Comments on the AQAP statement

This statement has something of a different tone from the previous one; whereas the first adopted the attitude of a proud victim, this one is absolutely gleeful, as its title suggests. It gets a bit dull, though, once the author starts talking about the false deceptive lying falsehoods of the lying Huthis (there are a lot of ways to say "lie" in Arabic). I guess what strikes me is that the author seems to assume that he is addressing a sympathetic audience. His audience is not just the jihadi community, but the Yemeni people as a whole, and he expects them to be happy to hear the wondrous news of this new campaign of violence against the Huthis. I'm holding to my previous assertion, that in the medium and long term this kind of violence won't be well-received in Yemen. But it's important to note that according to this statement, both of the suicide bombers were Yemenis. This is made clear by their names: we aren't given the real names of either man, but both have kunyahs (noms de guerre) containing the adjective "San‘ani." Add to this the assertion, in the final paragraph here, that the Huthis now have the backing of the CIA. The intended take-away is that these were attacks carried out by Yemenis against foreigners, for the sake of the Yemeni people.

Time will tell if this tactic pays off for al-Qa‘idah. But I'm more interested and concerned with the Yemeni government's reactions. So far I haven't heard much, but still think it's likely that President Saleh will try to fan the flames of this conflict for his own twisted reasons.

New AQAP statement

Al-Qa‘idah in the Arabian Peninsula has released another statement about their attacks on supporters of al-Huthi, giving additional details about their "martyrdom operations."

"Glad tidings to the faithful concerning the series of activities in defense of the People of the Sunnah

[We announce that] our heroic, martyred brother Abu ‘A’ishah al-San‘ani al-Hashimi carried out a blessed operation against the procession of influential apostate Huthis in the province of al-Jawf, and that he killed in this operation more than thirty people—among them many of their leaders—and wounded scores of them. This was at 8:40am, the morning of Wednesday the 18th of Dhi al-Hijjah (November 24th), according to our sources at the scene of the bombing.

Our sources present at the scene of the event also informed us that one senior leader of the Huthis was present at the procession, but that his name had previously been withheld by the Huthis.

They then informed us that they would attempt to discover this name in the days that followed. Before long they sent us word that [the person in question] was one of the leading turbaned mullahs. After that the news leaked out that the deceased was the head of evil and corruption, Badr al-Din al-huthi himself, the founder of the apostate Huthi group. He had been in al-Jawf to preside over the celebrations for ‘Eid al-Ghadir, while his son ‘Abd al-Malik presided over them in Sa‘dah. So God enabled us to transform their Day of Ghadir [which literally means “stream” or “brook”] into a Day of Hellfire for the enemies of God who distort Islam and pollute the land of the Prophet (PBUH). For God is great, God is great, God is great, and all praise and thanks be to God.

So our organization issued urgent instructions to send another car bomb—from among several such cars we have prepared for them—to intercept the funeral processions [for al-Huthi]. This blessed martyrdom operation was undertaken by the heroic brother Abu ‘Abdullah al-San‘ani in the stronghold of the Huthis (the area of Dahyan) in the province of Sa‘dah on the morning of Friday the 20th of Dhi al-Hijjah 1431 hijri [November 26 2010]. According to our sources at the scene, this attack killed at least seventy and injured scores of Huthis, who filled the hospitals of Sa‘dah.

The Huthi gang has said—though they are not able to conceal the truth—that Badr al-Din al-Huthi died from natural causes. The Huthi gang wants to deceive the people by claiming that al-Huthi’s funeral, which followed our blessed operation by only one day, was the result of a natural death. The have tried to hide the facts of his death and to circulate information inconsistent with reality, but despite all of this, we have been able to obtain reliable information from within them about the killing of Badr al-Din.

The lies and forgeries and subterfuges [of the Huthis] will not fool any but the most foolish of their followers. The most loathsome of their lies was that their investigations indicated that the blessed martyrdom operation had been carried out by the Israeli Mossad and American intelligence agencies! The truth is that the American intelligence agencies are your helpers; they halted the war [between the Huthis and the Yemeni state] for your sake so that you could work for them in their war against the mujahidin, the vanguard of the Muslim Ummah....

