Yemen: all you want (2011-2015)

[davidbfpo]

The succession struggle in the Yemen has not gone away, although it certainly has faded from the news reporting here, probably the impact of events in Libya and Syria.

So hat tip to FP Blog for this article, which opens with:

After being tricked into believing that Saleh would sign a Gulf Cooperation Council brokered power transfer deal three times, the international community has finally realized that Saleh has no intention of leaving power until at least 2013, the end of his official presidential term of office.

Leaving aside the machinations in the Yemen, which are covered, I was struck by this paragraph:

Short of asking for foreign military intervention, which most protesters reject outright, Yemenis have done all they can to make their struggle known to those abroad. Fully aware of their own lack of coverage in the international media, Yemenis have sought to increase their visibility in the international community from the outset of the protest movement last February by providing English language resources to Western journalists, establishing committees made up of English language speakers to issue press releases and hold press conferences, and making sure every protest sign was in both English and Arabic.

I am sadly not convinced the outside world, let alone English language speakers, are listening and or watching.

As for the freezing of President Saleh's assets abroad, nice diplomatic gesture and of little value beyond a headline.

Link:http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/pos...saleh_s_assets

[Bob's World]

Two self-serving families compete for control of Yemen. Neither represent the will of the populace or show any indication of doing anything other than continuing the very unsustainable status quo. Meanwhile a wide range of nationalist insurgent movements rise from and draw support from the populace as a whole. Both families are willing to work with the West and to profit from the control of this bit of geo-strategically key terrain. This seduces us.

Into this F'd up mix comes AQ, smelling opportunity to get after their top two interests:
1. Take down the Saudi royal family;
2. Hurt the West enough to get us to break our support to the regimes of the region that we have helped sustain for so long.

Meanwhile Saudi insurgents flee to Yemen as the first "covered and concealed position" from Saudi Arabia. One can reasonably assume that those who stay close, rather than travel to Pakistan to work with AQ there, are most focused on nationalist issues at home in Saudi Arabia. Their issues are reasonable, even if their approaches are extreme. Sadly no reasonable approaches are available to them at home, so to Yemen they go (or simply disappear at home).

AQ conducts UW in support of members of both these groups primarily, but I suspect to a number of similarly motivated men from other nations in the region as well.

US "intelligence" lumps all of this under a single banner of "AQAP." They recommend CT against the lot, with little differentiation for purpose for action. I'd give a month's retirement pay as a Special Forces Colonel for a single intel officer above the grade of O5 who could carry on a 3 minute conversation with me about insurgency without reverting to tired cliché's and saying the words "ideology" or "AQ."

This isn't rocket science, it's people science and common sense. That is far too rare a commodity it seems. (Please excuse me a little Veteran's day venting, good men are being employed far less effectively than they could be, and we owe them better.)

[davidbfpo]

During a university-level discussion on US strategy post-9/11 Yemen was cited as an example of where the USA had intervened of late, a point that I would and did contest.

Today FP Blog has a short update on the delicate mix in the Yemen, which illustrates the USA has few options currently and the locals, sorry a local, President / non-President Saleh remains in power - note, not control:http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...again?page=0,1

Short of time? This sums up the situation brilliantly:

Somali refugees in Yemen are now returning to Somalia in larger numbers. Perhaps they know something that the international community doesn't.

[davidbfpo]

Yemen appears to have disappeared from the limelight of late, even though President Saleh is bound for the USA, for medical treatment. So it was a surprise to hear a BBC reporter actually in southern Yemen reporting on the growth of jihadist control.

A podcast:http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today...00/9685172.stm

A written article:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...lk/9682753.stm

[davidbfpo]

A different, detailed commentary. The agreement to remove President Saleh:

..do(es) not appear to herald a break with the past and the beginning of a process of appeasement and democratization.

Indeed, although the caretaker government also contains elements belonging to the opposition, some weak points of the agreement drawn up in Saudi Arabia regarding the deep divisions within Yemeni society indicate not only the attempt by the Republican faction to maintain strong control over the country, but also that the initial protests of Yemeni citizens against their autocratic leadership have been gradually transmuted into a military conflict between the state and the tribal confederations, plunging Yemen into a more acute domestic crisis, with obvious repercussions at regional level.

Link:http://www.opendemocracy.net/maria-s...-and-divisions

So the Yemen has a new government, which faces the same problems and decides on "more of the same" with "a few chairs changed on a sinking ship". Great result for diplomacy.

[davidbfpo]

A grand sounding title from the NYT and:

The plan’s two-pronged strategy calls for the United States and Yemen to work together to kill or capture about two dozen of Al Qaeda’s most dangerous operatives, who are focused on attacking America and its interests.

At the same time, the administration will work with Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf allies to train and equip Yemeni security forces to counter the organization’s wider threat to destabilize the country and the government of its newly installed president, Abed Rabu Mansour Hadi.

I wish this idea well, but cannot think of a more hostile place to try it (OK Afghanistan, oh it works there):

One main proposal, he said, is to pay Yemeni troops directly rather than through their commanders.....(Citing Mr O'Brennan) We’re trying to ensure that the aid is very tailored, so it goes to those units that are professional, that fall within a command and control structure that reports to Hadi, that are addressing Al Qaeda and domestic threats to Yemen, and are not engaged in any political shenanigans.

In response Gregory Johnsen, a Princeton scholar who closely tracks militants in Yemen.:

Some independent analysts aso warned that the administration’s approach amounted to picking and choosing favorite Yemeni generals, which could backfire over time. “Any time the U.S. gets into where it’s favoring certain generals or trying to play generals off each other, it is a very dangerous game,” said

Link:http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/27/wo..._r=1&ref=world

[davidbfpo]

Somehow I missed the release of this RUSI report in December 2011, 'The Language of Jihad Narratives and Strategies of Al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula and UK Responses' and have just skimmed through it, looks like a very good read. It is 55 pgs and has chapters on

Terrorism, Communication and Strategy; The History of AQAP; The Language of Jihad; Conclusions and Recommendations; Postscript

The authors aim to:

...look to understand the situation in Yemen and the possibilities for AQAP gaining further traction in the region, through garnering a greater understanding of the underlying issues that allow such groups to operate.....What is certain is that AQAP will be watching closely to capitalise on any mistakes that are made and will bide their time ready to fill any vacuum that appears.

Link:http://www.rusi.org/downloads/assets..._Jihad_web.pdf