NowLibyangovernment,collapsingamidIslamistattacks,calling

Now Libyan government, collapsing amid Islamist attacks, calling for international intervention

posted at 10:41 am on July 15, 2014 by Noah Rothman

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On October, 2011, amid a lethargic economic recovery, President Barack Obama – a man who prided himself on ending wars, not starting them – touted his foreign policy successes. Beyond the successful raid that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden, Obama noted that he had successfully solved two thorny international puzzles; ending the war in Iraq and successfully prosecuting a brief campaign to stem the violence in Libya.

In a speech in the White House, the president made the case for his own competency within an announcement regarding the beginning of the full withdrawal of American troops from the Mesopotamian theater.

“In Libya, the death of Muammar Gaddafi showed that our role in protecting the Libyan people, and helping them break free from a tyrant, was the right thing to do,” the president said. “In Iraq, we’ve succeeded in our strategy to end the war.”

Those concerned about the vacuum the president was leaving in Iraq were ignored, and the chaos in that country has now vindicated Obama’s critics. The dream of Islamists going back generations, the founding of pan-Islamic caliphate, has been achieved in the Sunni regions of Syria and Iraq. Terrorist actors now operate with impunity in that caliphate’s interior. The Islamic State’s fighters are brazenly engaged in the pursuit of unconventional weapons while intelligence officials believe they continue to plan sophisticated attacks on Western targets.

But what about Libya where the president, without seeking Congressional approval, committed to military action with the aim of containing that country’s rapidly escalating civil war? The mission was a relative success and, in short order, rebel factions took Tripoli and executed Gaddafi – one of the United States’ preferred, though neither stated nor pursued, mission objectives.

Today, that country is a disaster. The bleak future in store for Libya was glimpsed on the night of September 11, 2012 when four Americans were killed in a coordinated attack on American diplomatic and intelligence assets in Benghazi. Those attackers lived free in a virtually lawless state for the next several years.

Though it escaped front page treatment in the West, the Libyan civil war gradually entered its second stage – a stage more closely resembling the situation in Iraq in Iraq where a fragile and unpopular pro-Western government is failing to provide for its own defense in the face of an Islamist insurgency.

Like Iraq, Libya’s Islamist insurgents are highly capable. On Monday, militants battled for control of the capital’s airport. The government claims that 90 percent of the aircraft on the ground and several structures, including the customs house, were damaged in the fighting.

Amazing @libyaamazigh101 picture: militias from Zintan & Misrata fighting for control of Tripoli airport. #Libya pic.twitter.com/ESOkXGozQB

— Jon Williams (@WilliamsJon) July 14, 2014

Today, the Associated Press reported, Libya’s interim governing authorities – authorities which have been unable to organize a legitimate election in the more than three years since Gaddafi was deposed — are sounding the alarm bells.

“Libya’s interim government says it is considering requesting the international community to send troops to the country after three days of fighting destroyed large parts of the capital’s airport,” the report reads.

The question then becomes: “calling whom?” What international body is today prepared to commit forces to stabilize Libya when the more strategically significant conflicts in Syria and Iraq have been ignored and allowed to metastasize? Libya is alone, and that country may soon more closely resemble a member of the caliphate that is strengthening in the Fertile Crescent.

Obama deserves to be criticized for prematurely declaring victory in these two theaters in the fall of 2011. He won political victories which served a short-term political purpose, but his administration failed to pursue a far-sighted strategy which would have prevented these states from collapsing.

When historians look back on this period through the précising lens of posterity, they will marvel over how rapidly the international landscape changed for the worse. To them, the legacy of peacemaking the president once coveted will appear quite irrational.

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Tags: Barack Obama, Iraq, Libya, Moammar Gaddafi

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Source from: hotair

IraqformallyrequestsUSairstrikesagainstISIS

Iraq formally requests US air strikes against ISIS

posted at 12:31 pm on June 18, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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The embattled government in Iraq suddenly finds itself quite a bit more fond of American military power than it did in 2011. According to the BBC, the US has received a formal request for air strikes to assist in the defense of Baghdad, as ISIS forces approach the capital:

Iraq has formally called on the United States to launch air strikes against jihadist militants who have seized several key cities.

“We have a request from the Iraqi government for air power,” confirmed top US military commander Gen Martin Dempsey.

The announcement came after insurgents launched an attack on Iraq’s biggest oil refinery north of Baghdad.

Reuters indirectly confirmed this from a report on Al-Arabiya television:

A news alert on the Al Arabiya news channel quoted Zebari as saying: “We request the United States to launch air strikes against militants.”

This puts the Obama administration even more on the spot than they have been for the last few days. Barack Obama promised that the Iraq War was “over” when we pulled out all of our forces, save for those protecting the American embassy. This week, Obama authorized the deployment of 275 troops, but as advisers and protection, not for offensive operations, at least not primarily. National Journal wonders, as did Noah yesterday, whether military action would be legal now that the force authorization for Iraq has been concluded:

Indeed, despite the U.S. military operating freely in Iraq for eight years during its occupation, a potential strike against forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and its allies presents a tougher call than it appears.

