British SAS Have been Operating in Libya

According to a leaked memo written by King Abdullah II, Jordanian troops have operated alongside UK Special Air Service troops in Libya since January.

The memo was sent to US lawmakers by King Abdullah to brief them of Jordan’s plans to embed special forces “with British SAS” in Libya. The document also reveals that the monarch met with Arizona Senator John McCain and Tennessee Senator Bob Corker in the presence of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.

“On Libya His Majesty said he expects a spike in a couple of weeks and Jordanians will be imbedded [sic] with British SAS,” reads the document, obtained by the Guardian.

The memo explains that Jordan’s role in Britain’s operation was crucial, since “Jordanian slang is similar to Libyan slang.”

Libya is of particular concern to Jordan because it serves as a hotbed for both Daesh, also known as the Islamic State, and al-Shabaab, following the NATO overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi. King Abdullah indicates that special forces operations could be carried in other African nations, as well.

“Jordan is looking at al-Shabaab because no one was really looking at the issue, and we cannot separate this issue, and the need to look at all the hotspots in the map. We have a rapid deployment force that will stand with the British and Kenya and is ready to over the border into Somalia.”

Britain’s operations are not limited to Africa. The memo states that UK special forces were critical in forming a battalion of tribal fighters to combat the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The document also expresses Jordan’s frustrations with other allies in the region.

“[Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan] believes in a radical Islamic solution to the problems in the region,” it reads, adding that the “fact that terrorists are going to Europe is part of Turkish policy, and Turkey keeps getting a slap on the hand, but they get off the hook.”

The king complained that Israel “looks the other way” in regards to the Nusra Front, al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, because “they regard them as an opposition to Hezbollah.”

The memo also offers Jordan’s view on the controversial issue of whether or not to shut down known terrorist websites.

Intelligence agencies should keep such websites “open so they can use them to track extremists,” the memo reads, adding that tech giant Google confirmed to King Abdullah that “they have 500 people working on this.”

The leak comes at a particularly trying time for the British government. Prime Minister David Cameron is facing increased pressure by parliament to improve transparency over special forces operations. News that Britain has been secretly operating in Libya for three months will only increase Cameron’s troubles.

Read the Original Article at Sputnik News

This Article was also published in Global Security

ISIS Corner: ISIS’ Expansion Strategy in Libya

 

Bottom Line Up Front: 

• On March 1, the UK announced that it will send a contingent of soldiers to help Tunisia secure its border with Libya

• The announcement comes a week after reports that French special forces are operating against the Islamic State in Libya

• International concern is growing about the spread of the Islamic State in Libya, and the group’s potential to expand beyond Libya’s porous borders

• In Libya, the Islamic State is geographically contained by an ocean to the north and a desert to the south; nevertheless, it has so far resisted containment and faces few obstacles to its continued spread

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Even as the so-called Islamic State faces increasing pressure in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State in Libya continues to expand. The vast territory of Libya, its large stores of weapons, and the absence of coherent government have enabled the Islamic State to move relatively freely around the country. This mobility has allowed the group to maintain a presence in both the east and the west of the country, and increasingly in the south. On March 1, in response to increased Islamic State activity, the UK government announced that it would be sending a small contingent of British troops to help Tunisia to secure its border with Libya. The Tunisian government has grown increasingly concerned over the threat posed by the Islamic State in Libya, and recently constructed a 125-mile border wall—complete with a moat—along the border with its war-torn neighbor. Despite the security wall, a small group of armed militants from Libya was able to cross into Tunisia on March 2, before being killed by Tunisian forces outside the city of Ben Gardane.

Other international actors have also stepped up their attempts to contain the spread of the group in Libya. French newspaper Le Monde reported last week that French Special Forces are operating against the Islamic State in Libya, and have reportedly launched ‘targeted strikes’ against senior members of the group. It is becoming increasingly apparent to international security officials that the Islamic State franchise in Libya is not merely an affiliate group—it was consciously constructed by senior Islamic State leadership in Raqqa. The Islamic State initially appeared in Libya when members of the Battar Brigade—an all-Libyan unit of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria—returned to Libya and declared a wilayah in the eastern city of Derna in the spring of 2014. Islamic State leadership has subsequently dispatched senior members—including Abu Nabil al-Anbari, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in November 2015—to head the Libyan franchise. 

Like its parent organization in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State in Libya is expansionist and opportunistic. The central coastal city of Sirte—seized primarily through the coopting of members of the Qadhafa tribe of former President Qadhafi—has served as the group’s Libyan capital since May of 2015. To ensure its economic sustainability, the Islamic State has attempted to capture energy infrastructure in the east, launching assaults on the oil and gas port at Ras Lanuf. The group has also spread south and west into the remote desert regions to secure access to lucrative smuggling routes running through the vast Sahara desert. In order to grow its ranks, the Islamic State has drawn fighters away from other extremist groups such as Ansar al-Sharia in Libya, and has even begun to encourage foreign recruits to travel to Libya, rather than to Iraq and Syria. 

This is particularly concerning for Tunisia, which has seen at least 6,000 of its citizens travel to fight in Iraq and Syria, and experienced two terror attacks carried out by Tunisians trained in Islamic State camps in Libya—spurring the construction of the border wall and the deployment of the British soldiers. Even if Tunisia—which has a roughly 285-mile border with Libya—is able to stem the flow of weapons and fighters to and from Libya, this task is far more difficult for Algeria and Egypt, whose borders with Libya run for approximately 615 and 692 miles, respectively. It is an even more demanding task for Libya’s southern neighbors Chad and Niger—two of the poorest countries in the world—both of which already struggle with Islamist militancy within their borders. 

Given recent indications, the international anti-Islamic State coalition will likely increase its role in combating the group in Libya. However, as in Iraq and Syria, periodic airstrikes will not succeed is dislodging the Islamic State from its strongholds, particularly in Sirte. Without effective and reliable partners on the ground, the Islamic State will simply weather the storm as it has in Iraq and Syria. While airstrikes against the Islamic State will be easier if the group is driven away from the populated areas along the coast, such a dispersal runs the risk of pushing the group into the desert regions of Algeria, Chad, Niger, Egypt, and Mali—bringing with it fighters, weapons, and poisonous ideology. As the rapid global spread of the Islamic State has shown, until the ideological appeal of the group can be effectively combated, limited military solutions can only accomplish so much. 

.For tailored research and analysis, please contact: info@soufangroup.com

Read the Original Article at The Soufan Group

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Crusader Corner: Things Getting Serious in Libya, ISIS Takes Over Govt. Security HQ

A view of the street after a violent clashes between Libyan interim government forces and loyalists of Muammar Gaddafi in Sirte October 18, 2011. REUTERS/Esam Al-Fetori (LIBYA – Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY) – RTR2ST4N

The Libyan branch of ISIS staged a gruesome attack Wednesday on government-security headquarters in the western city of Sabratha. According to the AP, the group beheaded 12 officers before taking control of the complex.

“A second security official said that the militants used the headless bodies of the officers they killed to block the roads leading to the security headquarters—which they occupied for about three hours,” the report added.

The attack came less than a week after American airstrikes hit an ISIS training camp in the city, killing about 40 people, including two Serbian hostages. The renascent U.S. efforts in Libya speak to a growing concern shared by a number of countries about ISIS’s increasing ability to flourish in the North African country.

American intelligence officials estimate that the group’s ranks in Libya have grown to 6,500 fighters, more than doubling since the fall. ISIS first declared its intentions to establish a presence in Libya in 2014 and has been launching attacks ever since. The group is now thought to control 150 miles of Libyan coastline.

Read the Original Article “Where ISIS is Doubling” at The Atlantic

ISIS Corner: Why ISIS is Destroying Libya’s Oil

A very clear and concise article that explains one of ISIS’s main characteristics when it comes to Strategy:  If they cannot control it or make money off of it, they Kill it. -SF

For the second time this month, massive clouds of black smoke from burning oil billowed above Libya. The first time, in early January, the Islamic State (ISIS) attacked two major oil storage facilities. Out of the seven tanks targeted, one collapsed entirely. Damage to the others rendered them unusable. Together, the two storage facilities accounted for 40 percent of Libya’s oil export capacity. A few weeks later, ISIS struck again, blowing up a pipeline that feeds one of the terminals.

It is clear that ISIS in Libya is trying to destroy Libya’s oil sector. To make matters worse, this was entirely foreseeable.

