U.S. Supports Equipping and Training Libyan Troops

By Jeralyn, Section War In Iraq
Posted on Mon May 16, 2016 at 06:43:41 PM EST
Tags: Libya (all tags)

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John Kerry announced today the U.S. supports training and equipping the military of the newly minted Libyan "unity" government so it can better fight ISIS.

Speaking in Vienna, Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States and other major nations would back the Libyan government's attempt to win an exemption from a United Nations arms embargo.

Kerry said it was "imperative" for the international community to support the 6-week-old government in Tripoli, which he called "the only legitimate one in Libya and which must now start to work.”

The State Department's press release is here. The new Libyan government is 6 weeks old and arrived in Libya by boat from Tunisia. [More...]

Are we going to train child soldiers? Libyan Prime Minister Fayez Serraj welcomed the announcement saying:

"We’re not talking about international intervention," he said. "We’re talking about international assistance and training, equipping our troops and training our youth."

Josh Earnest, the White House spokesman, had this to say:

[Earnest] said the decision to arm the new government marked "the beginning of a process, not the end of it."

The Pentagon spokesman's comment is even more disheartening:

The Pentagon recently sent special operations teams to Libya to gather intelligence and find potential partners to fight the militants, Peter Cook, the Pentagon spokesman, said Monday.

“This small presence of U.S. forces has been trying to identify players on the ground and trying to find out exactly what their motives are,” Cook said. “And that's to give us a better picture of what's happening there, because we don't have a great picture.”

Sounds like a recipe for disaster. The groups in Libya are fighting each other and not aligned in the fight against ISIS. The Guardian's reporter in Libya says the challenge will be keeping U.S. arms from being used in Libyan civil wars instead of the fight against ISIS.