The news that the US conducted a raid on a remote ISIL training camp in Libya is welcome. (Although it may, according to latest reports, have come at the tragic expense of the lives of two Serbian hostages.) The Pentagon said the camp, on the outskirts of Tripoli, was used to train foreign fighters, and among those said to have been killed in the rain is a Tunisian ISIL leader who is accused of organising the terrorist attack on the Bardo museum in Tunisia a year ago.
While such strikes are useful and must continue – Barack Obama, speaking before the strike, had said he intended to carry out attacks when they can identify specific targets – there is a limit to what sporadic raids like this can do. This was only the second US strike on ISIL in Libya since late last year.
Taking out a training camp in one part of Libya is useful. But with Libya still without a central government, too many parts of the country are in danger of becoming training camps.
That is the essential problem with Libya today. It remains deeply divided, with even the limited call for a government of national unity unlikely to succeed. The US, along with western allies and the UAE, issued a statement calling for a united government. But Libya’s major factions cannot agree.
It is only because of such division that ISIL has been able to gain a foothold in Libya. But the longer such division continues, the harder it will be to eradicate ISIL.
The militant group sees Libya as a possible next staging post, if it loses its strongholds in Iraq and Syria. That should worry the Arab world as well as Europe because Libya has already been used as a staging post for attacks in neighbouring Tunisia. If the group loses its foothold in Syria, they may well see in Libya a space for them to gather, train, organise – and conduct attacks from. That would pose a grave threat to North African states and beyond. Egypt is right next door and Europe is nearby.
This US attack, then, must only be the beginning. Libya needs a concerted plan of action that combines political unity as well as military action against ISIL. Only that can genuinely rid Libya of the scourge of this militant group.
