Clash at Tunisian Military Barracks Near Libyan Border Kills at Least 27

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TUNIS — At least 27 people were killed in a predawn firefight on Monday between attackers suspected of being Islamist militants and the Tunisian security forces at a military barracks near the border with Libya, Tunisian security officials said.

The clashes at Ben Gardane, 18 miles from the border, were the second in the district in a week and come at a time of growing concern that the war in Libya, where the Islamic State has aggressively expanded, is spilling into Tunisia.

Belhassen Oueslati, a spokesman for the Tunisian Defense Ministry, said the assault started just after 5 a.m. Monday with a concerted attack on the military base. The security forces responded with fire, killing 21 militants and capturing six others, he said.

Two security officials and four civilians also died, Mr. Oueslati said. A hospital official told Agence France-Presse that a 12-year-old boy was among the fatalities. Officials said they expected the toll to rise.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/world/africa/attack-tunisia-libya-border.html

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1. Libya: Worse than Iraq. Sorry, Hillary

George W. Bush destroyed the state and army of Iraq, but it was located within a constellation of relatively powerful and capable states interested in some form of stability or control. The United States also poured massive doses of money and power into Iraq in an attempt to influence its outcomes.

However, when the US pitched in to “lead from behind” and destroy the Libyan state at Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s urging, even though Libya was surrounded by relatively vulnerable, at-risk states unable or unwilling to project power beyond their borders, the U.S. refused to go “Pottery Barn”, to use Colin Powell’s analogy, and fill the power vacuum in Libya with its own forces.

The United States did worse than just walk away. In a misguided and morally and intellectually lazy (my opinion!) gambit it tried to “export” its way out of the Libyan problem by supporting the migration of destabilizing elements, i.e. the Islamist fighters who had brought down Qaddafi, to another adventure in Syria. Now, with the Syrian project faltering despite 5 years of foreign-funded Islamist insurrection, Libya has emerged as a preferred destination not only for returning Libyan fighters, but also a growing population of transnational fighters from dozens of countries.

Security analysts are quietly flummoxed about the establishment of the Islamist fighter “colony” in Libya, because after three decades of cynically exploiting Islamist fighters as a deniable asset against the Soviet Union and uncooperative secular regimes, the number of transnational Islamist fighters has roughly quintupled. Fact is, the number probably more than doubled in the last couple years alone, thanks to the competing recruitment efforts of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and ISIS in the Syria/Iraq theater.

http://chinamatters.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/libya-worse-than-iraq-sorry-hillary.html

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2. And this needs more attention too:

The number of transnational fighters is getting bigger. It used to be there was a hard core of a few hundred to a few thousand Islamist fighters who would show up to help the locals in their struggle against the infidel du jour; now it’s tens of thousands.

And I think the Western security wonks are quietly going apesh*t over the fact that the reservoir of foreign fighters keeps growing even as JSOC whacks ‘em retail and the military campaign in Syria & Iraq takes ‘em out wholesale.

As the Jamestown Institute noted:

A March 2015 report commissioned by the United Nations Security Council found that the number of foreign fighters for Islamist causes worldwide was higher than it has ever been and had soared by 71 percent between mid-2014 and March 2015. The study concluded that Syria and Iraq, by far the biggest destinations for foreign fighters, had become a “finishing school for extremists.”

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3. Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi Moved from Turkey to Libya to Escape Hunt Operation

Informed intelligence sources have disclosed that ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has moved from Turkey to Libya to escape the hunt operation of the Baghdad Intelligence Sharing Center after he was traced down and allegedly targeted a number of times in Iraq and the Syria.

"Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi who was injured in Syria was sent to Turkey for treatment and from there he was sent to Libya," the Arabic-language media outlets quoted former Egyptian intelligence officer Hesam Kheirullah as saying on Monday.

In relevant remarks in December, sources in Libya said al-Baghdadi had arrived in Sirte, the hometown of the slain Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, which is under the control of the Takfiri groups.

The ISIL Leader is running a secret life as his life is at stake more than anyone in the world now. Al-Baghdad's terrorist group is under massive airstrike by the Syrian, Russian and Iraqi Air Forces all throughout the Western Iraq and Eastern Syria.

http://en.alalam.ir/news/1796406

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4. Tunisian Clash Spreads Fear That Libyan War Is Spilling Over

TUNIS — Fear engulfed Tunisia on Monday that Islamic State mayhem was spilling over from neighboring Libya, as dozens of militants stormed a Tunisian town near the border, assaulting police and military posts in what the president called an unprecedented attack.

At least 54 people were killed in the fighting in the town, Ben Gardane, which erupted at dawn and lasted for hours until the security forces chased out what remained of the assailants. An enormous stash of weapons was later found.

The authorities said at least 36 militants were among the dead. The others were a mix of security forces and civilians, including a 12-year-old girl.

It was unclear precisely where the assailants had come from, although some witnesses reported that they had local accents and had pronounced themselves as liberators. But President Beji Caid Essebsi of Tunisia, increasingly alarmed about the Islamic State’s expansion in Libya, blamed the militant group. In a televised address, he suggested that the motive was to create a new Islamic State territory on Tunisian soil, similar to the 150-mile stretch it controls in Libya.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/world/africa/attack-tunisia-libya-border.html