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2017-05-31 Africa North
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Libya: Ansar al-Shariah sez they're disbanding
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 [NEWSWEEK] Almost five years after the deadly attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya’s second city, the al-Qaeda linked group Washington held responsible for the siege has announced it is disbanding.
Ansar al-Sharia
...a Salafist militia which claims it is not part of al-Qaeda, even though it works about the same and for the same ends. There are groups of the same name in Libyaand Yemen, with the Libyan versions currently most active. Tunisia's Shabaab al-Tawhid started out an Ansar al-Sharia and changed its name in early 2014. It still uses the old name now and then, probably because the stationery's not all used up and the web site hasn't expired yet...
(ASL), formed in 2012 following the overthrow of Libyan autocrat Muammar el-Qadaffy, announced its dissolution in a statement posted online on Saturday. The group is one of many fighting for supremacy in a civil war in the country and said it had been weakened by intense fighting with the forces of General Khalifa Haftar
... served in the Libyan army under Muammar Qadaffy, and took part in the coup that brought Qadaffy to power in 1969. He became a prisoner of war in Chad in 1987. While held prisoner, he and his fellow officers formed a group hoping to overthrow Qadaffy. He was released around 1990 in a deal with the United States government and spent nearly two decades in the United States, gaining US citizenship. In 1993, while living in the United States, he was convicted in absentia of crimes against the Jamahiriya and sentenced to death. Haftar held a senior position in the anti-Qadaffy forces in the 2011 Libyan Civil War. In 2014 he was commander of the Libyan Army when the General National Congress (GNC) refused to give up power in accordance with its term of office. Haftar launched a campaign against the GNC and its Islamic fundamentalist allies. His campaign allowed elections to take place to replace the GNC, but then developed into a civil war. Guess you can't win them all...
, an ex-Libyan army commander whose forces control much of eastern Libya.
While ASL suffered a dip in popularity following the Benghazi attack, its demise is mostly attributable to an attritional war in the city against Haftar’s forces. Since Qadaffy’s overthrow and Libya’s fracturing into several rival governments, Haftar has emerged as the main power broker in eastern Libya, commanding the remnant of Libya’s national military and courting Russian support.
Haftar has pledged to eradicate jihadi groups in Libya and his forces have wiped out most of the big shotship of ASL. The group’s founder and leader, Mohammad al-Zahawi, was killed in festivities with Haftar’s army, ASL said in January 2015.
ASL has also suffered as a result of the rise of the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
bad boy group (ISIS) in Libya. ISIS has built up support and territory in the North African country since late 2014, taking control of cities including Darna, Sabratha in the west and the coastal city of Sirte, though these gains have since been reversed. ASL has suffered numerous prominent defections to ISIS-- including its top jurist, Abu Abdullah al-Libi --and came under intense pressure to declare official allegiance to ISIS caliph His Supreme Immensity, Caliph of the Faithful and Galactic Overlord, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
...formerly merely the head of ISIL and a veteran of the Bagram jailhouse. Looks like a new messiah to bajillions of Moslems, like just another dead-eyed mass murder to the rest of us...
, though it appears not to have taken that step.
In its dissolution statement, ASL called on other Islamists and Islamic shura councils to join together to fight Haftar’s forces in Benghazi. But given the chaotic nature of the conflict in Libya--the country is currently home to two rival parliaments, three governments and a plethora of militias and jihadi groups--a unification of forces appears unlikely.
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Posted by Fred 2017-05-31 00:00||
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File under: Ansar al-Sharia
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