Libya is embroiled in a multi-front civil war, and control of the oil sector – the lifeblood of Libya’s economy – is central to controlling Libya itself. Libya’s two rival governments, in Tripoli in the west and Tobruk in the east, have both tried to wrest control of the sector for themselves. And it was inevitable that ISIS would try to do the same thing once it had grown large enough to do so. After all, illicit oil sales have been an important source of income for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and ISIS in Libya would have liked to try to emulate that success. But the profile of Libya’s oil and gas sector is different from that in Iraq and Syria, and as a consequence, ISIS in Libya was never going be able to control the sector, and once it realized that, it would seek to destroy it.

Libya’s oil sector differs from that of Iraq and Syria in significant ways. First, unlike in Iraq and Syria, Libya has no teapot refineries. ISIS in Iraq and Syria has used mom-and-pop refineries to transform looted crude into refined products to sell to the retail market under its control. Without the ability to supply the retail market, ISIS in Libya would have to export crude. However, previous attempts by ISIS to illicitly export large volumes of crude were prevented. Furthermore, Libya does not have fleets upon fleets of tanker trucks to transport smaller volumes of crude to nearby markets. Iraq’s oil smuggling networks are decades old, dating back to the mid-1990s as a way to circumvent the UN’s Oil-for-Food Program. While Libya is riddled with smugglers, the infrastructure does not (yet) exist to transport crude to would-be buyers. Thus, unable to make money from it, ISIS has decided that no one else will either.

ISIS’ destruction of the oil sector achieves two things.

First, it deprives Libya’s two governments of the revenue that they use to pay militias that, if they were to stop fighting one another, could combat ISIS. Libya is in a surreal situation where both of Libya’s opposing governments draw their budgets from the Central Bank of Libya. The governments then pay the salaries of the different militias that ostensibly fight for them. Oil revenue is the Central Bank’s only meaningful source of revenue. If there is no oil, there is no revenue, and there are no salaries to buy the allegiance of militiamen who could fight ISIS.

Second, the destruction of Libya’s economic backbone reduces the likelihood that Libya’s third government, which is currently based in Tunisia, will be able to establish itself in Libya proper, and even if it is able to eventually come to Libya, that it will be able to succeed. The Government of National Accord (GNA), which emerged out of UN-led negotiations at the end of 2015, would be as dependent on oil revenue as Libya’s two current governments are. Without oil revenue, the GNA would have no money to pay the salaries of a future  Libyan National Army and public sector workers who constitute 80 percent of the workforce. Unable to pay for soldiers and social services, the GNA’s prospects would be bleak.

What destroying Libya’s oil sector does not do is actually strengthen ISIS or build its capacity. ISIS would still need to turn elsewhere for revenue and for materiel, meaning that it is still bound to ISIS in Iraq and Syria. This reduces the likelihood that ISIS in Iraq and Syria can create an independent self-sufficient “rear base” in Libya to which it can retreat if it is unable to hold on in Iraq and Syria.

In addition, ISIS’ destruction of the oil sector also has the potential to consolidate opposition in Libya against the group. ISIS has no shortage of enemies in Libya, but its opponents have not formed a united front against it. With ISIS threatening Libya’s natural and national patrimony, Libya’s opposing militias may see the wisdom of joining forces to combat it. With ISIS threatening to destroy the pie from which all of the militias benefit, they may opt to fight to preserve the pie’s very existence even if it means they might get smaller slices in the future. After all, a smaller slice is better than no slice at all.

Read the Original Article at The Cipher Brief

West Ignoring Grave Threat from ISIS in Libya, Israeli Terror Experts Warn

Well we have a POTUS that does not even listen to Military Advisors and people waaaaay smarter than him, so good luck on him listening to Israel, a country with more experience fighting terror than anybody in the world. -SF

Libya is the only place outside Iraq and Syria where the jihadi group controls territory, but US and Europe have no strategy there, researchers say

Despite battling the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the West is woefully neglecting the spread of the terrorist group in Libya, where it poses a supreme danger not only to the Middle East and North Africa, but also to Europe, according to Israeli terrorism researchers.

“Libya is the only country besides Syria and Iraq where IS controls a large territory and controls government infrastructure, including a power plant, port, and economical ports,” said Reuven Erlich, a former senior officer in military intelligence and currently the head of the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC). “We think that IS’s establishment in Libya poses a grave threat and it needs to be taken very seriously by Europe and the US.”

Several researchers at ITIC, which operates under the Israel Intelligence and Heritage Commemorations Center, spent a full year examining IS’s activity in Libya, and this week are publishing their worrying conclusions in a 175-paper report, entitled “ISIS in Libya: a Major Regional and International Threat.”

Read the Remainder at Times of Israel