More US Training for Yemeni Military

From the AP...

Faced with an increasingly alarming threat from al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the U.S. military will begin a new training program with Yemen's counterterrorism unit so it can move against militants believed to be plotting attacks on America from safe havens there.

I think, instinctually, this makes a lot of us nervous.  No one seriously questions Salih's willingness to use our arms and money and training against the people of Yemen.  I understand that CT is our main objective in Yemen, but we also ned to be careful not to let our actions destroy our reputation (further destroy) for another generation.  


However, and I know that this article only talks about elite counter-terrorism troops, one thing Egypt has demonstrated it is that military contacts at many levels can be an excellent counterweight to an entrenched and reality-deprived authoritarian.   Indeed, one could make the case that it is the threat of withholding friendship, in the form of scrilla, that could make an army say "it's time to go."   Its own sense of morality could do so as well, but let's not depend on the kindness of strangers. 


This isn't to say that dumping military aid into Yemen is the best thing to do to hedge against our becoming entangled in Salih's potential death-throes; it could easily backfire.  Odds are, it will.  (And the article's almost comically lonely throwaway paragraph, consisting of one sentence reading "the overall U.S. effort also includes economic and governance assistance" is a perfect illustration of the blinkered nature of our strategy.)   But I also think we shouldn't be so quick to jump the gun and getting nervous about these expanded contacts.  A professional military is more likely to be loyal to the state, and not just to the guy doling out money. 


 

Arrrgh: A Reasoned Statement on Yemen

New York Republican Peter King is the new chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security.  This combines a lot of my favorite things, because the Honorable King is not only a crazy person who is terrified of Muslims, but he is a wild hypocrite who hates Islamic terrorism but has a history of being totally in love with the IRA.   I am Irish (American), and vaguely believe in the cause of one Ireland, but despise the IRA, and, when it comes down to it, don't really care.  History is the nightmare, and all of that.  Anyway, King standing for two things I hate- Islamophobia and the degradation of the Irish- manages to combine with possibly my least favorite thing, the elevation of Anwar al-Awlaki into a Bondian supervillain, in today's committee hearing.

"I actually consider Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula with al-Awlaki as a leader within that organisation probably the most significant risk to the US homeland," National Counterterrorism Centre head Michael Leiter told the committee.

(Note: for some reason this is from as Australian news feed, which explains the wildly anti-American spelling of center.)

I am actually pretty happy he said that al-Awlaki is just "a leader", rather than "the leader", although in his prepared statement Leiter only highlighted al-Awlaki when talking about the group, saying:

Anwar al‐Aulaqi, a dual U.S.‐Yemeni citizen and a leader within AQAP, played a significant role in the attempted airliner attack and was designated in July as a specially designated global terrorist under E.O. 13224 by the US Government and the UN’s 1267 al‐Qa’ida and Taliban Sanctions Committee. Al‐Aulaqi’s familiarity with the West and his operational role in AQAP remain key concerns for us.

As anyone who reads this blog, and really anyone who doesn't, knows, this is: crazy.   There are so many more people in AQAP who are a much greater threat than al-Awlaki.  I am pretty glad about the rest of what I have read, and plan to do a semi-live blog tomorrow (I was busy today).  I think it looks like the admin knows that the franchises are increasing in importance.  But whether it is pandering or ignorance, our bloody-minded fixation on the one guy who speaks English might be our biggest stumbling block in establishing a decent and sustainable policy in Yemen.

Salih Goes All-In

I'm still muddling through President Salih's endgame in essentially announcing a bid to be President For Life (abolishing term limits).  Greg has all the specifics of the recent election moves.

Obviously, the immediate game is to remain in power.  Let's not overthink this.  But why, exactly?  And don't just say "because power is fucking awesome", even though it is.  I think that might be underthinking it.   What are Salih's goals, and how will this help accomplish them?  Those are the questions we need to ask.

