Community Association trustee

Facebook   The death of Owais Egwilla, left, was announced on social media accounts affiliated with Libyan fighters, according to the SITE Intelligence Group. The youth’s father was Abdu Albasset Egwilla, right, a Libyan-Canadian religious cleric.

 

"Allah loved  you with martyrdom, which you had sought while you were still young" wrote his uncle, Abdul Rahman Egwilla as a tribute on Facebook to the 20-year-old Owais Egwilla, a former student at University of Ottawa whose death on the weekend "raised the head of our entire family". This, obviously was the young man's destiny, a young man who in a video in 2014 viewed his father urging "an audience of Libyan Islamist fighters to take part in jihad", according to a Canadian intelligence report, since declassified.

His uncle's proud tribute to the family's shahid, an honoured martyr in the classical tradition of Islamist responsibilities of the faithful to Islam delineated repeatedly in the Koran, was linked to the Shura council of Benghazi Revolutionaries which posted notice that Egwilla and another colleague in jihad had died "after a battle they waged against a group from the disbelieving forces", the SITE Intelligence Group reported. The 'disbelieving forces', actually was a Libyan government military group.

The young man, whom a spokesman for the Canadian-Libyan group insists hadn't been involved in fighting, had himself posted propaganda exalting jihad on Facebook. According to reports, he was a member of an armed Islamist group, Ansar al-Sharia. This is the Salafist Islamist militia involved in the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that killed several American diplomats, including the U.S. Ambassador, in a bloody firefight that torched the consulate.


In an appearance Monday before the Senate National Security and Defence Committee, Michel Coulombe, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service spoke of "another report yesterday or today in Libya", and to queries responded that 180 people "with a nexus to Canada" were actively engaged in terrorism overseas; 100 in Syria and Iraq, another 60 having returned to Canada, with an additional 90 to 100 known to be planning to travel to the jihadi conflict zones.

But of course, another Islamist with links to Canada, who has committed to Islamist jihad, spurred on by energetic recruitment -- in this instance by the young man's own father inspiring his son -- is described as ordinary, normal, not violent, not involved in jihad, but sadly simply misunderstood, a bystander. Canada has realized that a plentiful number of "bystanders" have surfaced in the Middle East and Africa, innocently wandering into jihadi training camps, then released to wreak their wretched obligation to Islam.

Delusional Reasoning

"We thought, naively, that regime change was the solution to the problem."
"Looking backward [sic], I would have actually left the Taliban government in power and said [to them]: 'Stay out of the way. We're here to find al-Qaeda. And as long as you stay out of the way, the special forces will go in there, they will do what is necessary to get al-Qaeda and we will leave."
"We compounded the problem by getting rid of the Taliban regime. I didn't like the Taliban regime, but why did we go there in the first place? It was because of al-Qaeda. Not because of the Taliban."
"We repeated it in Iraq. In Libya, we didn't put any ground troops in and we created an even bigger mess because there's no government whatsoever in Libya. We went back into Iraq and now for the very first time the international community is beginning to appreciate that regime change is not the solution -- hence why we're not pushing to do a regime change in Syria."
Major-General Dave Fraser, retired

Now those are pretty simple-minded sentiments. Hard to believe that they're coming from someone with this man's experience as the Canadian commander leading NATO in southern Afghanistan ten years ago. He had command of the Canadian task force along with the military alliance's expanded mission to solidify the authority of then-Afghan President Hamid Karzai to capture command of the entire country, not merely Kabul.

It was an inadvertent goal to invade, occupy and leave Iraq without its strongman to ensure that sectarian viciousness would not overwhelm the divided population. This was an errant American-led decision to remove a typical Middle East dictator leaving a vacuum that Islamist terrorism rushed to fill. Saddam was a vicious beast, but his Sunni Baathist rule was nowhere near as destructive to his majority population as has been Bashar al Assad's Shiite Baathist regime, which had it been challenged at an early enough date with aid to the rebel forces would have removed a far worse butcher than Saddam.

The Taliban, a cruelly repressive, human-rights-bashing regime of Islamists, took pride in giving haven and support to al-Qaeda and its then-leader, Osama bin Laden, who had helped drive the Russian occupation into oblivion in Afghanistan. They had much in common, not the least of which was their extreme brand of Islam and hatred of Western influence. So when bin Laden realized his astonishing success in the planning and carrying out of 9/11, and it was demanded of them that they surrender bin Laden to the U.S. they refused.