AQAP vs. al-Huthi

In a recently released statement, al-Qa‘idah in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has officially taken responsibility for the two bombings that targeted Huthi supporters this week. If it's legit, this proves my original thesis wrong. The original Arabic statement can be found on the Jihadology blog. Below is my English translation of the statement in full:

“After repeated appeals from the Sunni people to their brothers the mujahidin for defense, and after the failures of the apostate governments in San‘a and Riyadh—with all their armies, resources, and funds—in addressing the apostate “Huthis” (failures that have abandoned the People of the Sunnah to a fate unknown); the mujahidin of the Arabian Peninsula have decided to begin these martyrdom operations in defense of the land of our Prophet (PBUH) and his Companions (may God bless them all); and in defense of our brothers among the People of the Sunnah, after we have seen them killed, their honor violated and their homes destroyed, driven from their homes and neighborhoods, receiving no assistance.

So we call upon the sons of the People of the Sunnah to enlist in the brigades for the defense of the land of the Prophet (PBUH). The Shi‘i peril is near, and if it is not dealt with, these apostate Shi‘ah will do as they have done to the Sunnis of Iraq and Afghanistan. Hasten, before it is too late; and know that the armies of Saudi Arabia and Yemen do not represent the People of the Sunnah.

Thanks to God we have formed special units to defend our brothers, and to guarantee the extermination of the malignant seeds that have been planted by the apostate Iranian Shi‘ah in Sa‘dah and the adjacent areas, under the leadership of the apostate Huthis.

The People of the Sunnah should know that the apostate Huthis are a legitimate target for us. So we caution our brothers to avoid the Huthis’ gatherings and processions. We call upon those at risk to abandon the apostate Huthis, before it is too late. We have prepared for them, and we will not rest until we have cleansed the land of their filth and their crimes against the People of the Sunnah, and until there is no fitnah, and the only religion is the religion of God, and all evildoers are overthrown and destroyed.”

In the coming week we'll see more analysis of this statement on Waq al-Waq and other blogs, including this one. The first thing that strikes me about this statement is that AQAP claims to be acting in self-defense. No one associated with al-Huthi has ever attacked AQAP. Earlier this year, Huthi supporters took a couple of prisoners linked to AQAP and, in an attempt to advance the peace process, handed them over to the central government. Other than that, the two groups have had no contact.

I think some observers—foremost among them Brian O'Neill—will argue that AQAP is trying to appeal to its international fan base by targeting the Yemeni Shi‘ah (though really, Yemenis almost never refer to Zaydis as Shi‘ah). Their goal is to attract foreign jihadis to their organization. But I have a feeling that this move will end up hurting AQAP, in that it will destabilize the networks of tribal and local support they've built up over the years. Maybe I'm misjudging the Yemeni populace at large, but I really don't think many Yemenis will tolerate sectarian violence on a large scale. Nevertheless, the government is likely to try to exploit conflict between its enemies to its own benefit.

Civil war

Reports yesterday of a bomb killing followers of 'Abd al-Malik al-Huthi as they gathered for 'Eid al-Ghadir marked what will likely be the opening of another round of war in northern Yemen. The attack—which may or may not have been a suicide bombing—was immediately blamed on al-Qa‘idah in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), but that group has not yet claimed responsibility. The Ghadir holiday is celebrated exclusively by Shi‘i Muslims, so it is easy to assume a sectarian motive to such an attack. But AQAP is always quick to claim its actions; the government tried to tie al-Qa‘idah to the bombing of a Zaydi mosque a few years ago, but the group denied it. It is more likely that this attack is related to hostilities that have been ongoing since early November between "Huthi" rebels and pro-government tribes.

It is likely that the current violence will spiral into open war between the rebels and the central government, as it has done six times before since 2004. But I can imagine another possibility, given the wider situation in Yemen today: it could be that the government, or pro-government paramilitary groups (which have ties to Saudi Arabia as well as to the Yemeni military) are trying to incite a war between al-Huthi's followers and AQAP.

