BEYOND SYRIA IRAQ

MOHAMED ELJARH
the fighting in Syria returned to Libya and helped set up IS in Darnah
and Benghazi.
Following the initial pledging of allegiance to IS and its leader Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi, and after much speculation about IS’s intentions for Libya, it
became evident that IS’s leadership recognized the strategic importance of
Libya to its overall project. Its wealth, location, and the immense amount
of weaponry still present there following the overthrow of Qadhafi made it
a source of great potential, as did the fragile state of the country, which suffered
from polarization and infighting among various groups. A document
circulated among IS supporters in January 2015 was proof of IS’s ambitions
for Libya as a strategic gateway for its project, or at least as a fallback option.
The link between IS’s central leadership in Syria and Iraq and its newly
established province became more evident in early 2015. The leadership dispatched
some of its most senior fighters to Libya to help strengthen the group’s
presence there and establish its first strongholds outside of Syria and Iraq:
• Abu Nabil al-Anbari (Wissam Najem Abdul Zayed Zubaidi), an Iraqi
national, was one of the military commanders who led the group’s
expansion in Iraq. He was reportedly killed in a U.S. airstrike on Darnah
on November 14, 2015.
• Abu Habib al-Jazrawi, a Saudi national, reportedly filled the role of the
wali in the city of Darnah very early on.
• Abu al-Bara al-Azadi, a Yemeni national, was reportedly killed in an
Egyptian airstrike in February 2015.
• Turki al-Binali (Abu Sufyan al-Salami), a Bahraini national, was considered
the spiritual leader of the group. He was active in Syria and Iraq,
delivering lectures and lessons in IS-held territory. He was also spotted
in Darnah and later on in Sirte.
Both in Darnah and Sirte, IS’s new strongholds were quick to establish sharia
courts, police (hisba), and other administrative departments to oversee the
radical social reengineering of local communities that fall under IS’s control,
not only through mandatory religious programs, but by instilling fear
in them through public punishments, including execution and crucifixion.
Furthermore, the link between IS’s central authority and its followers in
the Libyan province is evident in the propaganda material disseminated by
the group; this was clearly demonstrated by the report in IS’s online magazine,
Dabiq, on the killing of the twenty-one Egyptian Copts in Sirte on
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