Brookings: Topics - Yemen

Building New Democracies: Institutional Reform after the Arab Spring

Wed, 22 May 2013 01:00:00 -0400

Event Information

May 22, 2013
9:00 AM - 11:00 AM AST

Doha Ritz Carlton, Doha, Qatar

On May 23, 2013, the Brookings Doha Center (BDC) hosted a plenary discussion on the challenge of institutional reform after the Arab Spring as part of the 13th Doha Forum. Speakers discussed how the countries of the Arab Spring could build new, representative governments, as well as how they could best balance demands for change with the requirements of an inclusive and successful transition. The discussion featured Ambassador Nabil Fahmy, former Egyptian Ambassador to the United States and founding Dean of the American University in Cairo’s School of Public Affairs; Dr. Rafiq Abdessalam, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Tunisia; Dr. Bernardino Leon, European Union Special Representative for the Southern Mediterranean; Nikolay Mladenov, former Foreign Minister of Bulgaria; and Michael Posner, former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. The discussion was moderated by BDC Director Salman Shaikh.

The panel opened with speakers taking stock of the situation of the countries of the Arab Spring, and Egypt and Tunisia in particular, more than two years after 2011’s revolutionary wave. Both Fahmy and Abdessalam pointed to the challenges their countries faced. “It’s impossible to deny that almost everybody [in Egypt] is frustrated at this point,” Fahmy said. He told the audience that he remained optimistic over the long term but was, over the short term, “quite disturbed.” For his part, Abdessalam acknowledged that Tunisia’s transition had been difficult. At this point, he said, the goal of the Tunisian “Troika” was to steer the country through this period “at the least possible cost” with an approach based on partnership and consensus.

These challenges reflected the scope of the change underway in these countries. Fahmy asserted that what is happening in Egypt is a “societal” transition, not merely an institutional one – an argument that Abdessalam seconded. Egyptians, Fahmy said, are now defining an Egyptian political identity for the 21st century. Mladenov identified this as a key point of difference between earlier transitions in Central and Eastern Europe and those in the Arab world: whereas the end goal in European transitions may have been relatively clear, in the Arab world it is still in the making.

In order to best conduct this societal dialogue, Mladenov emphasized the “roundtable” approach Bulgaria had taken to arrive at a consensus vision for the future. This had parallels with the Tunisian approach, which Abdessalam said was based on a recognition that no single faction could bear these burdens alone. Fahmy, meanwhile, expressed unhappiness that Egypt had entered the political process before setting its constitutional ground rules, a decision he blamed for Egypt’s polarization. When politics are put first, he said, political forces “pull you apart rather than push you forward.” Posner was also critical of the Egyptian case, and in particular what he saw as a “very flawed” constitution – both the drafting process and the resulting document.

Participants worked to put forward an approach that was forward-looking but also workable. Leon laid out the key points on which he had counseled these transitioning countries. He advocated a transition that held accountable those responsible for excesses and dramatically reformed fiscal structures and the security services. At the same time, he argued for retaining the personnel and institutions of the state and broadly accommodating officials not implicated in crimes as part of the former regime. Fahmy warned that by too-aggressively dismantling everything that had come before the revolution, you risked “destroy[ing] the core of the country,” while Mladenov cautioned against not going far enough – he said that old regimes “have a tendency to come back from the ashes.” Leon read the successes of al-Nahda in Tunisia and the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party in Egypt as evidence of a desire for change – but said that support for Ahmed Shafiq in Egypt’s presidential election and Beji Caid Essebsi in Tunisia showed the need for a process that was respectful to and inclusive of all parties.

Any solution, of course, has to match up with the aspirations of the peoples who overthrew their dictators. As Posner put it, these are “young societies” whose people want economic opportunity and a political stake in the future of their countries. Fahmy argued that people need to see real progress on reform and improving their quality of life if they are to remain committed to the transition.

Participants touched on different ways that the West could support these transitions and reform processes. Mladenov raised as examples both European efforts to assist political party formation and the EU Endowment for Democracy. Still, Leon said that it is “very important to listen to what these societies want.” Posner and Mladenov agreed that any process had to be domestically driven, given the particularities of any given country case; looking at examples as diverse as Argentina, Serbia, and East Germany, they rejected a one-size-fits-all model.

In a discussion of the Gulf role in supporting these transitions, Abdessalam praised Qatar’s role but condemned some other Gulf states’ fear of change and “pessimistic depiction” of what is now going on in Egypt and Tunisia. Fahmy said that the Gulf should continue to provide support for these transitions, but not for one party over another. Posner, for his part, was sharply critical of the Gulf states’ position on the uprising in Bahrain. Bahrain should have been a model for a managed transition to a constitutional monarchy, he said, but instead the Gulf had been silent as the Bahraini government declined to implement key recommendations of the “Bassiouni Report.” Mladenov and Leon, on the other hand, were much more positive about the support of the Gulf for the Arab transitions and the Gulf countries’ role as a partner for the West. Mladenov did warn, however, that the Gulf faced possible blowback from its involvement in the Syrian conflict.

Dr. Yassin Said Noaman, Secretary-General of the Yemen Socialist Party and former Prime Minister of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, had been meant to represent the Yemeni experience in the discussion but was ultimately unable to attend. Fortunately, Yemeni Minister of Information Abu Bakr al-Qirbi and Minister of Industry and Trade Saad al-Din bin Taleb were able to contribute during the panel’s question-and-answer session. They discussed the progress on and hopes for Yemen’s national dialogue and, in the case of bin Taleb, highlighted how previous regimes’ corruption and self-serving contracts had left their countries with an unsustainable economic burden.

Participants

Moderator

Salman Shaikh

Director, Brookings Doha Center
Fellow, Saban Center for Middle East Policy

Panelists

Ambassador Nabil Fahmy

A Lasting Peace? Yemen's Long Journey to National Reconciliation

Ibrahim Sharqieh — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0500

As Yemenis sit down to their long-delayed national dialogue, they face an array of challenges that threaten to pull the country apart – from an unfinished revolution to regional demands for independence. Can Yemen grapple with its legacy of dictatorship and violence and prevent another slide into civil conflict?

In a new paper from the Brookings Doha Center, A Lasting Peace: Yemen’s Long Journey to National Reconciliation, Ibrahim Sharqieh outlines a process of national reconciliation that is Yemen’s best hope for stability.