The level of pressure on President Saleh's regime from the US, UK, and other international powers to focus on AQAP makes it unlikely that the President and his inner circle would seek a new war with al-Huthi now, as Saleh's international allies have warned him repeatedly to keep the north under control. And while al-Qa‘idah affiliates in Iraq and elsewhere have targeted Shi‘is, this has not happened before in Yemen. Moreover, AQAP is very busy at the moment working to disrupt the US war effort and the central government, so it makes no sense for them to pick a fight with al-Huthi. AQAP has done a great job building support and sympathy from (some of) the public; while some tribes and networks are certainly alligned against al-Huthi, and while anti-Zaydi sentiments are still prevalent in parts of the country, launching a campaign of sectarian violence would not earn AQAP any friends in Yemen.*

In some rare situations, a conspiracy theory yields the most likely answer. This is one of those situations. The Saleh regime knows that its US-supported war against AQAP is going poorly, and is, in the long run, not winnable. It also knows that the United States will not grasp that reality any time soon, and will continue to push for, and to fund, more and more counter-terrorism operations. But the more the US and Saleh push, the weaker their position becomes. So it makes a great deal of sense for Saleh to try to pit al-Huthi against AQAP, and thus distract and weaken both enemies without risking his own resources.

If I'm right about this (I'll admit it if I'm not), the US would be making a horrible mistake if it were to go along with this program, wittingly or not. American envoys should have been talking to al-Huthi years ago, but that's not going to happen. The Obama administration can, however, avoid an even bigger catastrophe than the one it already faces in Yemen by making sure President Saleh refrains from any more of his infamous balancing acts, which always end in misery for the Yemeni people and more power for himself.

Let's all just hope I'm wrong.

P.S. Since this post originally went up, a second bomb killed Huthi supporters en route to the funeral of Badr al-Din al-Huthi, father of 'Abd al-Malik and Husayn al-Huthi and one of the intellectual fathers of the broader Zaydi revival movement.

[*EDIT: Brian O'Neill has been saying for a while that one of AQAP's main goals right now is to recruit "serious jihadis" from abroad. I think he's right, and it is likely that some foreign fighters would be drawn to an anti-Shi‘i campaign. But as much as it wants foreign recruits, AQAP can't survive without local support, which would evaporate if the group were to take on ethnic cleansing as its raison d'etre. I think they know better.]

Why I’m Here (by Aliya)

The first time Yemen crossed my radar was in high school, when I was flipping through channels and inadvertently stumbled on the excellent documentary called The English Sheikh and the Yemeni Gentleman. I was intrigued by author Tim Mackintosh-Smith’s strong attachment to the country despite having no Yemeni background and captivated by the lifestyle so strongly rooted in tradition. For a long time I had a vague hopes of travelling to Yemen, so naturally in my second year of college as an Arabic student, when I heard of an affordable opportunity to study Arabic in Sana’a, I jumped at it. Anyone who has ever had the privilege of visiting Yemen knows what happened next—I fell in love straight away. True, the weather’s beautiful, the aesthetics of the Old City are stunning, and ambling through the best-preserved souks in the Arab world is certainly an experience, what clearly makes Yemen worth visiting, as Tiffany mentioned below, is the people who live there.

There are many things to admire about any culture, but the part of Yemeni culture that struck me the most was the importance placed on personal relationships. Coming from a society that is fast-paced and over-scheduled, where hanging out with friends and family is a thing reserved for weekends and holiday vacations, the amount of time that Yemenis put aside not every week, but every day at qat chews to spend time with friends and family is mind-blowing, to say the least, and made me wonder exactly what we were spending all that time on. As an American I was humbled by the degree of friendliness and total absence of hostility that was shown to us by people who are often portrayed as being violently anti-American, and as a Muslim I was touched by the welcome I received as a sister in faith from another country.

Partially, I am involved in the Yemen Peace Project simply because I love Yemen, and I hate the feeling of helplessness and injustice that I feel when I see a place that gave me such wonderful memories crumbling because of forces outside its control and then on top of that being slandered in the American media as a “terrorist haven” as we ourselves nurture anti-American sentiment there. But I’m also involved in YPP because as an American I love my own country as well, and I would like someday to be proud of the way we conduct ourselves abroad. That day seems a pretty long way off, to be honest, by my hope is that by fostering discussion and relationships between Americans and Yemenis, we can all help make it a little bit closer.

