ISIS atrocity spreads through North Africa especially in LIBYA, EGYPT, ALGERIA AND TUNISIA

The mass beheadings of Egyptian Christians by militants in Libya linked to the Islamic State group have thrown a spotlight on the threat the extremists pose beyond their heartland in Syria and Iraq, where they have established a self-declared proto-state.
Militants in several countries - including Libya, Egypt, Algeria, Yemen and Saudi Arabia - have pledged allegiance to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, although the degree of coordination and operational planning between IS leadership and the group's affiliates remains unclear.

Demonstrators chant pro-Islamic State group, slogans as they carry the group's flags in front of the provincial government headquarters in Mosul, 360 kilometers northwest of Baghdad. The extremists pose a threat beyond their heartland in Syria and Iraq, where they have established a self-declared proto-state. Militants in several countries have pledged allegiance to Isis.
ISIS is under pressure in parts of Iraq and battling a variety of adversaries in Syria, but it's metastasizing at warp speed elsewhere, most dangerously in Egypt and Libya.

It also has support in Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan. And the leader of the group ravaging northern Nigeria, Boko Haram, has expressed his admiration of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

The savage killing of 21 Egyptian Christians in Libya -- all of them dressed in ISIS' trademark orange prison garb -- is another indication of ISIS' ability to take advantage of collapsed or collapsing states and of its growing presence in North Africa. Most significantly, the atrocity took place in Sirte, a long way from ISIS' first stronghold around Derna in the east of the country.

ISIS' presence in Sirte, a town of 50,000, has been growing. The Egyptians were abducted in November, and more recently, the extremists strengthened their presence by taking over government buildings and a radio station.

Here's a look at the Islamic State group's reach across North Africa, and how the extremists' growing presence is viewed across the Mediterranean Sea in Europe.
LIBYA- The country has been in free-fall since the end of the civil war that ousted longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. Libya's elected government has relocated to the far eastern part of the country, while a loose alliance of militias have set up a rival government in the capital, Tripoli.

Fighting between government forces and Islamic militias rages in the second largest city of Benghazi. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced, embassies have shut and diplomats have fled the country, along with hundreds of thousands of foreign laborers, many of them Egyptian.
This chaos has proven fertile ground for Isis, which has received pledges of allegiance from several extremist factions in Libya. Isis-affiliated groups divide the vast, oil-rich country of 6 million people into three regions: Tripoli, Barqa or Cyrenaica in the east, and Fazzan in the south.
The interior minister of Libya's elected government, Omar al-Sinki, has said that al-Baghdadi appointed a Tunisian named Abu Talha to lead the IS faction in Tripoli. Al-Sinki also has said that the bulk of Isis militants in Libya are Tunisian and Yemeni.
According to postings on jihadi web forums, groups claiming allegiance to Isis control the coastal cities of Sirte and Darna, and have a presence in at least three other locales, including Tripoli and Benghazi, the birthplace of Libya's 2011 uprising. Egyptian warplanes struck suspected Isis targets in Darna on Monday, following the killing of the 21 Coptic Christians.
Militants claiming allegiance to Isis have battled Libyan troops in Benghazi, often using suicide bombers. Last month, fighters loyal to IS claimed responsibility for a deadly and complex attack on a hotel in Tripoli.
EGYPT- The Egyptian government is battling a burgeoning insurgency centered in the strategic Sinai Peninsula, which borders Israel and the Gaza Strip. North Sinai has seen a spike in militant attacks against security forces, particularly after the military ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in 2013. The area has been under a dusk-to-dawn curfew since October.
Some militants there have declared their allegiance to Isis, with one such group calling itself Sinai Province of the Islamic State. It claimed responsibility for a sophisticated and multi-pronged set of attacks late last month on Egyptian military positions that killed 32 troops.
Last October, another major attack killed more than 30 troops, and last month Sinai Province militants claimed responsibility for the capture and killing of a police captain.Sinai Province, which grew out of the al-Qaida-inspired group known as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, has not attacked civilians directly, although some have died as a result of its violence.
Extremist groups in Sinai rely heavily on weapons smuggled across the porous desert border with Libya. Despite more than a year of massive military operations in northern Sinai, which have included home demolitions along the frontier, the government has not been able to stem a daily stream of militant attacks there.
ALGERIA AND TUNISIA- The Islamic State group's successes in Syria has inspired a number of radical Islamist groups to splinter away from the dominant North African branch of al-Qaida, known as AQIM, and declare allegiance to al-Baghdadi.
Most prominent has been the Algerian Soldiers of the Caliphate (Jund al-Khilafah) led by a veteran al-Qaida commander that kidnapped French hiker Herve Gourdel in September and then put out a video showing his beheading.
Algeria unleashed a massive operation against the group last year, and most of its known members have since been captured or killed.
In Tunisia, the radical Oqba ibn Nafaa brigade has long had good relations with AQIM, but has also issued statements in support of Isis. More importantly, however, there has been a steady flow of Tunisian recruits to al-Baghdadi's group, most passing through Libya for training. Increasingly, they have stayed there and fought with an alliance of Islamist militias as well as the Islamic State, and report have emerged of several Tunisian "martyrs."