Based on extensive field research and interviews with key Yemeni figures, Sharqieh describes the challenges facing post-revolutionary Yemen and the key actors in the country’s national reconciliation, from the Islamist Islah Party to the country’s tribes. He also lays out the mechanisms for a successful reconciliation process, discussing not only the country’s nascent national dialogue but also the sort of transitional justice bodies that must follow it. Finally, he concludes with how the international community can help Yemen achieve reconciliation – and warns against regional and international powers acting as spoilers.

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Authors

Ibrahim Sharqieh

Publication: Brookings Doha Center

Image Source: © Mohamed Al-Sayaghi / Reuters

Improving the Quality of Basic Education for the Future Youth of Yemen Post Arab Spring

Takako Yuki and Yuriko Kameyama — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 09:19:00 -0500

This paper looks at the issue of the quality of education in Yemen. It uses micro-data from TIMSS and from surveys conducted in underserved rural areas, as well as macro-level policy information from the System Assessment for Better Education Results (SABER) database. The analysis indicates that the availability of teachers and resources at schools, the monitoring and supervision of schools and parental involvement in schooling are important factors for better learning outcomes and avoiding trade-offs between expansion of enrollment and quality of learning. The paper suggests three types of reforms that can be carried out in the short run. First, it is necessary to systematically monitor teachers’ actual deployment and attendance in order to link the information with salary management and incentives. Second, there is a need to refine and scale up the existing implementation and monitoring mechanism for school grants to reward schools and communities that improve access for disadvantaged students and girls, and enhance the quality of learning. Third, there is a need to enhance transparency and accountability of school resources and results by disseminating a simple database that would include trends of basic indicators to monitor and compare progress at the school, district and governorate level.

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Authors

Takako Yuki
Yuriko Kameyama

Image Source: © Khaled Abdullah Ali Al Mahdi / Reuters

Is Yemen’s Power Struggle Over?

Ibrahim Sharqieh — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 17:45:00 -0500

In a dramatic move this week, Yemeni President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi struck at some of the old regime centers of power that have persisted since the removal of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Saleh’s influence has lived on through allies that retain command of key military and security units – in particular, his son Brigadier General Ahmed Ali Saleh, who heads the country’s Republican Guards, and his nephew Yehya Saleh, who leads the Central Security forces. But with a set of decrees reorganizing Yemen's armed forces, Hadi moved to fold these units into a four-branch Yemeni army, with the president serving as commander-in-chief.

Hadi’s decrees aimed to end the low-intensity struggle that has ground on over the past year between Saleh’s allies and their rivals in the country’s political and military leadership. In so doing, however, Hadi has run the risk of destabilizing a country that the United States views as a front line on the war on al Qaeda. After all, Yemen is also adjacent to Saudi Arabia, and chaos in Yemen could disrupt oil supplies and upset world energy markets.

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Authors

Ibrahim Sharqieh

Publication: CNN

Image Source: © Khaled Abdullah Ali Al Mahdi / Reuters

U.S.-Yemeni Terror Obsession Will Not Solve Yemen's Woes

Ibrahim Sharqieh — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 18:30:00 -0500

Among the world leaders who congratulated President Barack Obama for winning a second term last week was the Yemeni president, Abdrabu Mansur Hadi. From the Yemeni leader's point of view, the most important aspect of Mr Obama's reelection is perhaps the issue of the continuation of a U.S.-Yemeni war on terrorism.

In the congratulatory cable, President Hadi "reiterated that the Yemeni-American partnership will continue to advance and the cooperation in the fight against terrorism will progress." Mr. Hadi praised his American counterparts' "achievements in curtailing the threat of terrorism and highlighted the linkage between global interests with the performance of the U.S. administration". No other Yemeni subjects were raised in the cable.

The prominence given to antiterrorism efforts in the U.S.-Yemeni relationship recalls the days of the old regime. Under Ali Abdullah Saleh, there was consistent controversy about whether the former president was sincere in his fight against Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP), or was just manipulating the cause to secure more military aid and support to his regime.

This is not to suggest in any way that Mr. Hadi is manipulating the security cause, but to mention "terrorism" twice in a short note of congratulation raises questions about Mr Hadi's approach to the challenges facing Yemen and his strategies for moving the country forward.

Mr. Hadi's appetite for tighter collaboration on security and antiterrorism seems to be motivated by his successes in the Abyan province, where AQAP militants have been driven out of several cities they'd controlled during the uprising against Mr. Saleh (including Lawdar, Jaar, Zinjibar and Shaqra).

AQAP moved into the remote province during the uprising in Sanaa, taking advantage of a collapse of security beyond the capital. Then, for probably the first time in its history (it was formed in 2009), AQAP abandoned its traditionally secretive approach and expanded into civil governance in Abyan. AQAP controlled police stations, regulated traffic and solved local disputes.

A collaboration of Yemeni boots on the ground, along with American drones overhead, led to the decisive collapse of this experiment in AQAP governance.

It also brought promises of even more antiterrorism funding from the U.S. The Washington Post reported in July that to consolidate this U.S.-Yemeni security collaboration, "the U.S. military is preparing to give more than $100 million in counterterrorism and security aid to [Yemen] this year".

Before President Hadi reiterates his commitment to taking security collaboration to the next level, he, along with the U.S., should be assessing to what extent the collaborated effort has indeed been successful.

First of all, the collapse of AQAP governance in Abyan does not weaken the organisation in terms of its ability to attack. It only returns the organisation to its previous state, as a clandestine group that plans and hits selected targets, either in Yemen or abroad. Governance has never been part of organisation's mandate. Renouncing its hold on Abyan may actually even end up strengthening AQAP, as it relieves the group from the burden of governance.

Furthermore, the Yemeni army did not provide the full protection needed after the fighting and left the local tribes who fought as part of the alliance with the U.S. military vulnerable, in particular to retaliatory attacks from AQAP. In fact, AQAP responded in August with a suicide bombing that targeted a funeral in the city of Jaar, killing 45 people.

If the Yemeni-American security alliance does not address the needs of the local tribes, it is unlikely they will be around when the next fighting begins. In other words, providing security and maintaining order takes more than just drone attacks with no strings attached.

In Northwest Pakistan, the same model has led to the alienation of local communities and turned them to easy recruiting targets for Al Qaeda. In Yemen, an estimated 200,000 people displaced by the fighting are still unable to return to their homes.