To expect the Taliban to do otherwise, is to not understand the basic fundamentals of Islam, where it represents a heretical offence against Islam to betray fellow Muslims. Islam requires of its faithful as a primary obligation to the faith that jihad be undertaken, to battle the non-Muslim West for the achievement of primacy as a force of theocracy destined to rule the world. Any attack by a non-Muslim power against Muslims is viewed as an offence against all of Islam, and Muslims are called upon to respond with jihad.

Had the U.S.-led coalition attempted to do as Mr. Fraser now feels would have been the prudent thing to commit to, the result would have been the same as what occurred in any event; the Taliban and the foreign jihadists who flocked to Afghanistan once again, this time to fight the Western non-believers (kuffar) who had set out to 'destroy Islam', were met with  Islam's determination not to be destroyed by the West, or by any source outside Islam.

Imams, mullahs, Ayatollahs, from Egypt to Indonesia, Britain to Canada, Australia to Pakistan, and throughout the ummah, incited to jihad in response to any perception that the West was positioning itself to interfere with Islamic rule.

So -- wrong, retired major-general Fraser, had you indeed "done that", it would have availed nothing.

"[Islam] believes that only Islam and the 'Camp of Kufur' [unbelief] exist, and that there is no way to reach Paradise and to be delivered from Hell except by walking in the path of our Prophet Muhammad and joining Islam. Any other way leads to Hell."
"In light of this, my believing brethren, how can it be claimed that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all paths leading to Allah?!"
Sheikh Adnan Ahmad Siyami, Mecca, May 11, 2001 *

"It is impossible ever to make peace with the Jews. The Jews are defiled creatures and satanic scum. The Jews are the helpers of Satan. The Jews are the cause of the misery of the human race, together with the infidels and the other polytheists. Satan leads them to Hell and to a miserable fate The Jews are our enemies and hatred of them is in our hearts."
"Jihad against them is our worship. Muslims must ... educate their children to Jihad. This is the greatest benefit of the situation: educating the children to Jihad and to hatred of the Jews, the Christians, and the infidels; educating the children to Jihad and to revival of the embers of Jihad in their souls. This is what is needed now."
Sheikh Muhammad Saleh Al-Munajjid, Al-Damam, Saudi Arabia *

"In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and [the obligation to] convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force."
Muqaddimah [Islamic historical theory], Ibn Khaldun (1332--1406) *

  * Onward Muslim Soldiers -- Robert Spencer

Israel and Iran are not Nuclear Bedfellows

"I have spoken directly with over 30 presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers. I explained that there was no place to hold a discussion of this kind as long as the main problem in the Middle East is Iran’s efforts to arm itself with nuclear weapons and its clear declarations regarding its intention to destroy the State of Israel. I welcome the fact that the gap in Israel’s favor was significantly larger than the votes in previous years. I thank all those countries that supported Israel, especially the US, Australia and Canada. I thank the EU for voting as a single bloc in favor of Israel against the decision."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

The IAEA General Assembly voted 61-43 this week, against forcing inspections of Israel’s nuclear reactor in Dimona. Egypt had submitted a proposal to the IAEA General Assembly that Israel be forced to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency inspection of its nuclear facilities. That proposal was supported by Iran, Syria, Iraq and Libya, for the IAEA's 59th General Conference.

Clearly, though Israel has never publicly admitted to its nuclear weapons, it is widely acknowledged that the ambiguity surrounding them represents a strategic defense policy.

Given the unambiguous nature of the hostility with which Israel is viewed throughout the Middle East, a country that has had numerous wars inflicted upon it by the collective Arab nations surrounding it, this move represented nothing but a political ploy, and a fairly transparent one at that. Countries like Egypt, Syria, Iran, Libya and Iraq are repressive tyrannies and failed nations. 

 

Obviously this move was associated with the Iranian nuclear deal; the suspicion with which the West holds Iran's nuclear file is not reflective of how Israel's facilities are considered.

 

The head of Israel's Atomic Energy Agency gave due notice to the IAEA General Assembly that attempting to force such inspections would have a deleterious effect: "If the resolution passes, it will only hurt the credibility of the IAEA by politicizing the organization and reducing its valuable resources. This debate has been forced upon the economic committee year after year and most of the member states have understood this after voting down these proposals three times in recent years", emphasized Ze'ev Snir, head of Israel's AEA.

 

There are occasions, even within the United Nations and its various arms when reason does occasionally prevail.

