Firm global response to IS barbarism needed
The Islamic State's beheading of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians in libya has brought the threat of the terror group right to Cairo's doorstep. It has also highlighted the possibility that parts of libya may now quickly fall into the Islamic State's orbit of direct influence. A day after the Islamic State released a video testifying to its barbarism, on Monday Egypt bombed the group’s training centres and weapons storages in the libyan coastal city of Derna, where the Copts are believed to have been killed. The libyan Air Force also supported the Egyptian military in the pre-dawn attack. But while these raids are fine in terms of an immediate response, they are not enough to eradicate the plague that is the Islamic State. For that, a comprehensive military, political and diplomatic solution is necessary.
At this point, it is unclear if Cairo has any such plan or if it is even thinking beyond air raids on Islamic State targets. Once a large and powerful player, if not the foremost power, in the region, Egypt today is a shadow of its former self. The socio-political chaos that resulted from the Arab uprising of 2011 has taken a huge toll on the country. Even though President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has brought back a semblance of order and stability, the situation is far from normal. The manner in which he dethroned the democratically-elected Muslim Brotherhood Government of Mohamed Morsi in 2014 has remained a sore point, with sections of the population still asking if he had reversed their hard-fought ‘revolution’. His economic reform agenda has been praised across the board but there's little he can do to improve the situation overnight.
His efforts to put a leash on the Brotherhood and other extremist elements have also met with a mixed response. In short, the former General is struggling to secure public approval in a deeply polarised society. The current crisis offers him an opportunity to lead from the front and rally public opinion in his favour. It will be a short-term gain at best, unless he can help script a decisive defeat against the Islamic State. This is also true for the embattled Jordanian Government which is seeking to shore up its credentials with a strong response to the Islamic State after the latter beheaded a Jordanian pilot. But again, these measures will have little effect without a larger, long-term plan in place.
The situation is perhaps the worst in libya. Abandoned by the world after the so-called Arab Spring turned frosty, it is now effectively going down the path of Syria and Iraq. There has not been one stable Government in Tripoli after Muammar Gaddafi was killed by Western forces in 2011. local militias control different parts of the country which is awash with guns and tanks, and has expectedly become a hotbed for Islamist terror groups. The Islamic State has only recently made a push towards into libya — US analysts believed that even until the end of last year, there were only about 200 Islamic State fighters there — but as several libyan leaders warn, it is a matter of time before the group establishes its dominant status there. It will be interesting to see how the US shapes up its policy vis-à-vis the Islamic State, now that at least two of its friends — Egypt and Jordan — have been dragged to the frontlines of the war.