Why I’m here (by Tiffany)

My first visit to Yemen was in 2009. While not my first visit to the Arab world, I had no idea what I was getting into. I went to study Arabic. I expected to engage in a study of culture and language in this forgotten world. I didn’t expect to fall in love with a country and a people whose culture is so different from my own but whose people are very much the same. Yemen is a country of extremes. It has coastlines and plunging mountain ranges. Cities with moderate temperatures year-round and regions where the thermometer climbs wildly into the 120s-130s each summer. Political struggles divide the north and south. Tribal and family ties command stronger allegiance than national identity, causing easy misunderstandings between Yemen and the West. Extreme poverty threatens the tenacity of an already unstable nation.

But as startling as the geographical, political, and economic landscapes may be, there is something else that will capture your attention and refuse to let go:

The Yemeni people.

I was challenged by the landscape. I was captured by the people. Here in this land whose harshness is borne out in its economic poverty, political tensions, and natural difficulty, you find a people who love their land, welcome in the stranger, and dream of a better future for themselves and their families.

Yemen struggles with a lack of infrastructure, lack of adequate water sources, high unemployment, violent political upheavals, and struggling educational opportunities. But despite the hardships, Yemenis love the land they call home. They do whatever it takes to carve out a life, even if it comes with little in the way of material comforts. They are incredibly hospitable, to a point where an American can easily be put to shame. The tensions between Shi’a and Sunni Muslims that are devastating in many parts of the Arab world are much quieter here.

Mostly, Yemenis want to live, to live in peace. They want to have enough, for their families and their neighbors and to share with the poor.

Not so different from America, is it?

One of my fellow YPP directors, Will, got in contact with me and the rest of the directors early this year as events between Yemen and the U.S. began to unfold in a way that seemed destined to produce serious, long-term problems for both countries. We were all getting frustrated, angry even. How we could we turn that frustration into something productive? Will took the reins and began building the foundation for the Yemen Peace Project, and the rest of us piled in to help in our own specialized capacities. We are a small and ever-morphing organization, focused on a specific goal: to build relationships between Yemen and the United States in order to help bring peace to a region that has known far too much in the way of violence. We want our country to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. Welcome to the Yemen Peace Project.

I am working on YPP’s advocacy activities. In the weeks to come you will be seeing background information on U.S. Foreign Policy and appropriations as they relate to Yemen. You’ll also be invited to join us in advocating for strategic American policy objectives designed to help prevent Yemen from becoming another place where American troops end up called to war. In addition to political advocacy, one-to-one personal relationships are part of what will build and sustain this movement. I encourage you to get involved in our Pens for Peace exchange, follow our local bloggers and discussion tables, and learn more about Yemeni culture through our Photo of the Week.

That’s why I’m here. I’m not sure what brought you to this site, but I hope you’ll stick around.

Why I’m here (by Dana)

In an effort to explain our motivations behind the founding of the Yemen Peace Project, each co-director will be blogging about why we’re here this month. I’ll do my best to follow Will’s compelling blog entry with my own perspective about why peace in Yemen is imperative for me. William and I were high school friends when he spent the summer in Yemen in 1999. The experience clearly had a profound impact on him. In an effort to learn more about Yemen, I read Tim Macintosh-Smith’s Yemen: An Unknown Arabia a dozen times, and hoped that I too would get to experience it for myself.  In 2009, Will and I were fortunate enough to spend 7 weeks in the capital studying Arabic.  I felt both in awe of the place and instantly at home there.  The country itself is gorgeous, unlike anything I could have imagined.  The 14,000 foot-terraced mountains, the 7^th-century mosques, the 2,500 year-old heart of Sana‘a… a traveler’s dream!