I was initially writing a list of different interpretations- "Cynical" "Idealistic" "Pragmatic" etc, but found that the categories kept sliding into each other.   Salih is neither misguided but benevolent statesman nor is he a bloodlust-filled tyrannical monster.  His biggest achievement in office, what he wanted his legacy to be, was the unification of North and South Yemen.  That was a longtime dream, and in his mind, and to a large extent in truth, he accomplished it.   He absorbed a chaotic and crumbling south, and when the traitorous southern leadership maneuvered to back out, he was the one who saved the country.  Sure, he had to bring in some unsavory elements, and some eggs go broken, but that is what leaders do.  Right?

Lincoln-esque, one might say.  Not me, but someone.

So, then: unity must be preserved.  And if there is an election with his unpopular son or murderous generals against maybe Hamid al-Ahmar and a disorganized crew of Southerners, with boycotts and bombings everywhere, unity doesn't have a chance.  Elections are the end result of democracy, not the beginning.  For Salih, in his mind, he is the only one who can really win decisively- the old master of alliance-building and survival is going to give it one last go.  He is tinkering with the Constitution at the same time there have been a raft of prisoner releases, both in the north and the south.  I think Salih sees an opening to maintain his rule and settle things down over the next term, so that he can pass it on as planned.

Like I said, this is pretty muddled.  But everything is muddled, mixed up.  I've argued before that Salih sees himself as the one man who can deliver peace and unity, no matter the cost.  This is megalomania, but there is an element of sadness and even blinkered decency to it, much like Yoweri Museveni or even old Paul Kagame.   Thinking you are the only one who can hold the country together shows vast egotism, but it also can't exist without the desire to hold the country together.  And, to be fair, unless things change radically, very quickly, I do think elections will be a disaster, a hardening of schisms.

That said, I still don't know exactly what I make of this move, or what I think the US response should be.  I am getting a little tired of saying "well, we can't interfere with everything, perfect enemy of good, etc", but my weariness doesn't make it untrue.  Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

Anniversaries and Justice

Anniversaries don't mean too much to me, at least analytically.  We have a tendency to grasp at round numbers, imbuing them with a significance they don't really possess.  There is an emotional importance to them, of course- and I am an emotional guy- but we always tend to put meaning on certain days, and get excited in the lead-up to them, and then ignore any lessons the day after.  After all, there is no longer a definite magic to a ten-year, two-day memory. 

I bring this up because, as you know, today is the 10-year mark of the attack on the USS Cole in the port of Aden, a major early blow by al-Qaeda.  Today is good to remember those who were killed, to honor their memory, and to stand in humble awe at their sacrifice.  Before that day, we didn't really know we were at war, and it wasn't until almost a year later that we as a nation really grasped that.  After all, there was an intense and annoying election coming up.  In popular memory, the tumult of the last decade started with the Florida debacle, but the roots of the waste can be tracked back to those beautiful, then red-tided waters.

There is both good and bad in the emotion of an anniversary.  There is a clarification of time, and in this case it provides an outlet for sick horror and shock at the idea of a decade going by without the instigators of this massacre being brought to justice.  This is the thrust of former FBI agent Ali Soufan's NYTimes editorial today, "Closing the Case on the Cole".  In this wretched decade, Soufan was consistently one of the good guys, maybe one of the heroes.  His investigation of the Cole attack, his doggedness in chasing actual justice, and his courageous stance against torture make him a figure to admire.   Soufan points out the Yemeni idea of justice, and then has some ideas of what we should do with Yemen.

For example, Fahd al-Quso, who had confessed to his role in the Cole attack and was sent to prison, is now out; earlier this year he gave press interviews and was featured in a Qaeda video threatening the United States. Jamal al-Badawi, who confessed to being Mr. Quso’s boss and received a death sentence, has gone through a cycle of “escaping” from prison, receiving clemency and allegedly being rearrested. (blogger's note: there is controversy about Qusa's whereabouts and his status among the living; Greg continues to look at it over at Waq al-Waq.)
Meanwhile, the security situation in Yemen has deteriorated. Freed operatives and the availability of safe havens arguably make Yemen an even better base for Al Qaeda than Afghanistan or Pakistan, as does the fact that the government is distracted by a rebellion in the north and a secessionist movement in the south. Not surprisingly, Al Qaeda’s Saudi branch recently moved to Yemen and merged with the local faction to form Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

In response, Washington is considering increasing military aid to Yemen, to as much as $1.2 billion over six years, up from $155 million in 2010. But it should do so only if it wins from Yemen a guarantee that it will be consistent in its fight against Al Qaeda.
An important test of that commitment should be how Yemen responds to a long-overdue request that Mr. Badawi and Mr. Quso be handed over to American officials to be properly prosecuted. Extraditing the two men would also help with another problem connected to the Cole attack: the case against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the plot’s alleged mastermind, who has been in American custody for almost eight years.

It is at the end that I begin to (very respectfully) disagree, though I don't feel particularly good doing so.  Ignoring that al-Qusa may not be in Yemen, or even be alive, extradition might not be the best way to help with Yemen's stability.   If these men aren't exactly heroes, they have protection, and their protection is something Salih can't afford to mess with, nor to tamper with any deals he might have made (although it is clear one way or the other that al-Qusa is still involved with jihad).

As this blog has irritatingly, and others have more eloquently, argued, so much in Yemen is negotiation.  It is frustrating, but for people to be peeled off AQAP there needs to be an element of trust, and being turned over to the US would violate that trust.  Bad people need to be let go- provided there isn't recidivism- in order to convince other bad people to stop being terrorists.  It clearly isn't a fool-proof system, and it fails as often not, but 50% is still a better percentage than zero.   Even 5% is. 

So then the question is: which is more important: justice?  Or victory?  I would love to see these men in jail, sitting idly in a federal supermax for the rest of their stunted and brutal lives.  But forcing Salih to choose between appeasing the US and local needs will destroy even our tentative and unreliable relationship, and make it much harder to help produce a relatively good outcome in Yemen.  Of course, the odds of that outcome being good are small, so why sacrifice justice for that? 

I don't have an answer; even the question makes my head hurt.  But these are the questions we need to ask ourselves.  These wars, or this war, or this action, or whatever it is, do not allow for easy and comforting answers.  Right or wrong are silly and unrealistic options.  Ten years on, I don't think we've figured out the ugly truths of this struggle.  

Awlaki Not to Be Extraditied From Yemen?

Foreign Minister Abu Bakq al-Qirbi seems to say so.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Abu Bakr al-Qirbi said that Yemen will not extradite the US Scholar from Yemeni origins Anwar al-Awlaqi to the United States. He affirmed that the scholar accused of links with al-Qaeda is now in the area where security forces are chasing al-Qada elements.

 This probably isn't going to go over very well, but Yemen has to play a dangerous game here- pleasing the US without alienating its own citizens, who still remember the kidnapping and trumped-up charges against Sheik Moyyad by the United States (for those who don't remember, the Sheik was arrested in Germany and brought to the US, where all accusations of helping Qaeda vanished.  He was eventually convicted of supporting Hamas, which is not a crime in Yemen.  Regardless of your feelings toward Hamas, this was bizarre and didn't present the US judicial system in a good light when it came to the GWOT.  Legally, it wasn't any different than if we sent a swat team into Ibb to capture a local qat dealer- because qat is so very, very bad).  The case against al-Awlaki is obviously a little more clean-cut, but when it comes to perception that doesn't matter.   The government handing him over to a haughty and arbitrary United States is just another way they can be painted as lackeys to America (and probably Israel, because why not?).

