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By Lori Hinnant, The Associated Press

TUNIS, Tunisia Almost the only home this toddler is known is a Libyan prison. He already marked one birthday there and in a few days will reach another, turning 3. He is an orphan of the caliphate: His parents, both Islamic State group members, were killed in an airstrike.

Tamim Jaboudi is among hundreds of children fathered by the Islamic State's foreign fighters or brought to the self-proclaimed caliphate by their parents who are now imprisoned or in limbo with nowhere to go, collateral victims as the militant group retreats and home countries hesitate to take them back.

Since his parents were killed in February 2016, Tamim has been living among some two dozen Tunisian women and their children in Tripoli's Mitiga prison, raised by a woman who herself willingly joined the Islamic State group. The captives are under guard by a militia that tightly controls access to the group, despite repeatedly claiming they have no interest in preventing their return home.

"What is this young child's sin that he is in jail with criminals?" asked Faouzi Trabelsi, the boy's grandfather who has traveled twice to Libya trying to retrieve the boy and twice returned home emptyhanded. "If he grows up there, what kind of attitude will he have toward his homeland?"

European governments and experts have documented at least 600 children of foreign fighters who live in or have returned from IS territory in Syria, Iraq or Libya. But the numbers are likely far higher.

The children and families often find it impossible to escape IS-held areas. And even if they do, their native countries are deeply suspicious and fearful of returnees sometimes even children. Tunisia, France and Belgium have all suffered major attacks from trained IS fighters, and Western intelligence officials have said the group is deploying cells of attackers in Europe.

Although the Islamic State group says women have no role as fighters, France in particular has detained women returnees and some adolescent boys who it believes pose a danger. Young children often go into foster care or end up with extended family. In the Netherlands, anyone over nine is considered a potential security threat, since that is said to be the age IS extremists begin teaching boys to kill.

In Libya, their fate is particularly uncertain. The North African nation descended into chaos after the 2011 civil war, which ended with the killing of dictator Moammar Gadhafi. The country has been split into competing governments, each backed by a set of militias, tribes and political factions. Militias in December captured the main IS stronghold in Libya, Sirte, effectively breaking the group's efforts to build territory there, at least for now.

Tunisia is working to bring back the women and 44 children held in Tripoli and elsewhere in Libya. But so far the only result has been repeated hold-ups and miscommunications.

"There is no wrong in being born in a conflict zone. Once their Tunisian citizenship is confirmed, they will have an individual treatment," said Chafik Hajji, a Tunisian diplomat who handles the cases of the country's citizens who joined IS.

Meanwhile, the women and children are held in a "big and comfortable" space in the prison, according to Ahmed bin Salem, spokesman of the Libyan militia that runs the facility. The prison was set up several years ago in a building inside Mitiga Air Base, a military facility that is now also used for commercial flights including daily ones from Tunis because it is the only functioning airport in Tripoli.

Few if any of the women and children at Mitiga or another group of 120 foreign women and children jailed in the city of Misrata in Libya have valid ID papers, according to Hanan Salah, a Human Rights Watch researcher who specializes in Libya.

While it is unclear how many children were born in IS territory in Iraq, Syria, Libya and elsewhere, a snapshot of the group at its height showed as many as 31,000 women were pregnant at any given moment, many of them wives of jihadis encouraged to have as many babies as possible to populate the nascent caliphate, according to the Quilliam Foundation, a British counter-extremism research group.

Quilliam researcher Nikita Malik said 80 British children were inside Islamic State territory. France estimated 450 of its children, including around 60 born there; Dutch and Belgian intelligence each estimated 80 children.

"In the long term, there is the new generation of ISIS, of Daesh. These are the newborns, the children of the marriages," said Mohammed Iqbel, whose Association of Tunisians Trapped Abroad advocates for the families of those who have left. "And if we don't save them, they will be a new generation of terrorism."

By many estimates, Tunisia sent more jihadis to the war zones than any other country, with official figures at 3,000 and some analysts doubling that number.

Trabelsi's daughter and son-in-law were among them.

His forehead bearing the bruise-colored mark from prayer, Trabelsi spoke with The Associated Press in his spotlessly clean living room in Tunis. Outside, the neighborhood was rough at the edges, its streets pitted with neglect. Around the corner, adolescent boys brawled as a crowd watched.

Trabelsi's daughter, Samah, married a young man from the neighborhood after a monthlong courtship, he said. The newlyweds left for Turkey, a common jumping off point for Europeans and North Africans joining extremist groups.

