US bombs ISIL in Libya in Obama’s last stand

Obama orders a blitz of air strikes on ISIL camps in Libya as he seeks to amend what he says was the greatest mistake of his presidency.

A B2 stealth bomber takes off in support of operations with the Libyan Government of National Accord on January 18, 2017, destroying four ISIL camps 45km southwest of Sirte, Libya. Senior airman JovanShow more

Barack Obama chose to make the final military act of his presidency an order for air strikes on ISIL in Libya this week, a country where he declared last year he had made the “greatest mistake” of his presidency.

From late on Wednesday night until the early hours of Thursday, two B2 bombers pounded two ISIL bases 48 kilometres south-west of the coastal town of Sirte.

For the past two years, US jets have carried out precision raids against both ISIL and Al Qaeda across Libya. By contrast, the use of B2s, each of which can carry 80 bombs, was a blitz intended to pulverise the two camps.

US officials told the Wall Street Journal that intelligence had been monitoring ISIL units for several days as they moved and made camp in Libya's desert.

The strikes on ISIL close to Sirte came less than a month after the US halted a four-month bombing campaign against the extremists in the town, which had been ISIL’s Libya headquarters. The Pentagon said the campaign, which began on August 1, saw US Harrier jets, attack helicopters and drones fly 495 strike missions to support ground forces allied to Libya’s UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) in capturing Sirte.

When the town finally fell on December 6, there was speculation that many ISIL fighters, estimated by the Pentagon last year to number 6,000 across Libya had managed to flee during the battle.

For the latest strikes, the US deployed its most expensive and sophisticated warplane, the B2 bomber. A pair of the jets flew the mission from their base in Missouri, a 30-hour round trip involving five mid-air refuellings. Backing them up, but unused, were Tomahawk cruise missiles aboard the destroyers USS Donald Cook and USS Porter in the Mediterranean.

The advanced radar-shielding technology of the B2 was not needed for a strike on ISIL, whose fighters would probably not have heard them in the night sky until the bombs rained down. But their bomb capacity is far higher than America’s Europe-based jets, allowing both camps to be flattened simultaneously. The Pentagon said the camps were hit with 108 precision-guided bombs in an operation conducted in coordination with the GNA.

In the US determination to wipe out, rather than damage, the ISIL units, at least one drone spent the rest of the night targeting stragglers with Hellfire missiles.

US defence secretary Ash Carter said a full analysis of the strikes would take time, but US officials estimated at least 85 fighters were killed.

“We need to strike ISIL everywhere they show up,” said Mr Carter. “And that’s particularly true in view of the fact that we know some of the ISIL operatives in Libya were involved with plotting attacks.”

The bombing is a reminder of Mr Obama’s declaration last April that a failure to follow up air strikes in support of rebels battling Muammar Qaddafi in 2011 was the “greatest mistake” of his presidency.

In the chaotic aftermath of Libya’s revolution that year, the country slid into civil war, a complicated struggle that involves two governments at opposite ends of the country and a mosaic of warring militias.

ISIL took advantage of this chaos to set up bases across Libya. It has failed to recruit many Libyans in a country dominated by tribal and regional loyalties, but has gathered foreign fighters.

While the US continues to scan the desert for signs of ISIL survivors, other ISIL fighters are battling the Libya National Army of Field Marshall Khalifa Haftar, the country’s most powered armed formation, in the eastern town of Benghazi.

The US has given no publicly acknowledged aid to the field marshall’s forces, which are aligned with the house of representatives parliament operating in eastern Libya. However, America’s Nato ally, France has had no compunction in revealing last summer that it was providing expertise to the Libyans following the death of three operatives from its elite Department General Security Exterior intelligence service in a helicopter crash near Benghazi.

Like Mr Obama before him, incoming president Donald Trump will learn that air strikes provide no definitive solution to eradicating ISIL from Libya.

Only a political settlement to end the country’s civil war, allowing a united army to turn its guns on the extremists, can achieve that. Time will tell whether the new US administration can succeed better than its predecessor in encouraging the country’s factions to come together.