Sadly, I think we're in a bind.  We've trumped up this relative nobody to be the living, breathing embodiment of evil, the next Osama, a terrorist out of our nightmares, capable of riding into town wielding a sword made out of machine guns, or something.  Yemen's unwillingness to extradite will make it clear to anyone with an opinion that they are an unreliable partner playing a double game and bent on making AQAP happy. This isn't the case- whatever Salih;s opinions are about Qaeda as a whole, AQAP is his enemy. He wants to get them, I think, but can't further and needlessly provoke the citizenry just so Sean Hannity doesn't call Obama a coward.   Our breathless hype has made reconciling positions almost impossible.  When we look back on the Yemeni chapter of al-Qaeda's history I think the relentless overstatement of his importance will be the most baffling thing.  
 

"Our Man in Sana'a"

I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about Ellen Knickmeyer's piece in Foreign Policy, and you all know how much I hate to be remiss.  The article is about how President Salih is corrupt and mismanages the country.  This is: not a surprise, but it is good to know just who we are getting into bed with. 

I didn't have a problem with most of it, on the surface.  It is an insanely corrupt government, and that is just killing Yemen.  She does an excellent job of highlighting how corruption is destroying any chance of rebuilding an imploding infrastructure.  And there is no doubt that Salih has made some criminally bad decisions, and indecisions.

But there are some strange things going on, outside of factual errors (such as saying Salih led the 1962 coup- he fought on the side of the Republicans, but was decidedly not a leader).  For one thing, the decisions are presented outside of context.  This blog always argues, at the risk of being a bore, that long-term thinking almost always has to be sacrificed to the alter of the immediate.  This isn't good, but it also isn't terribly immoral- it is probably amoral.  Considerations of the day are key, and the chaos the create down the road will be dealt with down the road.  Obviously, this heightens the shuddering violence and instability of the country, but to present this as something unique to Salih is misleading. 

A good example of it is this:

When it comes to short-sightedness regarding Yemen's best interests, Saleh and his ruling family circle have demonstrated a near unerring propensity to err since he assumed the presidency in 1978, after leading a military coup in 1962. Since then, Saleh has built a power system based heavily on buying the goodwill of Yemen's tribal leaders, allegedly paying them to deliver the votes of their people in election after election.

There is the coup part in there, but that has been covered (and I do like the phrase "unerring propensity to err".).  It is the second sentence which weirds me out.  This is presented as if it is something that Salih does because he is corrupt, and because he cares more about power than governance, rather than an inevitable feature of ruling Yemen.  The tribes have always needed to be propitiated, and not just to get votes.  Assuming another president could avoid this is unrealistic.

What gets me in the conclusion.

But if Saleh continues to refuse and delay reforms, the United States and its allies should do something inconceivable in the can-do war on terror: back off and let Saleh feel the pain of his sucked-dry economy and thwarted people. Rather than trying to prop up another wobbly tyrant, as in Afghanistan, the United States would help most by allowing Yemen's citizens, and potentially better Yemeni leaders, to finally have a say.

This reminds me of one of my favorite lines in literature, the last line in The Sun Also Rises.  Brett wistfully and probably unrealistically says to Jake that they good have had such a damn good time together, to which he replies yes, "Isn't it pretty to think so?"   There is a devastating mix of romanticism, weariness, cynicism and a touch of hope in it.  But it never happened, it never was going to, and it being pretty is as far as the thought would go.

It is pretty to think that cutting back aid would allow a good government to spring into place, that backing off would do anything other than accelerate the chaos.  But it won't- there isn't anyone with a power base to really run Yemen, and that is how we are forced to think.  I am not saying that Yemenis inherently need a strongman or that Arabs just want someone to rule them or any of that claptrap, but that Yemen right now, with its hideous conditions, isn't able to transition from Salih to a competent bureaucrat with an efficient civil service humming beneath him.  A lot of this is Salih's fault; a lot of it is in the system.  No one wants to support him forever.  I'd love it if it were possible to replace him with someone better who could keep things together.  But we don't choose the countries we are involved in, and can't choose the conditions we find them in.  What we can choose is how to deal with them smartly and with long-term planning.  In the short-term we need Ali Abdullah.  We can't dreamily turn our back and wait until there is a more comfortable leader with whom to deal.  Our policy has to know this, but also to help ease into the next five, ten or twenty years.  Anything else is an exercise in feeling good at the expense of our security and those we are ostensibly helping.

