The New Barbary Coast

Three days ago Vlad Tepes posted photos of an Islamic State convoy in the town of Sirte on the Libyan coast. A smaller version of one of the images is below; see Vlad’s place for the rest.

To highlight the new political order in Sirte, the following story was published the next day by Breitbart:

Italy Prepares for Potential ISIS Air Attack

According to recent reports, the Italian Secret Service fears an air attack by ISIS, compounding the already existent danger of terrorist infiltration among with throngs of immigrants coming to Italy by boat from neighboring Libya.

Several days ago, the air defense system went into high alert after the secret service sent a notice.

The notice spoke of aircraft prepared to take off from Sirte and able to strike the Italian peninsula. Though this has not yet occurred, tensions remain high because of the strong risk of an attack carried out by “lone wolves” as occurred in Paris and in Copenhagen.

The recent ISIS beheading video was reportedly shot somewhere in the vicinity of Derna, far to the east of Sirte, near Benghazi — which is also said to be largely under the control of the Islamic State. The eastern part of Libya is now an ISIS stronghold, but according to former Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan, groups affiliated with the Islamic State are present in most major cities in Libya.

On February 13 the Italian foreign ministry said that ISIS affiliates were staging attacks in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, and had captured radio and TV stations in Sirte. There have also been reports of ISIS groups in Misrata.

More recently, the prime minister of the rump Libyan government based in Tobruk said that the Islamic State “continues to spread and take more terrain” and “their flags can be seen in Tripoli, Sabratha, Sirte and Ben Jawad”.

Looking across the western border of Libya into Tunisia, we learn that radical Islamic groups are attacking security forces in the Kasserine region. Those Tunisian mujahideen are not specifically identified as ISIS affiliates. However, since one of the groups is named “Ansar al-Sharia”, we may assume it is only a matter of time before they declare their allegiance to Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as so many other jihad groups in the region have already done.

So what is all this ISIS activity leading up to?

Well, if we pay attention to what the Islamic State itself says, its strategic goals are fairly clear. It has promised that it will send 500,000 jihad fighters across the Mediterranean, specifically to Italy. And it has created a Twitter hashtag, #We_Are_Coming_O_Rome.

In other words, the new Caliphate intends to accomplish what previous Caliphs never managed to achieve: the conquest of Rome.

Let’s pull all these bits and pieces together on a map so we can see them more clearly:


(Click to enlarge)

The portion of North Africa in which the Islamic State is converging is roughly equivalent to the eastern half of the Barbary Coast — that is, the eastern Islamic Maghreb which for centuries preyed upon European shipping and terrorized European travelers.

The Barbary Pirates — who were finally dealt with on “the shores of Tripoli” in the early 19th century by the U.S. Marines — were the last gasp of the nautical raiders who had ravaged the Mediterranean coastal areas in the name of Islam for more than a thousand years. In their heyday, Arab corsairs would launch razzias, or raids, against Cyprus, Greece, Dalmatia, Italy, Malta, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, France, and Spain. Before the Ottoman conquest of Anatolia they raided the coast of Asia Minor. They pillaged, burned, raped and destroyed wherever they went. Hundreds of thousands of Christian women and children were carried off to be sold as slaves in the bazaars of Araby.

At the beginning of the 19th century the hosts of Mohammed had become too weak to mount any extensive campaigns against the infidel countries on the northern shores of the Mediterranean. They were reduced to attacking shipping, taking cargoes as booty and crews and passengers as slaves. By the middle of the century the Barbary Coast had been pacified and colonized by the European powers, bringing to an end more than a millennium of Islamic predation.

Now it seems the jihad warriors of the Islamic State are poised to resume where their predecessors left off two hundred years ago. Yet the planned invasion will not take the form of traditional razzias, nor will it be a conventional military campaign.

As ISIS consolidates its hold on the coastline of Libya (and perhaps eventually in Tunisia), it will gain control of those ports from which the people-smugglers ply their lucrative trade in “refugees” bound for Italy and Malta aboard decrepit fishing boats. Using a combination of threats and bribery, the Islamic State should easily be able to place as many mujahideen as it wants in those rusty scows, disguised as impoverished Maghrebian peasants. It’s not a stretch to think that other boats could drop off caches of weaponry at pre-selected locations in rocky coves along the Italian mainland.

