WASHINGTON — The United States and its allies have entered a new stage of involvement in Libya, sending assistance and advisers directly to opposition military forces, which have been unable to break Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s stranglehold over much of the country despite help from NATO airstrikes.
France and Italy said Wednesday that they would join Britain in dispatching military advisers to assist the inexperienced and disorganized rebel army, primarily in tactics and logistics.
President Barack Obama authorized sending $25 million worth of nonlethal equipment, including body armor, tents, uniforms and vehicles.
The assistance appeared to stretch the definition of the “civilian protection” mandate contained in last month’s U.N. resolution authorizing foreign intervention in Libya. The allies said their efforts were indirectly achieving that objective, because the rebel force was best-positioned on the ground to protect Libyans from attacks — or the threat of attacks — by Gadhafi loyalists.
The rebel-held western Libyan city of Misrata continued to be the focus of the fighting. NATO said its warplanes struck government targets on the outskirts of the besieged city as well as around Tripoli, the capital.
The arrival of European military advisers and U.S. uniforms is unlikely to rapidly change the trajectory of the conflict, however, and NATO and its Arab partners in the Libya operation continue to count on their economic and diplomatic war of attrition against Gadhafi paying off in the end.
“We are dealing with a set of imperfect options,” a senior administration official said, noting that the measure of success is not “where things stand” but “where they would have stood had we done nothing.”
The NATO airstrikes and a no-fly zone enforced by NATO and Arab countries “have essentially frozen the battle space in terms of the advance of Gadhafi’s forces,” he said, and “if you work all the other levers, you can make time work against Gadhafi.”
The official emphasized that Obama has no intention of sending U.S. ground forces — including noncombat military advisers — to Libya.
But the administration’s attempts to firmly limit its involvement have also contributed to an image of disarray within NATO.
A senior European official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing the Americans, said that Obama’s eagerness to turn over command of the Libyan air operation to NATO late last month, and the withdrawal of U.S. fighter planes from ground strike missions, had undermined the strength of their united front against Gadhafi.
In a feisty response, Vice President Joe Biden said the alliance was perfectly capable of handling the air attack mission itself.
“It is bizarre to suggest that NATO and the rest of the world lacks the capacity to deal with Libya — it does not,” Biden said in an interview with the Financial Times.
