Still Kicking: the Survivability of the Islamic State in Libya

Since emerging in eastern Libya in 2014, ISIS laid claim to wilayat within Libya’s three regional provinces—Tripolitania, Barqa, and Fezzan—moving fast to establish a quasi-state in the coastal city of Sirte and amassing just a few thousand fighters at its peak strength. Yet, just as ISIS core’s territorial hold in Syria and Iraq withered, its strength in Libya also soon diminished. Sustained domestic and international counterterrorism efforts have severely depleted ISIS in Libya’s (ISIS-L) numbers, operational capacity, and opportunity for safe haven. However, while weakened, ISIS-L’s survivability is driven by a far more complex range of factors than just Libya’s domestic unrest. The apex of ISIS-L’s power from 2014 to 2016 may have been brief, and its current threat low, but the group’s damage to Libya lingers, and the potential for its continued periodic revival should not be understated. For those seeking to counter and address ISIS-L’s continued presence in Libya, understanding the factors that simultaneously facilitate and hamper the group’s operations and growth is paramount to crafting appropriate interventions.