The people were also the kindest I had ever met abroad.  At first, I was startled that complete strangers were inviting us into their shops for tea and conversation, but I quickly realized that this hospitality was the Yemeni way.  We talked about politics, culture, poverty, the high birth rate, the serious water shortage, and the steep decline in tourism.  Why don’t they come? We love Americans! they insisted.  Despite these problems, all Yemenis I met lauded Obama's then-recent election as a relief, and as a promise of improvements to come.

I also learned that the Yemeni people are brave.  Women and men march on the streets, run non-profit organizations, publish newspapers, and risk (or bear) imprisonment or torture for expressing their opinions and exposing corruption in Yemen. Despite the ruling regime’s war on political pluralism and human rights, the people continue to take a stand. However, the efforts of activists and journalists have grown even riskier with the bolstering of the Yemeni government by the West, who are pouring military resources into the country without regard for civilian casualties. When Will and I returned to Sana‘a during the summer of 2010, the optimism about President Obama had deflated.  Ordinary Yemenis were not hopeless about the U.S. government's potential, but their faith was waning rapidly.

As the U.S. “Pursues a Wider Role in Yemen,” (as reported today by The Wall Street Journal), we urge you to learn about the consequences of war in Yemen, and to support us in our efforts for peace and cross-cultural understanding.  Thank you for reading!  For more information, visit our media page and our Pens for Peace page!

Why I’m here (by Will)

I first visited Yemen in 1999. I don't think I knew what to expect when I arrived, but I know I didn't expect to love the place so much. I left after three weeks, having seen the towers and the qamariyahs of San'a, the crows and the fishing shacks of 'Aden, the mosques of Thula, the fortress of at-Tawilah. But I knew as soon as I left that Yemen would not leave my mind or my heart as easily. It wasn't just the other-worldly sights, the mountain views and ancient stones, that stayed with me; mostly it was the people. I could close my eyes and see everyone I had met: the qat seller in the Saylah, the children shepherds by the road, the wedding party at the Egyptian monument, the fishermen, the soldiers, the beggars, the family that had housed and cared for me. I kept every one of them with me. Westerners who care about Yemen are used to indulging an obscure interest. Between 1999 and 2009 it was extremely rare for events in Yemen to make headlines in Western newspapers, or to provide fodder for dinner-party conversation. I always followed the news from Yemen, but that news rarely involved my own country, and rarely interested the people in it. So the feeling I had upon opening the newspaper in December of 2009 to see that the United States had killed dozens of innocent Yemeni women, men, and children, was a visceral one. No other single event has ever aroused in me such anger and sorrow.

It was these deaths—between forty-nine and sixty-four depending on who you ask—that finally woke me to the need to do something. I didn't really choose to start this effort that became the Yemen Peace Project. I don't feel a choice, I feel a compulsion, a need, to do whatever I can to reverse the deadly course of American policy in Yemen.

I suspect that many of those who visit this website share my feelings. Anger is the impetus for my involvement, but hope is what keeps me here. I know that America is not intrinsically evil; no nation is. I have hope, despite the weight of my anger, that informed and enlightened Americans can eventually make their country's role in the world a positive one. Nearly everyone I've talked to in Yemen shares this hope, which is why I'm able to sustain it in myself. So that's why I'm here: to inform, to enlighten, to challenge, and to change. Thank you for joining me.

Ahmed's blog

We are now hosting a new blog by our friend Ahmed, a student and YPP volunteer living in San‘a, Yemen. We are very excited to have this opportunity to share this bright, young voice with our readers. Please read and bookmark this new blog, and follow the YPP news for more updates.

Why we’re here

Last summer we spent some time in San'a, during which we met with a large group of Yemeni students who study English at a school run by AMIDEAST. We'd already been talking about the Yemen Peace Project for quite a while when one of the students raised her hand and asked a question that, for some reason, I had not expected. She asked us why we were doing this. It seemed strange to her—maybe even suspicious—that a bunch of young Americans would build an organization focused on the challenges facing Yemen, that we would travel all the way to San'a to talk to young people like her about the future of her country. So we felt it would be useful to address that question here. Over the next few days, all four of the directors of the Yemen Peace Project will be using this space to tell all of our friends and readers why it is that we've undertaken this project. Hopefully this will allow you all to get to know us a bit better. We also invite all of you to use the comments section to share your own reasons for wanting to get involved. Stay tuned....

