The Rise and Mysterious Fall of Militant Islamist Movements in Libya
Wolfram Lacher
Rise: Social embeddedness and social acceptance
Such tactical choices become more understandable through their social context – that is, when considering what was socially acceptable or facilitated by social ties. Before militant Islamists became attractive allies with the escalation of conflicts in 2014, they were able to develop in an environment in which they and their perspectives enjoyed widespread social recognition. This was partly due to the prevailing moral codes under Gaddafi, but above all to the role of Islamists in the 2011 revolution.
It is true that Gaddafi had persecuted and demonised Islamist opponents; at times his regime had arrested young men simply for attending early morning prayers. At the same time, however, Gaddafi had enforced a strict moral code – in the words of a then young Islamist who had spent several years in the notorious Abu Salim prison: “Libya was a conservative, isolated society.
Gaddafi had banned alcohol, prostitution and nightclubs. During Ramadan, everyone fasted. Being religious was entirely normal, and many people who were later labelled as Islamists were simply devout.”
With certain limits, the regime even tolerated a jihadist underground culture in the 2000s. At least for a while, the secret services covertly encouraged the recruitment of young men to fight in Iraq and did not prevent the families of fighters from publicly celebrating them as martyrs when they received news of their deaths.
In cities such as Darna, Ajdabiya and Sabratha, networks developed that deeply embedded jihadist ideas in parts of local society. For young men with this social background, jihadism was simply an aspect of piety.
During the 2011 revolution, Islamists actively participated in the struggle, and thereby emerged as prominent leaders. In this way, they accumulated considerable “revolutionary social capital”, which increased their social standing all the more dramatically since they had been in exile, in prison or under surveillance only a short time before.
Hardly any of them formed purely Islamist – let alone jihadist – units. Instead, just like others, they mobilised under the banner of the revolution. The revolutionary armed groups were mostly centred on individual cities. Fighters primarily joined groups with whom they had family, friend or neighbourly ties.
The fact that there were more Islamists in some groups – such as those from Darna – than in others was mainly due to local subcultures. But even in these groups, die-hard jihadists fought side by side with young men who were simply committed to the revolution.
Deep bonds often developed between Islamist and non-Islamist commanders from different groups during the joint struggle, and these bonds lasted for years. Of course, there was also mistrust – especially between figures who had not fought closely together and only encountered each other when the first rivalries emerged after the fall of the regime.
Three aspects were decisive for the ascent of militant Islamist movements after 2011. Firstly, the revolution gave rise to many charismatic leaders of armed groups who used an Islamic idiom. It was often difficult to determine which of them were Islamists, jihadists or simply devout – the boundaries were blurred.
Secondly, in the years after 2011, politicians and commanders who were part of the militant Islamist spectrum were able to build on the solidarity of those with whom they had fought during the revolution.
At least in the initial phase, they enjoyed high social standing, which showed in the election results in 2012 and subsequently dwindled as conflict and insecurity spread. Thirdly, groups led by figures who ranged from pious to jihadist after the fall of Gaddafi often included both Islamists and non-Islamists.
Most, though not all, of the leaders of the Abu Salim Brigade in Darna were jihadists, but among their fighters were “many ordinary young people from Darna who smoked and put gel in their hair”.
The founders of the Rafallah Sahati Brigade in Benghazi “espoused Islamist ideas. Most of us were former prisoners. But many of our members were Shabab who smoked, took drugs and listened to music. We were open to everyone.
It was similar with other groups, such as the 17 February Brigade or the Martyrs of Zintan Brigade.” Leading figures in Zawiya and Sabratha such as Mohamed al-Kilani, Omar al-Mukhtar and Shaaban Hadiya were widely perceived as Islamists – but in fact “Hadiya was a charismatic legal scholar who had been a unifying figure in 2011, not an extremist”.
Kilani and Mukhtar were “not members of any ideological organisations. Omar al-Mukhtar had been Abu Salim in prison, but he was simply deeply religious. And many fighters were not – they smoked and so on.” The leaders of the Faruq Brigade in Zawiya, who were later vilified as terrorists by political opponents, were religious – “but among the members there were more people who drank alcohol than strict believers”.
These aspects explain why many revolutionaries did not see those militant Islamists with whom they had personal connections as a threat. And for the same reasons, Islamist ideology was not so alien to many of them.
For young men in the Abu Salim brigade from Darna, for example, chants (nasha’id) from the al-Qaeda movement were commonplace. The same applied to the black flag with the Islamic Shahada, which was used by IS and al-Qaeda groups, among others. In Benghazi, “we had to explain to the Shabab how this was perceived internationally”.
Looking back, an Islamist revolutionary from the city said: “I can understand why many people liked the black flag. But it didn’t make a good impression, it looked like IS.”
Militant Islamist groups in Libya were able to operate openly in society.
This background also helps to contextualise why jihadists were able to continue operating openly in society when they separated themselves from the revolutionaries and formed their own groups – in other words, why they emerged as a social movement and were not forced underground as isolated cells.
In Benghazi, many initially regarded Ansar al-Sharia as a group of devout young men interested in the common good.100 As recently as 2013, a member of the local council was of the opinion that “all they want is Sharia law” – and after all, the fundamental role of Sharia enjoyed support across political divides in the first few years post 2011.
Even when the leaders of Ansar al-Sharia openly rejected the state and democratic processes, their former brothers-in-arms advocated resolving such differences of opinion through dialogue.
Last but not least, this explains the permeability between revolutionaries and jihadists and the fact that social ties facilitated alliances between them. It was all the easier for members of the Rafallah Sahati Brigade to join Ansar al-Sharia because they were reuniting with their former comrades-in-arms.
IS also initially appeared in the guise of fighters with whom the revolutionaries previously had personal relationships – such as a person who was sent to Benghazi by IS in Iraq in 2013 to demand that three revolutionary commanders submit to the organisation, albeit in vain.
In Sabratha, a leading revolutionary acted as an intermediary with IS when negotiating the release of hostages, using relationships dating back to the joint fight in 2011: “Abdallah Haftar [the local IS leader] had been with us in the mountains in 2011. He was a brave fighter – a simple person, not ideological, interested in money. He also fought in our ranks in 2014.
Social ties and embeddedness in local society therefore played an important role in the spread of militant Islamists in former revolutionary strongholds such as Benghazi and Darna.
The later IS capital of Sirte, on the other hand, was anything but a revolutionary stronghold; there, another logic applied. Ansar al-Sharia and later IS established themselves in the city as small, isolated minorities that benefited from the absence of a military counterweight. Sirte had experienced the revolution as a defeat, the revolutionaries did not have a broad social base there, and the city’s elite was in prison, in exile or dead.
Among the founders of Ansar al-Sharia in Sirte were members of the Faruq Brigade from Misrata – a revolutionary group that included both Islamists and nonIslamists in its ranks. The Faruq Brigade split in two when part of it settled in Sirte and merged into Ansar al-Sharia.
This split involved the Sirte group’s geographical and social distancing from its former brothers-in-arms, even if relations between some members of both groups continued. Ansar al-Sharia in turn later formed the nucleus of IS in the city. Therefore, the rise of IS in Sirte differs from the pattern in other Libyan cities with regards to the social embeddedness of its jihadists.
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Dr Wolfram Lacher is Senior Associate in the Africa and Middle East Research Division at SWP.
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SWP Research Paper – June 2024 – German Institute for International and Security Affairs
