In an article for the Atlantic Council's MENASource, Dr Alia Brahimi and Jason Pack write the first of two article looking at valuable lessons that can be learned from the ejection of the Islamic State (ISIS) from Sirte. This first article delves into the strategic lessons, arguing that 1) Governance failures drive jihadism; 3) Weakening ISIS strengthens al-Qaeda; and 3) ISIS’s governance model is unsustainable. A second article will look at the tactical lessons.
In Libya, ISIS’s governance model was financially and socially untenable. Ultimately, ISIS never managed to generate a social base. By contrast, in Syria and Iraq, this base currently exists by default, as the state is widely perceived by Sunni communities to be a sectarian predator.Yet, ISIS’s inherent vulnerabilities notwithstanding, it is difficult to see strategic progress against the group, while uncertainty over the most basic governance questions prevails. Since December, there has been no agreement on how Sirte itself will be run––in fact, Sirte’s new mayor, elected by municipal councilors, was kidnapped in February. The question mark that now hovers over Sirte’s fate, after ISIS, joins a series of unresolved questions on the future of Libya as a whole.
Click here to read the full article.If you are interested in how ISIS managed to establish itself in Libya, and how Libyan and international actors can act to prevent the group from regrouping or rebranding elsewhere in the country following ejection from Sirte, then look out for Eye on ISIS in Libya's seminal paper entitled 'The Origins and Evolution of ISIS in Libya'. The paper is authored by Jason Pack, Rhiannon Smith, and Karim Mezran and will be published by Atlantic Council later this month.