Islamic State in North Africa: Still There, Struggling to Expand

The Islamic State group established a presence in North Africa following its successes in the Middle East. Shortly after the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) changed its name to the Islamic State (IS) and declared a caliphate spanning eastern Syria and western Iraq in late June 2014, pledges of allegiance rolled in from groups in North Africa to the declared leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. IS was subsequently able to establish a significant presence in Libya, where a "capital" conceived along the lines of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria was established in the coastal city of Sirte. IS has also gained a foothold in Egypt and, albeit to a lesser degree, in Algeria and Tunisia. The many pledges of fealty, or bayaa, appeared to signal that IS was expanding rapidly in North Africa and eroding the position of al-Qaeda as the foremost transnational jihadi organization in the region. However, the fortunes of IS have been changing of late. The loss of Sirte in December 2016 to militias loyal to Libya's UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA), assisted by U.S. airstrikes, represented a major setback to the group's ambitions in North Africa and further draws attention to the group's overstretch. With its weaknesses becoming more apparent, will IS be able to remain and expand in North Africa as its slogan asserts?