The United States on Friday conducted air strikes in Libya, a country described as having “all but collapsed” since the NATO military intervention there five years ago.
Local officials say that at least 40 people were killed from the strikes in the early morning, with others critically wounded, news agencies report. The location of the strike was a reported Islamic State training camp in the northern Libyan city of Sabratha.
The Pentagon said that it was not clear yet whether the target of the attack, Noureddine Chouchane, was among those killed.
Chouchane, a Tunisian national, has been linked to attacks in 2015 on a Tunis museum and a beach in the resort town of Sousse.
“He facilitated the movement of potential ISIL-affiliated foreign fighters from Tunisia to Libya and onward to other countries,” the Associated Press reports Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook as saying.
The Guardian reports that the new
As journalist Glenn Greenwald and professor of international relations Vijay Prishad both indicated in early-morning tweets, Friday’s bombing should be read as an indication of the Obama administration’s failed strategy in Libya:
Last month, after speaking with his French counterpart, Gen. Pierre de Villiers, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, “It’s fair to say we’re looking to take decisive military action against ISIL [in Libya] in conjunction with a legitimate political process.”
The strikes come just days after President Obama said, “With respect to Libya, I have been clear from the outset that we will go after ISIS wherever it appears, the same way that we went after al Qaeda wherever they appeared.”
“We will continue to take actions where we’ve got a clear operation and a clear target in mind. And we are working with our other coalition partners to make sure that as we see opportunities to prevent ISIS from digging in, in Libya, we take them.”
But this reflects an approach akin to “a game of whack-a-mole spanning multiple unstable foreign countries,” argues Paul Pillar, professor at Georgetown University for security studies.
He explains:
Others similarly described the governance problem. From the Guardian earlier this week:
The reporting adds this comment from Guma El-Gamaty, the rebel government’s London envoy during the revolution: “We are now suffering the legacy of Gaddafi, the lack of institutions, no democracy, the lack of knowing how to come together.”
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Reuters reports: “A U.N.-backed government of national accord is trying to win support, but is still awaiting parliamentary approval. It is opposed by factional hardliners and has yet to establish itself in the capital Tripoli.”
Last month, in an article entitled “The U.S. Intervention in Libya Was Such a Smashing Success That a Sequel Is Coming,” Greenwald wrote that since the 2011 NATO bombing of Libya, the country
And in a statement Friday, Prashad said, “The U.S. Air Force should have named this current bombing run in Libya ‘Operation Deja Vu.’ It is the third such strike at ISIS. What is not clear is the strategy being followed by the U.S. Occasional bombing runs have not stopped ISIS from fully taking Sirte and now expanding along the edge of the Gulf of Sidra.”