[ANALYSIS] Bringing on the (Libyan) apocalypse

The gruesome videotaped beheadings of 21 Egyptian Christians on a Libyan beach may well be the Islamic State’s (also known as IS, ISIS or ISIL) invitation to foreign powers to intervene in Libya. The air strikes Cairo launched in response followed a script written by a group whose role in Libya was marginal up until a few months ago.

Not only does generating chaos fit well with the group’s apocalyptic interpretation of Islam. It also suits the group’s political strategy.

While it remains unclear whether ISIS in Libya is a direct export of the Caliphate in Iraq and Syria, or a home-grown franchise that has adopted the ISIS brand, its numbers have swelled by arrivals from Iraq and Syria in Spring 2014, spurred on by the establishment of ISIS’s caliphate last summer.

But even though the group is getting stronger inside Libya, its strength is sometimes overstated. It does not even control all of Derna, its birthplace, where rival groups like the Abu Salim Martyrs Brigade still play a major role. It faces competition from other well-entrenched Islamist groups, and Libya lacks the sectarian divide between Sunni and Shiite, that has fed the civil wars in Syria and Iraq. And so far, ISIS has not gained control over the oil fields, even if some of its attacks have targeted oil fields.

Even Al Qaeda still wields more influence in Libya than IS, and still appears to hold a more pragmatic aim than bringing on the apocalypse, perhaps to settle on Libya becoming a sort of ‘Gulf-style’ Sunni emirate.

Like David Koresh but bigger…

Islamic State’s particular brand is its cultish-ness and eerily millenarianism.

Faith unto death: Jim Jones and David Koresh led extremist Christian cult movements, wielding absolute power over their followers and finally provoked end-time clashes that ended up in death

“The loaded language, myth creation, and strict ideology mean that the members are not participating in what we would call the real world. They live in an imaginary world in which jihadi heroes prepare for the apocalypse,” writes Marita Le Palm in Foreign Policy Journal.

Deciphering ISIS theology is important in avoiding alarmist conclusions. In the Coptic beheadings, the ISIS commander says “And we will conquer Rome by Allah’s Permission.” But this is not the Italian capital but defeat of the Christian armies in a future battle to take place in Dabiq, in Syria.

In this eschatological vision, as recounted by Geame Wood in The Atlantic, ISIS believes that after its victory in Dabiq, the caliphate will expand and sack Istanbul. But an anti-Messiah, known in Muslim apocalyptic literature as Dajjal, will come from the Khorasan region of eastern Iran and kill a vast number of the caliphate’s fighters, until just 5,000 remain, cornered in Jerusalem. Just as Dajjal prepares to finish them off, Jesus – the second-most-revered prophet in Islam – will return to Earth, spear Dajjal, and lead the Muslims to victory.

Dabiq: the Islamic State’s magazine is named after the city where Jesus’s second coming will avenge the Muslim forces under attack by the antichrist ‘Dajjal’

In contrast to ISIS, the more entrenched Muslim Brotherhood that which wields influence on the Tripoli government, belongs to a completely different mindset, one which seeks the Islamisation of society through the imposition of Shari’a law – but through constitutional and parliamentary means.  

While in neighbouring Tunisia a political party with roots in the Muslim Brotherhood handed over the reins of power peacefully after being defeated in a democratic election, the Brotherhood in Egypt was ousted from power by a military coup.

Which is why Graeme Wood assimilates ISIS to cult terrorist organisations like David Koresh and Jim Jones – of the Waco and Jonesville massacres respectively – with the singular difference that they wield absolute power over not just a few hundred people, but some eight million.

But not to be underestimated is ISIS’s proven ability to act politically and strategically, and govern millions of people through a mixture of fear, consent and sectarian alliances in Iraq and Syria. Neither is it incapable of political pragmatism: in Iraq it was able to ally itself with Baathist (of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party) Sunni insurgents to take over cities like Tikrit and Falluja.

Inviting the crusaders to war

ISIS’s strategy in Libya to provoke a foreign intervention would be its route of giving other Islamic groups no option but to join them in expelling the invader. Provoking Europe to intervene in Libya would enable ISIS to play the nationalist card. Resentment against the presence of foreigners in Libya is so strong that even during their revolt against Gaddafi, Libyan insurgents were adamant in refusing any foreign boots on the ground.

The Coptic beheadings has attracted Egyptian retaliation, perhaps in a bid to force all jihadist groups and even moderate Islamists to unite against a foreign invader. In this sense ISIS plays on Libya rivalries to create their ideal apocalyptic scenario: the arrival of the crusading armies in another Muslim state.  

Yet as the Middle East experts and Independent columnist Robert Fisk observes, ISIS’s own brutality may now have backfired, creating a new Arab military alliance to bomb it out of existence. Burning Jordan’s captured pilot provoked 56 air strikes from Jordan, and the Coptic murder brought Abdel Fattah al-Sisi into the war.

What could be bad news for Sisi is that in his game of conflating ISIS with the Muslim Brotherhood adherents he has thrown into jail, his air strikes could encourage the recruitment of Muslim Brotherhood to ISIS.

And then again, there is the chance that ISIS’s role in Libya is being hyped by the very regional powers who seek intervention.

“ISIS is a serious threat to Cairo, but in one sense it is also an opportunity,” says Shashank Joshi, a research fellow of the Royal United Services Institute in London. “This week’s strikes are likely to lend international legitimacy to Egypt’s Libya policy by associating its broad support for the Tobruk government and General Khalifa Haftar with its specific actions against ISIS.”

Making sense of the Libyan chaos

The Tobruk government The eastern city of Tobruk hosts the House of Representatives led by Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni, recognised by most of the international community. Libya’s new parliament, dominated by self-styled secular and nationalist candidates, was formed after the heavy defeat of Islamist candidates in June elections. The House moved to Tobruk after armed groups supportive of the General National Congress began to overrun the capital. 

The Tripoli government Fighters under Libya Dawn (Fajr Libya), an umbrella of several armed groups, took control of the capital’s and its airport after months of fighting against rival fighters largely from the mountain stronghold of Zintan, southwest of Tripoli. In November 2014 Libya’s constitutional court invalidated the parliament in Tobruk, giving the parliament in Tripoli its own claim to legitimacy. It is led by Omar Al Hassi.

General Khalifa Haftar Army strongman who as a cadet participated in Muamma Gaddafi’s 1969 coup that deposed the Libyan monarchy. “He was my son and I was like his spiritual father,” Gaddafi said of the general when he defected in the 1980s after Gaddafi turned his back on him when he was taken as a prisoner of war in Chad.

He subsequently moved to the US and only came back to Libya in March 2011 during the uprising. He launched ‘Operation Dignity’ as Libya drifted into instability, pledging to purge Benghazi of “terrorists” with his self-declared Libyan National Army.

He is backed by a loose coalition of eastern tribal groups eager for more autonomy, former Gaddafi army soldiers, and a number of politicians in the House of Representatives. Asked by New Yorker journalist Jon Lee Anderson whether he would be willing to serve as President, Haftar smiled, replying: “I would have no problem with that.”

Ansar al-Sharia One of the most powerful Islamist groups which gained notoriety for its alleged involvement in the 2012 attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi. It also enjoys support among many Libyans for its emphasis on charity and the services it provides to locals. It distanced itself from more moderate Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, who have participated in Libya’s democratic process.

They are separate from the Islamist militias that Haftar is fighting. Ansar al-Sharia include the February 17th Martyrs Brigade, described by the BBC as the “biggest and best armed militia in eastern Libya.” 

The militias In the vacuum that followed Gaddafi’s removal, rival militias took up residence in neighbourhoods and public institutions in Tripoli. The main rivalry is between the Zintan and Misurata militias, both of them instrumental in Gaddafi’s downfall. Misurata is supported by business leaders and have joined the mainstream Islamists, who are battling more secular forces, including the Zintan brigades and tribal units once loyal to Gaddafi.

Egypt and other foreign powers Foreign powers have sowed divisions by treating the Libya conflict in terms of a wider regional struggle. The UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are aligned against Qatar and Turkey in the latter’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates. Egypt’s involvement is an extension of the Napoleonic ambitions of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to quell Islamists ambitions regionally. Ironically, his deposition of the democratically-elected Mohammed Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood, is supported by the Salafist Al Nour party.

Saudi Arabia, despite practising a form of Islam not at all different from that practised in the ‘caliphate’, wants to maintain its autocracy and rout out Islamic State troublemakers. Equally ambivalent are Qatar and Turkey: they support a galaxy of groups affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya and Syria which however has spilled towards more extremist groups.

The immigrants Gaddafi had threatened to flood Europe with sub-Saharan refugees; Islamic State may be planning the same tactic. Up to 6,000 people are detained in severely overcrowded conditions in Libya, Human Rights Watch said in April 2014. But this is a tiny fraction of the three million undocumented migrants and refugees estimated to be in the country. Between 500,000 to 800,000 – mostly from Somalia, Sudan and Eritrea – are believed to be waiting to embark on the treacherous crossing.