These groups also have financial means secured by oil smuggling in cooperation with local gangs that were formed during the siege on Libya in the nineties. Moreover, they have become able to move freely with no surveillance after the collapse of the late Col. Moammar Gadhafi's regime and thanks to tribal protection and a welcoming social environment.
Perhaps the economic crisis has also supplied these groups with young fighters, and the open borders have provided them with jihad enthusiasts. Some of these groups also seek to open several fronts to disperse the efforts of the anti-IS international coalition and push it to stop its war on the organization.
The negative measures taken by some IS leaders in they regions they control have formed the only obstacle to the rise in fighters. These measures included destroying tombs and shrines, forcing women to wear the hijab, imposing prayer on pedestrians and forbidding women from moving around without a mahram [male escort].
According to reports from these areas, militants have apparently stopped destroying shrines temporarily and they are awaiting the right circumstances to resume this activity.
From this, we arrive at a very important conclusion on the future of our Arab world, which is threatened with destructive chaos in the Maghreb and the Levant and with IS expansion. The two factors are interrelated, as they are conditioned by one another. How can we face this threat, knowing that the Atlantic states that toppled the former Libyan regime cannot deal with the disastrous results of their intervention?