While all eyes in Washington watch the clash between former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and House Republicans over events in Benghazi four years ago, chaos reigns in Libya, where two separate governments battle for control. Islamists are in control in the capital city of Tripoli, and Islamic State militants are expanding their hold on cities and towns across the country.
The security situation has reached a new low in recent weeks as the faction in control in Tripoli and the rival secular government based in the city of Tobruk have refused to sign a peace deal that the United Nations and the Obama administration have been pushing for months.
The deteriorating situation was one focus of the House hearing. Mrs. Clinton said the seeds of the Benghazi tragedy, in which U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed, were rooted in the need for U.S. diplomats to go to dangerous places to deal with crises.
“We have learned the hard way when America is absent, especially from unstable places, there are consequences. Extremism takes root, aggressors seek to fill the vacuum and security everywhere is threatened, including here at home. That’s why Chris was in Benghazi,” Mrs. Clinton said.
U.S. officials apprehended Ahmed Abu Khattala, the suspected leader of the Benghazi attack, in a 2014 raid, but the Obama administration sharply reduced its footprint in the country even as the political and security situation worsened.
The Obama administration has a “very hands-off policy in Libya now,” said Bill Roggio, an editor of The Long War Journal published by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington. “The administration provided military assistance to overthrow the government in 2011 and has since provided nothing concrete to deal with the problems on the ground.”
The U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, where Mr. Stevens once worked, was closed and all personnel evacuated in July 2014. Philip Gordon, who served as White House coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf Region from 2013 until early this year, said in an article in Politico this summer that Libya was in a state of “disintegration.”
Various jihadi groups have embedded themselves in the Libyan opposition, and U.S. intelligence officials express growing concern about the spread of Islamic State operations in the nation.
Escalating crisis
What’s worse, according to an analysis posted that month on the website of the Brookings Institution, is that “with international attention focused on the humanitarian emergencies in Syria and Iraq, the escalating crisis in Libya has gone overlooked.”
“Human traffickers are taking advantage of the collapse of order in Libya, sending more and more boats across the Mediterranean filled with asylum seekers and migrants desperate to reach Europe,” the analysis said.
The political divisions have only deepened. In addition to rival governments, Libya now has two parliaments and two organizations claiming to be the state oil company.
Islamic State forces are said to be in control of the city of Sirte. Benghazi is sharply divided with districts and neighborhoods controlled by hostile factions, including Islamist militias battling an alliance headed by Gen. Khalifa Haftar, who was an ally of dictator Moammar Gadhafi, the Reuters news agency reported this week.
Mr. Obama acknowledged in his U.N. General Assembly speech last month that the U.S. and its allies “could have and should have done more to fill the vacuum left behind” in Libya after pounding the nation with airstrikes and arming rebels who ultimately killed Gadhafi in October 2011.
But a U.N.-sponsored peace process has repeatedly struggled to get off the ground and broke down again this month as neither the Tobruk government nor the Tripoli government was willing to endorse it.
U.N. envoy Bernardino Leon insisted this week that mediation efforts would continue despite the rejections.
“This process goes on,” Mr. Leon told reporters at a briefing Wednesday in Tunis, according to Agence France-Presse. “There is no chance for small groups or personalities to hijack this process.”
The worst part of the situation, Mr. Roggio said, is that Washington’s inaction in Libya has provided ammunition for some of the most radical critiques of the Obama administration’s overall policy toward the Middle East.
“We overthrow the regime, jihadists take control of various areas and the country becomes a basket case,” he said. “It’s amazing how we’re now playing into those narratives that feed conspiracy theories that the U.S. actually supports the overthrow of governments and then supplants them with jihadist groups.
“They are conspiracy theories,” Mr. Roggio said. “What is truly going on is shortsightedness in U.S. policy and a failure to understand who’s who on the ground, which groups are operating, and then the lack of political heft on the ground to get involved.”
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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