Libya has now an Islamic State (IS) problem on top of — and compounding — all others. The murder last week of 21 Coptic Christians in Libya by IS has alerted the international community to the new danger. Egypt and Italy are especially concerned. Cairo, because the victims of IS brutality were Egyptian migrant workers. What is more, President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi fears extremism may take root on Egypt's western border and spread to his country. Among European nations, Italy, Libya's former colonial master, has good reason to worry. After all, Libya is within arm's reach of Europe. Rome feels that the threat from IS is now on Europe's doorstep. There is the risk of IS fighters joining the tens of the thousands that cross the Mediterranean to the Italian island of Lampedusa each year. At one time Italian officials were talking up the risk of an IS “invasion of Rome” (Remember British Prime Minister Tony Blair's warning of Saddam Hussein's missiles reaching British military bases in Cyprus, as well as Israel and NATO members Greece and Turkey, within 45 minutes). Italian opposition figures see the refugee inflow as an IS plot to distract the Italian Navy. On the surface, everything looks simple. But there is something frighteningly familiar, too. There is the refrain, as was the case in the build-up to the Iraq invasion of 2003, that doing nothing is not an option. Those who opposed the invasion of Iraq were depicted as supporters of Saddam Hussein and worse. Now Qatar is accused of “supporting terrorism” because it expressed reservations about Egypt's recent air strikes against IS targets in Libya. Cairo, which moved against IS to avenge the killing of its citizens, had also asked the UN Security Council to provide a mandate for an international intervention. Right now Western powers don't favor direct involvement. So Egypt and Libya want the Security Council to lift an arms embargo imposed on Libya in 2011 when Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown in a Western-assisted uprising. This will enable Libya to fight the IS as it establishes a presence in North Africa. The question is which Libya. This North African nation has no unified government. It has two separate power centers. The internationally recognized administration is based in the eastern city of Tobruk. A rival Islamist administration functions from the capital, Tripoli. Complicating the situation, there is a plethora of militant groups operating on the ground. Western powers, we are told, are wary of supplying arms to the Tobruk-based government or intervening on their behalf. They say Libya needs a national unity government first or at least a compromise between the two governments. But the political process, led by the UN's Special Representative Bernardino Leon, has not so far produced any tangible results. "If we fail to have arms provided to us, this can only play into the hands of extremists," Libya's Foreign Minister Mohammed Al-Dairi said last week, addressing an emergency session of the Security Council. But the unfortunate fact is that supplying arms to his government will also be “playing into the hands of extremists." Any administration or faction receiving arms and money from Western countries will be seen as acting on behalf of Western interests, if not part of a new crusade. This will only drive moderate militias into the willing arms of extremists like IS. There is the possibility of Western arms falling into wrong hands. Worse still, it will upset the precarious balance of power in Libya. Backing any one faction will only escalate violence, because there is no single group capable of winning an outright victory leading to stability. This too will persuade some factions to align with IS. All this presupposes that there is the presence of IS in Libya on a scale overshadowing all the other problems this country has been through since the overthrow of Gaddafi. Many doubt this. Would a group, which is desperately fighting to maintain the territories it has captured in Iraq and Syria, stretch its resources too thin? So, many Libyans assume all this talk of IS using their country as a launch pad for an attack on Rome is the result of paranoia or part of a well-crafted Western plan to intervene again in Libya in hopes of clearing the mess created by the first intervention. This means Libya will see more violence and more instability. Last week's air strikes by Egypt followed by the retaliatory bombing by suspected IS militants may be the shape of things to come.
