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By Ashraf Abdul Wahab and Nigel Ash
Tripoli, 17 September 2013:
The US defence department in Washington has confirmed to the Libya Herald . . .[restrict]that US equipment was stolen in a raid by an unidentified militia on a US base in Tripoli, where it appears American special forces were training Libyan army personnel.
Anger at the failure of Libyan army formations tasked with protecting the facility, reportedly caused the US last month to withdraw its training cadres from the country.
Much about the seizure of the equipment remains unclear. The story was broken by the Fox News TV channel which, seemingly relying on sources from the US State Department, claimed that in two separate raids on the US training base, “ to the west of Tripoli” key equipment, including laser-aiming equipment that could only be seen with dedicated night-vision kit, was taken in overnight raids on the training base.
On each occasion the facility had been guarded by Libyan security personnel, who apparently did little to defend the base from the intruders.
Fox claimed that the stolen equipment “included dozens of M4 rifles, night-vision technology and lasers used as aiming devices that are mounted on guns and can only be seen with night-vision equipment.”
The station went on to claim that the raids were mounted against a military training camp, commonly known as Camp 27 or 32 Brigade Camp, 27 kilometres west of Tripoli, run by American Special Forces.
Sources close to the Libyan Ministry of Defence have told the Libya Herald that that base was in fact at Salahuddin. The dozen US personnel withdrew from the training facility there each evening to secure accommodation, leaving their equipment to be guarded overnight by local security personnel. The source however declined to comment on how the base was twice entered by militiamen and” important “equipment seized. The source also refused to confirm that after the second raid, Washington decided to withdraw the training mission entirely.
Speaking to the Libya Herald, the Pentagon was guarded its comments: “As a result of militia raid on a Libyan military base,“ a spokesman said, “some US equipment was unaccounted for and presumed stolen. We are working with our partners to fully assess the situation and recover the missing items as much as possible. We continuously evaluate training opportunities with other nations, including any US-Libyan military training.”
There have since been unconfirmed reports that Libyan security personnel interdicted an attempt to smuggle weaponry, that may have included some of the items stolen from the US training facility, into Algeria.
Fox News has maintained that the loss of the specialised equipment has caused a rift between Washington and Tripoli. However a London defence specialist today told Libya Herald: “This all sounds rather odd. It would be hard to imagine that US forces, whatever their mission, would be training Libyans with state-of-the-art equipment. It just doesn’t work that way. Not only that, but if this kit were so very specialised, it seems inconceivable that the Americans would ever let it out of their sight, assuming that it has been offered in training to the Libyans in the first place.”
The whole issue of the special forces training camp has given rise to speculation that the dozen US trainers were in fact a cover for American efforts to identify the murders of US ambassador Chris Stevens and three colleagues in Benghazi just over a year ago.
Nevertheless. the American military appears to helping Libya rebuild its armed forces. This week a plan was announced to train up to 8,000 Libyan soldiers at two joint US-Bulgarian military bases in Bulgaria. The plan would be to handle between 150 and 200 soldiers at a time. [/restrict]