Pens for Peace – Update

We will finally be relaunching our Pens for Peace initiative this week! If you've already signed up to participate in this amazing program, you'll be getting an email from us soon. If you haven't signed up yet, you really should. Contact us right now to get started.

War without a face

If you read the international papers, you've surely noticed that a day no longer goes by without a story of "suspected US drone strikes" in Afghanistan and Pakistan. These strikes are always "suspected" because, even though everyone in the world knows about them, they are the work of the CIA's "clandestine" services, and thus officially secret. September was an especially busy time for the drones, with over 20 separate attacks reported in the media. Occasionally the US or Pakistani authorities will announce the death of a major militant figure in such a strike, but more often, it seems, America's robotic killers take innocent lives. Jason Ditz at antiwar.com puts it this way:

President Obama has made the drone strikes the centerpiece of his foreign policy, and has killed well over a thousand people inside Pakistan since taking office. The vast majority of those killed have turned out to be innocent civilians, while large numbers of others remain unidentified but classified as “suspects.”

Obviously, with so many victims to its credit, the impact of these clandestine weapons is only too visible to most Pakistanis and Afghans. But in the United States, drone warfare seems immune to the kinds of scrutiny and criticism that other elements of the president's military policy have faced. Politicians and generals in this country have long understood that the public will stand in their way if American lives are at stake; as long as the only people dying are foreign nationals, we as a people will keep quiet. This sense of safety, even from their enemies in the Republican Party, has allowed the Obama administration to develop a severe addiction to robotic warfare.

Given all of that, it should be obvious why I'm writing about AfPak policy in a blog about Yemen. Obama has already increased US military aid to President Saleh's government, and sent more covert CIA and Special Forces operatives to Yemen; the drones cannot be far behind. Right now, the American public knows almost nothing about Yemen, and is willing to believe anything about it. Aside from a few hardcore pacifists and Yemen-philes like us, Americans seem to be completely at ease with the expansion of the "War on Terror" to a new front. What this means is that Yemen will be an ideal killing ground for Obama's Predators and Reapers. American apathy, if left unchecked, will ensure that thousands of Yemenis are added to the civilian death toll that the US government touts as progress.

Obviously, the Yemen Peace Project opposes the use of drones in Yemen, just as we oppose all American military action in the country. But as the American presence grows and becomes more and more costly for the Yemeni people, we must increase our efforts to bring their suffering to the attention of the world. We'll want the help of our readers and friends, as well, to make sure that every death is counted, that the American public that funds and encourages this pointless war is forced to reckon with the true cost of their decisions.

Stay tuned for updates on this subject, and on our efforts to change America's policy toward Yemen.

With friends like these…

"It is important to make sure that we strengthen the capacity of the government so that you don't see the same vacuum develop in Yemen that has developed in Somalia....We'll continue to help Yemen in terms of its dialogue with its own population in both north and south."

These two gems come from US State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley's press briefing yesterday, in which he gave us the upshot of last Friday's "Friends of Yemen" meeting in New York. The first sentence is, of course, the exact opposite what the Yemen Peace Project and Human Rights Watch both urged prior to the meeting. We implored the US, UK, Saudi Arabia, and other members of the Friends of Yemen group not to rely on a policy of "strengthening the capacity" of President Saleh's government, a government that has abandoned democracy and due process in favor of its own survival. If the US and its allies continue to "strengthen the capacity" of this regime, the people of Yemen will face more and more hardship, repression, and violence.

As we pointed out in our open letter to the Friends of Yemen, the US is also directly responsible for killing dozens of Yemeni civilians. Saudi Arabia -- which chaired last Friday's conference along with Yemen and the UK -- has racked up a far larger Yemeni body count, having bombed several villages out of existence during the last phase of the Sa'dah war. The US recently announced a massive deal to supply new jets and helicopters to the Saudi military, thus ensuring the Kingdom's ability to kill even more Yemenis the next time around. For the leaders of these two countries to talk about "dialogue" and development is disingenuous at best. Does the State Department expect Yemenis to buy this double-talk? Does it seriously expect Yemenis to choose Saleh and his "Friends" over the various opposition movements currently at work in Yemen?