For one thing, the administration has in no uncertain terms repeatedly declared the conflict in Iraq to be over—and in 2011, the United States effectively pulled out of the country after an agreement to leave a more robust U.S. presence couldn’t be reached with the Iraqi government. That means the White House may no longer be able to seek legal cover by invoking the 2002 law passed by Congress that authorized the Iraq invasion.

“It’s a bad argument,” said Bobby Chesney, an expert on national security law at the University of Texas. “Obviously, the context was for action against the government of Iraq.”

Chesney conceded that the law was used for years afterward to justify continued U.S. operations in the country after Saddam Hussein’s regime fell, but, he said, “We’ve been out for years. To go in there and attack ISIS—it’s really a fresh fight.”

Moreover, the administration has come out in favor of repealing the Iraq Authorization of Military Force—and Obama reiterated last week that he hasn’t changed his mind. That makes asserting it now, at best, inconvenient and at worst, highly hypocritical.

The White House could instead invoke the broader 2001 AUMF that authorized U.S. action against al-Qaida in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The main problem with that? Al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has denounced ISIS for its conduct in Syria, where it has clashed with an al-Qaida backed group.

In addition, Chesney noted, the 9/11 AUMF was intended to warrant preemptive action against threats to the United States—and there has been little evidence that ISIS has America on its mind. The best thing for the administration’s legal position, he joked, is if al-Zawahiri issues a press release praising ISIS and hinting at reconciliation.

Ahem. Obama ordered military action against Moammar Qaddafi under the questionable “responsibility to protect” paradigm, which actually targeted the government of another country. That’s called “war,” in any other context, and yet not only did Obama not have authorization to conduct war against Libya, he never bothered to seek it after the expiration of the War Powers loophole the White House claimed for legitimization, either.

In this case, the R2P seems much less legally fraught. We are not going to war with the legitimate and recognized government of Iraq, but protecting it against a sack of its capital. And now our nominal ally in Iraq has formally requested the assistance, which allows for executive action. While James Oliphant notes that the WPA proviso about “clear and present danger to the security of the United States” may not be entirely clear with regard to ISIS, it’s also clear from intelligence reports that this group intends to conduct operations against the West at some point.

The time may be propitious for an attack on ISIS, which may have lost some momentum already:

Islamic militants attacked Iraq’s largest oil refinery late Tuesday, but were repelled by Iraqi security forces after an overnight battle, Iraqi officials said Wednesday.

The al Qaeda splinter group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) began their attack late Tuesday night, but fighting continued into Wednesday morning. There were unconfirmed reports that the militants had managed to gain control of much of the refinery compound, but in messages posted on their Facebook page, the Iraqi Special Operations force vehemently denied the claims.

Iraqi special forces, backed up by air support, destroyed an ISIS convoy and gunned down three ISIS snipers during a failed attempt by the group to break into the Baiji refinery, according to the special operations force, part of Iraq’s Interior Ministry which is in charge of security across the country.

Chief military spokesman, Lt. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, later said government forces had repelled the attack and that 40 attackers were killed in fighting.

Operations at the sprawling complex were halted and its foreign staff evacuated on Tuesday shut down due to the threat.

This is probably an easy call for Obama to make. Air strikes are a lot more antiseptic than putting ground troops in harm’s way, and a lot more practical in terms of politics, logistics, and timing. It gives Obama a chance to take some action that will at least address the deep concerns from allies in the region about the lack of action and direction from Washington these days, too. Air strikes will also provide a positive impact on the situation and give Baghdad some room to maneuver politically and militarily. Plus, Congress is likely to rally around this limited intervention, which would provide Obama with political cover — if he’s smart enough to seek it. He didn’t in Libya and is still paying the political price for high-handing Congress and going it alone.

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Tags: Barack Obama, intervention, Iraq, ISIS, Libya, Moammar Gaddafi, Nouri al-Maliki, Responsibility To Protect

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Source from: hotair

Hasal-QaedatakenoverasecretUSbase

Has al-Qaeda taken over a secret US base in Libya?

posted at 10:01 am on April 23, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

When losing ground in a war, it’s not unusual to see an enemy make use of one’s facilities and equipment. The report from Eli Lake at the Daily Beast only surprises because the US has insisted that we are not losing ground in the war against al-Qaeda, and still insists that the decapitation of the Moammar Qaddafi regime was sound policy:

A key jihadist leader and longtime member of al Qaeda has taken control of a secretive training facility set up by U.S. special operations forces on the Libyan coastline to help hunt down Islamic militants, according to local media reports, Jihadist web forums, and U.S. officials.

