O’s Libya Mess
Chasing ISIS instead of just defeating it
WITH his renewed determination to fight ISIS in Libya, President Obama can do some good — but can he go beyond more of the same half-hearted measures?
This week, Obama announced that, at the behest of the Libyan government, American planes will bomb targets in Sirte, helping local fighters in their attempt to drive out ISIS terrorists. Italy then said that it would allow US planes to use its airspace and military bases near Libya’s shores. And not a moment too soon. In early 2015, as Libya descended into chaos, ISIS fighters took over the coastal city of Sirte, the birthplace of Moammar Khadafy and his favorite place to do business during his long rule. The area around Sirte is home to Libya’s main oil fields, and its port serves as the country’s main oil terminal. Control it, and you’ll be rich.
No wonder ISIS turned Sirte into the caliphate’s largest home base outside of Syria and Iraq. Refugees from the battle-scarred Mideast and impoverished African would-be migrants sail from Sirte to Europe daily in whatever floating vessel they can find. Many don’t make it alive.
How did Libya become a terrorist hub — and a humanitarian blight to boot?
Back in April, Fox News’ Chris Wallace asked Obama to name his worst foreign-policy mistake. “Probably failing to plan for the day after, what I think was the right thing to do, in intervening in Libya,” he said, referring to the 2011 US-backed removal of Khadafy from power.
Of course, Democrats like Hillary Clinton, who had initially supported the 2003 Iraq war, heaped mountains of scorn on President George W. Bush for failing to follow-up after ousting Saddam Hussein. Now that Obama admits making the same mistake in Libya, they go quiet.
So this week Obama has opted for a course correction. Is he doing it for political reasons? After all, then-Secretary of State Clinton urged him to undertake regime-changing military action, and now Libya is home to jihadis. Victory over ISIS could blunt such criticism of Hillary on the campaign trail.
Even so, that wouldn’t make stronger action against ISIS any less of a good idea. And ousting ISIS from Sirte isn’t such a formidable task. Local militias are already eating away at the areas the jihadis control.
ISIS terrorists counter with sniper fire and other urban guerrilla tactics. But aided by precision US air attacks, those US-allied locals can hopefully beat ISIS back fairly quickly.
And defeating ISIS in its second-largest home base could put a dent in the group’s aura of invincibility. Terrorist recruitment could suffer. All good.
Then again, success can fleeting.
Libya is a big country. Terrorists in North Africa are well versed in the practice of retreating from urban centers into vast deserts, hoping to tire out their pursuers. ISIS fighters could wait America out and then return, bigger and stronger, to Sirte.
More importantly, Libya’s still a mess. The UN-recognized “unity government” that invited America to fight ISIS clumsily masks the country’s deep political divisions. And the Libyan army, commanded be by General Khalifa Haftar, is far from the only fighting force in the country.
In fact, it isn’t even the one we’re backing.
As Libyan UN Ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi notes, the militias the United States is supporting in Sirte call themselves revolutionaries. “I hope we can fight ISIS without [further] strengthening those militias,” Dabbashi told me, reflecting concerns that in the future, the militias will challenge the country’s only wellstructured army.
Jihadist movements thrive in politically divided Arab countries. They flourish where multiple militias (as opposed to a single army) compete for control.
As Obama astutely noted, a failure to follow-up can turn each military success into a disaster. In Libya’s case, his limited remaining time in office means any follow-up will be left to his successor.
So, at best, expect an electioneve “mission accomplished” banner. Hopefully our Sirte effort will temporarily dent ISIS’s advances. But Obama will never get beyond the first part of his vow to “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS; he won’t have time.
A more comprehensive strategy must include sustained military effort, with some boots on the ground and, yes, a bit of nation-building, too. All these, regrettably, have become dirty words in our current political discourse — except to criticize others who have made the same mistakes.