Yemen drone strike and US evacuation: Signs of drone war intensification?

Yemen drone strike: The State Department called on all Americans to leave Yemen immediately, even as a US drone strike in Yemen Tuesday killed four Al Qaeda militants. It was the fourth US drone strike in two weeks.

|
Hani Mohammed/AP
Police stop cars at a checkpoint near the US embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, Aug. 6. The State Department on Tuesday ordered non-essential personnel at the US Embassy in Yemen to leave the country.

The travel warning the State Department issued Tuesday calling on all Americans in the Gulf state of Yemen, including non-essential US government personnel, to leave the country immediately, reflects intercepted Al Qaeda communications urging terrorist actions against Western interests in the country.

But the evacuation of the Americans, including diplomats, may also suggest that the US is planning to intensify the sustained drone war it has been carrying out against Al Qaeda militants in Yemen.

It also reaffirms the view of White House and State Department officials that the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is now the terrorist organization’s most active and dangerous arm.

The travel warning was issued in Washington as the US carried out a drone strike targeting a vehicle traveling north of the capital of Sana’a and reportedly carrying four Al Qaeda militants, all of whom were killed. Tuesday’s strike was at least the fourth in the last two weeks – part of an intensification of the US drone war in Yemen over the past 18 months.

The British government on Tuesday also ordered a drawdown of its diplomatic presence in Yemen.

The Yemeni government lamented the US and British actions in a statement Tuesday afternoon, asserting that “The evacuation of embassy staff serves the interests of the extremists and undermines the exceptional cooperation between Yemen and the international alliance against terrorism.”

As if to rebut recent reports of US concerns that Yemen is letting down its guard against Al Qaeda, the statement said Yemen has "taken all necessary precautions" to ensure the security of foreign missions in Sana'a and went on, “Yemen remains strongly committed to the global effort to counter the threats of Al Qaeda and its affiliates.”

The latest US strike followed several others that were carried out just as Yemen’s recently elected president, Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi, was about to meet last Thursday with President Obama at the White House. Those strikes also reportedly killed a number of militants – but it is not clear that any of the most recent strikes killed any of AQAP’s top leaders or most-wanted fighters.

Yemeni officials said one senior AQAP militant, Saleh Jouti, was killed in Tuesday’s attack, according to the Associated Press, and AQAP confirmed on a website that a July missile strike killed its No. 2 leader, Saeed al-Shehri.

The US travel warning was issued after the US intercepted communications between the head of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Nasir al-Wuhayshi – the head of AQAP and the man US intelligence believes was recently promoted to be Mr. Zawahiri’s deputy. In the message, intercepted in the midst of the latest uptick in US drone strikes in Yemen, Mr. Zawahiri is said to tell AQAP to take action urgently against Western interests.

The intensified US focus on Yemen reflects at least in part the Yemeni Al Qaeda affiliate’s efforts not just to bring down the Yemeni government, but to strike the US on its soil. “AQAP has a particular track record of trying to attack the American homeland,” says Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington who advised the last four presidents on terrorism issues.

Several foiled plots of recent years – the underwear bomber in a plane over Detroit in 2009, the Chicago-bound package bombs of 2010 among them – emanated from AQAP.

That kind of activity, plus AQAP’s insurgency against the Yemeni government and its messianic and recruitment activity on the Internet, have drawn US attention and led to redoubled efforts to weaken the organization. US drone strikes in Yemen skyrocketed to 54 last year, compared with 15 in 2011, according to a database kept by Washington’s New America Foundation.

The database lists 12 drone strikes in Yemen so far this year, not including Tuesday’s strike.

The US is particularly focused on taking out AQAP’s notorious bomb maker, Ibrahim al-Asiri, the reputed mastermind behind the underwear bomb and even an unsuccessful 2009 attempt on the life of Saudi Arabia’s chief counterterrorism official by means of a bomb planted inside Mr. Asiri’s brother.

The US is anxious to stop Asiri before he develops a bomb that could foil the world’s best detection systems. But Asiri is also thought to be busy training a workshop full of bomb makers who could replace him if he is killed.

Says Brookings’s Mr. Riedel, “He’s probably developed a dozen [bomb makers] who could take his place.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Yemen drone strike and US evacuation: Signs of drone war intensification?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Foreign-Policy/2013/0806/Yemen-drone-strike-and-US-evacuation-Signs-of-drone-war-intensification
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe