Eight suspected ISIS members were captured in this scarred city in recent weeks, Libyan commanders say. Militant sleeper cells, they say, lurk in some neighborhoods.
Other militants have set up desert camps to the south, where ISIS reportedly hides fighters and weaponry, as Libyan militias that once worked closely with U.S. counterterrorism forces on the ground no longer patrol the area.
These are signs of how the expanding civil war in Libya has created a potential opening for ISIS to revive itself in the country, according to Libyan commanders and Western officials.
Today, the militias that targeted ISIS are themselves targets of airstrikes by the forces of eastern warlord Khalifa Hifter, who is seeking to oust the United Nations-installed government. The small contingent of U.S. troops that coordinated with the militias left Libya months ago.
“We used to have eyes in the south,” said Brig Gen. Nas Abdullah, the top military commander in Sirte. “Now we can’t go out there. The planes will bomb us.”
Since Hifter launched his offensive on the capital of Tripoli in April, the militants have staged nine attacks, mostly in the south, said U.S. military officials. Those included one that killed nine in the city of Sabha and another that targeted an oil field, killing three. In June, ISIS asserted responsibility for two bombings that injured 18 in the eastern city of Derna, the group’s first attack in the city since 2016.
Those attacks triggered four U.S. drone strikes in September, targeting ISIS positions in the southern desert, including two attacks on the oasis town of Murzuq, about 600 miles south of Tripoli. Social media reports in Libya suggested that one of the strike’s targets was Malik Khazmi, a prominent ISIS recruiter. The airstrikes marked a resumption of attacks on ISIS after a 10-month pause.
The strikes killed 43 militants, roughly a third of ISIS forces, according to the U.S. military. A senior U.S. defense official, speaking last month to a small group of reporters on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence information, described the attacks as a “pretty significant degradation” of the militants’ capabilities.
The U.S. military estimates there are now about 100 ISIS militants in Libya.
But the official, as well as others interviewed, cautioned that ISIS branch remains capable of taking advantage of the current power vacuum.
“There is concern that as this conflict goes on, the ability of ISIS and al-Qaida to regroup is going to grow,” said a Western official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak freely. “Nobody is under any illusion that we’re out of the woods in Libya yet on the counterterrorism front.”
After the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a U.S. military strike in Syria last month, even more attention has turned to the status of the group’s affiliates around the world.
At its height, ISIS had as many as 5,000 fighters in the country and controlled more than 125 miles of the coastline.
Sirte was an extension of the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate. The militants also had bases in Derna and in Sabratha in the west. While most of its fighters were homegrown, ISIS also attracted nationals from Tunisia, Egypt, West Africa, Sudan — and even some Americans and Europeans.
Now, three-quarters of the Libyan militias that defeated ISIS here are fighting on Tripoli’s front lines, taking valuable resources away from the counterterrorism fight.
“Nobody is saying or doing anything,” said Gen. Mohammed Haddad, a senior pro-government commander, referring to the international community. “Are we not on the right side? We fought ISIS in Sirte. Now, Hifter is targeting us.”
Adding to the Libyans’ frustration is a sense they were abandoned by the U.S.
“The Americans are not 100% supporting us,” Haddad added. “I was shocked that when Hifter attacked Tripoli, the Americans here got on board their planes and left. It left a big wound inside me.”
Rebecca Farmer, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Africa Command, said that “U.S. forces relocated from Libya due to the deteriorating security situation.” She declined to comment on the relationship with their Libyan partners, but said they still coordinate on counterterrorism efforts.
When asked whether the limited ability to access the south could harm efforts to fight ISIS, Farmer said she cannot comment on “internal discussions between U.S. and Libyan leadership.” She added that “we continue to monitor ISIS” and that “we will take appropriate action as ISIS presents itself.”
In the past three years, Sirte has resurrected itself slowly.
Entire neighborhoods pummeled by hundreds of U.S. airstrikes during the fight against ISIS still lie in ruins. Yet 80% of the city’s 180,000 people have returned. The university and 67 schools have reopened, local officials said.
Fear, though, lingers. On some store fronts, the stamp of ISIS’s taxation department remains.
“People are still worried that Daesh will come back,” explained Tayeb al-Asayfer, a burly fighter assigned to protect the city, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS.
After the ouster of longtime ruler Moammar Gadhafi during the 2011 Arab Spring uprising and NATO intervention, militias ruled their own fiefdoms and rival governments emerged. The ISIS exploited this unsettled situation.
In 2015, the militants seized Sirte, a metropolis speckled with seaside mansions in Libya’s oil crescent, where Gadhafi was born and later was killed by rebels in October 2011. As in Syria and Iraq, the militants set up a government and asserted control through public executions, ultraconservative Islamic codes and a cadre of religious police.
In 2016, months after the U.N.-backed government took office, Libyan militias from Misuruta launched an offensive against the militants. Backed by U.S. Special Forces and F-16 fighter jets, the militias drove ISIS out of Sirte in December 2016. Thousands of militants were killed.
Many of the surviving extremists melted away into urban populations.
Others fled to Libya’s ungoverned and lawless southern steppes in search of safe havens. This extension of the vast Sahara desert is vital for the survival of ISIS. The militants have set up desert camps, according to U.S. military officials and Libyan commanders. From there, they have seized trucks carrying fuel and have gained other revenue by taxing human traffickers and arms smugglers.
And some crossed the border into Niger on their way to joining emerging ISIS branches or al-Qaida affiliates.
Despite their much smaller numbers, the militants continued to stage hit-and-run attacks and suicide bombings, seeking to gain fresh recruits and sympathizers.
“We will not allow them to use the current conflict in Libya as protection,” Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, the head of the U.S. Africa Command, said in statement after the first U.S. strike.
In Sirte, the concerns about ISIS are growing.
Since April, 10 suspected ISIS members have been arrested, including the eight in recent weeks, said three Libyan commanders. They included a Libyan female engineer who had walkie-talkies in her house and had transferred money to some residents. Another man was caught after he met with members of suspected ISIS sleeper cells.
The militants also have erected pop-up checkpoints outside the city to show they are still around.
“They are starting to come back,” said Abdullah, the city’s top commander.
Abdullah’s forces patrol the city day and night. But he worries about the desert, which his men no longer patrol.
After U.S. airstrikes on ISIS positions, Libyan fighters used to drive to the location to assess damage and to gather intelligence. But Hifter has begun to bomb the Libyan forces, including a strike that destroyed their main headquarters. That has kept them from traveling to the sites of more recent U.S. airstrikes and from patrolling the desert, according to Libyan commanders.
In recent weeks, Libyan commanders and fighters in Sirte have reported militant groups moving in the desert and riverbeds south of the city.
Muftah Abdusalem, 42, a school janitor, fled Sirte in 2011 because of the anti-Gadhafi revolution and fled again in 2016 when the U.S. airstrikes began. On a recent day, he was rebuilding his destroyed home, a months-long effort determined by what he can save from his meager $160 monthly income. He knows he might never finish.
“If Daesh comes back, if there’s another war, if I feel any hint of danger, I will leave again,” said the father of four small children.