The Signed-in Blood Battalion

"The Libyan government in the east of Libya confirms that the U.S. fighter jets conducted airstrikes last night in a mission which resulted in the death of the terrorist Belmokhtar."
Government of Libya statement

ANI/Handout    Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who lost his left eye in combat, has been reported dead a number of times over the years.

The hostage taking at a BP-operated gas plant in Algeria in 2013 represented a bold and unexpected attack by an al-Qaeda affiliate that drew the attention of the world to the vulnerability of workers in such places where terrorist attacks can take place to deliver the message of jihad. Islamist jihadists targeting symbols of the West, its insulting decadence, its disgraceful status as a democratic enclave spurning Islamic values, its intolerable exploitation of Muslim countries, stripping them of their assets and their valuable resources.

Expatriate workers were taken hostage during a siege of the sprawling plant, and thirty-nine of the hostages including ten Japanese and three Americans died when an Algerian military assault took place to rout the Islamists and rescue the workers. Two Islamist-radicalized Canadians were among the dead attackers. They had travelled to North Africa for the express purpose of joining the terrorist group headed by Mokhtar Belmokhtar.

This was a man who had fallen out with al-Qaeda, a man who preferred to make his own rules and regulations and act in accord with them, rather than accede to the authority of the central agency of al-Qaeda in the Maghreb. Mokhtar Belmokhtar had planned the abduction of two Canadian diplomats in Niger. They were eventually released after ransom was paid. Belmokhtar was placed on an Interpol warrant by the Canadian Department of Justice.

He had already been sentenced to death in absentia by a court in Algeria for decades spent staging "massacres", "murder" and "aggravated theft" in Algeria, according to authorities there. And in the wake of the disastrous 2013 Algerian gas plant attack, the United States issued a $5-million reward to see him brought "to justice". Justice, as it happened, arrived on Saturday when American F-15s streaked over the Libyan Desert to slam bombs into an al-Qaeda position where the man was assumed to be hiding.

U.S. State Department This wanted poster from the website of the U.S. State Department's Rewards For Justice program shows a mugshot of Mokhtar Belmokhtar, charged with leading the attack on a gas plant in Algeria in 2013 that killed at least 35 hostages, including three Americans.

This would not be the first time the terrorist commander reaped his martyrdom reward. In 2013 the Chadian military circulated its triumph in destroying a terrorist base and in the process numbering "several dead terrorists, including their leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar", among their successes. It took several months for Belmokhtar to be miraculously resurrected; it appears the virgins in Paradise rejected his advances so he descended to Earth to try once again.

And now, though he is dead but not mourned since martyrs are celebrated, the announcement may, yet again, be hopefully precipitate. A Libyan Islamist has rained in the triumphant parade of accomplishments to state that although U.S. bombs had killed four Islamic terrorists, Belmokhtar, alas, was not among them

At the age of 43, the man had amassed a reputation reflecting his experiences as a seasoned mujahadeen. Born in east Algeria, he fought in Afghanistan during the Soviet Invasion of the country, training with jihadist groups. He returned to fight in the Algerian Civil War in the early 1990s. Since then he operated out of the Sahara desert, planning hostage taking, smuggling illegal cigarettes bringing him up to $50-million in profits in his enterprise and earning him the sobriquet "Mr. Marlboro".

"Mr. Marlboro" may yet be among the living to continue his pursuits that most please his ideology.

Islamist Death, Political Death

"Intervention is now urgent because what has happened is extremely worrying. The Renzi government is bringing in Islamist fundamentalists and using Italian ships as taxis for potential jihadists."
Maurizio Gasparri, Italian senator, Forza Italia party

"The government is not only bringing to its knees the social fabric of our cities [through immigration], but is allowing onto Italian soil fundamentalist terrorists."
Ignazio La Russa, Italian centre-Right politician

"We don't have months and months. The double risk of an advance of the Islamic State group in Libya and the waves of migrants means we are in a race against the clock."
Paolo Gentiloni, Italian foreign minister

Migrants on a boat in the Mediterranean Sea between North Africa and Sicily who are being rescued by the Italian Navy  Photo: Italian Navy/dpa/Alamy

When a group of Egyptian Copt workers in Libya were slaughtered by Islamic State terrorists in a mass beheading atrocity, their leader warned, gesturing toward the Italian coast, that Islamist jihadists were preparing to take the same route as desperate refugees fleeing the carnage being inflicted throughout Africa and the Middle East by sectarian conflicts and Islamist mass murder in the name of the religion of peace, to invade and conquer "Rome".

