Egyptians are fleeing the violence in Libya. Yahoo/AFP

Egyptians waiting in line at a border station. Yahoo/AFP

Almost 15,000 Egyptians are fleeing the violence in Libya after ISIS executed 21 Coptic Christians. Yahoo/AFP. Cairo has ordered the roughly 150,000 Egyptians in Libya to come home.  Egypt has chartered flights to help with the evacuation. More Egyptians are on their way out. The thousands of Egyptians worked mostly in the oil industry. This is not the first time Egyptians have fled from Libya. When the 2011 revolution happened thousands fled the violence. Though the situation in Libya has deteriorated, the execution of the 21 Coptic Christians was the final straw. Egypt sent in airstrikes as retaliation for the beheadings. 

My Comment:

The situation in Libya is rapidly turning into a madhouse. The situation was bad before with the government fighting Islamic militants and dozens of other factions, but with ISIS on the scene now the situation is much, much worse. It is not surprising at all that these Egyptians are fleeing. Who would want to stay in a country where ISIS is active and killing people? Especially if it is a country where everyone else is fighting anyways. I'm somewhat surprised that so many are still staying. 

This is bad news for Libya. They need these workers to get their economy going again. Libya is fairly dependent on foreign oil workers. They don't have the people necessary to run their oil industry without outside help. Why a country would want to import thousands of people to work instead of training workers that live there is beyond me, but given how Libya was controlled by a power mad dictator a few years ago and been in utter chaos sense I guess it makes sense. It's too late at this point, so losing even some of these workers is going to hurt and hurt badly.

When these Egyptians come home, they will come home to a country that has its own ISIS insurgency. Though the insurgency is largely limited to the Sinai Peninsula, the security situation is getting worse. Much like Iraq, Syria and Libya, when a secular, but brutal, regime is overthrown, something worse rushes in to fill the vacuum. The Arab Spring, which was hailed as the Muslim world finally joining modernity when it happened, is largely responsible for the rise of ISIS. Time will tell if these revolutions were worth it in the end...