Warnings of a ‘Powder Keg’ in Libya as ISIS Regroups<br />American intelligence agencies offered wide-ranging estimates last year on the peak number of Islamic State fighters in Libya — mainly in Surt,<br />but also in Benghazi and Tripoli — with some assessments topping 5,000 militants.<br />In the meantime, American spy agencies, as well as Western<br />and African intelligence operatives, are monitoring the movements of ISIS fighters, who officials say have been wary of gathering in large groups since the January strike by B-52s and armed Reaper drones flying from Sicily.<br />Gen. Thomas D. Waldhauser, head of the Pentagon’s Africa Command, told a Senate panel this month<br />that after their expulsion from Surt, many militants from the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, were moving to southern Libya.<br />But Western and African counterterrorism officials now say<br />that while the twin blows dealt a setback to the terrorist group in Libya — once feared as the Islamic State’s most lethal branch outside Iraq and Syria — its leaders are already regrouping, exploiting the chaos and political vacuum gripping the country.<br />Waldhauser said that The multiple militias and fractured relationship between factions in east<br />and west Libya exacerbate the security situation, spilling into Tunisia and Egypt and the broader Maghreb, allowing the movement of foreign fighters, enabling the flow of migrants out of Libya to Europe and elsewhere,<br />have been working for more than a year to identify militia fighters in Libya who the United States can trust<br />and support as a ground force to combat ISIS fighters, as the Pentagon did last year with militias from Misrata.
