The U.S. Must Blunt Russia’s Adventurism in Libya
The deployment of Kremlin-linked mercenaries will make a costly civil war even harder to end.
They’re about to be outgunned. Mahmud TURKIA / AFP) (Photo credit should read MAHMUD TURKIA/AFP via Getty Images)
Photographer: Mahmud Turkia/AFP via Getty Images
Until recently, very little had changed in Libya since April, when General Khalifa Haftar, the commander of the self-styled “Libya National Army,” attacked Tripoli. Now, two high-profile stories have highlighted the presence of Russian mercenaries on the front lines of the war and their impact on the fight over Libya’s capital. For the first time, a spokesperson from the U.S. Africa Command confirmed the presence of “Russian private military companies” in the west of Libya (Russia’s presence in the east, away from the fighting, has long been suspect). And in an unusual step, a U.S.-Libya dialogue decried “Russia’s attempts to exploit the conflict against the will of the Libyan people.”
After seven months of equivocating about Libya’s third civil war in nearly nine years, the Trump administration has an opportunity to play a meaningful role in stopping it. To do that, however, the administration would have to engage in uncharacteristically aggressive, and disruptive, regional diplomacy. Neither it nor the Obama administration before it has ever given Libya the U.S. attention it deserves.