They will have to do without their trademark technicals, of course — at least until they can carjack sufficient Italian trucks and mount weapons on the back of them. But maybe they can call in close air support from those airborne “lone wolves” flying over from Sirte to expedite their goals.

From there, it’s on to Rome, with Pope Francis as Target #1. It’s hard to tell whether the His Holiness is oblivious, stupid, ill-informed, or some combination of all three: on February 17 the pope met with representatives of the Italian coast guard and praised them for their courage and dedication in saving so many thousands of refugees who might otherwise have perished making the perilous crossing from Libya in their leaky boats. Does he not realize that among those thousands are an untold number of jihad operatives whose express mission is to storm the Vatican and behead him? Is he really that much of a communist fool?

The commander of the Swiss Guard says he and the men under his command are ready to defend Pope Francis against anything ISIS might throw at him. Will it come down to halberds and cuirasses against RPGs and AK47s in St. Peter’s Square? That should make for some interesting video. I wonder if VICE News will be embedded with the mujahideen?

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Back when ISIS was confined to eastern Syria and western Iraq, news commentators on both sides of the Atlantic pooh-poohed the idea that it might soon break out of the sandbox and pose a wider threat. In those days — which seem part of the distant past, but were really only six or eight months ago — the Islamic State was bragging about its achievements and promising to reconquer al-Andalus for the Caliphate.

“Ridiculous!” snorted the talking heads on CNN. “That’s 2,500 miles from where they are now! It will take decades for them to get there!”

Uh-huh.

In the past six months they’ve made it to Sirte, which is more than 1,300 miles from Raqqa. Do you still want to take bets on “decades”?

ISIS doesn’t annex territory the way, say, Alexander the Great did. The mujahideen of the Caliphate don’t raise armies, acquire weapons and provisions, and then set off to conquer their neighbors.

Their armies are already in place, wherever Muslims reside. After all, as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan famously said: “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers.”

The Islamic State forms like ice on a pond. One part of the pond doesn’t freeze first, and then “conquer” the rest. When the temperature drops below freezing, all parts of the pond freeze at more or less the same time.

The temperature in the Maghreb has dropped below 0°C. Syria and Iraq are already iced over. Libya is freezing fast.

How cold is it in Tunis? Algiers? Marrakesh?

How about Cordoba?

Hat tips for the articles: Fjordman, Insubria, and Steen.

55 thoughts on “The New Barbary Coast

  1. Oh Baron what a picture you paint! Only the Pope Francis’ of this world have yet to realize what is almost upon them and while the majority of the Italian populace can see the now not so distant problem looming onto their own shores, the elite refuse to entertain let alone acknowledge, the very real clear and present danger that they are importing by boat.

    I’ll bet the Muslims in the WH will be popping the champagne corks the minute that Islam launches the first of its murderous rampages in Europe via Italy in the coming weeks.

    Of all the Middle Eastern states that the WH meddled with to undermine, Libya has proven to be the gold mine of Islamic resurgence, and ably assisted by ‘misplaced’ American air drops of weapons and financed through so many Banking and financial channels that even if the West really wanted to shut them down, would find it impossible to do.

    Welcome to the 21st Century’s first big test to the West and its ability to survive what is coming to a suburb/town near all of us.

  2. I would love to see an IS video “insulting” the current Pope’s mother!

    This Pope deserves a nice islamic attack… A real Pope would have called for a 21th century crusade. This pope is a sissy. Let him have it!

    • The funny thing is, the Dalai Lama says almost exactly the same things as Pope Francis. They’re both Liberation Theologians, but grounded in different faith traditions.

      I don’t understand the process that produced them — some “Demonic Convergence”…

      • The Dalai Lama should only teach and talk about Hindu Kush.

        Hindu Kush is all Dalai Lama’s should be talking about for the next 1400 or so years.

        [Obscene suggestion concerning the Dalai Lama’s mother]..

        • I do believe i refering to pope Francis mother in the fi(r)st place.