In his remarks to the press, Crowley also claimed that US Undersecretary William Burns led the Friends of Yemen conference, although, as noted above, this dubious honor in fact fell to the UK and Saudi Arabia. Clearly the US wants to be seen -- or wants to see itself -- as leading the effort to fix Yemen. But the truth is that US humanitarian aid is already vastly overshadowed by military assistance to Saleh's regime, and now the Obama administration is considering a huge, multi-year package that will augment Saleh's capacity for violence several-fold, even though critics within the administration and Department of Defense argue that the new weapons and training will be used against Saleh's political enemies rather than al-Qa'idah (it's almost as if they'd been reading the news).

This week Secretary of State Clinton told the United Nations that the US would not "sacrifice human rights" to fight terrorism. Clinton told the world that the way to end terrorism is to provide hope to those vulnerable to the "allure" of extremism. To be honest, I'm surprised Hilary Clinton -- or any other State Department official -- can gather the nerve to speak to the world, knowing as we all do the humiliating fact that they are almost completely irrelevant to American foreign policy. I give Clinton credit: her words to the General Assembly weren't hollow rhetoric. The State Department has been producing papers for a long time now pushing the agenda of long-term, systemic solutions in places like Yemen. But the US hasn't shown Yemen any long-term solutions, only the immediate destructive power of the American war machine. For many Yemenis and other victims of American violence around the world, the "choice" between Yemen's "Friends" and al-Qa'idah isn't so simple.

Status quo

In May of 2010, I wrote the following in a paper on the Sa'dah war:

...it is hardly surprising that the ceasefire that came into force in February of 2010 is already collapsing after only three months, and the president and his allies seem eager to help it fail. Future efforts at mediation will produce similar results so long as the most powerful factions profit more from war than from peace.

Reading the news this week of a new peace deal between the Yemeni government and the northern rebels, I felt a sense of deja vu. The government of Qatar hosted negotiations between the rebels and the government, as they have done several times in the last three years. Before Qatar, Yemeni officials and tribal leaders attempted unsuccessfully to mediate a truce between the partisans of the al-Huthi family and President Saleh's government. Knowing the history of this war, which has caused immeasurable suffering for hundreds of thousands of Yemenis in the far north, I can confidently say that this new agreement will fall apart just like the ones that came before it.

I'm not saying that nothing has changed since 2004, when the war between the government and the rebels began. Plenty has changed in Yemen. The nature of the northern conflict itself has changed: in 2004, Husayn al-Huthi led a small resistance movement, comprised mainly of revivalist Zaydi Shi'is who felt marginalized by a state influenced by Western powers and Saudi funds. Today, the label "Huthi" is applied to a wide -- and probably loose -- coalition of forces pursuing disparate agendas. Yemen has seen changes outside of the northern war zone as well. The Southern Movement has become probably a more pressing concern for the regime than the war against al-Huthi, while international concern about al-Qa'idah in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has put Yemen in the spotlight for the first time in two decades.

But the more things change, the more they stay the same -- or rather, continue to get worse -- for so many residents of Sa'dah and 'Amran governorates. The war will not end with this new peace deal, because despite all of the new pressures President Saleh faces, he and those in his inner circle still profit from the northern war. While the United States, President Saleh's new best friend, publicly demands that he make peace in the north, the truth is that the US would never support a compromise with al-Huthi. According to the twisted logic that prevails in the Pentagon, a president that gives in to the Shi'a rebels today might  give in to al-Qa'idah tomorrow. And as popular movements all over Yemen demonstrate in the streets for civil rights and increased democracy, the regime in San'a holds ever more tightly to the belief that a strong military, funded by the US and augmented by the reactionary Sunni militias that al-Huthi first rose to oppose, is its own best hope for survival.

