Malta’s closest non-EU neighbour, Libya, is rapidly descending into a failed state and as the country’s two parliaments continue to jostle for control of the lawless country while simultaneously attempting, with questionable success, to ward off the Islamic State’s intentions to seize control of the country and its resources.

Just this week, a United Nations human rights report documented thousands of cases of beheadings, arbitrary detention and torture involving electrocution and beatings with pipes and cables in the increasingly lawless country.

Issuing a 95-page report, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said it has reasonable grounds to believe that all parties have been involved in the violations of human rights law in Libya, a country divided up among tribal groups, an Islamic State offshoot, a government in Tripoli supported by Islamist-allied militias and an internationally recognized government in the eastern city of Tobruk.

UN human rights chief Zeid Raad al-Hussein said many of the offences amount to war crimes, and used the occasion to urge the Security Council to increase monitoring in and support for Libya, which has seen years of division and instability since a NATO-led operation helped bring down Gaddafi in 2011.

Six years later, UN investigators have heard from 250 victims and witnesses and have received more than 900 complaint files. But they only set foot in Libya once, and only at the Tripoli airport.  Underscoring the gross security risks in the country, the interviews were conducted abroad, or via telecommunications.

The report cited assassinations, attempted murder, kidnapping and arbitrary detention of journalists, judges and prosecutors and activists, and said threats, assaults and harassment against women appear to be aimed at sending a wider message that they should keep quiet in public. The report points to public executions, the desecration of bodies placed on display and suicide bombings – with a child reportedly used as the attacker in one case.

“Use of torture is widespread, particularly in detention facilities, with reports of beatings with plastic pipes or electrical cables, prolonged suspension in stress positions, solitary confinement, electrocution, deprivation of adequate food or water, threats of a sexual nature and extortion,” the report said. Torture-related deaths were reported in various detention places, including at military police and intelligence facilities.

These are certainly troubled times in which we are living today. But as we here in Malta may be somewhat diverted by public scandal after public scandal as they roll off the presses almost on a daily basis, we should not lose sight of the big picture.

And that big picture places us, geographically, at the centre of a tempest – a maelstrom created by two very opposing forces: the Western ideal of democracy, freewill and free speech; and a heinous, extremist, religious ideology that will seemingly stop at nothing to persecute, murder and terrorise anyone subscribing to any different worldview.

Just this week, Islamic State affiliates in Libya briefly took over the security headquarters in the western city of Sabratha, killing and beheading 12 security officers before being driven out. But before being driven out, the militants had used the headless bodies of the officers they killed to block the roads leading to the security headquarters.

Sabratha has become the latest Libyan power centre for the local IS affiliate. Last week, US airstrikes killed dozens of suspected militants in the city along with two Serbian hostages kidnapped last year. And the incident highlighted the enduring presence and unpredictable striking power of the local IS militants in this strategic city, which also serves as a hub for migrants heading to Europe.

The fanatics of the Islamic State are quickly planting roots just a few hundred kilometres of open sea to the south of us. The US recently carried out air strikes, and special ops forces from a number of countries – including at least Special Forces from France and the US – are reported to already be operating in the country.

Libya’s chaos, five years after the uprising that led to the ouster and killing of long-time autocrat Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, has paved the way for the IS affiliate to take control of several cities. The extremist group had previously taken over the city of Darna, before being driven out and still controls the central city of Sirte, Gaddafi's home town. The divided country is ruled by two parliaments: an internationally recognized body based in the eastern city of Tobruk and a rival government, backed by Islamist-allied militias, that controls the capital, Tripoli.

The United Nations brokered a deal last year to unite the country's various factions. A new unity government is awaiting endorsement by the eastern parliament. The unity government could pave the way for an international military intervention against the Islamic State group.

But in the meantime, security and rule of law in Libya continue to deteriorate seemingly by the day, and with this deterioration the Islamic State’s presence in Libya grows.

These warped militants with their twisted ideologies are edging ever closer to some kind of an attack against Europe and their threats to attack Europe are also growing with equal frequency. Malta, by geographic quirk is the closest – as well as the softest and most enthusiastically Christian – target in the whole of Europe.

The situation in North Africa presents a potentially deadly cocktail for Europe, and for Malta as well. 

While Tunisia enjoys the rule of law, and will certainly leave no stone unturned to thwart any terrorist activity on its soil, it is not so with Libya. There the two rival governments are not only battling each other but they are also separately battling ISIS and al-Qaeda, both of which are vying for territory in the virtually lawless country, and where ISIS and al-Qaeda are even fighting each other for control.

Malta has already suffered, directly or not, a terrorist attack when the Islamic State struck against Maltese-owned assets with its attack on the Tripoli Corinthia. This was an attack on one of the country’s largest private sector foreign investments and it has given Malta its first bitter taste of the viciousness that this organisation is capable of. Let us hope it will be the last taste we have.