The United States has sought to help Libya’s military regain control over the North African state.

Officials said the U.S. military and Defense Department have been drafting plans to provide weapons and training to Tripoli. They said the military assistance was required to help the new interim government gain control over large parts of the country now held by Al Qaida-aligned militias.

“I’ve been to Tripoli a number of times,” U.S. Africa Command chief Gen. Carter Ham said. “We’ve had Libyan officials visit us in our headquarters in Germany, and we have started to map out what the U.S. assistance might be for Libya well into the future.”

In an address to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies on June 25, Ham said U.S. support to Libya was part of Washington’s security strategy for
Africa. The general said the aid could include communications, air transport, logistics, training and an intelligence exchange.

Officials said the administration of President Barack Obama has been alarmed by the loss of government control over large parts of Libya, particularly in the south. They said Tripoli has failed to stop the flow of missiles and other weapons to Al Qaida and other insurgency networks in the region. Some of the networks were believed to have targeted U.S. diplomatic facilities in Libya.

“Libya has a real challenge of many militias who fought bravely during the revolution, but now how do you bring those disparate organizations under
government control?” Ham asked.

Much of the Libyan weapons were believed to have reached Al Qaida Organization in the Islamic Maghreb. Ham said AQIM has sought to form an
anti-Western coalition to destabilize U.S. allies in North Africa and Sahel, including Mali and Nigeria.

“It [AQIM] is essentially unconstrained,” Ham said. “There is real concern in Libya. We see worrying indicators that Al Qaida and others are seeking to establish a presence in Libya.”

The general said Washington did not seek to establish a large military presence in Libya. He said, however, the U.S. military would help secure diplomatic facilities.

“[It would] certainly not [be] a large military presence, probably no permanent military presence other than an attache and an office of U.S. military cooperation,” Ham, who also reported a U.S. military presence in Morocco, said. “Occasionally, we do in fact have deployments, short-term deployments of capabilities throughout the continent of Africa.”

AQIM was also believed to be working with the Al Qaida-aligned Al Shabab in Somalia. Officials said Al Shabab, which was recruiting Americans, was believed to have expanded operations.

“In Somalia especially, Al Shabab’s presence has denied the delivery of humanitarian assistance to a population that has been under some significant duress for a long period of time,” Ham said.

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