Response to New York Times article

A couple of weeks ago, the New York Times ran this article about the "covert war" that the United States is currently waging in Yemen and around the world. The Yemen Peace Project responded to the article with an op-ed piece, which the Times declined to publish. Here, for our friends and visitors, is the text of the piece we submitted:

In the August 14 piece “Secret Assault on Terrorism Widens on Two Continents,” the Times exposes important details of the Obama administration’s covert war against Al Qaeda in Yemen. But the article fails to adequately examine the tactical shortcomings of the campaign, and dismisses the inexcusable suffering US-Yemeni policies have visited upon the Yemeni people.

The article quotes Deputy National Security Advisor John O. Brennan as likening the current US campaign in Yemen to a “scalpel” rather than a “hammer.” America’s supposedly scalpel-esque operations include cruise missile and drone strikes, as well as covert actions by small Special Operations and CIA teams. But the label Brennan applies – and the Times accepts – is misleading

Since 2009, American ordnance has killed or injured hundreds of Yemeni civilians and incited additional terrorist attacks. For example, the Times article reports that a cruise missile strike against a “makeshift Qaeda camp” on December 17, 2009 killed “at least 41” Yemeni civilians. Estimates in Yemeni papers at the time were much higher. But the Times cites no evidence – and none has been presented by either American or Yemeni officials – that any enemy operatives were killed in the attack, or that a Qaeda camp was even present. Nor have US or Yemeni officials justified the decision to launch a missile packed with cluster munitions into a populated area.

It is common to see Yemen portrayed in the press as lawless and inaccessible. If these descriptors can accurately be applied to any part of Yemen, the particular district where the December 17 strike occurred is not such a place. There is no sensible reason why a criminal target in this area could not have been dealt with by Yemeni police or counter-terrorism forces. More to the point, cluster munitions are the literal opposite of a scalpel, and the use of such weapons in populated, civilian areas is unjustifiable. For the administration to describe such tactics as “surgical” is perverse. For a journalistic institution like the Times to relay such descriptions as fact is irresponsible.

The Times article does a better job of questioning the strategic rationale behind this campaign. Many of Mr. Obama’s top counter-terrorism advisors are veterans of the CIA’s Afghan campaign of the 1980s, in which attrition was the goal. But the reality, expressed admirably by former US Ambassador to Yemen Edmund Hull, is that a strategy of killing terrorists will not protect US interests or destroy Al Qaeda. Rather, all available evidence suggests that US and Yemeni counter-terrorism policies have in fact led to an increased entrenchment of Al Qaeda in Yemen. Once a pariah in Yemeni society, the organization now voices the grievances of the people, while the reckless disregard for civilian safety demonstrated by the US and Yemeni governments reinforces the idea that the Yemeni people have nowhere else to turn.

But a kind of victory is still possible, if the Obama administration is willing to listen to its better angels. Ambassador Hull hits close to the mark in saying that counter-terrorism must not be limited to the military and intelligence sectors, but must also include “political, social and economic forces.” In fact, State Department officials have already released several documents emphasizing the need to address Yemen’s systemic problems of corruption, unemployment, an extreme water shortage, and other crises of capacity. Secretary Clinton and her deputies have consistently said that a secure and peaceful Yemen can only be achieved through development and humanitarian aid. If given the necessary resources, a State Department-led effort could make a significant difference, for the people of Yemen and for the United States.

At present, the Obama administration is touting a humanitarian aid package that amounts to just over two dollars per Yemeni, while spending millions on military operations. Only if this calculus is reversed will the US have a chance at weakening Al Qaeda in Yemen and elsewhere. In the meantime, media institutions like the Times need to scrutinize the facts, and not allow Defense Department and CIA rhetoric to cloud their reporting of this very un-surgical and costly war.

Welcome to the Directors' blog!

Thank you for visiting the Yemen Peace Project. On this blog, our four co-directors -- Aliya, Dana, Tiffany, and Will -- will share updates about our activities, as well as our thoughts and observations about developments in Yemen. We will try to post updates at least once a week, so please bookmark this page and check back regularly. We hope this blog will help encourage and facilitate an informed conversation about Yemen, and US foreign policy, and we look forward to receiving your feedback in the comments section. This month we are recruiting volunteers for our Pens for Peace initiative, which aims to foster direct communication between Americans and Yemenis. Click here to learn more.