          Dalai Lama’s mother will have to wait until i am done with Pope [redacted insult] Francis’ mother..

        • But the Dalai Lama wants one country set aside just for Hindus, no other religions allowed. He’s a limited thinker, unfortunately. Hindus need more wisdom than he has.

          I can no longer find his quote, which was at one time easily come by. I ran across it when I was posting about the girl in Ohio who’d converted from Islam to Christianity and then run away to Florida, causing a big stink – but probably saving her own life. Since her family had immigrated from Sri Lanka “for medical reasons” (the girl’s eye, which had never been fixed) and long out-stayed their legal time to be here, her flight became a cause célèbre. She eventually got away from her parents and attended college…

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinduism_by_country

          • Dymphna. It should be well known i am a Atheist anyway.

            But when the [odiferous stuff] would hit Normandy? In the end?
            I might be just a Viking. Or at least a moderate Viking. I would distance myself a lot about what real Vikings would do, but that will still make me a Viking…

            I know believe that being a Viking is superior to anything else. We Vikings wont take no for an answer. We will take your provences..and dont you build any other temples in any way, shape or form in our 2000 mile parameter. We will simple burn them all…

          • The atheism is neither here nor there. You’re quite entertaining when you can remember to keep it ummm…clean? We have home-schooled children who read our posts & we made a deal with their parents to have it child-proofed here.

            I don’t think you can resurrect a dead religion but it is entertaining to put on the head gear and wave your — what did Vikings carry? Spears?

            BTW, the Norsemen pirates did a busy trade with the Barbary pirates of old. They like to pick up Russian girls since the Saudis would pay top money for them. Did they save the Irish girls for themselves? It would appear so.

    • I’d love to see ISIS mock the current Pope. He richly deserves it for his cowardice in failing to defend his brothers and sisters in the ME. The guy is a utter embarrassment to the Church.

      And I could think of a half-dozen very high profile protestant ministers that are equally cowardly and deserving of mockery.

      Though I think ISIS will probably just try to pot the poor bumbler or raise a serious ruckus in Rome just to let them know they are coming.

    • We at Occidental Dissent worked hard to make US Senator, Libertarian loon Rand Paul Traitor of the year. American Renaissance gave Rand Paul this dishonorable prize.

      But our voters strongly agreed that the new Liberation a Theology Catholic pope was the international traitor of the year.

      This [vulgar epithet] wants to be a PC pop singer star and was even favored on the a Cover of the Rolling Stone. The new age, pro Muslim Pope was even quoted saying he wants to lead a group of Hispanic illegal aliens across the US Southern border.

  3. Some people I know thought that things could get “really” bad around 2030 (quotes from around 5 years ago). It seems increasingly though that such a prediction is overly optimistic. The real figure is likely to be much closer to 2020.

      • I had a look. The author only addresses birth-rates. Yes, the Muslim World’s birth-rates may be falling too…. but they’re falling from maybe 6 to 3 children per woman, while in the West it’s from 2.4 children (title of a British comedy, I think) to maybe 1.6… ergo – the Islamic world’s still expanding, while the West is contracting. Is that a problem? Not necessarily. Many Muslims are angry that the 6 million Jews of Israel can triumph over “1.5 billion Muslims”… in our technology-oriented world today, bigger does not need to be better. But once you add to the West’s diminishing size it’s porous borders, culturally-enriched enclaves, dhimmified media, indoctrination at schools, and general demoralisation (binge drinking, unstable relationships, 1-parent families etc), what chance is there that the West will prevail? Not much, imo. And if the goal is to prevail, then the Islamic world at the moment imo scores better on all of the above.

  4. How’s about March 2015? Leather necks, swine dipped ammo and another round of reformation in the interests of far and further out survival?

  5. What makes you think that Italy will be the prime terror focus of ISIS?

    “Obama policy to bring Syrian refugees into US raises concern among Republicans, intelligence community”

    http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/02/21/mccaul-administration-policy-allowing-syrians-onto-us-soil-is-dangerous/?intcmp=latestnews

    And most of the refugees will be Muslims. Describing a State Department release from December, 2014: “The State Department announcement was careful to explain that the U.S. will take in only those Syrians who are “persecuted by their government.” Christians in Syria are being killed by ISIS and other Muslim rebels, not by “their government,” but the Sunni Muslims are being killed by the Shiite-led government.

    Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/12/u-n-sending-thousands-of-muslims-to-america/#JeMWutsyqpEdJVXy.99

    • At a guess I’d suggest it may be because jihadists are literalists and Rome has been in their sights for over a millenium and when murdering the Christians they reminded Rome they would be next. For ISIS to spearhead an attack on Vatican City and kill Bergoglio that would cement their credentials in place as the Caliphate. But as always with Islam one has to be careful using Western binary logic so Rome doesn’t rule out the US.

    • “What makes you think that Italy will be the prime terror focus of ISIS?” Because as degenrrates and cowards they are going to go for the smallest country in the world – the Vatican that is. They have to pass through Italy to get there. Unless of course ISIS decides to do a flying leap or a few local “Young Turks”. Also just the thought of Constantinople and Rome must drive Muslims inside and outside Europe wild with envy.

  6. Some ISIS invasion math:

    500,000 refugees decamp from Libya to Europe, of which 1% are ISIS jihadists = 5,000 soldiers. Some local European muslims will want to join their ISIS brothers in the mayhem – perhaps another 10,000. Ten thousand is less than 0.1% of the European muslim population so we are not talking about a fantastic number. That brings a total of 15,000 fighters on European soil. It will be easy for them to find advanced weaponry (see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/getting-a-gun-legally-in-europe-may-be-hard-but-terrorists-have-little-trouble/2015/02/19/9eb6bce2-b78b-11e4-bc30-a4e75503948a_story.html)

    Taking Charlie Hebdo as an example, 3 jihadists inflicted 17 casualties (12 dead, 5 wounded); 15,000 jihadists could account for 85,000 casualties. Unlike the U.S., Europe’s civilians are unarmed so it will be up to the state to defeat the invaders.

    If the jihadists coordinate their attacks, the results will be terrible. It took hundreds of French police to deal with just 3 Charlie Hebdo assailants. There are not enough police to deal with 5,000 simultaneous Charlie Hebdos. They will launch their attacks and then melt back into the ghettos before the overwhelmed police can stop them.

    The jihadists will be no match for the million-plus strong armies of Europe. But what can the army do against an enemy that disappears into the 20 million population of European muslims?

    It is not a stretch to see Europe fall under martial law at some point in the next few years, with a longer-term result of each of today’s no-go zones becoming like the Gaza strip.

    • We go Auschwitz on their [posteriors]. They just have to go. They are intolerable already… Not eating pork, dont drink alcohol…imposing the [ordure] on everybody else..what’s the moderate “x” in that?

      They have to go tp dar el islam! Period!

      • There are historical precedents of mass repatriation of ethic minorities – Cossacks and Ukranians for example were sent back to Russia from Austria and other places after the war. The Finns also repatriated ethnic Russians and Poland sent Germans back to Germany. Further back Spain drove muslims from its land in the 15th century after 700 years of occupation. We may have to do the same.

        • My DIRECT ancestor Charles the hammer Martel sent the moors packing on back to the Iberian peninsula and moorish Africia! That was 732 at the Battle of Tours and he was outnumbered but his troops well trained. The vast Heavy horsemen were a special for the moors and so were the great number of trained infantry.

          I am proud of this and I swear even if old , like Martel was, I will help fight the devils Islamic foot soldiers( or Toyota truck boys) ….special sand cookies for those losers!

          LET US NOT GIVE UP HOPE TO SEND THE ISLAMICS DEVILS TO THEIR DESERVED H __________!

          • The Muslims are already in their deserved Hell. The free world just has to takes steps to make sure they stay there.

    • RJ, you’re on the right track as far as actions go, but your numbers I believe are well below what I consider Islam has already put in place within each European country.

      Every Mosque is a weapons cache, and every Muslim male a potential soldier. Even if the numbers of Muslims taking up the Jihad within Europe and Britain are only 10% of the total Muslim population, that is hundreds of thousands of potential Islamic foot soldiers.

