David Cameron has been blamed for causing the rise of ISIS in North Africa after he went to war in Libya based on an ‘incomplete understanding’ of the situation. The former PM turned what was meant to be an limited intervention into an ‘opportunist policy of regime change’ based on inadequate intelligence, a report found.
MPs from the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said there was no coherent strategy for how to deal with the aftermath when dictator Col Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown.
This led to political and economic collapse, civil war, humanitarian crisis and the rise of Islamic State (IS) in north Africa, they said. The whole thing was based on ‘erroneous assumptions’, the parliamentary inquiry found.
Ministers urging support for the rebels should have realised they included a significant Islamist element, the committee said. It called for an independent review of the way decisions were taken by the National Security Council (NSC).
And it said the international community needed to get behind the UN-backed interim government to prevent the country descending into all-out civil war.
An international coalition led by Britain and France launched a campaign of air and missile strikes against Gaddafi’s forces in March 2011 after the regime threatened to attack the rebel-held city of Benghazi.
Mr Cameron argued the intervention was necessary to prevent a massacre of civilians but the committee said the available evidence showed that, despite his appalling human rights abuses over 40 years, Gaddafi had no record of large-scale attacks on Libyan civilians.
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