The US wades into Libya – Downing Reports

The US wades into Libya

Brian M Downing

The West is stepping up its activity in the Libyan civil war. Fearing that ISIL is establishing a statelet, the West is about to provide arms and more advisers to the forces backing the Government of National Accord. NATO troops and airpower are preparing to operate again in Libya. The American public was recently apprised that a special forces contingent, albeit a small one of about 25 troops, has been alongside government troops for several weeks. More US commitments are likely.

The NATO powers are deeply concerned that ISIL’s consolidation in Libya will form part of a patchwork Islamist federation stretching from Africa to Central Asia. Further, ISIL in Libya is already attracting recruits from West Africa and elsewhere.

These are legitimate concerns. However, the West is wading deeper into Libya without appreciating the complexities of the war and the potentials for being ensnarled there for many years to come, possible a decade or more.

War and anarchy

Wars are usually seen as one more or less united side fighting against another more or less united side. In Libya, there are ostensibly two sides: the government recognized by much of the world, and Islamist regions. However, there are 1,700 militias engaged in the conflict. This is the legacy of the uprising against Qaddafi where districts and tribes and ambitious commander patched together armed bands, wore down Qaddafi’s forces until they collapsed, then refused to turn in their weapons.

Most of these 1,700 bands have placed themselves under umbrella organizations such as Libya Dawn and the Libyan National Army. This gives the appearance of organization, but command and control is frail and unlikely to last, in part owing to international pressures. Most Libyan fighting groups are backed by foreign powers, some of which are aligned, some of which are bitter foes. Saudi Arabia backs some, Iran others, Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood others still.

Involvement in Libya places the US in the middle of a bewilderingly fragmented country, and also further into the Sunni-Shia and Saudi-Qatari rivalries.

Consequences of western intervention

As benign as western intentions may be, they will not be seen that way by Islamist groups. Nor will they be seen that way by the all the forces in the government side.

The US and other European powers are intervening in a war between a shaky coalition of Islamist bands and an equally shaky coalition of government militias. Western intervention will underscore Islamist views of western meddling and oppression. Foreign support for Islamist bands will likely rise – in both money and recruits. Government troops will benefit from arms and training and money, but many of their fighters have no fondness for the west and may reevaluate their loyalties.

ISIL and Ansar al Sharia (the al Qaeda affiliate) will determine all the more to strike back. They have existing networks in France and Belgium with which they can launch Paris-style attacks.

What will victory bring?

If government forces and western backers someday defeat the Islamist bands, they will face two long-term and possibly interminable problems – underground Islamist movements and the burden of state-building.

Islamist militance is not a recent emergence in post-Qaddafi Libya. An underground movement developed in the colonel’s time, and indeed it constituted the most serious threat to his rule. Many Islamists were imprisoned and massacred in a prison yard. Instead of extirpating the movement, the slaughter gave it a powerful myth. Many who fled the country joined up with Osama bin Laden’s fledgling al Qaeda organization in the Sudan.

Islamists have safe houses and networks with which they can wage bombing campaigns against the government and its allies, just as they do in Iraq thirteen years after Saddam’s fall. Libyan civilians will recall colonial rule as bringing the deaths of one-third of their forbears, many in concentration camps. Many will support resistance movements.

Government institutions are almost nonexistent. Qaddafi ruled through a security force and personal charisma. Neither was especially strong. The West, then, will have to perform a large part of the state-building in ravaged land.

The problems will be all the more onerous as Libya has never had meaningful national institutions. For much of the colonial period and its immediate aftermath Libya was administered as three provinces, Tripolitania in the west, Cyrenaica in the east, and Fezzan in the south. Within each province are numerous tribes and peoples (Berbers, Tuaregs) who find the notion of a united Libya either outdated or repellent.

Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who has written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs.