ISIL in Libya is coming to world attention
Col Qaddafi had an Islamist movement inside his country, He thought he could deal with it through repression, including a massacre of jailed Islamists. It didn’t work; many Islamists simply went overseas. In its early years, al Qaeda had a large Libyan component. After Qaddafi’s fall, Islamist militias won control over many coastal cities – and that’s where the bulk of the Libyan population is, not in the desert interior. The interior is where most of the oil is, but export terminals are on the coast. ISIL-Libya is also gaining influence in western Egypt.
Shia militias in Iraq vow to fight any US ground troops
Shia militias are under the influence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, or IRGC, and are critical parts of the counteroffensive against ISIL. If the US were to introduce ground troops, which is highly unlikely, the militias claim they will fight them. It’s not clear how they will feel about US airstrikes if they are in a tough spot. Iran is trying to detach Iraq from the US – something it could not do a few years ago when Baghdad ordered the US out.
al Qaeda consolidates in S Yemen
The war in Yemen has pitted a Shia north against a Sunni south, though the fighting is due to regional differences rather than religious ones. Largely unnoticed amid the conflict is that al Qaeda and to a lesser extent ISIL have found support from Sunni tribes and have carved out territory. This is the real problem in Yemen. The northern Houthis have been the fiercest enemies of AQ and ISIL. Indeed, the Houthi movement began as an opposition to the rising influence of Saudi Salafism, which is the creed upon which those Islamist groups are built.