29 Dead in 8 Days as U.S. Puts Yemen Drone War in Overdrive
* By Noah Shachtman
<
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/author/noah_shachtman/>
* September 5, 2012 |
29 dead in a little over a week. Nearly 200 gone this year. The White House
is stepping up its campaign of drone attacks in Yemen, with four strikes in
eight days. And not even the slaying of 10 civilians over the weekend seems
to have slowed the pace in the United States' secretive, undeclared war.
At this week's Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, you'll hear
<
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/09/dem-convention/> lots of talk about
the Obama administration's pursuit of al-Qaida and its allies - including,
of course, the raid that ultimately took out Osama bin Laden. But the
hottest battlefield in this worldwide conflict isn't likely to receive much
attention. It's a shame, because the fight in Yemen is one that demands
discussion. Not only does the White House consider al-Qaida in the Arabian
Peninsula to be the extremist group most likely to strike in the United
States. But the American response to that threat was been widely questioned
by regional experts, who wonder whether U.S. drones and commandos aren't
being duped into fighting on one side of a civil war.
The latest attack came in Hadramout province, where a barrage of eight
missiles slammed into a suspected militant safe house on Wednesday, killing
six people. "
<
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2012/09/6_islamist_militants.php#ixz
z25c350XBZ> The exact target of today's strike has not been disclosed; no
senior AQAP leaders have been reported killed in the attack," the Long War
Journal notes. Most of those killed were fresh recruits;
<
http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/05/world/meast/yemen-drone-strike/index.html>
only one could be considered an extremist veteran, a security official tells
CNN. Several others were able to
<
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/05/yemen-qaeda-idUSL6E8K588F20120905
> escape the hideout alive.
On Sunday, at least 10 civilians were not so fortunate. They were killed in
a strike gone awry near the town of Rada'a in al-Baitha province. An
aircraft - believed to be an American drone -
<
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g-lcy97e1q00-ocw0WVO2B1-
J2AQ?docId=CNG.addf2dcbfe9b931ff7fc97a6c01cf101.6d1> fired a pair of
missiles at a vehicle supposedly carrying a local AQAP leader. One of the
missiles instead hit a nearby minibus.
<
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Yemeni+warplane+misses+target+kills+civil
ians+including+girl/7182533/story.html> A 10-year-old girl and her mother
were among the dead. "Families
<
http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/03/world/meast/yemen-drone-strike/?hpt=hp_t3>
attempted to carry the victims' corpses to the capital, Sana'a, to lay them
in front of the residence of newly elected President Abdurabu Hadi, but were
sent back by local security forces," according to CNN.
"You want us to stay quiet while our wives and brothers are being killed for
no reason. This attack is the real terrorism," one Rada'a resident tells the
network. Members of parliament and Yemeni human rights groups were
<
http://www.alsahwa-yemen.net/arabic/subjects/5/2012/9/5/22148.htm> quick to
condemn the killings, as well.
The U.S. has
<
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/06/cias-drones-join-shadow-war-over-ye
men/?utm_source=Contextly&utm_medium=RelatedLinks&utm_campaign=Previous> two
separate drone campaigns underway in Yemen - one run by the CIA, the other
by the military's Joint Special Operations Command. Together, they've
conducted 43 strikes since the start of 2011, according to a Long War
Journal tally, killing 274 people in the process. Exactly how many of the
274 were militants is tough to tell; the U.S. "
<
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaed
a.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&pagewanted=print> counts all military-age males
in a strike zone as combatants," the New York Times recently reported.
Either way, the drones are only one facet of a
<
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/06/yemen-war/all/> much American
broader war effort in Yemen. U.S. commandos stationed inside Yemen are
helping government forces target their militant adversaries. American
warplanes, based in neighboring Djibouti, are also flying missions over the
country. The U.S. has acknowledged it will spend $112 million on military
assistance to the Yemeni military for
<
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/07/yemen/> gear like night vision
goggles and commando raiding boats. More than twice that amount will help
fund nation-building there, to include "
<
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/08/brennan-yemen/> food vouchers, safe
drinking water and basic health services," according to top White House
counterterrorism adviser John Brennan.
The rationale for this rather sizable campaign is simple, Brennan says: AQAP
is al-Qaida's "
<
http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/04/20/brennan-on-bin-laden-raid-and-dang
erous-yemen/> most active operational franchise." Its members have tried to
launch attacks on the U.S., including the infamous "
<
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/11/meet-the-bomb-maker-the-behind-unde
rpants-printer-attacks/> underwear bomber" of 2009, and
<
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/10/al-qaeda-mag-urges-shooting-up-d-c-
eateries/> inspire American-based extremists to do the same. Its allies even
managed to
<
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/07/inside-yemens-shadow-war/> take
over Yemen's Abyan province for a time. In a single attack this March,
insurgents surprised Yemen's 25th Mechanized Brigade, kidnapped 73 soldiers,
and killed as many as 200 more in their sleep.
But the results of U.S. intervention are harder to gauge. Brennan and his
colleagues say they're making progress in Yemen as a new government there
gets trained up to take on the counterterror fight. Yet AQAP's ranks appear
to be swelling - exactly why, no one is quite sure. University of Virginia
researcher Christopher Swift says it's <
http://www.offiziere.ch/?p=8742>
largely because of economic arguments. One the other hand, one member of
Yemen's coalition government disagrees tells the Washington Post that "
<
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/in-yemen-us-airstrikes-bree
d-anger-and-sympathy-for-al-qaeda/2012/05/29/gJQAUmKI0U_print.html> there is
a psychological acceptance of al-Qaida because of the U.S. strikes,"
Nor is it always clear who is fighting whom. Yes, the government is battling
AQAP. But it's also trying to put down a rebellion - and the rebels are
often hard to separate from the terrorists. Meanwhile, forces supporting the
former president have
<
http://www.criticalthreats.org/yemen/yemen-crisis-situation-reports-update-
143-july-31-2012> battled with troops loyal to the new administration, and
tribal militias have
<
http://www.criticalthreats.org/gulf-aden-security-review/gulf-aden-security
-review-september-4-2012> struck both Islamists and soldiers. So this is a
conflict with as many as five sides, which would present a strategic
challenge even if American policy makers were intimately familiar with
Yemen. They are not.
"
<
http://bigthink.com/waq-al-waq/drones-drift-and-the-new-american-way-of-war
?page=2> This is not going to end well," Princeton University's Gregory
Johnsen, an expert on the region, recently wrote. "In an effort to destroy
the threat coming out of Yemen, the U.S. is getting sucked further into the
quicksand of a conflict it doesn't understand and one in which its very
presence tilts the tables against the U.S." Meanwhile, the strikes keep
coming.
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Received on Wed Sep 05 2012 - 16:17:28 EDT
