The safety and security of weapons in Libya, and preventing them from moving into the hands of violent extremists is something that the head of U.S. African Command is concerned about.
“We have seen points in Libya in past years used as transit points for foreign fighters and the like, and just to make sure that that segment doesn’t reemerge and doesn’t become a part of the interim government or any subsequent government,” is important, Gen. Carter Ham recently told the Defense Writers Group.
At the end of August, Ham attended a meeting in Doha, Qatar, of chiefs of staff from countries militarily involved in Libya. “A very legitimate concern” for attendees was the role of violent extremist organizations in a post Qaddafi Libya, Ham said. Conference attendees discussed the security and military way ahead with leaders of the Libya Transitional National Council.
There are a number of such extremist organizations, Ham said, and they “certainly warrant a degree of examination and a dialogue between the United States and any other nation with the National Transitional Council to say we have to be very careful, it’s a very legitimate concern of ours.”
The council recognizes that concern but also wants an inclusive government going forward.
In command some six months now, Ham has traveled over his broad area of responsibility noting the presence of extremists in East Africa, involved in piracy among other things, and yet other groups, with different operations in West Africa, working to expand their influence.
This issue will have to be worked collaboratively on the part of the United States and other regional states to reach the goal of African solutions for African problems, as expressed in a 2009 speech by President Barack Obama.
Extremists are already discussing collaboration, and also recently, published reports from Pakistan said top al Qaeda leaders had left Afghanistan and were headed to Somalia or Yemen. The State Department’s most recent report on terrorism lists al Qaeda as on top of the list of threats to the United States.
While Ham said he could question the extremists’ capabilities, he did not question their explicit intent to harm westerners and particularly U.S. citizens.
Extremist’s capabilities could be improved by their ability to get weapons from the disorder in Libya. The proliferation of weapons in three categories concerns Ham.
“For me at the top of the list would be MANPADS, just because of the threat of their use that could result if those get into extremist organizations hands,” he said.
The State Department has led a regional effort to craft a way ahead.
“I’ve actually been pretty encouraged by engagement with our regional partners,” Ham said. Such states recognize the MANPAD risk and it’s been “heartening” to see greater collaboration and sharing of intelligence and border security to try and stem the MANPADS flow.
Second, the conventional munitions and explosives that could be the components of IEDs are of concern, he said. There are lots of those munitions or explosives and their security is vital.
Then there are residual chemical components that before March events in Libya were being systematically demilitarized and destroyed. The work was not completed so some of those materials remain a concern and must be secured. The material, he hastened to add, is not weaponized or easily weaponized, but still must be secured.
The current NATO mandate for action in Libya comes to an end Sept. 27, and NATO will have to determine what is next, what follows NATO involvement.
The greatest lesson Ham draws from operations in Libya is that combatant commanders don’t get to choose their missions, but must be prepared for a full spectrum of operations,
“While Africa command is principally focused on engagement and military to military activities and training and exercising, and those kinds of things, we must always, always, retain the capability to do the higher end operations,” Ham said.