A Mediterranean coastal city that’s about 350 miles away from the European island of Malta is the ISIS-held city of Sirte, Libya.
After the West supported the rebels against the dictator Col Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, ISIS rooted next to Europe just four years later.
Terror is now very no close to Europe and NATO territory in a failed state.
Where was Hillary Clinton’s master plan as U.S. Secretary of State (2009-2013) to prevent this to happen?
While America is focussing on her e-mails, this is the main question to be answered by the Democratic nominee who wants to become POTUS.
Here’s a chilling account of what’s happening in this oil-and gas-rich country:
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“As if beheading and shooting perceived enemies isn’t enough, ISIS is causing terrible suffering in Sirte even for Muslims who follow its rules,” said a senior terrorism and counter-terrorism researcher Letta Tayler. “While the world’s attention is focused on atrocities in Syria and Iraq, ISIS is also getting away with murder in Libya.” According to a news report from Human Rights Watch, 45 former and current residents of Sirte claimed to live in a continued state of fear.
From February 2015, the group has executed 49 people, including the 21 Coptic Christians that were beheaded last year. A couple of elderly men who were blamed of knowing “sorcery” were publicly beheaded in October. One resident said that, “They encouraged people to watch. . . When the big man finished the job he raised the head for the crowd to see.” ISIS even released a video of the horrid incident over the internet. Many of the executed that were shot in the head were mostly accused of being “spies”. They were killed and then displayed at a platform for some days. The group has a “kill list” of 130 titles of its “theoretical enemies” that sit in the courthouse; many on this list have been murdered in drive-by shootings.Most of the chaos in Libya can be traced back to the death of the country’s former leader, Moammar Gadhafi who was murdered in 2011. ISIS gained a foothold in the country due to the vacuum created since collapse of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.
How Isis is leading torture in Libya
At first it was thought that the country would follow a democratic path like its western neighbor Tunisia. However, warring groups split over the running of the country and instead a civil war ensued. Two governments appealed to be the rightful leaders of the country, and then in December signed an UN-backed peace deal. While the local soldiers tussled for power, ISIS took the opportunity to claim the territory for itself. American officials estimated about 4,000 to 6,000 ISIS militants in the country.
“The foothold gained by the Islamic State, the Levant in the city of Sirte remains a serious impairment to stabilizing the situation,” A Canadian military official added. In the years that Libya has sunk much further towards a void, ISIS has extended to fill that void. There is no Western involvement, but also there is no simple or rational reason for sitting back and letting the collapse speed towards them. Canada’s Top general says military action in Libya is inevitable; he’s actively assessing options to advise the government on a conceivable way forward as many nations are watching closely.
How terror is permeating the migrant route
In dank dense corridors in Tripoli, amid empty plastic bottles and filthy mattresses is where one finds Eugene, one of a group of migrant hopefuls who have been apprehended by the Libyan police. He is one among many, but all of the thirty confined souls, live in their own tragedy and horror. “I came through desert,” said Eugene. “My father is dead, through Boko Haram, through the crisis in Kano. Even my younger brother, he died from the bomb blast last year.” He tried to find work as he could not afford the fees to get himself smuggled across Europe. “In northern area in Nigeria, most of us we are not safe. Today bomb blast, tomorrow bomb blast, so we are not safe. If you can get anyone to help me, because I don’t know what to do, to tell the truth. Because here in Libya there is no peace.” It is unclear how he ended up in the holding cell, but crossing to Europe is on hold for now. He is among the thousands of African migrants in detention in Libya. The number only grows as the EU’s bid to block the Turkish-Greek shoreline deepens.
Intervention by the US
Libyan diplomats are now urging attention over an evolving U.S. plan to arm and train the nation’s militias again to battle the growing Islamic State threat. They fear a repeat of the terrible Pentagon planned program that ended with only a few hundred trained fighters. The Department officials closed the military’s initial program to train moderate rebel forces in Libya late last year after about 180 recruits successfully completing the program, at a whopping cost of millions of dollars to American taxpayers. “We have to be cautious. We cannot rush back into this,” said Wafa Bugaighis, at the Embassy of Libya during a panel discussion on the growth of the group acronyms ISIS or ISIL. “Libya can’t afford to be divided up by people with their own regional interests. I think everyone understands that,” said Jonathan Winer, the State Department’s special envoy for Libya.
More than three thousand Tunisians have journeyed to fight in Iraq and Syria. A thousand or more is the number of people making the short trek from Jordan, Syria’s neighbor. The number is 500 more than those traveled from Saudi Arabia, a jihadist breeding ground with thrice of Tunisia’s population. “Tunisia” is the Arab Spring’s success story, the one country that took to a stable democracy after swapping its leader in an upsurge of protests. It is also the world’s biggest exporter of violent jihadists.
Dozens of interviews with Tunisian youth in Ettadhamen, point to incentives that range from wanting a higher standard of living to sociopolitical inspirations, like obliterating the uninformed borders that European imperialists drew in the regions about a century ago. The problem is only growing due to high youth unemployment. The African Development Bank that has its headquarters in Tunis, said unemployment among young graduates is at “a particularly worrisome level” of 34%. The Times quoted them saying “education is inexpensive but jobs remain scarce,” making young people “prime candidates for jihad.” The report read, “It seems that everyone under 30 knew someone who had traveled to fight in Syria or Iraq, or someone who had died there”.
Poverty is pushing youth to become militants
Nevertheless, while economic insecurity and social exclusion are factors encouraging radicalization, they are definitely not the only ones. In La Marsa, North Tunis, several young people have offered to fight in Syria. “Three young men from here died. One of them was very shy, very introverted. The ‘recruiters,’ many of them are around here, spotted that and this is how they got him to enroll,” said Marwen, a plumber in La Marsa. “Among one single family, six children have gone to Syria. Yet, they come from a middle-class family. So how do you explain this? The reason is that they grew up in a country without moral values. During the former regime, a family man could be humiliated in front of his kids by the lowest paid employee of an administration, without being able to defend himself. The father figure has been shattered. They all grew up without a sense of respect for the law because of corruption,” said Mohamed, a foreign language teacher in La Marsa.
“The biggest thing needed in Libya is a unity of effort,” said Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis, “That is ultimately what we are waiting on. Any talk of potential herd numbers or types of weaponry en route is rash,” explained Capt. Davis, mainly because “this mission is not yet defined because the government is not defined.” Inhabitants describe how workers of the group fine and flog men for -smoking, listening to music or waning to guarantee their women were covered in loose black abayas. They have hauled “boys and men into mosques for prayer and religion classes.” As a result, in February the Italian government gave the Pentagon the green signal to commence armed drone strikes against Islamic State targets in Libya . Earlier this month, Gen. Dunford said the situation in Libya had worsened to the point where Washington and international communities had no choice but to offer to take action.
“They want assistance and you know that a number of countries, including the United States are prepared to do that,” the general added. The assistance required in Libya is definitely amplified through all the atrocities taking place in the nation. There are few who continue to pray for peace from the confinement of their homes, and then there is ISIS that forces others to pray at gun-point.
Not everyone fully agrees that US intervention is the most effective.
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Whether or not the US should interfere with the Libyan crisis, it’s still true that Libya needs global support to end its turmoil. The world needs to come together to change this constant living in fear for the people who are faced with the worst war of their lives.
Image: wikipedia
