Top adviser to Libya’s PM says Obama, U.S. blind to Islamic State threat in Libya

“If help had been coming for the last four years, we wouldn’t have this problem.” But no help was coming, because Obama was on the wrong side, actively aiding the anti-Gaddafi “rebels” who killed Ambassador Stevens at Benghazi. “He said the arrival of al-Baghdadi’s movement — also known by the acronyms ISIS and ISIL — shows how the threat has grown since the U.S. effectively withdrew after the September 2012 attack that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.”

This is Obama’s legacy: the rise of the Islamic State and the retreat of freedom and stability everywhere.

“Obama, U.S. blind to Islamic State threat in Libya,” by Guy Taylor, The Washington Times, February 3, 2015:

A top adviser to Libya’s prime minister warned Tuesday that the Obama administration and the U.S. intelligence community have dramatically underestimated the Islamic State’s expansion into his nation — a development that could have been avoided had Washington led a more aggressive counterterrorism strategy after Moammar Gadhafi’s ouster in 2011.

Expanding ties in recent months between Libyan extremist groups and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Syria- and Iraq-based Islamic State movement have attracted more international attention during recent weeks. But U.S. officials have resisted playing up the association — even after an outfit claiming allegiance to al-Baghdadi killed a U.S. citizen in an assault on Tripoli’s Corinthia Hotel last week.

“If help had been coming for the last four years, we wouldn’t have this problem,” Aref Ali Nayed, the nation’s ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and a top adviser on security policy to Libyan Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni, said in an interview.

He said the arrival of al-Baghdadi’s movement — also known by the acronyms ISIS and ISIL — shows how the threat has grown since the U.S. effectively withdrew after the September 2012 attack that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

“After Chris Stevens’ death, instead of being re-energized to not let him die in vain, there’s been a reluctance to have anything to do with Libya,” Mr. Nayed said.

He said he was not blaming the Obama administration or delivering an official message from the al-Thinni government, but he stressed in an interview that moderates in Libya’s struggling government have been unable “to stop the growth of extremism, and the net result is that we now have an infestation of ISIS that is not only threatening Libya, but the entire region and our European neighbors.”

Mr. Nayed was in Washington on Tuesday to promote the Libya Institute for Advanced Studies, a civil society group that he and others created in 2013 with the goal of promoting freedom and democracy among younger Libyans….

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