As always, the policy of AJG is to allow the person I've needlessly attacked to respond, in full and unedited, with as many attacks at my learning, character or grooming as desired.  Ellen Knickmeyer, if by some chance you are reading this, please feel free to drop me a line and open a debate. 

Exciting Stories for Cool Kids!

That title seems more gripping than "A Few Links About Aid In The Arabian Peninsula".  I think it will also be the title of my forthcoming 1940s-style mystery serial.  Anyway.

The first link is from Nasser Arrabyee, about Germany providing some 110 million bones, US, to Yemen for aid projects such as water and other infrastructure needs.  This is good, of course.  It does, however, highlight a troubling trend, at least in the long-term: the perception that aid comes in two different ways- the US provides guns to the regime, and Europe provides what the people actually need.  This is balderdash, or maybe poppycock- the US is also providing hundreds of millions in direct aid.  But it is also giving over a billion in military aid, and has trumpeted that number far louder.   I understand there are domestic reasons for wanting to highlight the exploding side of aid rather than the weak and palsied "keeping people alive" side of it- that is one of the seemingly unavoidable stupidities in our political climate.  But the dangers of this barely need to be written.  If the only perceived US footprint is a boot- regardless of how accurate that is- we lose.  Maybe not in the short-term, but in the extremely medium term.   The US is the primary foreign target of jihadi rhetoric.  Even if there is a tacit agreement among the Friends of Yemen- we provide guns; you: butter- and even if the end result is the same, the story of the US propping up an apostate dictator to crush the little guy is a propaganda coup.  The US needs better PR on this.

A slightly more difficult question is the proposed $60 arms deal to Saudi Arabia.  This has been percolating for a while, but here is the briefest summary, from the CFR website.

Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have recently ordered U.S. weapons worth around $123 billion. The largest deal, if approved by Congress, would be a $60 billion package of U.S. arms for Saudi Arabia, including eighty-four new and seventy refurbished F-15 fighters, supplied largely by Boeing, as well as seventy Apache helicopters, seventy-two Black Hawks, and thirty-six Little Birds.

On the above link there is also a learned debate about the merits of such a sale, mostly revolving around whether it will provide a good counterbalance to Iran.  I don't feel qualified to weigh in on that question, so instead I'll talk about the potential impact on Yemen.  I know, weird twist, right?

The helicopters scare me.  The Sauds have never exactly been reluctant to interfere in Yemen, physically if needed.  This was shown again last year, when they foolishly enmeshed themselves in the Houthi war.  And what is the point of fancy new equipment if you can't use it?  I don't doubt the Saudis are very concerned with Iran, but it is a mistake to think that Yemen is an afterthought for them.  The odds of new, well-publicized US arms being used in Yemen are pretty short.  I'd take that bet in a heartbeat. 

And then what?  Well, nothing unites Yemenis like Saudi interference.  Even those who were on the side of the government liked seeing the overbearing older brother get their nose bloodied in Sa'dah.  It is another great marketing gimmick for AQAP and for the Houthis- the US is selling arms to two corrupt governments in order to crush you.   Even if we discount the propaganda bonus, Saudi involvement further complicates an impossible situation in the north- our goal is to keep Yemen from falling apart, not speed that up.  Of course we're going to sell arms to the Saudis, but we also really need to keep an eye on how they are used. 

The cost

Andrew Bacevich has stirred a lot of talk lately about the limits of US power, the wars we are in, and what we can do as a nation- talking that goes beyond CT/COIN debates or even "Can Iran Get a Nuke" discussions- but fundamental questions about national interest.  Some of the discussion is spurred by the 9/11 anniversary, which is understandable.  James Fallows linked us to probably the shortest David Foster Wallace essay ever, in which he asks if 9/11 victims should be considered martyrs instead of victims, and that is the price we have to pay for living in a free society.  It had been asked before, of course, but never that I have seen in the martyr terms. 