Tamim was born there on April 30, 2014. The couple returned to Tunisia, then went on to neighboring Libya, where they remained for two years, he said.

The Islamic State group paid particular attention to recruiting families, boasting that it would build a society that would endure for generations. Its early propaganda showed children eating sweets and playing in peaceful streets. Foreign fighters who brought wives and children were told their housing and utility bills would be covered, with money for food. Their children, they were told, would grow up to be "true Muslims."

To reassure recruits, an Australian doctor appeared in a widely viewed propaganda video that showed a pristine neonatal clinic in Raqqa.

Reality was another story. The families of foreign fighters, in many cases, took over the homes of Syrians who had fled. Movement was highly restricted, and medical care was rudimentary at best, according to court testimony and interviews from former recruits who have returned.

For foreign recruits in particular, extricating themselves has proven exponentially more difficult than joining.

Tamim's mother made it out once, Trabelsi said, but she was demoralized by what he described as harassment from Tunisian intelligence agents. His daughter gave no warning before she left for the second time, he said. She took all her documents and nearly all the family photos.

A copy of her ID card shows a veiled young woman gazing directly at the camera.

When she did call, she said nothing about where they were, Trabelsi said. "Her husband told her to be quiet and not to tell us anything."

The couple was among at least 40 people killed in a U.S. airstrike on an IS training camp in the city of Sabratha in February 2016. The Pentagon at the time said the target was Noureddine Chouchane, a Tunisian suspected in a 2015 attack on the Bardo Museum in Tunis in which 22 people died.

Six months later, word filtered back to his grandfather that Tamim was alive and in Mitiga. He began pressing to get him back.

A low point came when Trabelsi was permitted to take Tamim outside the prison and sit with him in a car. He wondered, he said, if he should just drive away with the child, who by now was closer to the prison warden than his own grandfather.

"He is clean, he is in good shape. They told me they bring him out to play and see other children," he said. "But he should be allowed back. He is in a prison."

Salah, the Human Rights Watch researcher, said that for both the Tunisians and the Libyans, keeping the women and children in the prison "is the easy way out, and that's what we object to."

Over a month ago, Tunisian officials pledged on a national talk show to bring Tamim home that very week. They never even left.

One problem is that the Tunisian government is reluctant to deal officially with the militia that runs Mitiga prison since it is not a government body, while the militia demands the Tunisians talk to it directly.

Last week, an unofficial Tunisian delegation went to negotiate for the children, only to be turned back by the Libyans because it did not get permission prior to the visit. On Wednesday, another delegation was due at the prison but the visit was cancelled when the group demanded to see the families and transfer them on the same day without going through proper procedures, according to the militia's spokesman bin Salem. He said the delegation also failed to show up on time.

Meanwhile, the women and children had been brought to an auditorium to wait in vain.

"As a government, they are not paying attention to us," Asmaa Qoustantini, cloaked in a black abaya and veil hiding her face, said while holding a toddler with pink bows in her hair. She spoke to a handful of Libyan cameras allowed into the room by the militia.

Security officials say they find themselves forced to treat children of IS parents both as victims and as potential threats.

Louis Caprioli, France's former anti-terrorism chief and an executive at the risk firm GEOS, said the fear is the children of foreign fighters will ultimately feel they should continue the fight started by their parents. He asked: "How are these children going to evolve?"

For Trabelsi, the question is irrelevant. He wants Tamim home with him or to stay with him in Libya.

"It was your government's airstrike that put Tamim in the prison," he told an American reporter. "The least you can do is help get him out."

- Associated Press writer Maggie Michael in Cairo contributed to this report.

More:
2-year-old orphan of jihad trapped in Libyan prison - Worcester Telegram

Thomas Friedman Photo Credit: Comedy Central

Pundits across the U.S. are amplifying the calls for further military intervention in Syria, as the Trump administration indicates regime change may be back on the agenda. The U.S. attacked the Syrian government on April 6, launching 59 Tomahawk missiles at a major air base, destroying 20 percent of its planes, according to the Pentagon.

Major media outlets, most politicians from both sides of the aisle and irascible war-hawk writers applauded the Trump administration's strike with gusto. The uniformity with which the commentariat has embraced the attack hearkens back to six years ago, when many of these same people and publications cheered as NATO overthrew Libya's government, plunging the oil-rich North African nation into chaos from which it is still reeling.

The 2011 war in Libya was justified in the name of supposed humanitarian intervention, but was in reality a war for regime change. A report released by the British House of Commons'bipartisan Foreign Affairs Committee in 2016 acknowledged that the intervention was sold on lies but by the time it was published, the damage was already long done.

Today, Libya is in complete ruins. There is no functioning central authority for swaths of the country; multiple governments compete for control. The genocidal extremist group ISIS has, in Libya, carved out its largest so-called caliphate outside of Iraq and Syria.

Perhaps most striking of all is the fact there are now open slave markets in Libya, where black human beings are bought and sold. Moreover, women have been banned from traveling on their own in the eastern part of the country, which is under the control of a warlord with longtime ties to the CIA.

Far from "freeing" Libyans, NATO regime change pulled them back centuries. And, in the meantime, thousands of refugees and migrants have lost their lives, sinking into the murky water off the coast.

Both neoconservatives and liberal interventionists alike helped sell NATO's war to the public, in the lead-up to and during the intervention in 2011. Since then, many of the NATO war's most vociferous advocates have fallen silent. Virtually no one has been held accountable.

Given this utter impunity for destroying Libya as a state, and for setting Iraq ablaze just eight years before that it may come as no surprise that many of these same figures are today stoking the fires of war, this time in Syria.

AlterNet has compiled a list of the big-name pundits and newspapers that helped sell regime change in Libya, and are doing the same now for Syria.

This is part one of a two-part series. Part one identifies the major regime change pundits; part two looks at the editorial boards of some of the top newspapers that justified military intervention.

Photo by Charles Haynes [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Thomas Friedman

Thomas Friedman, a New York Times columnist with a notorious knack for jejune "gee-whiz" metaphors, has long been a cheerleader for Western wars.

"We must do whatever we can to help," Friedman wrote in an orientalist, borderline racist February 2011 column. Protests had broken out in the Middle East, which Friedman described as "the Arabs' return to history."

When NATO militarily intervened in Libya in March 2011 with the supposed goal of protecting civilians, Friedman applauded President Obama in a subsequent op-ed. In his characteristic neoliberal fashion, the New York Times columnist lamented that the region hadn't had "free politics and free markets for half a century." He expressed glib enthusiasm that the region had decided "to join history."

In an October column, Friedman applauded the regime change. "In Libya, Obama saved lives and gave Libyans a chance to build a decent society," he said. He did concede, "I am still wary, but Obama handled his role exceedingly well." (Friedman also noted, with a note of admiration, "Barack Obama has turned out to be so much more adept at implementing George W. Bushs foreign policy than Bush was.")

The next year, in a July 2012 column, Friedman singled out Libya as a model for intervention, writing of the "kind of low-cost, remote-control, U.S./NATO midwifery that ousted Qaddafi and gave birth to a new Libya."

Today, in 2017, Libya has the "free markets" Friedman so adores, albeit a slightly different kind: free markets for human slaves.

Friedman still has not learned his lesson. While his colleagues in the intelligentsia merely applauded Trump's April 6 attack on Syria, Friedman took it to the next level, arguing in an April 12 column the U.S. should not target ISIS, and should instead let the genocidal extremist group weaken the Syrian government and its allies Iran, Russia and Hezbollah.

Friedman also called for using "NATO to create a no-fly safe zone around Idlib Province," the last rebel-held province in Syria, which even hawkish, pro-regime change analysts have acknowledged is the "heartland" of al-Qaeda. Friedman calls these rebels "moderate"; in reality they are anything but.

He furthermore said the U.S. should "dramatically increase our military aid to anti-Assad rebels," even though these rebels are dominated by al-Qaeda and its hardline Salafi jihadist allies. Friedman, unconcerned, said the U.S. should be "giving them sufficient anti-tank and antiaircraft missiles to threaten Russian, Iranian, Hezbollah and Syrian helicopters and fighter jets and make them bleed."

Nicholas Kristof

Fellow New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has been similarly supportive of Western military intervention. In a column inFebruary 2011, weeks before NATO intervened, Kristof said that, while he would like to see a so-called no-fly zone in Libya the first step to regime change "a safe passage corridor" would at the very least be "a no-brainer for us." These euphemistic humanitarian concepts sounded nice, but required a military to enforce. They were effectively calls for war.

In early March, Kristof openly made "The Case for a No-Fly Zone." "I'm not in the business of providing air cover," Kristof wrote ironically, while noting he had called on the Obama administration to create a no-fly zone.

Later, in an August 2011 column on Libya, subtly titled "'Thank You, America!'", Kristof depicted the U.S. as nothing short of heroic. "This was a rare military intervention for humanitarian reasons, and it has succeeded," he declared.

The lesson of Libya was "that on rare occasions military force can advance human rights," Kristof continued. "Libya has so far been a model of such an intervention." And, "Libya is a reminder that sometimes it is possible to use military tools to advance humanitarian causes."

In what is now a portentous remark, Kristof included in his column a throwaway line from a rare Libyan critic: They didnt do it for us, he said. They did it for oil. (This quote is also quite interesting given the Times published another article that same month on "The Scramble for Access to Libya's Oil Wealth.")

Today, little has changed.

In a column immediately after Trump's strike on Syria, Kristof applauded the attack. "President Trumps air strikes against Syria were of dubious legality. They were hypocritical. They were impulsive. They may have had political motivations. They create new risks for the United States. But most of all, they were right," he wrote.

"Many of my fellow progressives viscerally oppose any use of force," Kristof claimed, "but I think that's a mistake." He then proceeded to argue "some military interventions save lives," citing Iraq in the 1990s but not Libya. There was mention of the disaster he backed in Libya.

In the column, Kristof also rehashed the rumor that the Clinton administration's lack of intervention facilitated the 1994 Rwandan genocide. In reality, the Clinton administration prevented international action to stop the genocide.

Bret Stephens

Bret Stephens, a hyper-hawkish former editor of the Wall Street Journal who was just hired as a columnist at The New York Times, joins the long list of neocons who welcomed regime change in Libya and wants it in Syria.

"Regime change is the only viable solution in Libya," Stephens openly declared in March 2011, in a Wall Street Journal column aptly titled "We're (Almost) All Neocons Now."

Fast forward six years, and Stephens' politics are just as bellicose.

In an April 5 article in the Journal, neocon Paul Wolfowitz called on the Trump administration to take action against the Syrian government. Stephens said he agreed.

The next day, on the eve of the attack, Stephens publicly called for Syria to be partitioned on sectarian religious and ethnic lines.

In a Wall Street Journal podcast commending the strike on April 7, Stephens depicted the attack as a blow against "evil" and said a statement by Trump's ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, was "so awesome." His co-host, the equally excited Mary Kissel, applauded.

Three days later, in a column in the Journal, Stephens said Trump and his administration "deserve credit," and doubled down on his calls for regime change. "The core of the problem in Syria isn't Islamic State," he claimed, adding, "there wont be any possibility of a cure until Assad falls."

"Assad at last has good reason to fear the power of the United States," Stephens rejoiced on April 10.

Anne-Marie Slaughter

The aptly named Anne-Marie Slaughter is a leading supporter of the so-called responsibility to protect doctrine. An academic who has boasted prestigious positions at Princeton and Harvard universities, Slaughter also served as the head of policy planning for the State Department under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and she now heads the New America Foundation think tank.

Slaughter forcefully insisted in The New York Times in March 2011 that a no-fly zone be created in Libya.

In a subsequent triumphalist article in the Financial Times in August, confidently titled "Why Libya sceptics were proved badly wrong," Slaughter condemned the "skeptics," declaring, "it clearly can be in the US and the wests strategic interest to help social revolutions fighting for the values we espouse and proclaim." She added, "Libya proves the west can make those choices wisely after all."

Since Libya collapsed into utter disaster, Slaughter has not said much about it. Meanwhile, she is loudly calling for escalating intervention in Syria.

Before Trump's attack, in an April 5 interview with the BBC, Slaughter called on the U.S. to "punish evil." If Russia vetoed a council at the UN Security Council, she implied the U.S. should consider taking "action" anyway and launch "a set of strikes that says there is a limit."

Slaughtered enthusiastically applauded Trump after the strike, writing on Twitter on April 7, "Donald Trump has done the right thing on Syria. Finally!! After years of useless handwringing in the face of hideous atrocities."

"Donald Trump has done the right thing at last," Slaughter later declared in an April 11 article in the Financial Times. She added, "Trump's decisiveness and precision in punishing Mr Assad offered a refreshing moment of moral clarity, notwithstanding the risks."

This is not new. In The New York Times in 2012, Slaughter called for "nations like Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Jordan to arm the opposition soldiers with anti-tank, countersniper and portable antiaircraft weapons," which they proceeded to do for years. She also suggested that Qatar, Turkey, Britain and France should send special forces to advise rebels committed to toppling the Syrian government.