This week it was reported that nine or a dozen Christian refugees aboard a boat shared by fleeing Muslims, were drowned in the Mediterranean. It wasn't that this boat capsized this time around -- although hundreds upon hundreds of fleeing refugees have drowned when their unshipworthy vessels have capsized -- but a deliberate criminal act by Muslims aboard to toss the Christians into the sea to drown.

The deaths are being investigated by Italian police on evidence that emerged from another hundred Muslim asylum seekers on board that vessel once it was rescued and taken to Palermo, Sicily. Fifteen Muslim migrants from Senegal, Ivory Coast, Mali and Guinea Bissau were arrested by police, accused of throwing the Christians from Ghana and Nigeria into the sea after an argument.

The legal charge is responsibility for "multiple murders aggravated by religious hatred", according to a police statement. The Muslims responsible had been identified by other refugees, themselves in anguish over the deaths of the Christians. The atrocity has given new fodder to Italian conservatives who are accusing the government of permitting "fundamentalists" into Italy.

Four survivors of another incident where a small boat sank in the Mediterranean described to Italian rescuers how their inflatable dinghy had sunk soon after leaving the cost of Libya with 45 people aboard. Just days earlier 400 people were reported drowned in another shipwreck north of the coast of Libya. The most recent results of freeing Libyans from the tyrannical clutches of their former dictator Moammar Ghadaffi.

The breakdown of law and order in much of Libya has had far-reaching consequences. Not only are Libyans fleeing the conflicts between competing 'governments' and their militias, but there is now no restraint on the passage of migrants from other points in Africa, and from the Middle East from paying smuggling gangs of jackals to place them on old ships in the hopes of reaching Europe, and haven from the fear and death consuming the geography

Humanitarian agencies now warn that up to a half-million migrants may attempt the Mediterranean crossing into Italy this year, well beyond the previous number of 170,000 who managed to reach Italy in 2014. The 28 nations of the EU argue about how they should share the migration burden, with Italy, Greece and Malta bearing the brunt of the massive and ongoing influx.

The world's largest, most desperate refugee situation, burgeoning and harrowing to the refugees and their would-be rescuers, caused by a collapse in security and order, courtesy of the faithful of Islam, that incomparable religion of peace.

The Middle East: In the Shadow of the Gunmen

by Jonathan Spyer
PJ Media
April 4, 2015

Post "Arab Spring," the Middle East is in chaos. And ready to be devoured by the mullahs of Iran.
In a process of profound importance, five Arab states in the Middle East have effectively ceased to exist over the last decade. The five states in question are Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Libya. It is possible that more will follow.

The causes of their disappearance are not all the same. In two cases (Iraq, Libya) it was western military intervention which began the process of collapse. In another case (Lebanon) it is intervention from a Middle Eastern state (Iran) which is at the root of the definitive hollowing out of the state.
But in all these cases, the result has been remarkably similar — it is the ceding of power from strong central authorities to a variety of political-military organizations, usually but not always organized around a shared sectarian or ethnic origin. The Middle East today is overshadowed by this process. We are living in the time of the militias.

Five Arab states in the Middle East have effectively ceased to exist over the last decade.

Observe: in Syria, the clearest-cut case, the country is now effectively separated into separated ethnic and sectarian enclaves — an area dominated by Bashar Assad in the south and west, an area dominated by the Sunni jihadi Islamic State group in the east, three non-contiguous Kurdish enclaves across the north, an area under the domination of al-Qaeda and its allies in the northwest and a small area in the southwest held jointly by al-Qaeda and a variety of other Sunni Arab militias supported by the west.

The important point to note here is that the area controlled by Assad (around 40% of the total area of Syria) does not essentially differ in its militia-nature from the other areas.

On the contrary, Assad has been able to survive because he is aligned with the force best designed to successfully exploit the fragmentation of Arab states and the emergence of militias seeking to impose their authority on the ruins of the state.

This force is Iran, and more specifically the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and its Qods Force.
This force is a unique body. It exists for the precise purpose of building proxy paramilitary organizations to serve the Iranian regional interest. At a time like the present, the possession of such a force is an enormous advantage.

Assad's large, mainly Sunni Arab conventional army became largely useless to him in 2011/12. The IRGC stepped in and created for him one of its own preferred force types. Today, this militia (the National Defense Forces) along with other Iranian-created or -sponsored militia forces from neighboring Iraq and Lebanon are largely responsible for Assad's survival. But he survives as a warlord and militia chief, not as a "president" or the head of a state.

