The number of strikes is small but points to the threat the Trump administration believes Libya still poses and raises questions about whether the Pentagon has tried to obscure operations there.
The U.S. military has carried out twice as many airstrikes against Islamic State group (ISIS) extremists in Libya since President Donald Trump took office as it has publicly acknowledged, raising questions about whether the Pentagon has sought to obscure operations in the strife-torn North African nation.
The total number of strikes — eight since January 2017 — is relatively small. But the uptick points to the threat that the Trump administration believes Libya still poses, despite the president’s focus on the U.S.-led campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq that he has trumpeted as one of his administration’s signature national-security accomplishments.
Counterterrorism specialists warn that ISIS and al-Qaida still pose formidable threats in places like Somalia, Yemen and West Africa. On Tuesday, Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, head of the Africa Command, said in congressional testimony, “We are heavily involved in the counterterrorism piece” in Libya.
But on Thursday, a spokesman for the command, Maj. Karl Wiest, cited four other previously undisclosed airstrikes, most recently in January.
Commanders decided to reveal those strikes only if specifically asked about them, a practice the Pentagon calls “responses to questions,” Wiest said via telephone and email from the Africa Command’s headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. He said journalists, usually tipped off by local reporting in Libya, have called about some but not all of the four strikes.
Wiest said the additional four strikes were not disclosed when they happened to protect U.S.-backed forces or because of diplomatic issues. “We’re not trying to hide anything,” he said.
He could not explain why the command did not announce the strikes some days later, after the sensitivities were presumably resolved or otherwise went away. Of the previously undisclosed airstrikes, one was launched in September, two in October and one in January.
To be sure, the number of U.S. airstrikes in Libya since Trump took office — carried out largely by armed MQ-9 Reaper drones flying from an air base in Sicily, Italy — is tiny compared with the number of strikes carried out against extremists in Yemen (more than 130) or Somalia (more than 40) in the same period. And it pales compared with airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, where the U.S.-led coalition has bombed on a near-daily basis.
