Manchester bombing: Libyan chaos is proving a fertile breeding ground for extremists

In the hunt for possible accomplices of the Manchester suicide bomber Salman Abedi, who may be preparing more attacks, intelligence agencies are now firmly focusing on the Libyan connection.

Abedi’s mother and father had fled oppression in Libya by the military dictator Muamar Gaddafi, setting up home first in London and then Manchester.

The parents returned to Libya in January, and they are understood still to be there – leaving only Salman and his 23 year old brother Ismail behind in the family property in Manchester.

Salman is known to have visited Libya earlier this year and, according to friends, returned a few weeks ago.

This suggests that he received some form of terrorist military training during the visit, either in Libya or Tunisia.

We also know now from the French interior minister that he went to Syria and has links with Islamic State. IS in Sirte, Libya, was one of the biggest supply points for foreign fighters for Syria.

Libya today is a bewildering chaos of competing militias and jihadi groups broadly following IS, al Qaeda and affiliates such as Ansar al-Sharia, and the Muslim Brotherhood in several guises and shadowy forms.

Despite serial attempts by the UN to patch up a viable national government, Libya is gripped by the standoff between those grabbing power in Benghazi in the East – with the military strongman General Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army to the fore, and the UN sponsored Government of National Accord in the capital Tripoli to the West.

In between are hundreds of militias, furnished with the arms from the Gadaffi arsenals and residues of funds from Libya’s $100 billion oil industry – garnered when the oil was still flowing.

There have been suggestions that Salman Abedi may have been trained in an IS camp in Syria. But as such expertise can easily be picked up in Libya, and neighbouring Tunisia.

IS has recently been losing its hold on towns like Derna and Sirte, but it is present along the coast in places like Sabrata and Zawia towards Tunisia.

IS propaganda has mentioned setting up a new ‘caliphate’ in Tunisia, scene of major attacks such as the at the Bardo museum in March 2015 and the beach at Sousse the following June, in which 30 British holidaymakers were killed.

The security risks posed by Libya are multi-dimensional, the civil war of the militias, the porous borders with Egypt and Tunisia, and the continuous traffic of migrants across the Mediterranean.

Even if trained in Libya, Salman Abedi may have got vital expert assistance here in the UK – in London, where he travelled on the day, and in Manchester, where someone had carefully scoped the security weakness of the Arena venue.

The operation was executed with ruthless calculation and operational savvy. It demonstrates new potency of the Libyan connection.