In Iraq, the country is today separated into three areas, a Kurdish north, an area in the center controlled by Sunni jihadis and a Shia area in the south. Again, the Shia south, which is still seen in the west as the "legitimate" government of Iraq, is in fact an area in which Shia militias are the key element, operating freely and acting according to their own will. Often, this will is the product of the desires of the Qods Force, and its commander General Qassem Suleimani.

In Lebanon, in a notably different process, an Iran-created militia, Hizballah, acquired the dominant role in the area once ruled by the state, because the state was a hollow construct long competed over by rival sectarian militias, and because Iranian and Syrian support enabled Hizballah to acquire a level of strength which no other homegrown political-military force could match. It may well be that this is now changing, as al-Qaeda associated Sunni militias enter the arena.

In Yemen, where the state and central government was also weak, the Iranian supported militia Ansar Allah (the "Houthis") seized the capital in January. Sunni elements in the south, including one of the strongest franchises of al-Qaeda, are fighting against them. A mobilization of Arab air and sea power is underway to prevent Iran's proxies from seizing the Bab-el-Mandeb strait. Control of this vital waterway, between the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, would tilt the regional balance yet further in Iran's favor.

The Iranians, because of their matchless IRGC, are best equipped to make gains from this chaos.

Finally, in Libya, the western destruction of the Gadaffi regime has led to the splitting of the country between two rival governments — one supported by the Egyptians in Tobruk, another backed by Islamist militias in Tripoli.

Five Arab states, effectively no longer in existence. In all, militia power has replaced ordered government.

What does all this mean for the region? It means that a huge chunk of the long misgoverned Middle East has exchanged an age of despotic torpor for an age of chaos. The Iranians, because of their matchless IRGC, are best equipped to make gains from this.

But nowhere (with the partial exception of tiny Lebanon) have the Iranians yet succeeded in keeping a country united under the control of their local proxy. This is not a story of an unstoppable Iranian advance, like a juggernaut, across the region. Their successes are notable, but partial in each area of operation. Sunni and Kurdish forces prevent their complete victory and are likely to continue to do so.

Where will all this end — what will the landscape look like when the storm passes? Impossible to say.

But it may be said with certainty that the shadow of the gunmen is today hanging over the Middle East, all the way from the Iraq–Iran border to the Mediterranean coast and from the Gulf of Aden to Libya.

Jonathan Spyer is Director of the Rubin Center for Research in International Affairs and a fellow at the Middle East Forum. He is the author of The Transforming Fire: The Rise of the Israel-Islamist Conflict (Continuum, 2011).

What Good Intentions Have Wrought

"There is the increasing possibility that the situation in Libya will transform into a long-term tribal civil war."
"This is particularly probable if opposition forces received military assistance from foreign militaries."
Canadian intelligence specialists, March 15, 2011 assessment

"One can quarrel with it or not quarrel with it, but the mission was we would provide air cover for those that were initially subject to Gadhafi's attacks and ultimately became his overthrowers."
"The decision was made at the outset that we were not going to go into Libya (on the ground) per se. It was going to be up to the Libyans to then make t he best of the situation."
Prime Minister Stephen Harper

An armed man waves his rifle as buildings and cars are engulfed in flames after being set on fire inside the U.S. consulate compound in Benghazi late on Sept. 11, 2012. US ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three of his colleagues were killed in an attack on the consulate in the eastern Libyan city by Islamists outraged over an amateur American-made Internet video mocking Islam. Stevens died less than six months after being appointed to his post. STR/AFP/Getty Images

Hindsight, a formal intellectually introspective exercise, rarely arrives with solutions to problems, only regrets that what occurs in response to a chosen direction turns out disastrous. And then in realizing that, one must defend the original position since it is too painful to admit that the response was one taken in haste, with insufficient thought to the probable outcome. In the case of Libya, just as in any country in that region of the world abutting the Middle East, tribal, clan, sectarian and ethnic complexities sully outcomes.

While it might mean that a reasonable mind in thinking of the future might conclude that given a little help from powerful outside sources, the indigenous population, freed at long last from the imperious and cruel dictates of a tyrant might take the opportunity to act in concert for the greater good of the country in which they live, that reasonable but hugely uninsightful interpretation of the currents of hatred, resentment and violence made its decision in error.