President Hadi's emphasis on "the Yemeni-American partnership in the fight against terrorism" should deal with the root causes of the problem rather than treating it merely as a matter of military aid and arms. That is the failed model that his predecessor used for years.

At the top of the list of root causes for the spread of terrorism is poverty. The UN's World Food Programme reports that food insecurity in Yemen had doubled in the last two years, leaving approximately 45 per cent of the population short of food. An estimated 300,000 children are facing malnutrition, while unemployment exceeds 46 per cent.

Equally important are the challenges facing President Hadi on the political front. The political settlement - or GCC initiative - that brought him to power is facing serious obstacles almost one year on from its signing in Saudi Arabia. Loyalists of the former president are still actively advancing their own agenda. The national dialogue process that was supposed to take place months after the signing has not even started. And there is now talk of the Southern movement boycotting the dialogue. Unless the political settlement produces result soon, Yemenis will begin to question where the political process is really taking them.

The results the Yemeni people expect are definitely not those emphasised by President Hadi in his cable to the American president. Rather, the focus from both Mr. Hadi and his American counterparts should be on meeting serious development objectives.

Yemenis need to see hope, not drones. Failure to reorient the U.S.-Yemeni relationship in this way will only add further pressure to the fraught political settlement, and bring its collapse one step closer, an outcome that would damage the ability of both the U.S. and Yemen to advance security, stability and development in the country.

Authors

Ibrahim Sharqieh

Publication: The National

Image Source: HANDOUT

Yemen and the Fight Against a Resurgent al Qaeda

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 10:00:00 -0500

Event Information

November 13, 2012
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM EST

Saul/Zilkha Rooms
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

Rife with political turmoil, Yemen has proven fertile ground for al Qaeda-linked groups in the post 9/11 era. Until the beginning of 2012, the United States cooperated with the regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh, but his departure—orchestrated with U.S. support—raises questions for future counterterrorism cooperation. How much ground has al Qaeda gained in Yemen despite setbacks in Pakistan? Can the United States effectively manage events in Yemen without becoming entangled in another costly ground war? What more can be done to prevent al Qaeda’s influence from spreading further throughout the Arabian Peninsula?

On November 13, the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings hosted a discussion to explore these and other questions about the conflict in Yemen. Panelists included Gregory Johnsen, a Ph.D. candidate in the Near Eastern Studies Department at Princeton, and Fellow Ibrahim Sharqieh, deputy director of the Brookings Doha Center, who appeared via video conference from Doha.

Senior Fellow Daniel L. Byman, director of research for the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, moderated the discussion.

Why Yemen is the Scariest Challenge Facing Obama Abroad

Bruce Riedel — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 11:02:00 -0500

Obama will have to face the growing menace of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the failing state in Yemen that it thrives on. The response must be nimble and careful because AQAP’s real goal is to drag America into another bleeding war in the Muslim world, this time hoping it will spread into the oil rich deserts of Saudi Arabia. Luckily, Gregory Johnsen has written the best new book on al Qaeda in 2012 and the best book on Yemen in years.

The Last Refuge: Yemen, Al Qaeda and America’s War in Arabia is a detailed narrative account of the development of AQAP. It is also a great read; Johnsen is a very good storyteller. The story is fascinating, this is a group that was virtually destroyed in 2004 by drone attacks and effective counter terrorism operations, and then it recovered, helped immensely by the Arab world’s anger over the American invasion of Iraq. In 2009 it rebranded itself with new leadership composed of Saudis and Yemenis, several of whom had been prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. It’s number two, Saeed al Shihri, spent five years America’s Cuban prison before being released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 where he fled into Yemen. A drone had allegedly killed him last month, then he reappeared alive in a message threatening more attacks on America.

Since 2009 AQAP has tried to attack the American homeland at least three times. On Christmas Day 2009 it almost succeeded. I served as an expert witness to the trial of the suicide terrorist who successfully penetrated American security and got a bomb on a Detroit bound flight that day. President Obama was absolutely right when he said after the fact “we dodged a bullet, but just barely” because the bomb failed to detonate properly. Johnsen reveals that AQAP’s master bomb maker, a Saudi named Ibrahim Asiri has now built a bomb with two detonators so it can’t fail.

The Arab Awakening came to Yemen in 2011 with a vengeance and has left the country completely fragmented. AQAP has thrived. Yemen has always been a difficult and inhospitable place. Its most desolate region, where Osama Ben Laden’s family comes from and Shihri was nearly killed, is the Hadramawt which means “death has come” in Arabic and is said to contain the gate to hell in one of its wadis. Today Yemen is running out of oil and water, more than half the population is under 18, half goes to bed every night hungry and the national government barely controls even parts of the capital.

For over a decade America has been trying to fight al Qaeda in Yemen without getting dragged deeper and deeper into its internal dysfunctional politics. Johnsen’s book provides a gripping account of the American war and its key players. The US ambassadors on the scene are portrayed vividly and their counter terrorism bosses back in Washington. So are the tensions between them over how to deal with AQAP and the complex politics of Yemen.

America’s key ally in this war is Yemen’s bigger and richer brother, Saudi Arabia, the real prize in the struggle. Bin Laden and his protégés in AQAP have always had their focus on the Kingdom and the House of Saud. Johnsen details just how deeply the Saudis have become involved in the war in Yemen including how its intelligence service has foiled two AQAP plots against America and its Royal Saudi Air Force is now flying bombing strikes against AQAP targets deep inside the country.

AQAP entitled the video it produced about the Christmas Day plot “the Final Trap.” Shihri was one of the narrators. What the title meant was that al Qaeda hopes to draw America deeper and deeper into a quagmire with more and more boots on the ground in Yemen. It wants another Iraq, another Afghanistan. An attack in America that killed hundreds would force America to take on the challenge of rebuilding Yemen with our own hands, a final trap that would bled America’s military, our economy, and our morale.

President Obama has wisely avoided the trap for the last four years but the Yemeni threat has not gone away and the slow collapse of the Yemeni state offers little hope that it will. Washington has a long-term challenge in Arabia. Greg Johnsen has written an excellent guide to the scary conundrum that we face.

Authors

Bruce Riedel

Publication: The Daily Beast

Image Source: © Jim Bourg / Reuters

Resilient Royals: How Arab Monarchies Hang On

F. Gregory Gause, III and Sean L. Yom — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0400

No monarchy fell to revolution in the Arab Spring. What accounts for this monarchical exceptionalism? Analysts have argued that royal autocracies are inherently more resilient than authoritarian republics due to their cultural foundations and institutional structure. By contrast, this paper leverages comparative analysis to offer a different explanation emphasizing deliberate regime strategies made in circumstances of geographic fortuity. The mobilization of cross-cutting coalitions, hydrocarbon wealth, and foreign patronage accounts for the resilience of monarchical dictatorships in the Middle East. Without these factors, kingships are just as vulnerable to overthrow as any other autocracy—something that history indicates, given the long list of deposed monarchies in the region over the past half-century.

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Authors

F. Gregory Gause, III
Sean L. Yom

Publication: Journal of Democracy

Image Source: © Amr Dalsh / Reuters

Campaign 2012: Arab Awakening

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 10:00:00 -0400

Event Information

September 25, 2012
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

Following the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and the death of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, the United States is weighing its position and policies in the post-Arab Spring Middle East. More than a year after the initial Arab uprisings, the United States is questioning the state of its relations with the nascent Arab democracies and the emerging Islamist regimes. As the second anniversary of the Arab revolutions approaches, political and economic instability persists alongside growing anti-American sentiment, forcing the United States to adapt its policies to the evolving landscape in the Middle East. With the U.S. election just over six weeks away, many American voters are questioning the presidential candidates’ foreign policy strategies toward the region and wondering how the volatility in the Middle East and North Africa will affect the United States in the months and years ahead.

On September 25, the Campaign 2012 project at Brookings held a discussion on the Arab Awakening, the tenth in a series of forums that identify and address the 12 most critical issues facing the next president. POLITICO Pro defense reporter Stephanie Gaskell moderated a panel discussion where Brookings experts Tamara Cofman Wittes, Shadi Hamid and Raj Desai presented recommendations to the next president.

Participants can follow the conversation on Twitter using hashtag #BIArabAwakening.

Download papers from the event:

Prioritizing Democracy: How the Next President Should Re-Orient U.S. Policy in the Middle East, by Shadi Hamid
Three Key Challenges in Confronting the Arab Awakening, by Tamara Cofman Wittes
The Challenge of a Reform Endowment, by Raj M. Desai

Campaign 2012: Twelve Independent Ideas for Improving American Public Policy is an indispensable guide to the key questions facing White House hopefuls in 2012.

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Campaign 2012: Arab Awakening

Transcript

Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

A Stubborn Terror

Bruce Riedel — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Eleven years after 9/11, al Qaeda is fighting back. Despite a focused and concerted American-led global effort—despite the blows inflicted on it by drones, SEALS, and spies—the terror group is thriving in the Arab world, thanks to the revolutions that swept across it in the last 18 months. And the group remains intent on striking inside America and Europe.

The al Qaeda core in Pakistan has suffered the most from the vigorous blows orchestrated by the Obama administration. The loss of Osama bin Laden eliminated its most charismatic leader, and the drones have killed many of his most able lieutenants. But even with all these blows, bin Laden’s successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is still orchestrating a global terror network and communicating with its followers.

Most importantly, al Qaeda’s allies in Pakistan, the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba, which attacked Mumbai in 2008, are under no pressure. They continue to enjoy the patronage of the Pakistani intelligence services. Lashkar-e-Taiba has a global network with cells in America, England, and the Persian Gulf. Just this summer, the Saudis arrested a key Lashkar operator planning a new mass-casualty attack and extradited him to India.

But it is in the Arabian Peninsula that al Qaeda is really multiplying. Its franchise in Yemen has staged three attacks on America, including one at Christmas in 2009—the infamous “underwear bomber—that almost succeeded in Detroit. Its brilliant Saudi bomb maker, Ibrahim al-Asiri, is alive and has trained a cadre of students. The Yemeni regime is weak, the country is spinning into chaos, and al Qaeda is exploiting it. Now the U.S. is using drones almost as much in Yemen as in Pakistan.

The al Qaeda apparatus in Iraq, despite being decapitated several times, carries out waves of bombings every month. It has proven remarkably resilient. In North Africa, al Qaeda has allied itself with other Islamist extremists and taken over more than half of Mali, an area bigger than France. There it is training terrorists from Algeria, Morocco, Nigeria, and elsewhere. It has raided Muammar Gaddafi’s arsenal and is armed and dangerous.

A new al Qaeda franchise has emerged in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, where it is trying to provoke a war between Egypt and Israel. American troops in the multinational force keeping the 1979 peace treaty are at risk.

The fastest-growing al Qaeda operation is in Syria. Zawahiri ordered al Qaeda jihadists from around the world to go to Syria last February. They carried out seven attacks in March, and at least 66 in June. Al Qaeda won’t take over the embattled country, but it will thrive in the civil war and chaos there—and use Syria as a base for attacks in Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon.

Attacking targets in America and Europe remains a high priority. Al Qaeda dispatched Chechen terrorists to Spain this year to attack Gibraltar. The Spanish unraveled the plot in August. Since 2009 al Qaeda plans to attack New York, Chicago, and Detroit have all failed due to good counterterrorism work, and good luck.

In fighting terror, our team has to stay lucky 100 percent of the time. Al Qaeda needs to be lucky only once.

Authors

Bruce Riedel

Publication: The Daily Beast

Image Source: © Kai Pfaffenbach / Reuters

The Yemeni Model Probably Won’t Fit Syria Now

Ibrahim Sharqieh — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Editor's Note: In an interview with Voice of America’s David Arnold, Ibrahim Sharqieh says it may be too late for a negotiated settlement in Syria, in contrast with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s peaceful departure from power earlier this year. Sharqieh says although a model for peaceful change, Yemen still needs to prepare for national reconciliation.

The escalation of violence in Syria stands in sharp contrast to the relative calm that followed a similar Arab Spring uprising in Yemen last year. In past months, Middle East observers have proposed that the transition from the 33-year rule of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh could be a model for the proposed departure of another long-serving head of state, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. But as the violence increases, time appears to be running out for a peaceful transition in Damascus.

Among those observers who once urged a negotiated settlement in Damascus, conflict resolution specialist Ibrahim Sharqieh of the Brookings Institution’s Doha Center, told VOA’s David Arnold this week it may be too late for Syria. “My argument at this point is that it’s becoming extremely difficult, and every day that passes without a serious initiative, the chances become less, unfortunately,” he said.

Yemen became a model for peaceful change and possible political reform in part because the Gulf States negotiated Saleh’s peaceful departure. The country still needs to prepare for national reconciliation and to provide electricity, water and jobs for the people, according to Sharqieh. But he says conditions have improved under the new president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur al-Hadi.

