y ANDREW HIGGINS
Published: June 4, 2013
BRUSSELS — NATO is sending a team of experts to Libya to assess how the alliance can provide security assistance, notably military training, to help the turbulent North African nation combat Islamist militants claiming allegiance to Al Qaeda and other threats.
Libya has been bedeviled by instability since a NATO air campaign helped topple the country’s longtime dictator, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, in 2011. The pledge to help Libya’s fragile new government came as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and other NATO defense ministers began a two-day meeting in Brussels focused largely on Afghanistan and cybersecurity.
The NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said at a news conference that a team of experts would visit Libya “as soon as possible” and report back by the end of June. He said that providing security assistance “would be a fitting way to continue our cooperation with Libya after we successfully took action to protect the Libyan people two years ago.”
The overthrow of Colonel Qaddafi’s autocratic government has left the new government struggling to fill a security vacuum. Last September, Islamist militants attacked the United States Mission in Benghazi, resulting in the death of the American ambassador and three of his colleagues, an episode that created a political firestorm in Washington over whether security issues were taken seriously enough and how President Obama’s administration responded.
Mr. Rasmussen, who discussed Libya last Friday in Washington with Mr. Obama, said Tuesday in Brussels that any security assistance would aim to beef up Libya’s own security forces and would not involve sending NATO troops to the country.
“Let me stress, this is not about deploying troops to Libya,” said Mr. Rasmussen, who added that the country had made a formal request for help last week. He said that any training of military forces “could take place outside Libya.”
Prime Minister Ali Zeidan of Libya visited NATO headquarters in Brussels early last week and said that the alliance had agreed to provide “technical assistance in terms of training.” He provided no additional details.
Libya has been wracked by insecurity since the overthrow of Colonel Qaddafi in the summer of 2011, when NATO declared a no-fly zone and sent warplanes to assist anti-Qaddafi rebels.
The growing role of Islamist fighters is a source of special concern to Washington. They have become particularly active in southern Libya, where militants have taken refuge after being driven out of Mali by a French-led offensive earlier this year.
The first day of the NATO defense ministers’ meeting, however, centered on the threat posed by attacks on the alliance’s computer systems. "Cyberattacks are getting more common, more complex and more dangerous,” Mr. Rasmussen told reporters. “They come without warning from anywhere in the world and they can have devastating consequences.”
He said that NATO had “dealt with” more than 2,500 “significant cases” last year. “That is one every three hours, day and night, every day of the year,” Mr. Rasmussen said. But he added that “despite the increasing sophistication of these attacks, our security has not been compromised.” He did not specify where the attacks originated.
The NATO secretary general also raised what in recent years has become a perennial complaint at gatherings of the alliance: the shrinking defense budgets of many European nations. Washington has repeatedly pleaded with its allies to beef up their defense budgets but, with much of Europe mired in a deep economic slump, the downward slide has largely continued.
“European countries must do more to relieve the unequal burden that is currently being carried by the United States,” Mr. Rasmussen said.
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