'A threat to international peace'

Hours after the Egyptian air force carried out retaliatory airstrikes Monday, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry warned that "leaving the situation as it is in Libya without a firm intervention to curtail these terrorist organizations would be a threat to international peace and security."

The Italian government has suggested an international peacekeeping presence in Libya. Italy is acutely aware that it's the jumping-off point for a growing flow of migrants and a base camp for terrorism, just hours across the Mediterranean.

Bernardino Leon, U.N. envoy to Libya, has floated the idea of international monitors when a peace agreement between rival factions is hammered out. But "when" seems a long way off, despite the beginning of talks between rival factions in Geneva. And U.S. and European officials fear that putting boots on the ground would be a bug light to ISIS supporters.

In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Leon admitted that "terrorism is becoming a problem beyond the east [of Libya.] It is growing into the west and now the south, and from the west they might go to Tunisia and Algeria."

Porter agrees there is a risk to Tunisia.

There are hundreds of Tunisians among ISIS' ranks in Syria and Iraq, and the government is already battling a jihadist presence at home in the Chaambi Mountains. "Although Tunisian security services have improved their capabilities in the last 24 months, they fear that they would be overwhelmed by the emergence of a cross-border threat originating in Libya," Porter says.

Egypt's Sinai nears anarchy

While Libya is ISIS' most notable franchise, jihadists in Egypt have made the vast Sinai desert almost ungovernable.

Chief among them is ISIS' freshly minted Sinai Province, formerly called Ansar Beit al-Maqdis. Late in January, it killed at least 30 people in a series of co-ordinated attacks on security outposts, leading Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to shake up the military command in the Sinai. And just last week, it released a video showing the beheading of eight alleged spies.

With Israel on one side and a military-dominated government in Cairo on the other, Sinai Province has powerful enemies close by.

"That said," writes Aaron Zelin, a leading scholar of jihadist movements, "if the Egyptian government continues to operate in a brazen manner, militarily it will create new local recruits that could sustain the Islamic State in north Sinai."

Less developed but worth monitoring are self-declared supporters of ISIS in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which the group now calls the province of Khorasan. One of them was a former Taliban commander, Mullah Abdul Rauf, who was killed a week ago in a drone strike in Helmand Province. He had split from the Taliban, and analysts are watching for further fragmentation of the group.

Several commanders of the Pakistani Taliban also pledged to al-Baghdadi, but it's unclear yet whether their departure has more to do with the rifts that have torn the group apart in the last two years. The Long War Journal concluded that most of the new ISIS group were low- to mid-level militants -- a sign of "the competition between smaller and emerging militant groups in South Asia, some of which are seeking to align with the Islamic State brand." within the group.

The most intriguing development in recent months has been the desire of the Nigerian group Boko Haram to fly the ISIS flag, literally and metaphorically. It has begun to hold territory and talk of its own Caliphate in northern Nigeria. Its propaganda machine has become much more ISIS-like. And it has incorporated the ISIS symbol into its own flag.

It has also begun inflicting ever more gruesome punishments, including beheadings, on its victims. Boko Haram's leader, Abu Bakr Shekau, has expressed his admiration for ISIS and al-Baghdadi on more than one occasion -- but ISIS has not officially acknowledged any link between the two groups.

For now at least, it is the long coast of Libya and its deep empty interior, its lack of government and many porous borders that seem the most promising territory for ISIS.

WHAT THREAT DOES THIS POSE TO EUROPE?- European states have looked on with growing alarm as militants with links to Isis have risen in prominence across North Africa. Italy, which is just 800 kilometers from the Libyan coast, has been perhaps the most concerned by the extremists' surge in Libya.
Italian authorities fear that Islamic militants might slip into the country on Libya-based smuggling boats crowded with refugees and migrants from Syria, Africa and elsewhere. Italian Premier Matteo Renzi has even gone so far as to press for UN intervention to stem the violence in Libya.
On Sunday, Italy repatriated by sea its personnel from its Tripoli embassy and advised other Italians, many of whom work in oil or construction businesses, to leave Libya.
Fears about the Isis threat are also running high in France, which has seen more people join extremists in Syria and Iraq than any other European country. Some 1400 French citizens or residents have been identified as linked to jihadi networks in recent years, hundreds of whom have traveled to Syria or Iraq, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said last week.
French authorities are particularly concerned that Isis-linked extremists will stage attacks at home, and are trying to toughen counter-terrorism laws and tools to stop them.
A Frenchman who killed four people at a Paris kosher market last month, Amedy Coulibaly, claimed ties to Isis, and the group said last week that Coulibaly's girlfriend has joined Isis in Syria.
Another Frenchman with ties to IS, Mehdi Nemmouche, is the chief suspect in a deadly attack on the Brussels Jewish Museum. Isis in recent months has started a monthly online magazine in French and have released multiple online videos in French urging French Muslims to join jihad in the Mideast - and if they can't, to stage attacks at home.