Supposed rival extremists were together when the U.S. tried to take out an infamous jihadi chieftain. Which raises the question: just how much are ISIS and al Qaeda really at odds?
A weekend volley of U.S. airstrikes on a farmhouse in eastern Libya didn’t just target a notorious, one-eyed al Qaeda leader. Mokhtar Belmoktar—nicknamed “the Uncatchable”—was gathered together with a “Star Wars bar” of al Qaeda and ISIS members, a senior administration official tells The Daily Beast.“He was meeting with more than 20 locals and core al Qaeda and ISIL members,” the official said, using an alternate acronym for the terror group. “He was apparently trying to bring them together,” to get the disparate militant groups to cooperate, the official added, speaking anonymously because he was not authorized to discuss sensitive operation publicly.
The jihadi gathering—and subsequent attack on that get-together—highlighted how close on-the-ground ties are between the self-proclaimed Islamic State’s affiliate in Libya and militants in the North African nation aligned with its supposed rival, al Qaeda. It’s one of numerous instances in past year of ISIS and al Qaeda foot-soldiers moving closer to one another when it serves both their purposes. From Syria to Paris, members of the two extremist outfits, bitter enemies at the top levels, are forming ad hoc tactical alliances.
The farmhouse struck by the U.S. was 12 miles from the town of Ajdabiya. The house was frequented by militants from supposedly competing groups, including members of a militia implicated in the 2012 assault on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, security officials in Libya told The Daily Beast. They spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to describe the operation publicly.
On Sunday the Pentagon announced that the U.S. had mounted its first airstrike in Libya since the 2011 NATO-backed uprising against the country’s strongman Muammar Gaddafi. Officials said the main target of the strike was the militant leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar—the mastermind behind the deadly attack on a natural gas plant in Algeria in 2013 that left 38 hostages dead.
The strike was carried out by two F-15 fighter jets that launched multiple 500-pound bombs in the attack, as first reported by The Associated Press and confirmed by a Pentagon official Monday.
The White House declined requests for comment Monday on the suspected presence of al Qaeda and ISIS fighters meeting together.
It remains unclear whether the one-eyed jihadi militant was killed. Officials with the internationally recognized Libyan government now based in the eastern towns of Tobruk and Beida say the infamously elusive militant was killed. Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren said the outcome of the strike on the farmhouse—owned by a local luminary of Ansar al-Sharia, the militia involved in the storming of the U.S. mission in Benghazi—is still being assessed.
Washington has good reason to be careful in announcing Belmokhtar’s death. The terror leader’s demise has been reported—and retracted—before. The most credible account came in March 2103 when Chad’s president announced the veteran jihadist leader had been killed by his forces in northern Mali. The 43-year-old Belmokhtar, also known as Khaled Abou El Abbas, is thought to have survived an assassination attempt in Qasr Ben Gashir in northwestern Libya last year. A militant spokesman Monday once again denied Belmoktar had been killed.
***
No comments:
Post a Comment