As IS and its allies suffered defeats in Derna and Benghazi this week, Libya Dawn air assets launched strikes against the group in Sirte and Hawara. The latter is a small town near Sirte that recently surrendered to IS without a shot being fired. At the same time, however, IS released a new video depicting new recruits receiving training in Nofaliya, a small IS-controlled town southeast of Sirte, near the Libya Dawn stronghold of Bin Jawad. The group also reportedly took over the town of Wadi Zamzam, southwest of Sirte, on 26 June.

As Libya Politics & Security reports, the reaction to IS’ control of Sirte, whereby Misrata has cut off the city from supply lines, has been counter-productive. Citizens have gone months without cooking gas, and banks are running out of paper currency. Many must make the dangerous trek to Hun, almost 300 km south, where the International Committee of the Red Cross distributes humanitarian relief. Marginalising the community in Sirte will likely only push them into the hands of their IS captors. For its part, IS released statements this week deriding Misrata, and Libya Dawn more broadly, for its treatment of the city. This was an attempt to further build off popular discontent. Sirte, the birthplace of the former dictator Muammar Qadhafi, has proven to be a particularly fertile breeding ground for terrorism since the revolution due to its marginalisation. When IS entered the city earlier this year, it did so with the support of local forces and smaller militias.

IS faced a major blow in Derna, but without a comprehensive plan to eliminate its threat from the region the group will just spread to where it faces the least resistance within Libya and the territory of its neighbours. The perpetrator of the horrific terrorist attack against two tourist hotels in the Tunisian beach town of Sousse, 140 km south of Tunis, reportedly received training in Libya. Immediately prior to the Sousse attack, an IS leader in Libya, Hamza Fathi Braebesh, allegedly announced plans to carry out attacks inside Tunisia during Ramadan. It is believed that he may have relocated to Tunisia recently. As the group spreads, the threat to Europe becomes greater. This week, it was announced that the EU Air Safety Committee had decided to renew a ban on all seven Libyan airlines from operating in EU airspace. But the threat could easily come by sea as well, with the massive amounts of migrant traffic between Libya and southern Europe.

In Libya, IS is trying to expand its influence in the west, beyond Sirte. The western and central regions have been historically less fertile ground for the propagation of the IS brand of extremism, but IS has thrived in the context of the civil conflict.

IS has escalated its rhetorical attacks against prominent Islamists in the Libya Dawn coalition, including against the Grand Mufti Sadiq Al-Gharianni, who arguably supports the group’s presence in Libya. In the west, the advances of IS present residents there with two options: Accept Operation Dignity and, as some would see it, the potential for a return of Qadhafi loyalists to power, or rally around IS as the strongest-surviving Islamist faction.

With IS being defeated (for now) in Derna, and under intense pressure in Benghazi and Sirte, this westward spread by the group will likely intensify. At the same time, elders from the powerful eastern Magharba tribe released a statement indicating that it was lifting the traditional protection of its members as individuals if they can be proved to have an affiliation with any terrorist group. These types of actions by other powerful tribes are critical to reducing the possibility that marginalised Libyans will join IS.