Here is Sharqieh’s assessment of the two countries and five reasons why he thinks a negotiated regime change probably won’t work in Syria:

Progress in Yemen

“Yemen made progress on two levels. One is in terms of working with a balance of power and the fighting with the former president’s group. President Hadi was able to eliminate to a certain extent and weaken the block of former President Saleh and marginalize many of its leaders. So he is gaining momentum in having a centralized power…. The other progress he made is in the fighting with al-Qaida, especially in the south where al-Qaida was able to control the entire province of Abyan.”

Syrian bloodshed

"There are five elements we need to consider in my view that prevent any easy implementation of the Yemeni scenario in Syria. Number one is that we have an army split in Yemen, where half of the army supported the revolution. In Syria, we’re only seeing, at least formally, the army is backing the regime. Two, which is more important…is that in Yemen we did not see the bloodshed we are seeing in Syria now.”

Divided opposition, divided neighbors

“Number three: In Yemen…we have a unified opposition…that was able to engage in negotiations and sign, whereas, in Syria we have seen a split position that does not have any unity…. Number four: The trust has been completely eliminated in Syria…. While it wasn’t perfect in Yemen, to a certain extent the parties were able to trust each other when it comes to signing on papers. Number five: The different parts of the international community – Saudi Arabia, the United States, China, Russia – were all united and pushing for the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] initiative to implement a solution in Yemen. In Syria…we are seeing a split in the international community in two blocks.”

Listen to the interview at middleastvoices.voanews.com »

Authors

Ibrahim Sharqieh

Publication: Voice of America

Image Source: © Handout . / Reuters

Let’s Admit It: The U.S. Is at War in Yemen, Too

Spencer Ackerman and Noah Shachtman — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 00:00:00 -0400

After years of sending drones and commandos into Pakistan, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta last week finally admitted the obvious: The US is “fighting a war” there. But American robots and special forces aren’t just targeting militants in Pakistan. They’re doing the same — with increasing frequency and increasing lethality — in Yemen. The latest drone attack happened early Wednesday in the Yemeni town of Azzan, killing nine people. It’s the 23rd strike in Yemen so far this year, according to the Long War Journal. In Pakistan, there have been only 22.

Surely, if America is at war in Pakistan, it’s at war in Yemen, too. And it’s time for the Obama administration to admit it.

For all the handwringing about the undeclared, drone-led war in Pakistan, it’s quietly been eclipsed. Yemen is the real center of the America’s shadow wars in 2012. After the US killed al-Qaida second in command Abu Yahya al-Libi earlier this month, Pakistan is actually running out of significant terrorists to strike. Yemen, by contrast, is a target-rich environment — and that’s why the drones are busier there these days.

The White House has declared al-Qaida’s affiliate in Yemen is to be the biggest terror threat to Americans today. The campaign to neutralize that threat is far-reaching — involving commandos, cruise missiles, and, of course, drone aircraft. It is also, according to some experts on the region, completely backfiring. Since the US ramped up its operations in Yemen in 2009, the ranks of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, have swelled from 300 fighters to more than 1,000.

The congressional foreign relations committees have had some briefings on the military and intelligence efforts in Yemen, Danger Room is told. But there’s been scant discussion in public of the campaign’s goals, or a way for measuring whether those goals have been reached. Outside of the classified arena, there’s little sense of what our Yemen operations cost, nor of what the costs would be if they were discontinued. It’s an odd situation, notes Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, since “it’s accurate to say we are ‘at war in Yemen.’”

“What should be accompanied with any (even unofficial) declaration of war is a clearly articulated strategy of what America’s strategic objectives in that country are, a cogent strategy for how current US policies will lead to that outcome, how US airstrikes are coordinated with other elements of power, and how much it might cost and when we might expect that to occur,” Zenko tells Danger Room. “Unfortunately, none of that has happened.”

There is no definitive accounting of America’s operations in Yemen and the region that surrounds it. But some details of the secretive missions have been leaked to the press. Here’s what we know.

The US has two separate drone campaigns underway in Yemen — one is run by the CIA, the other by the military’s Joint Special Operations Command. Some of the drones’ targets are authorized by President Obama himself. Some just happen to look or act like perceived threats. According to the tally assembled by the Long War Journal, only nine of the 155 people killed in Yemen by US drones this year have been civilians; no innocents were among the 81 slain in 2011. But it’s hard to know how much to trust those statistics. One of those killed in 2011 was Abd al-Rahman al-Awlaki, a 16 year-old American citizen whose father was a notorious al-Qaida propagandist. And the White House “counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants,” the New York Times reports. Perhaps Awlaki met that threshold.

The twin drone operations are only one facet of American efforts in Yemen, however. According to the Los Angeles Times, a contingent of at least 20 US special operations troops stationed inside the country are using “satellite imagery… eavesdropping systems and other technical means to help pinpoint targets” for the Yemeni military. Pieces from American-made BGM-109D Tomahawk cruise missiles and BLU97 A/B cluster bomblets have been photographed in the town of al-Majala, where 35 women and children were allegedly killed in a December 2009 strike. (The Yemeni journalist who documented the attack is now in prison, supposedly for abetting terrorists.) In neighboring Djibouti, eight American F-15Es jets are flying missions from the US outpost known as Camp Lemonnier; the Pentagon just handed out a $62 million contract to maintain the base. According to the investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill, who has spent extensive time in the region, Djibouti is where “much of the coordination for Yemen ops” takes place.

For all of that firepower, there’s something rather obvious missing: a sense of how and why we’re fighting there. Yes, terrorists based there have tried to attack Americans — tried and repeatedly failed. And yes, the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, passed by Congress right after 9/11, gives the military wide latitude to chase al-Qaida adherents around the globe. But there’s no articulated rationale for why these unsuccessful militants in Yemen warrant this particular military response. No sense of what victory looks like.

“I don’t believe that the US has a Yemen policy,” Princeton University scholar Gregoy Johnsen recently told Foreign Policy magazine. “What the US has is a counterterrorism strategy that it applies to Yemen.”

In this case, however, countering terror also carries the risk of participating in a civil war. The local al-Qaida group “is joined at the hip” with an insurgency largely focused on toppling the local government, one US official told the Washington Post. Take on the wannabe terrorists, and you may be wind up fighting the area’s insurgents, as well.

