The White House, under political
pressure to respond forcefully to the Sept. 11 attack on theU.S. Consulate in
Benghazi, is readying strike forces and drones but first has to find a target.
And if the administration does find
a target, officials say it still has to weigh whether the short-term payoff of
exacting retribution on al-Qaida is worth the risk that such strikes could
elevate the group's profile in the region, alienate governments the U.S. needs
to fight the group in the future and do little to slow the growing terror
threat in North Africa.
Details on the administration's
position and on its search for a possible target were provided by three current
and one former administration official, as well as an analyst who was
approached by the White House for help. All four spoke on condition of
anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the high-level debates
publicly.
In another effort to bolster Libyan
security, the Pentagon and State Department have been developing a plan to
train and equip a special operations force in Libya, according to a senior
defense official.
The efforts show the tension of the
White House's need to demonstrate it is responding forcefully to al-Qaida,
balanced against its long-term plans to develop relationships and trust with
local governments and build a permanent U.S. counterterrorist network in the
region.
Vice President Joe Biden pledged in
his debate last week with Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan to
find those responsible for the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in
Benghazi that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others.
"We will find and bring to
justice the men who did this," Biden said in response to a question about
whether intelligence failures led to lax security around Stevens and the
consulate. Referring back to the raid that killedOsama bin Laden last year,
Biden said American counterterror policy should be, "if you do harm to
America, we will track you to the gates of hell if need be."
The White House declined to comment
on the debate over how best to respond to the Benghazi attack.
The attack has become an issue in
the U.S. election season, with Republicans accusing the Obama administration of
being slow to label the assault an act of terrorism and slow to strike back at
those responsible. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday night
that the security of State Department operations was her responsibility.
The White House is "aiming for
a small pop, a flash in the pan, so as to be able to say, 'Hey, we're doing
something about it,'" said retired Air Force Lt. Col. Rudy Attalah, the
former Africa counterterrorism director for Defense Department under President
George W. Bush.
Attalah noted that in 1998, after
the embassy bombing in Nairobi, the Clinton administration fired cruise
missiles to take out a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan that may have been
producing chemical weapons for al-Qaida.
"It was a way to say, 'Look,
we did something,'" he said.
On the subject of developing a
special operations unit, U.S. officials received approval from Congress well
before the Benghazi attack to reprogram some funding in the budget that could
be used for the commando program in Libya. But the details are still being
discussed with the Libyans and also must get final approval from Congress,
according to the defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because
he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
The initial cost is estimated at
about $6.2 million.
The defense official said U.S.
leaders have recognized the need to train Libyan commando forces, but details
such as the size, mission and composition of the forces are still being
finalized.
A Washington-based analyst with
extensive experience in Africa said administration officials have approached
him for help in connecting the dots to Mali, whose northern half fell to
al-Qaida-linked rebels this spring. They wanted to know if he could suggest
potential targets, which he says he was not able to do.
"The civilian side is looking
into doing something and is running into a lot of pushback from the military
side," the analyst said. "The resistance that is coming from the
military side is because the military has both worked in the region and trained
in the region. So they are more realistic."
Islamists in the region are
preparing for a reaction from the U.S.
"If America hits us, I promise
you that we will multiply the Sept. 11 attack by 10," said Oumar Ould
Hamaha, a spokesman for the Islamists in northern Mali, while denying that his
group or al-Qaida fighters based in Mali played a role in the Benghazi attack.
Finding the militants who
overwhelmed a small security force at the consulate isn't going to be easy.
The key suspects are members of the
Libyan militia group Ansar al-Shariah. The group has denied responsibility, but
eyewitnesses saw Ansar fighters at the consulate, and U.S. intelligence
intercepted phone calls after the attack from Ansar fighters to leaders of
al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, bragging about it. The affiliate's
leaders are known to be mostly in northern Mali, where they have seized a
territory as large as Texas following a coup in the country's capital. The
Maghreb is a region of northwest Africa that stretches from Libya to
Mauritania.
But U.S. investigators have only
loosely linked "one or two names" to the attack, and they lack proof
that it was planned ahead of time or that the local fighters had any help from
the larger al-Qaida affiliate, officials say.
If that proof is found, the White
House must decide whether to ask Libyan security forces to arrest the suspects
with an eye to extraditing them to the U.S. for trial or to simply target the
suspects with U.S. covert action.
U.S. officials say covert action is
more likely. The FBI couldn't gain access to the consulate until weeks after
the attack, so it is unlikely it will be able to build a strong criminal case.
The U.S. is also leery of trusting the arrest and questioning of the suspects
to the fledgling Libyan security forces and legal system still building after
the overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.
The burden of proof for U.S. covert
action is far lower, but action by the CIA or special operations forces still
requires a body of evidence that shows the suspect either took part in the
violence or presents a "continuing and persistent, imminent threat"
to U.S. targets, current and former officials said.
"If the people who were
targeted were themselves directly complicit in this attack or directly
affiliated with a group strongly implicated in the attack, then you can make an
argument of imminence of threat," said Robert Grenier, former director of
the CIA's Counterterrorism Center.
But if the U.S. acts alone to
target them in Africa, "it raises all kinds of sovereignty issues ... and
makes people very uncomfortable," said Grenier, who has criticized the
CIA's heavy use of drones in Pakistan without that government's support.
Even a strike that happens with
permission could prove problematic, especially in Libya or Mali, where al-Qaida
supporters are currently based. Both countries have fragile, interim
governments that could lose popular support if they are seen allowing the U.S.
unfettered access to hunt al-Qaida.
The Libyan government is so wary of
the U.S. investigation expanding into unilateral action that it refused
requests to arm the drones now being flown over Libya. Libyan officials have
complained publicly that they were unaware of how large the U.S. intelligence presence
was in Benghazi until a couple of dozen U.S. officials showed up at the airport
after the attack, waiting to be evacuated — roughly twice the number of U.S.
staff the Libyans thought were there. A number of those waiting to be evacuated
worked for U.S. intelligence, according to two American officials.
In Mali, U.S. officials have urged
the government to allow special operations trainers to return, to work with
Mali's forces to push al-Qaida out of that country's northern area. AQIM is
among the groups that filled the power vacuum after a coup by rebellious Malian
forces in March.
U.S. special operations forces
trainers left Mali just days after the coup. While such trainers have not been
invited to return, the U.S. has expanded its intelligence effort on Mali,
focusing satellite and spy flights over the contested northern region to track
and map the militant groups vying for control of the territory, officials say.
No comments:
Post a Comment