Max Boot

Max Boot, a proud self-declared American imperialist, is a faithful cheerleader for virtually every U.S. military intervention.

Boot was one of a group of war hawks who sent a letter to President Obama on March 15, 2011 pushing for regime change in Libya.

In a March 2011 op-ed in The New York Times titled "Planning for a Post-Qaddafi Libya," Boot noted that, for weeks before NATO intervention had even begun, he had been calling for a no-fly zone and airstrikes against the Libyan government. When the bombing commenced, Boot criticized it for not going far enough, and stressed that removing Qadhafi must be a priority.

"This is a worthwhile intervention for both strategic and humanitarian reasons," Boot wrote six years ago.

Now, while Libya is roiled by disaster, Boot has moved on to shilling for more regime change.

In an April 7 article in the neoconservative Commentary magazine, Boot said it is "of considerable importance that President Trump has now attacked a Syrian air base," adding, "This is a small but significant step in regaining lost American credibility and putting Americas adversaries on notice."

"There is a new sheriff in town, and he will be far less hesitant than Obama was about the use of force," Boot declared.

A few days later, in an April 10 article in Foreign Policy, Boot took Trump to task for not going far enough. The U.S. attack on, which destroyed 20 percent of the Syrian government's planes, according to the Pentagon, was not aggressive enough.

"It is a good thing he did act," Boot wrote. But "if Trump is interested in truly 'decisive' action in Syria, he will need to go a whole lot further."

Bill Kristol

Neoconservative idol Bill Kristol, founder and editor of the right-wing magazineThe Weekly Standard, joins the list of regime change advocates who applauded Trump's recent attack on Syria.

Kristol, a harsh critic of President Obama, nevertheless praised the Democratic leader for overseeing regime change in Libya. In a March 2011 interview on Fox News, Kristol admirably called Obama a "born-again neocon."

In a column published a few days before, titled "You've Come a Long Way, Baby," the Weekly Standard editor applauded a hawkish speech by President Obama. Kristol wrote, "The president was unapologetic, freedom-agenda-embracing, and didnt shrink from defending the use of force or from appealing to American values and interests. Furthermore, the president seems to understand we have to win in Libya. I think we will."

Fast forward to 2017, and Kristol is just as hawkish. Before the attack on April 6, Kristol tweeted, "If Pres. Trump takes appropriate action against Assad this #NeverTrumper will of course support him. He's the president, not merely 'Trump.'"

"Gorsuch confirmed, Assad attacked: Best day so far of the Trump presidency," he wrote the next day.

On April 8, Kristol ramped things up and expressed hope that Syria's ally Iran is overthrown. "Punishing Assad for use of chemical weapons is good. Regime change in Iran is the prize," he tweeted. Kristol then doubled down on his calls for regime change in Syria.

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, an inconsequential figure whose influence is a mere tiny fraction of the others in this list, is nonetheless another voice to mention, as he is part of a coterie of regime change trolls who relentlessly harass anyone who opposes U.S.-led regime change in Syria. Ahmad and a slew of fellow hawkish British writers like Robin Yassin-Kassab, Oz Katerji and Sam Charles Hamad purport to be leftists, but in reality echo neoconservative talking points on foreign policy and peddle pro-regime change propaganda.

Ahmad has spent years persistently defending NATO regime change in Libya, striving to rewrite the history of Western intervention. He has gone so far as to claim that the real problem in Libya was not U.S.-led regime change, but rather "hasty disengagement." That is to say, the West did not intervene enough, in Ahmad's view.

Unsurprisingly, then, he welcomed Trump's attack on Syria.

Ahmad wrote and tweeted nonstop about Libya, in support of regime change, in 2011. From September 2011 to September 2014, as the nation descended into bedlam, Idrees Ahmad's Twitter account made no mention of Libya. Since 2014, he has resumed his ardent defense of intervention in Libya, using right-wing arguments like attacking Venezuela's socialist government and popular former president Hugo Chvez in order to do so.

In recent years, Idrees Ahmad has vociferously called for even more U.S. intervention in Syria and regime change. On April 7, he doubled down on his demand for regime change, in an article in a small website called The Progressive that rehashes opposition propaganda citing pro-rebel sources.

While spreading the ludicrous conspiracy that the U.S. has supported the Syrian government which it has spent years and billions upon billions of dollars trying to violently overthrow Ahmad admirably wrote that Trump's "strikes were tactical and punitive."