“In an effort to destroy the threat coming out of Yemen, the US is getting sucked further into the quicksand of a conflict it doesn’t understand and one in which its very presence tilts the tables against the US,” Johnsen wrote.

Katherine Zimmerman, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, doesn’t believe all this fighting adds up to the US being at war in Yemen, although she admits it’s “understandable” why others might hold that view. She sees the difference between the Pakistan war and the Yemen conflict as one of partnership, and intent. “It’s slightly different because of the local cooperation. The effort in FATA [Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas] are more heavily driven by Americans,” Zimmerman tells Danger Room. “In Yemen, we’re essentially acting as a stop gap until Yemenis can take full responsibility. We’ve got a very willing partner in Yemen. We’re working on making it an able partner.”

Of course, Yemen is only one part of an even larger regional conflict. The US maintains additional drone bases, not far away in the Seychelles and Ethiopia. The American Navy keeps around 30 warships in the nearby Indian Ocean, mostly to help fight local pirates. A pair of Lewis and Clark-class supply ships, possibly used as seaborne military camps for Special Forces, have been spotted in the region of late. At least one Somali terrorist was held by American commandos aboard the USS Boxer for weeks.

Over in nearby Somalia, just across the Gulf of Aden, America has backed proxies from the Kenyan army to a “butcher” warlord to take on the local terror group, al-Shabab. But American forces have become directly involved, too. US destroyers have launched missiles and fired their guns at terrorist targets. Members of SEAL Team 6 have dropped in to rescue hostages. Then of course, there are the drones. Perhaps, by Panetta’s standards, this means the US is “at war” in Somalia, as well.

Undeclared wars are dangerous wars. Questions about goals and resources can go unanswered, when there’s no need to convince the people or the Congress of their merits. No one knows how undeclared wars end, or even when they’re won, because no one measures the progress of wars fought in the shadows. The only way they end is when the US decides to simply walk away — as with the 80s-era shadow war the US helped wage in Afghanistan. Looked like a great success for a decade; not so much on 9/11.

Of course, missions can drift and resources can vanish in a declared war; just look at Iraq. But when a fight is kept in the shadows by design, the chances for shenanigans and miscalculations rise. At least we have some sense of when and where resources were misspent in our open war in Afghanistan of today; in our secret campaign in Pakistan, there’s almost none.

The president doesn’t need to address a joint session of Congress every time he dispatches a warship or a handful of military advisers, naturally. But this fight in Yemen isn’t a disconnected, sporadic series of strikes. It’s wide-ranging and it’s multi-pronged. It’s costing lives while building up the ranks of our enemies. It’s war. And it’s time our Commander in Chief came out and said it.

If this war is worth waging, it’s worth waging openly. And it’s worth having a strategy with a clearly defined, achievable goal. Does anyone know what that is in Yemen? Is it the end of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula? The containment of AQAP? A functional Yemeni government that can fight AQAP without U.S. aid? We’ve gotten so used to fighting in the shadows for so long, we barely even ask our leadership what victory looks like.

Authors

Spencer Ackerman
Noah Shachtman

Publication: Danger Room (Wired)

Image Source: © Khaled Abdullah Ali Al Mahdi / Reuters

Yemen Can't Do It Alone

Ibrahim Sharqieh — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 00:00:00 -0400

During a recent visit to Yemen, I was sitting in a cafe in Sana when we suddenly experienced a power outage. I asked the waiter what happened, and he replied: “Saleh’s men keep attacking the main power plant in Mareb to disrupt life in Sana. Saleh is still working against the revolution. He won’t give up.”

Regardless of the real causes of the outage, the waiter’s explanation reflected a general sense that the uprising against former President Ali Abdullah Saleh and his aides is far from over.

Officially, the uprising, which was inspired by the Arab Spring and led to hundreds of deaths, ended last February when the former vice president, Abed Rabbu Mansour Hadi, was installed as president. But many Yemenis do not believe that Saleh has entirely exited the political scene after 33 years of authoritarian rule over the poor, deeply divided country.

Some progress has been made under the new president. By and large, change and uprising in Yemen are proceeding on parallel tracks, and unless the international community provides Yemen with serious support these tracks may collide — with dire domestic and regional consequences.

Some Yemenis have blamed the opposition for signing the power transfer deal that removed Saleh from power without insisting on making his immunity conditional on his retirement from political activity. The terms of immunity allow Saleh to exercise politics in any capacity he wishes other than the presidency, while also completely shielding him from prosecution. Saleh still serves as president of his General People’s Congress party, which makes many Yemenis nervous about his plans.

“He is like a ghost,” my waiter said. “You don’t see him but you certainly feel his presence.”

Young revolutionaries fear their uprising has not yet achieved its goals. Six months since the signing of the power transfer deal, there are still thousands of tents in Sana’s Change Square. Protesters continue pressing their demands as they have for months.

A revolutionary culture permeates the area, with political slogans, leaflets, music and youths discussing politics around the clock. Almost all political parties are represented at information centers in the square — liberals, Islamists, socialists and secularists. Even the Houthis, a militant rebel group that has fought six wars against the central government, still operate an information center tent called “Shabab al-Somoud” (Steadfast Youth).

Preparing for what seems to be a long stay in Change Square, the Nobel Prize laureate Tawakkol Karman upgraded her tent to accommodate her family, a secretary and a space to meet visitors. The “Nobel Tent” makes a blunt statement: The Yemeni uprising is no longer a fully domestic affair but has a global dimension and will continue until the uprising’s objectives have been fully met.

Yemen’s transition, unlike others in the region, was met with unanimous support from the international community, which has positioned Hadi strongly to deal with the multiple challenges he faces. Indeed, President Obama’s recent threat to freeze the assets of “those trying to disrupt the political transition” sent a clear message to Hadi’s rivals about the strong American stance on Yemen.

Hadi has used this robust international support to change the balance of power in his country. He succeeded in sidelining General Mohammed Saleh al-Ahmar, the air force chief and Saleh’s half brother, as well as Tareq Saleh, a commander of a powerful brigade in Sana and Saleh’s nephew, significantly boosting the president’s power and popularity.

The partnership between Hadi and the U.S. administration undoubtedly extends to the fight against Al Qaeda. For Hadi, defeating the group is crucial for several reasons. He needs to distance himself from his predecessor by proving his sincerity about routing Al Qaeda. This will earn him the trust of the international community. Furthermore, winning the war against Al Qaeda will pave the way for restoring security and stability in Yemen.