Which is to say the executive branch of government in this instance, in throwing in its expected lot with that of its collegial members of NATO in the belief that it was the right thing to do, did so when the country's military intelligence officers parsed the situation and its outcome quite differently. Predicting in 2011 that Libya could and likely would descend into the ongoing destructive chaos of civil war, led by opposing tribal challenges to a central authority.

The warning was made, and it was most likely shunted aside as Canada threw in her lot with the bombing campaign under NATO auspices and UN approval to aid local militias in their resolve to remove Moammar Gadhafi's regime from power, permitting in the final analysis, Libya to descend into lawless and violent chaos where rival tribes and militias continue to meet in battle for control of the country.

"The one thing we can say categorically is that they couldn't be any worse than Col. Gadhafi", said the then-Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs in pointing out that the issue was to help Libya reach its way into becoming a democracy. The weak and ignored central authority that ostensibly represents democratic rule has been ineffective and powerless against the larger factions that challenge and dismiss it.

Gadhafi was indeed a brutal dictator, just as Iraq's Saddam Hussein was, but both kept opposing factions under control through fear and oppression, and the only violence that took place was what each government wrought upon their weaker, less-well-organized opponents. In their absence, each of the countries descended into violence. Perhaps worse, each of those countries has become a smouldering hotbed of Islamist fanaticism whose vicious depredations and threats surmount those of the tyrants.

And nor was the West totally ignorant of what they might be unleashing, since intelligence reports described the anti-Gadhafi stronghold of eastern Libya as an "epicentre of Islamist extremism" whose "extremist cells" operated in the region. And now, the iron fist that kept them in check is gone, and they are free to destroy and kill at leisure. Hell unleashed.

Al-Hayat Media Centre/AFP/Getty Images   An image grab taken from a video released on Feb. 15, 2015 purportedly shows black-clad ISIS fighters leading handcuffed hostages, said to be Egyptian Coptic Christians, wearing orange jumpsuits before their alleged decapitation on a seashore in the Libyan capital of Tripoli.

Full Circle

"The burial was done in the way of his religion, of Islam: they prayed for him with prayers for the deceased, then laid him to rest. Michael is a good person on the inside, and he's kind and affectionate."
"It does not justify his attack toward the head of government, and doesn't make it right to kill a soul. Because in our religion, we believe that if someone kills one person, it's as if they killed all of humanity."
"As for the public opinion in Libya, there are some here who call him a hero, there are some who consider it a big crime, and some who don't care about the situation. I think that this is very normal in any country, because not all people know the whole truth about the story."
"The Canadian government is primarily responsible for all of this. Of course [Zehaf-Bibeau] thought that Canada was thinking to attack a Muslim country, Iraq, and he didn't know the reality of ISIL. He thought ISIL was the Islamic country he wanted; that it was what every real Muslim, or any lover of peace, wanted."
"But he was cheated by ISIL. Even us Muslims don't want ISIL because it does not represent peace. Even I was cheated by their Islamic symbols -- but when I saw the killings, I knew they were not Muslims."
"Canadian media is twisting the story and I have seen many journalists lie and relate the issue to religion when there are no ties to religion. They ruined the image of Islam and ruined the image of Abdullah [Zehaf-Bibeau] with their narratives."
"We want you to know that all Muslims aren't evil; some are good and some are not good."
Ashraf Zehaf, cousin of Michael [Abdullah] Zehaf-Bibeau

Michael Zehaf-Bibeau was buried in Libya, a cousin says.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Michael, aka Abdullah Zehaf-Bibeau, 32 years old, a Canadian citizen whose mother is Canadian and father Libyan, shot to death Cpl. Nathan Cirillo on October 22, as the reserve soldier stood guard at the National War Memorial. That accomplished, the armed man rushed to the nearby Parliament Buildings, to enter the great hall, and search out others to kill, presumably the Prime Minister and any other officials he might come across. He was killed by Parliamentary security guards.

Now, he has returned in death to Libya, although he was born in Canada. It is where his father, Bulgasem Zehaf, took his son's body for a traditional Muslim burial, after release by the Canadian coroner's office, with the permission of the Ottawa-based Libyan mission, according to consular official Khalifa Alghuwel.

In 2011, Canada took part in UN- and NATO-sponsored aerial bombing of the military forces of Moammar Ghaddafi when a civil war broke out that succeeded eventually in removing the Libyan tyrant from his seat of power. The result was not as the West had envisioned; the freeing of a people from the talons of a totalitarian government, leaving them the capacity and the will to install another government modelled on democratic principles.