"The consequences of todays actions are likely to be far-reaching," he said. Ahmad happily noted that the U.S. attack "already softened the Kremlins stance" and "exposed the limits of Russias power in Syria."

"The regime has lost part of its impunity," Ahmad rejoiced. "Whatever the administration's motives, it worked for Syrians." He then proceeded to attack the anti-war left, using neoconservative talking points.

Ben Norton is a reporter for AlterNet's Grayzone Project. You can follow him on Twitter at @BenjaminNorton.

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Pundits Who Helped Sell NATO's Destruction of Libya Push for Trump to Lead Syria Regime Change - AlterNet

Tamim Jaboudi is nearly three-years-old. The young Tunisian is said to be stranded in a prison in neighbouring Libya and his grandfather, Faouzi Jaboudi, claims to have made repeated bids to gain his release.

Tamims parents are believed to have left Tunisia to join ISIL. Reports differ on their fate, but he is said to be alone.

The first time we met at the guards offices he didnt want to approach me. He hugged the warden there, who he knows very well and is used to. They told me that they love Tamim and feel for him because his parents arent there, said Faouzi.

He says Tamim is being raised in detention in Tripoli by a woman who willingly joined ISIL.

They and dozens of other women and children are said to be being held by RADA, the Libyan Special Forces of Deterrence which are currently allied with the UN-backed government in the Libyan capital.

But Tripoli and Tunis are reportedly not communicating about those held.

NGO the Rescue Association of Tunisians Trapped Abroad, is working to help those stranded.

ISIL works on three levels: short, medium and long term. In the short term, it worked on recruitment getting young people to leave their country for Libya, and especially Syria and Iraq. After that, it was the departure of entire families, said Mohammed Iqbel, the head of the NGO.

Tunisian authorities recently agreed to visit the detention centre, but have questioned how many of those held are actually Tunisian. Human Rights Watch says none of the detainees have valid ID papers, meaning Tamims future remains unclear.

Read more from the original source:
Questions over detention of Tunisians in Libya - euronews

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We have lost the Christian presence in Libya, said Professor Mariz Tadros during a Christian persecution conference on Thursday at the National Press Club.

Religious pluralism as it existed [in Libya] is over, she added.

Before the 2011 revolution that resulted in the overthrow and execution of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, as many as 100,000 Christians, mainly members of the Coptic Church, resided in Libya,reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

As of 2013, before the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) appeared in the North African nation, a few thousand Christians remained, added AFP, citing church officials.

At one point, Libyas coastal city of Sirte, where Gaddafi was killed, was ISISs largest stronghold outside of its so-called caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

ISIS jihadists targeted members of the Christian minority in Libya as it did in other countries.

In February 2015, the terrorist group decapitated 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians on a Libyan beach, prompting worldwide condemnation.

These beheadings accounted for a mere twenty-one of the 7,100 Christians whom Open Doors estimates died for their faith in 2015, points out a report released by the University of Notre Dames Under Caesars Sword project on global Christian communities during the conference Thursday.

The report, titled In Response to Persecution, assessed Libya to host a high level of Christian persecution.

Christians face violence at the hands of Muslim militants. Especially in Egypt and Libya, this violence has increased as a result of the Arab Uprisings of 2011, it notes adding:

While Christians generally enjoyed freedom from heavy discrimination and a decent level of liberty to worship and practice under the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, Christians security disappeared when this dictator fell and Libya was beset with lawlessness. Militias and tribal groups were empowered, including Muslim groups like Ansar al Shariah, al-Nusra, the Islamic State, and the Muslim Brotherhood. At their hands, Christians suffered assaults on churches, violence against clergy, abductions, and numerous other forms of violence.

Libya has been gripped by chaos since the fall of Gaddafi, providing fertile grounds for jihadists to flourish.

While the persecution report mentions that Christians still make up between 3 percent and 5 percent of the population and are mostly migrant workers from outside the country, the Open Doors USA organization estimates that less than one percent (20,000) of the Muslim-majority countrys 6.4 million people are Christians.

As anarchy took hold in Libya, many Copts and other Christians at first tried to avoid abductions while remain-ing in the country, often living like fugitives, notes the report released Thursday. Eventually, a mass exodus ensued, with more than 200,000 Christians leaving Libya between 2011 and 2015, it is estimated.

Read the original here:
Expert: 'We Have Lost the Christian Presence in Libya' - Breitbart - Breitbart News

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Libya's Liquidity Crunch and the Dinar's Demise: Psychological and Macroeconomic Dimensions of the current crisis - Libya Herald