Hadi has thus far been successful in restoring order in the city of Louder, and the army says it now controls most of Zinjibar, a known Qaeda stronghold. But the suicide bombing at a military parade rehearsal in Sana on May 21, which killed nearly 100 soldiers, highlights Al Qaeda’s effort to shift the battleground from the south to Sana.

Although these successes are important, they will not transform Yemen into a stable, functioning nation. It will take more than defeating Al Qaeda and sidelining Saleh’s allies for Hadi to win the hearts and minds of Yemenis.

Above all, Hadi must quickly deliver desperately needed services to the people. Yemen is on the verge of a humanitarian crisis, exacerbated by recent clashes, and aid must be delivered before it is too late. In my discussions with tribal members, “looming starvation” was mentioned several times.

In addition, power outages happen many times a day, complicating attempts at economic recovery and stalling efforts to resume normal daily life. Frustrated by the frequency of power outages, it is no surprise that the waiter I spoke to believes that Saleh’s men are behind these disruptions. Although it is not required under the power transfer agreement, Saleh’s departure to another country could restore some needed credibility to the political process in Yemen.

Yemen’s problems can be solved, but the international aid community must step in immediately if the country is to stave off a looming disaster.

Authors

Ibrahim Sharqieh

Publication: The New York Times

Image Source: Khaled Abdullah Ali Al Mahdi / Reuters

Al Qaeda’s "Final Trap" in Yemen: Costly Demise Planned for U.S.

Bruce Riedel — Sun, 27 May 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Al Qaeda’s attack on Yemen’s capital, Sana, this week is a graphic demonstration that its franchise in Arabia is getting more dangerous, benefiting from the weakness of the Yemeni state. The U.S. is putting pressure on the jihadi network like never before, but al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) remains determined to strike us at home to drag us ever deeper into another quagmire in the Middle East.

The suicide bombing on Monday in Sana was the deadliest attack AQAP has ever carried out. It comes as government forces are trying to recover lost territory in southern Yemen that al Qaeda has seized since the Arab Spring came to Yemen a year ago. AQAP using a cover name, Ansar al Sharia, has set up seven so-called emirates in southern Yemen in the last year where it can recruit, train, and prepare its fighters and suicide bombers to strike at home and abroad. AQAP even controls some neighborhoods in Aden, the south’s largest city and port. President Obama is rightly trying to put the Arabian Humpty Dumpty back together again in Yemen so Yemeni forces will be able to disrupt, dismantle, and destroy AQAP. It’s an ambitious strategy.

Central to any chance of success for America in Yemen is close cooperation with Saudi Arabia, the rich big brother next door that most Yemenis resent. Any hope of rebuilding a stable central government will require massive amounts of Saudi aid—and this week the Saudis pledged $3.2 billion in new assistance. The joint U.S.-Saudi intelligence operation that foiled al Qaeda’s latest plan to blow up an airliner en route to America was a significant success in the now-12-year-old battle with al Qaeda in Yemen. AQAP also announced the May 6 death (by drone attack) of the airline-bomb plot’s operational mastermind, Shaykh Fahd al Quso al Awlaqi, one of the brains behind the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Aden and the successor to the New Mexico-born Anwar al Awlaqi, who was also killed in a drone attack last year.

These successes should not obscure the fact that AQAP remains determined to carry out attacks in the United States. Three times in three years—Christmas 2009, October 2010, and now May 2012—AQAP has tried to blow up aircraft in America’s skies. Because the bomb maker Ibrahim al Asiri, who produces these weapons , remains alive and has trained a cadre of understudies in his workshops, we can assume they will try again. AQAP brags that it has already hurt America more than once. AQAP claims al Anwar Awlaki inspired the Fort Hood attack in 2009.

AQAP has articulated an ambitious strategy. During the preparations for the trial of the Christmas 2009 bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab, I prepared testimony to explain AQAP’s strategy to the jury. AQAP had laid it out in the video they released after his capture titled “America and the Final Trap.” Al Qaeda says it hopes that a successful mass-casualty attack on an American city from the air will provoke the U.S. to send troops to attack its bases in Yemen. AQAP wants to drag America into what it calls another “bleeding war” like Afghanistan and Iraq to sap American resources and will. Yemen, AQAP argues, will be the “final trap” that defeats America—much as the war in Afghanistan in the 1980s defeated the Soviet Union. AQAP notes that Yemen’s tough terrain and even tougher tribes have defeated foreign armies from ancient Persia to the U.K. in the 1960s.

If it can’t provoke America into the “final trap,” AQAP hopes its attacks will force the U.S. and its allies to devote more and more resources to countering its threat with expensive security measures. AQAP announced that the bombs it sent to blow up over Chicago (“Obama’s city”) in 2010 cost only $4,200 to make; countermeasures to detect them have cost billions to disburse at airports around the world. This is the strategy of a “thousand cuts” that it hopes will break America.

All this may be nothing more than the fantasies of fanatics. AQAP also hopes Israel will attack Iran to plunge the Middle East into a massive regional war that it can exploit and it hopes to someday overthrow the House of Saud to create a jihadist emirate in the Arabian Peninsula that will redistribute wealth from the ruling families of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and the UAE to the poor of the region, especially in Yemen. All of this is far beyond AQAP’s throw weight. But it can continue to try. In eulogizing al Quso this week, the group promised America “the war between us is not over.”

Authors

Bruce Riedel

Publication: The Daily Beast

Image Source: Khaled Abdullah

Ibrahim al Asiri: al Qaeda's 'Genius' Bomb Maker

Bruce Riedel — Tue, 08 May 2012 13:50:00 -0400

The few details so far released on the latest plot suggest the bomb was made by a Saudi named Ibrahim al Asiri. U.S. experts who have looked at his previous creations characterize him as a genius at the miniaturization of bombs. Asiri is the bomb maker for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the jihadist franchise that is based in Yemen. Asiri built the bomb with which Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian, tried to blow up Northwest Airlines flight 253 on Christmas day 2009 as it was descending over southern Ontario to Detroit. Abdulmutallab was told to choose any American destination, the date and the flight he wanted by then-head of AQAP operations Anwar al-Awlaki, the New Mexico–born terrorist killed in a drone strike last year. This new bomber apparently had similar instructions from Awlaki's successor, Fahd al Quso, who was killed in a drone strike last Sunday.