Libya was and is too beset by tribal, clan, sectarian animosities, too ingrained by centuries of hate and conflict, with each element jostling the other through violent clashes while persecuting the minorities among them. The weapons caches abandoned by Ghaddafi's military to the marauding Islamists taking advantage of the country's upheaval have substantially benefited the Islamist jihadists across North Africa and the Middle East.

Little did Canada visualize that their part in the effort to bring peace and security to a far distant country would result in one of their own nationals of Libyan heritage attacking the very seat of government in their own country. Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, who had been flagged by Canadian intelligence as a possible threat, had been refused a passport to enable him to travel out of Canada and into Libya. His vengeance for that denial was the killing he perpetrated. That, according to his cousin's narrative.

"As for Abdullah -- or 'Michael Zehaf-Bibeau' -- his family has accepted the (fact of what happened October 22) and they believe that Abdullah carried out this act as a result of his own narrow-mindedness, and that it was wrong", said his cousin. And in the same breath held Canadian authorities responsible, by denying the man the passport he wanted, for the calamity which unfolded when he rampaged in Ottawa, killing a soldier and threatening Parliament.

ISIL is now well established in Libya, even in the city where the cousin lives, Zawiya. Ashraf Zehaf, glad to see the last of Gadhaffi, holds countries like Canada responsible for the chaotic patchwork of armed thugs in his country roaming about, destroying and killing. Even so, he speaks for Libyans claiming that the ISIL video of the slaughter of 21 Egyptian Copts was an invention.

"Libyans mostly believe that the ISIL video was fabricated, and (we're) not convinced by it because as you know, there are two parties in Libya conflicting for power. Since Islamic terrorism became a scapegoat for governments around the world, (ISIL) became something that the government can control. The government describes it as terrorism in order to allow it to remove those groups by force, although what qualifies as terrorism is still determined by -- who knows -- Ms. America?"

Muslims know terrorism when they see it, and they don't see it in Islamic State, nor evidently do they recognize it in the 'good person on the inside' ... 'kind and affectionate', who killed a Canadian soldier at the country's national memorial to the tragedy that is war.

From The Caliphate To The Cross

"The Assyrian people are not merely Christians, but indigenous inhabitants of the Middle East."
"After the Iraq war of 2003, and since the Syrian crisis began, the persecution unleashed on them – including extortion, kidnappings, murder, the ethnic cleansing of entire swaths of Baghdad, the Nineveh plains, and now much of north-east Syria, has been so vast that their very existence in their ancestral homelands is in grave peril."
"We are watching a living history and all that comprises [it] disappear".
Mardean Isaac, Assyrian writer, U.K.

"A message signed with blood to the Nation of the Cross."
"Oh people, recently you have seen us on the hills of as-Sham and Dabiq's plain, chopping off the heads that have been carrying the cross for a long time."
"Today, we are on the south of Rome, on the land of Islam, Libya, sending another message."
"The sea you've hidden Sheikh Osama bin Laden's body in, we swear to Allah we will mix it with your blood."
Video executioner, Islamic State, Libya

Egyptians call for more action earlier this month over the kidnapping of Coptic Christians in Libya. Photograph: Mohamed Abd El GhanyANY/Reuters

"It is one thing to fly the ISIS flag because a lot of guys are doing it. It is another thing to capture a bunch of Egyptian Copts and kill them and see it as some part of a grand, final-days battle."
William McCants, researcher, Brookings Institution

Under the banner of the Tripolitania Province of the Islamic State, terrorist jihadis announced they were holding 21 Egyptian Christian Copts last month. A like number of workers had disappeared from the coastal city of Surt; and it was they who were seen being beheaded by masked fighters in black carrying machetes parading along a rocky beach. And it was that atrocious event that brought Egypt's warplanes on bombing missions over Libya.

This time around Islamic State jihadis retreating from their defeat by the Kurdish defenders of Kobane, kidnapped 90 Christians in the north-east of Syria. "This is another episode in the targeting to the Christians of the east. We are witnessing the end of the Christian presence in the east", said Habib Afram, president of the Syriac League in Lebanon, representing the Assyrian minority.
Four Christians were killed in their attempts to defend the village of Tal Tamr.
 

The terrorists were overheard referring to the Christians as "crusaders". An anomaly of historical reckoning when the Christian presence much predated Islam in the east, and the crusades where European Christians responded in fury to the Islamic slaughter of Christians in Jerusalem were Christianity's answer to Islamic bloodlust. Reports of the destruction of Christian churches augmented the pain of the kidnappings.

