WASHINGTON — President Obama is being pressed by some of his top national security aides to approve the use of US military power in Libya to open up another front against the Islamic State.
But Obama, wary of embarking on an intervention in another strife-torn country, has told his aides to redouble their efforts to help form a unity government in Libya at the same time the Pentagon refines its options, which include airstrikes, commando raids, or advising vetted Libyan militias on the ground, as Special Operations forces are doing now in eastern Syria. The use of large numbers of US ground troops is not being considered.
The debate, which played out in a meeting Obama had with his advisers last week, has not been resolved, nor have the size or contours of any possible US military involvement been determined.
“The White House just has to decide,’’ said one senior State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “The case has been laid out by virtually every department.’’
The number of Islamic State fighters in Libya, Pentagon officials said this week, has grown to between 5,000 and 6,500 — more than double the estimate government analysts disclosed last fall. Rather than travel to Iraq or Syria, many new Islamic State recruits from across North Africa have remained in Libya, in militant strongholds along more than 150 miles of Mediterranean coastline near Sirte, these officials said.
The top leadership of the Islamic State in Syria has sent half a dozen top lieutenants to Libya to help organize what Western officials consider the most dangerous of the group’s eight global affiliates. In recent months, US and British Special Operations teams have increased clandestine reconnaissance missions in Libya to identify the militant leaders and map out their networks for possible strikes.
Military planners are still awaiting orders on whether US involvement would include striking senior leaders, attacking a broader set of targets, or deploying teams of commandos to work with Libyan fighters who promise to support a new Libyan government. Any military action would be coordinated with European allies, officials said.
Teams of American Special Operations forces have over the past year been trying to court Libyan allies who might join a new government in a fight against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. But commanders say they are dealing with a patchwork of Libyan militias that remain unreliable, unaccountable, poorly organized, and divided by region and tribe.
“How long will the United States and the Europeans wait until they say, we have to work with whatever militias we can on the ground?’’ said Frederic Wehrey, a Libya specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who frequently visits the country.
When Obama assembled his national security advisers last Thursday to discuss escalating the fight against the Islamic State, he asked them to prepare whatever military measures were necessary to combat the militants in Libya while not undercutting the international effort to help form a national unity government.
For Obama the challenge is to avoid embarking on yet another major counterterrorism campaign in his last year in office while also moving decisively to prevent the rise of a new arm of the Islamic State that if left unchecked analysts say could attack the West, including Americans or US interests.
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter summed up the balancing act between nurturing the fragile and fitful political process and gearing up for what would most likely be a Special Operations war this way last week: “We’re looking to help them get control over their own country.’’
But, he added, “We don’t want to be on a glide slope to a situation like Syria and Iraq. That’s the reason why we’re watching it that closely. That’s the reason why we develop options for what we might do in the future.’’