      • The Spanish got rid of their rootless Muslim hordes after long drawn out battles and campaigns across the entire period of Muslim occupation. It will be the same in one way or another in the future as real people realize its the easier way to go.
        See Posted on March 28, 2010 by Baron Bodissey
        El Inglés returns to the topic of a possible culturally enriched civil war in the UK during the not-so-distant future, and speculates about some of the characteristics and constraints that are likely to apply to such a conflict.

      • “Every mosque is a weapons cache”? Even our benighted and PC security services couldn’t miss that, could they? After all, it would be their lives on the line.

        • Security services have already stated that they cannot interrupt all planning and preparation going on at every fifth column barracks. Especially in the Muslim bantustans.

        • Hordes of young Muslim men would head to rented out western properties in my home state to shoot off thousands of rounds of short 7.62mm ammo ( AK47) based on ‘intelligence’ reports that I had access to while employed as a NSW police officer.

          AK47 rifles were never a go to weapon in this country, even when anyone could buy anything before the clamp down on semi and semi-auto long arms. American semi-auto and automatic long arms were always the preferred weapon of choice by native Australians.

          Australian ports are owned by an Arab consortium and ‘security’ is enforced by Australian Customs that also employ officers from middle eastern background. It should therefore come as no surprise that illegal arms and ammo could be smuggled into the country via our Arab controlled ports and compromised Customs service.

          In 2009, police managed to trace 1000 Glock 9mm pistols as having been smuggled into the country by a Lebanese criminal/Muslim/OMG member over a five year period via NSW ports – but where are all the AK47s?

          Permission must be obtained by police or security services whenever they wish to search for specified items that may have been secreted within Mosques. To date, I cannot recall any Mosque ever being subject to a search warrant, or any magistrate or judge willing to grant one.

          Those weapons have been coming into the country for probably more than 20 years and as such would number into the thousands or possibly tens of thousands. So if your Mosque is almost off limits to law enforcement, where would you hide your weapons and ammo?

    • That Washington Post article is impressive. Only a very brief mention of JIM, later on in the article. If you had only skim-read the first paragraphs (like many readers do), you might as well think that the “radicals” were animal rights activists, or something similar… the fact that Europe reacts to events like in Paris and Copenhagen, as well as the recent Isis show of force in Italy’s neighbour Libya, with such talk, even more refusing to confront the problem, or with talk about a sci-fi future dominated by robots (a conversation I just had), shows that we don’t have a clue, and don’t have much hope. In fact, at this stage probably only God can save us… strange then that at this same moment in time, Europeans are also becoming ever less religious?

  7. I think the Swiss Guard do have ‘real’ weapons, but whether the men and weapons are sufficiently numerous may yet be seen.

  8. Simple. Go medieval on their sorry [fundaments]. Get rid of islame in Europe once and for all. And if any white Europeans want to put themselves in harms’ way to protect them, then they are gone too. A two-fer!

  9. Um, there seems to be some misunderstood aspects of the Swiss guard here. Make no mistake, they are the Vatican military, well trained in modern tactics and advanced weaponry. Their training makes them the equivalent of a special forces company. Don’t let those halberds and 16th century armor fool you, that is just for show…

    • That would be some kind of a plus. So many other given basics like national security, immigration no brainers and the laughable idea that infidel children’s education could be so easily Saudied and halaled up to meet the demands of the derision of peace have proven to be delusional.

  10. Moslem Albania is a mere short boat ride away. There are currently thousands of Albanians in Italy, indistinguishable in appearance from Italians (and often somewhat paler). So there’s another Trojan Horse. waiting for the order to unload its contents within the West’s walls.

    • Don’t forget greater Albania. Kosovo that is. You can be sure our WW2 Serbia of the sacrifices for the allies will not be stabbing us in the back. That’s Tesla country. The Human Condition.

  11. I don’t know if you remember this, but 11 large jets went ‘missing’ from the Libyan airport a few months back.

    http://www.barenakedislam.com/2014/09/03/obamas-libya-mess-11-missing-jetliners-raise-threat-of-911-style-suicide-plane-attacks-state-department-appears-unconcerned/

    That’s 11 human guided missiles that can be flown into European targets.