Pivoting off both of these thoughts a bit, I am going to poke my minor nose into the debate with a question.  This is one for which I have no answer, at all.   It is a very specific, though not entirely far-fetched scenario involving my two favorite places, one which I think puts this fundamental question in very stark terms. 

If you know, very certainly (again, this is hypothetical), that AQAP was going to be able to bring down a plane in downtown Chicago, say crash it down State Street, killing many (thousands?), and knew the only way to stop it would be to invade Yemen, would you?  This invasion might not be as costly as Iraq or Afghanistan, but would certainly run in the tens of billions and lose many soldiers, and there would probably be no clear-cut victory.  I don't mean "let the attack happen" in a Truther sense; this is fiction.  I am also aware there is no alogrithm for "citizens' lives v. dollars spent".  I chose Chicago because I live here, with loved ones, any one of whom (myself included) could be downtown at any given moment.   So these are the things that you have to think about: potential personal loss as measured against what your country can afford; what you personally can endure versus the traumatic shock of another major attack, weighed against the divisions yet another war would bring to our society.  And, perhaps, the life of your cousin spending the day at Macy's against the life of an anonymous soldier, bleeding out in an impossible land.

I don't have any answers, but this is something that, between the Yemen stuff, and my budding mayoral campaign, that I want to explore.   Any thoughts are always welcome.

Money

The big US-Yemen story of the day, of course, is the Journal's piece about pumping military aid into Yemen. 

WASHINGTON—The U.S. military's Central Command has proposed pumping as much as $1.2 billion over five years into building up Yemen's security forces, a major investment in a shaky government, in a sign of Washington's fears of al Qaeda's growing foothold on the Arabian Peninsula.
The timing and the final funding amount will depend on how supporters of the effort overcome resistance from some officials at the State Department and the Pentagon, who have doubts about Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and the ability of his government, seen by many as corrupt, to effectively use a flood of American-taxpayer money.

"Seen by many" is journalistic lingo for "is".

This seems on the face to be exactly what many are warning against- pumping in a flood of money to enhance the security services while leaving the massive underpinning structural issues untouched.  Non-military aid, promised with a heap of pronouncements this year, has been terribly slow, and essential food supplies are, at best, trickling in.  There is also the fear- which is polite blogger lingo for "near goddamn certainty"- that the aid will be used for Salih's other wars in the north and the south, and send the country into further chaos.  

These are legitimate concerns and fears.  As has been hammered home nearly ad nauseum, mere military aid might staunch the bleeding, but won't save the patient.  It's like House- the treatment is worse than the disease! 

But the Journal article adds a little more nuance to that picture.

Special Operations teams run several rural development programs in Yemen's tribal areas.They are doing the type of work the State Department's Provincial Reconstruction Teams have done to understand local needs in regions of Iraq and Afghanistan, a congressional official said. Officials said the teams' aid role in Yemen has grown in part because of the U.S. Embassy's stricter travel restrictions for civilian employees. In some cases, USAID officers haven't been out to visit their projects in years.

This isn't laziness; Yemen is a dangerous place.  There is good that the military can do, where aid groups fear to tread.   This, then, is the frustrating paradox of nation-building policies- you can't build a well while being shot, and the shooting won't stop until there's a well.

What this really boils down to is a question to which no one has an answer, and really what no one wants to ask: is it worth billions of dollars and years of blood and treasure to protect, say, one or two planes of citizens, or even a few thousand?   What we've learned over the last decade is what should have always been obvious: America doesn't have infinite power and resources; all wars have to be paid for.  So do you bog yourself down in yet another maddening country to stop a threat which, in the end, shouldn't prove to be existential?   Instinctively, you say yes- lives are worth it.  I know that is my gut.  But what I want to do in over the next couple of weeks is explore that question a little more in-depth.   Any insights or suggested readings are welcomed.