Pentagon sees Islamic State resurgence in Libya amid Tripoli fighting

The Donald Trump administration is seeing a “small” resurgence in the Islamic State’s numbers in Libya since strongman Khalifa Hifter began a bloody march on the capital Tripoli more than two months ago, the Pentagon’s second-ranking military official said.

Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Paul Selva said he suspects that forces supporting the US-backed Government of National Accord in Tripoli may be able to hold out “for weeks or months” against Hifter. The United Nations says Hifter’s Libyan National Army has received weapons from the United Arab Emirates and Egypt in violation of an arms embargo. 

Both the LNA and the GNA "are keeping a lid on IS for their own individual interests for a fair period of time,” Selva, who leaves his post at the end of October, told a gathering of reporters in Washington earlier this month. “Because they’re now going after one another in the capital, it’s actually taking their attention off of IS and we’ve seen a small resurgence of those [IS] camps in the central region.”

It was not immediately clear how significant the resurgence of the Islamic State has been since the April offensive began. Selva said that the Pentagon picked up that IS camps in Libya’s central region and Tuaregs were “helping out the IS militants and moving people back and forth across the border to the south.”