In the summer of 2012, American Green Berets began refurbishing a Libyan military base 27 kilometers west of Tripoli in order to hone the skills of Libya’s first Western-trained special operations counter-terrorism fighters. Less than two years later, that training camp is now being used by groups with direct links to al Qaeda to foment chaos in post-Qaddafi Libya.

Last week, the Libyan press reported that the camp (named “27” for the kilometer marker on the road between Tripoli and Tunis) was now under the command of Ibrahim Ali Abu Bakr Tantoush, a veteran associate of Osama bin Laden who was first designated as part of al Qaeda’s support network in 2002 by the United States and the United Nations. The report said he was heading a group of Salifist fighters from the former Libyan base.

In other words, Tantoush is now the chief of a training camp the U.S. and Libyan governments had hoped would train Libyan special operations forces to catch militants like Tantoush.

Again, this is one sign of lost ground, and not exactly a novel one for North Africa, where wars have taken place for millenia. We left behind our diplomatic and intelligence facilities in Benghazi, for instance, when we pulled out after the terrorist attacks on both on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in 2012. The rest of the West had already left the city long before, more cognizant of the terrorist threat than the US despite months of warnings that flowed into Washington about the danger and the escalating attacks on the ground. Those Western facilities are not likely to sit unused, except of course for those destroyed in the attacks.

By eliminating Qaddafi, we created a vacuum for our enemies, whom we already knew were organizing in the areas outside of Tripoli. But even after the Benghazi attack, we were still trying to fix the problem — hence, Camp 27, which is nearer to the capital:

One U.S. official who worked on the program said the U.S. Special Forces began to refurbish the base in the summer of 2012, before the 9/11 anniversary attack in Benghazi. The actual training, however, did not begin until the fall of 2012. One U.S. defense official noted the initial program at Camp 27 endeavored to train 100 Libyan special operations soldiers. But even this modest goal was never really in reach.

“The program has not achieved the outcomes that we hoped that it would and the Libyans hoped it would,” said Carter Ham, the now-retired four-star general who led U.S. Africa Command when the initial training program was established. While Ham said he was not aware of the latest reports that the base was now in the hands of an al Qaeda figure, he nonetheless acknowledged that myriad challenges—from the uncertainty in the leadership of the Libyan military to security on the ground—made it difficult to sustain the special operation forces training.

“The selection process for what Libyan unit and what Libyan soldiers would participate was probably not as rigorous as we would have liked it to have been,” Ham continued. “But this was a Libyan decision and they had to decide what unit and what individuals to enroll in the program.”

Look how well that’s worked out in Libya. The government there can barely hold its own in the capital, and has almost no writ outside of it. Lake quotes David Gartenstein-Ross’ prediction that the Libyan government will likely expel the terrorists due to its proximity to the capital, but they haven’t done so yet despite knowing about it. This is the same government whose Defense Ministry couldn’t clear its own street of militias demanding a more Islamist line from Tripoli last year.

Meanwhile, the Daily Mail reports on a “citizens committee” report that accuses the US of causing Benghazi through its support of the radical Islamists that Qaddafi was fighting at the time:

The Citizens Commission on Benghazi, a self-selected group of former top military officers, CIA insiders and think-tankers, declared Tuesday in Washington that a seven-month review of the deadly 2012 terrorist attack has determined that it could have been prevented – if the U.S. hadn’t been helping to arm al-Qaeda militias throughout Libya a year earlier.

‘The United States switched sides in the war on terror with what we did in Libya, knowingly facilitating the provision of weapons to known al-Qaeda militias and figures,’ Clare Lopez, a member of the commission and a former CIA officer, told MailOnline.

She blamed the Obama administration for failing to stop half of a $1 billion United Arab Emirates arms shipment from reaching al-Qaeda-linked militants. …

The commission and AIM filed 85 document requests under the Freedom Of Information Act, hitting the Department of Defense, State Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency with demand after demand.

But most of its information has come from insiders with deep knowledge of the flow of weapons in Libya and elsewhere in the African Maghreb.

Some of the claims are a little far-fetched, as the Mail notes:

Some of the group’s claims strain credibility, including the assertion that the Obama administration’s early effort to blame the Benghazi attack on a protest against a crude anti-Muslim YouTube video ‘appears to have been well-coordinated with U.S.Muslim Brotherhood organizations as well as Islamic state members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).’

One does not have to go that far in assessing American policy in Libya vis-a-vis al-Qaeda. We knew that AQ operated in eastern Libya for years, as recruitment for their operations in Iraq relied heavily on Libyan organizations. In this case, Qaddafi and the West had a common enemy, and AQ was part of the rebellion against his regime. We picked the worst time and the worst place to decapitate a regime, and then deliberately kept boots off the ground and failed to shape the outcome. A failed state was the inevitable result.

Tags: al Qaeda, Benghazi, Libya, Moammar Gaddafi

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Source from: hotair