    Considering that on any given day there are THOUSANDS of planes in the air over Europe it would be nearly impossible to detect these 11 (and do anything about it) in time.

    Here’s ‘only’ 11 targets:

    The Vatican
    Rome
    Berlin
    Paris
    London
    The UN
    NATO Headquarters
    Madrid
    The Hague
    Bern
    Brussels

    • Can’t say I’d miss London that much, particularly places like Tower Hamlets or Cesspit-on-Thames and it’s current crop of High Traitors.
      Perhaps if Isis did us the favour of taking them both out it would free-up we the indigenous people to sort things out properly. A sort of Gates of Vienna moment in its actual historical sense.

      • Thanks for sacrificing me so glibly, Seneca. Maybe I can do the same for you someday.

        Mark H (in London)

    • Porkistan (great screen name, by the way):
      I would make just one edit to your list: the UN. Let them have it. It has done no good to the world since its League of Nations founding, anyway.

  12. This is beginning to look much like the prophesies of Nostradamus. I expect northern Europa will be flooded with italians, greeks and spaniards as mayhem spreads in southern Europe. That will give the northern parts a chance to make a stand, not the least because they will have learned something important from the destiny of the south. Or am I being too optimistic?

    • You, like the good Baron have a clear view of matters as they stand. The West has been infiltrated by Islamists who are playing their best taquiyya hand at enabling their own expansion – whilst our own established political leaders must be in on this or enablers through ignorance. Either way, it really does look like the cultural skirmishes that we are seeing where Islam meets anything other than Islam are accelerating to a final point that can only end in civilizational war. Sound advice for any person who lives or desires a Western lifestyle would be to remove themselves away from Islamic zones.

  13. It cannot be a coincidence that the conditions have been created to allow an Islamic Caliphate from North Africa, anticlockwise around the Med all the way to Syria; also at a time when Turkey is turning rabid – and that Barack Hussein Obama provided the weapons and funding to some supposed “freedom fighters”, against Assad that brought this forth. For a while I have pondered if there is some blueprint being unfolded in front of us. Taking all of the small strands together there is definitely a larger, designed plan in fruition.
    A grand Islamic Caliphate is being created, and on Europe’s doorstep. The tolerance of Europe and intolerance of Islam make them anathema to each other. So the real questions should be addressed. Who is enabling this caliphate, why are they enabling it and what if any action needs to be taken in order to ensure our Western cultures survival?

  14. To add in a little scepticism .. While this scenario is frightening and indeed feasible, let us not forget that Islam is also in the throes of its own unprecedented crisis. From Indonesia to Dublin, many Muslims are resentful of the bad name extremists have given them and at some point may say enough is enough–and abandon Islam en masse. I have heard this message from Muslims from Syria, Iraq, France, Malaysia, Indonesia and Britain. It is a universal demoralization. I suspect that the only thing keeping Islam together as a political system is the way it has become bound up with national identity in every country where Islam prevails. This is the great inner strength of Islam–an Algerian is not properly Algerian if he is not Muslim, but a Frenchman is still French whether or not he calls himself a Christian. That, of course, and the intimidation.

    • And therein lies a great opportunity still being missed by our MC/PC elected loons who are way too cowardly to confront Islam as it must be confronted if we wish to remain a viable civilization having the upper hand in nearly all aspects of human life.

    • Don’t forget Muslims’ “family values”… Are you sure that Muslims will want to make themselves public enemy #1 to their fathers and brothers by turning their backs on the faith, and hence “betraying” it – with all that this entails??

    • We’re not getting away with anything less than a long drawn bout of bloody mayhem for not acting sooner on the unassimilable Muslims. The “great inner strength of Islam” is cheap and opportunist. European countries have lapsed not just in pride of country but also their Christian heritage. Ramp those two up a few notches and the savage elements will start to look a little more drawn and pale. Just as a first step only of course.

    • A bit late for the old “it wasn’t me it was them”. This thing will play inself out over who knows how many more years until whatever happens. What a horrible way to live. Watching Muslims proliferate in your towns and villages under the flag of the Islamic state.

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