the self-described Islamic State, also known as ISIS, has long been making a push to capitalize on the chaos in Libya.

For over a year, it has carried out terror attacks, taken over territory and released propaganda from its franchise in Libya. Now, a new assessment from the Pentagon states the number of ISIS fighters in Libya has doubled since the fall to over 5,000, spurring fresh debate among security officials over the possibility of foreign intervention.

Analysts and officials worry that Libya is increasingly becoming a sort of fallback option for ISIS as it loses territory and power in Syria and Iraq.

“If we look at the raw numbers, the presence of ISIS is definitely strengthening and growing. I think the security threat they pose is definitely going up,” Riccardo Fabiani, senior North Africa analyst at political risk research firm Eurasia Group, told The WorldPost.

The threat ISIS presents in Libya is different than in other nations, and is related both to the group's changing capabilities and to the country's ongoing instability


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/isis-presence-in-libya_us_56b369e2e4b08069c7a6352f

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/us/politics/hillary-clinton-libya.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=span-ab-top-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

New York Times Feb 28, 2016


Hllary Clinton's Smart Power and A Dictator's Fall

President Obama was deeply wary of another military venture in a Muslim country. Most of his senior advisers were telling him to stay out. Still, he dispatched Mrs. Clinton to sound out Mr. Jibril, a leader of the Libyan opposition. Their late-night meeting on March 14, 2011, would be the first chance for a top American official to get a sense of whom, exactly, the United States was being asked to support.

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The Libya Gamble

An examination of the American intervention in Libya and Hillary Clinton’s role in it.

Did the opposition’s Transitional National Council really represent the whole of a deeply divided country, or just one region? What if Colonel Qaddafi quit, fled or was killed — did they have a plan for what came next?

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Mrs. Clinton was won over........

Her conviction would be critical in persuading Mr. Obama to join allies in bombing Colonel Qaddafi’s forces.

In fact, Mr. Obama’s defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, would later say that in a “51-49” decision, it was Mrs. Clinton’s support that put the ambivalent president over the line.

The consequences would be more far-reaching than anyone imagined, leaving Libya a failed state and a terrorist haven, a place where the direst answers to Mrs. Clinton’s questions have come to pass.