The kidnappings were recognized as related to attacks targeting Christian communities regionally, inclusive of attacks in Baghdad and Mosul, the beheading of the Egyptian Copts, and Jabhat al-Nusra's occupation of the ancient Christian town of Maaloula. Mr. Afram spoke of Christian refugees taking refuge in a humanitarian crisis and shock at the attack. "They are not part of the struggle", he explained, the Christians having desisted from taking sides in the sectarian war in Syria. "We do not understand this targeting of Christians."

A statement that is difficult to credit for a spokesman of the Assyrian Christians who surely should have a better handle on the vicious antipathy of Islamist jihadis toward Christians in particular and minority ethnic and religious groups in general. Making of their antipathy a special emphasis on tormenting and violating their human rights, when they're not busy killing them. When Mr. Afram condemned the "frightening and shocking Arab silence" over the attacks against regional Christians he is perhaps on more solid footing.

"Coexistence needs two sides", he complained. The deafening silence is the response to that statement.

Europe Terrorist-Compromised

"[Libya has] immense potential [for ISIS]. It has a long coast and looks upon the southern Crusader states, which can be reached with ease by even a rudimentary boat."
"The number of trips known as 'illegal immigration' from this coast, which are huge in number ... if this was even partially exploited and developed strategically, pandemonium could be wrought in the southern European states and it is even possible that there could be a closure of shipping lines and targeting of Crusader ships and tankers."
Abu Arhim al-Libin, ISIS propagandist

"Those boat people who go for immigration purposes and try to cross the Mediterranean ... in the next few weeks, if we do not act together, they will be boats full of terrorists also."
Nasser Kamel, Egypt's ambassador to London

"Twitter has shut down Libim's accounts several times and each time he starts a new one he gets thousands of followers very quickly, which is typical of an influential ISIS affiliate."
"The risks Europe faces from ISIS's pre-eminence in Libya are substantial."
Charlie Winter, researcher, Quilliam Foundation

Islamic State has identified Libya as a "gateway" to bring itself the enablement of waging war directly to southern Europe. The plan appears to flood Libya with jihadists from Syria and Iraq, to  sail across the Mediterranean as migrants using people-trafficking vessels. Quilliam research has revealed the plan, describing how the terrorists would rampage through the cities of southern Europe on an atrocity-laden slaughter spree.

At the same time maritime shipping would be a target.

Libya based cells are already established. One of which revealed the video of the beheading of the 21 Egyptian Copt workers, kidnapped and held prisoner until their beheading, revenge against Egypt's campaign to free the Sinai Peninsula from the stranglehold of Islamist terrorists including Islamic State affiliates. Leading to the Egyptian airforce bombing the ISIS-held Libyan city of Derna.

Egyptian president Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has been persuading he United Nations that a UN-backed coalition was required to rid Libya of Islamist extremists. He spoke as well of the U.S.-led airborne alliance expanding its mission to target ISIS forces in Libya as well as those in Syria and Iraq. The U.S. has been linked to Shiite militias and Iran in its Syrian and Iraqi mission. This might be an opportunity for the U.S. to repair its relations with Egypt.

Libya, even before the downfall of Moammar Ghadafi, and increased since, has acted as a hub for trafficking boatloads of refugees into Europe. The immense weapons depots that Islamists took possession of when they were abandoned by Ghadafi's military are now in the hands of al-Qaeda affiliates and those of ISIS; the availability of high-tech arms no problem at all, some of them acquired in fact from Britain by the Ghadafi regime.

The Libyan army says this neighbourhood of Derna was home to an IS training site. Photo by Twitter.

The former head of the British spy agency MI6, John Sawers, said ground troops should be committed by Britain to halt Libya's "being exploited by fanatics". Ironically, it was Britain and France that led the charge for NATO to become involved in destroying Ghadafi's reign, in giving air cover to the Libyan tribal rebels, many of whom were obviously dangerous Islamists. North Africa has never been the same, since.

Now, the very real potential of ISIS using people-trafficking vessels as a means to smuggle terrorists into Europe is a concern shared by security officials. Italy's interior ministry estimated some 200,000 refugees and immigrants are preparing to make the dangerous crossing from Libya to Sicily or the island of Lampedusa. Among them it is feared may be ISIS terrorists; how to differentiate them from the others desperately seeking to escape their predations?

The concern is real and the potential for the concern to become a nightmare reality is certainly real enough, hovering on the horizon of absolute dread.

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.