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The Predictable al-Qaeda Advance in Yemen
Al-Qaeda has taken over a major airport and an oil terminal in Yemen. This was predictable, and as odious as it is to say, “I told you so,” I’ll say it, because the point needs making. Anyone with common sense could see this coming, so anyone who says “We had no idea this would happen” has no excuse:
AQAP will be the beneficiary. The focus of our policy in Yemen for years has been counter-terrorism. If AQAP isn’t a real threat, why were we involved there at all? If it is, how could a policy guaranteed to benefit AQAP possibly be in our interest?
The Saudis have succeeded in doing huge damage, but restoring nothing like order. We’re not just hapless bystanders. We’re heavily involved in this:
The U.S. military has begun daily aerial-refueling tanker flights to support the Saudi-led coalition that is intervening in Yemen’s civil war, the latest sign of growing American involvement in the new Middle East conflict.
A U.S. Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker flew the first mission Tuesday night, providing fuel for a Saudi-owned F-15 Eagle and an F-16 Fighting Falcon operated by the United Arab Emirates air force, Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, said Wednesday. …
The Pentagon also has approved limited logistical and intelligence support as well as some weapons shipments for the Saudi-led air campaign that is striking at Iran-backed militants in the troubled Arab country.
CENTCOM has assigned about a dozen U.S. service members to a “fusion center” to work alongside Saudis and other allied militaries from the Gulf Cooperation Council and coordinate the limited U.S. support.
How could it possibly serve US interests to pursue a policy that allows al-Qaeda to gain ground? Because that is indeed what we’re doing:
Created through a merger between Saudi and Yemeni branches of al Qaeda in 2009, AQAP has long been perceived as a threat by the United States. In 2013, State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki described AQAP as “one of the foremost national security challenges faced by the US.” With the support of the Yemeni government, the US has maintained a military and intelligence service presence in the country for more than a decade. Since 2011 a joint operation between the two has launched 88 drone strikes against AQAP, killing more than 482 people.
But now both the Sunni tribes and AQAP, traditionally opposed to the government, suddenly find themselves in a de facto alliance with forces led by Saudi Arabia and backed by the US.
Advanced insanity. We’re doing this with no formal debate or Congressional oversight. Would any normal American back a policy that puts us in a tacit alliance with al-Qaeda? How have we managed to learn absolutely nothing from any of the foreign policy disasters of the past decade?
Photo Credit: Saeed Al-Batati@saeedalBatati After years of relentless drones strikes, #Qaeda in Yemen appears stronger and more defiant. #Yemen, via Vice
Published in General
The UN is fundamentally flawed because it makes no distinction between good and bad actors. That is why we really need a more exclusive group. Simply put we can make no meaningful laws with people that so fundamentally reject our morality.
There’s a real temptation to decide that since we are (obviously) good all our actions are just fine, and whoever is opposed to us and to these is evil. But if you look at the history of the West and Iran since WWII it’s clear that all our actions (eg overthrowing elected Govt, supporting Saddam’s war on Iranian civilians) were not good, nor all their responses to these evil. Otoh wrt women’s rights, we ARE the guys with the white hats.
And the Saudis are barbarous. If told that my options were to be born a woman in Saudi Arabia or Iran, I would without hesitation choose Iran. Nor are the Saudis in any way innocent of exporting and bankrolling the ideologies with which the entire world is now at war.
The Houthis are on sale to the highest bidder. A shame we didn’t have the wherewithal to buy them off.
Anyway, this editorial in Dawn made me laugh.
Tangentially but in the same vein, the news this morning from the Mediterranean is shocking. Why Republicans are failing to hammer Hillary with this is beyond me. This is the cost of chaos–human misery beyond imagination, a massive threat to the West, and the region plunged into a darkness that will last a century.
Indeed.
Ditto. Is not Wahabbi fanaticism being exported around the world on Saudi money, including to American prisons?
Miss Claire, you are unusually harsh today, which is not to say you are wrong…
This I can explain. The GOP is best understood as a Tory party. What you are asking is like asking why Tories did nothing to move England to a sane sense of what went on in Europe in the 1930s….
Please explain. Do you mean we could pay them to kill Iranians or pay them to fight for a middle east where Christians, Jews, and others have the same rights as Muslims?
Pay them to kill al Qaeda and otherwise make as little trouble as possible.
They may do the former on their own and they won’t do the latter. How about just paying (or simply telling) the Saudis to kill both al Qaeda and the Houthis?
Not to be a killjoy, but that approach worked out phenomenally badly in Afghanistan. And Pakistan. (And – Libya?)
Iow, Al-Qaida is not the Houthis only, or even most pressing, issue.
Enter: Saudis, ex-Govt of Yemen (bothasithappensalliesofyouknowwho).
I believe that’s the current plan, but…well, it may have looked neater on paper than it does on the ground.
As long as AQAP doesn’t directly attack the Saudis, they won’t touch them.
The Saudis have participated in strikes on ISIS. It’s not too much to think they could be encouraged to attack al Qaeda.
We can’t even get them to stop funding them.
Short sighted – AQ (because Sunni) poses the greatest threat to Saudi legitimacy there is – much bigger than the Islamic Revolution (buncha Shias) declaring that monarchy was unIslamic zulm.
As noted in various earlier posts, I submit we have not really tried to get the Saudis to stop funding bad guys. GWB should have made them an offer they could not refuse.
I imagine their minds are pretty occupied with the eastern province and Najran. But this is short-sighted in that regard, too.
There are times when fighting a two-front war or taking on two enemies at once is necessary.
Failure to do so means that the one you do not fight now ends up being too strong to fight later.
Sorry to change the subject, but think of the two-decade bi-partisan negotiation with the Norks. The problem with American foreign policy is non-partisan. Mr. W Bush should have done what his partisans would have wanted, but he did not, for the same reason no one before or after him did–it is not part of the doings of American foreign policy.
The borders are straining – I hope somebody in the West’s deep state (do we have one?) is thinking about what comes after and is prepared rather than being surprised, utterly surprised, yet again, when they dissolve..
I hope so, too.
Write a book, Dr B, write. a. book.