Asiri also built the parcel bombs that AQAP dispatched to Chicago on the eve of our elections in 2010 to try to blow up UPS and Fed Ex planes that were instead found in Dubai and England, thanks to a tip from Saudi intelligence. AQAP claims a similar parcel bomb was responsible for blowing up a UPS delivery aircraft in Abu Dhabi on Sept. 3, 2010. Al Qaeda publicly said those bombs cost less than $4,200 to make and were a product of Asiri’s workshop in Yemen. And Ibrahim built the bomb that his brother Abdullah used in his failed attempt to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s counterterrorism chief, Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, in August 2009.

Read the full article at dailybeast.com»

Authors

Bruce Riedel

Publication: The Daily Beast

Image Source: Reuters

Pakistan and the Terror Threat: One Year after the Death of Bin Laden

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 14:00:00 -0400

Event Information

April 26, 2012
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM EDT

Falk Auditorium
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC

As the one-year anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden approaches, the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan seems as precarious as ever. While the death of bin Laden undoubtedly struck an important blow against al Qaeda and its affiliates, Pakistan still remains a hotbed of extremism. Elsewhere, al Qaeda has sought to exploit the turmoil in the Arab world to expand its presence in Yemen, Syria and the Maghreb. What is the threat assessment at home and abroad a year after the death of Bin Laden?

On April 26, the Saban Center for Middle East Policy and Foreign Policy at Brookings hosted a discussion on the situation in Pakistan and the threat facing the United States from al Qaeda nearly one year after the death of Osama bin Laden. Panelists included Senior Fellow Daniel L. Byman, director of research of the Saban Center and Brookings Senior Fellow Bruce Riedel. Brookings Senior Fellow Michael O’Hanlon, director of research for Foreign Policy at Brookings and co-author of Bending History (Brookings, 2012), moderated the discussion.

Video

Audio

Pakistan and the Terror Threat: One Year after the Death of Bin Laden

Participants

Moderator

Panelists

Focus on Al Qaeda in Yemen Magnifies Chronic Instability

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0400

In a recent conversation, the White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan and Yemen's newly elected President Abdrabu Mansour Hadi "pledged that the two countries, together with Yemen's other international partners, will work closely together to confront Yemen's security and economic challenges".

Despite the fact that Yemenis signed a power-transfer deal in November in the hopes of achieving lasting political change, this process was not mentioned in that high-level conversation. Undoubtedly, political progress has been made, with the election of a new president and the formation of a coalition government, yet economic improvements have yet to be delivered. Yemen is increasingly insecure, as the number of drone attacks has risen post-revolution.

No wonder The Washington Post reported last week: "The CIA is seeking authority to expand its covert drone campaign in Yemen by launching strikes against terrorism suspects even when it does not know the identities of those who could be killed, US officials said."

Since the February 25 inauguration of Yemen's new president, Abyan province has become the front of a new war against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). In mid-March, the bombing of Abyan resulted in the deaths of more than 60 militants.

By mid-April, violence had escalated; at least 222 people were killed in five days of clashes around the southern town of Loder. This escalation sends a clear message that a security solution is being pursued even more aggressively today than under the former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who still wields considerable power in the country. Recent actions also suggest that the pattern of investing resources in a security solution - even at the expense of economic development - is also surviving in Yemen's post-Saleh period.

With the "Friends of Yemen" scheduled to meet next month, the international community should think carefully about the aid it provides. Investing resources in fighting AQAP has caused more harm than good.

In the past few years, focus on military spending to aid the fight against AQAP has perpetuated domestic instability. This can take place in two ways. First, in the context of instability, units created to preserve security can be manipulated to serve narrow political agendas. For example, the counterterrorism unit which the US helped to create and train, headed by Mr Saleh's nephew Yahya, opted to stay in Sanaa to protect the former president during the uprising - rather than mobilise in the South to preserve security.

Yemen's security establishment remains divided between supporters of the former regime and Mr Hadi and his supporters, creating dangerous conditions for the manipulation of security resources.

Second, the fight against AQAP has created beneficiaries who now depend on continued fighting for their survival. AQAP, for instance, announced that its attack against the Yemeni army, immediately following the inauguration of Mr Hadi, killed over 100 soldiers and led to the capture of their weaponry. Al Qaeda is arming itself with the weapons meant to fight it.

Some Yemeni analysts such as Abdul Ghani Al Iryani trace the emergence of Ansar Al Sharia - an AQAP-linked group - to the December 2009 drone attack that killed over 40 people, many of whom were civilians. Mr Al Iryani suggests: "Of the thousands of Ansar Al Sharia now fighting in Abyan, the majority were not Al Qaeda; they were angered by what they saw American aggression … one event that radicalised the entire [province]".

A third reason the international community should not invest in additional attacks is that the security solution has failed miserably. The most noticeable accomplishment of the drone attacks has been the aggravation of the security situation on the ground. Yemen analyst Gregory Johnsen agrees, stating that "such an approach actually does more to exacerbate the problem of Al Qaeda than it does to solve it". AQAP, which has something to fight against as long as attacks continue, has recently become stronger in Abyan, gaining control over areas such as Arhab, Jaar, Shaqra, Rawdah and Azzan.

Furthermore, continuing drone attacks are overshadowing Yemen's political process. Success in the country has been measured by the number of AQAP members killed, rather than by the development of a viable political system post-Saleh. Indeed, five months have passed since the signing of the transfer of power, yet no agreement has been signed on the location, participants or agenda of the upcoming national dialogue.

The Friends of Yemen meeting on May 23 should keep in mind that true friendship to Yemen involves helping the country become self sufficient through the delivery of economic assistance and the launch of a genuine, inclusive and sustainable national dialogue. It is also imperative for a clear political road map to emerge. The GCC-mediated power transfer led to a fragile peace, yet mistrust in the political process lingers. A successful national dialogue process may secure the now-fragile peace.

Pursuing a security solution in Yemen has created greater instability. A development strategy featuring an inclusive national dialogue should help break the cycle of violence. The time has come for a paradigm shift. A security solution is not sustainable in the long term in Yemen, yet economic development and a viable political road map are.

Publication: The National

Focus on Al Qaeda in Yemen Magnifies Chronic Instability

Ibrahim Sharqieh — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Yemen's security establishment remains divided between supporters of the former regime and Mr Hadi and his supporters, creating dangerous conditions for the manipulation of security resources.

Authors

Ibrahim Sharqieh

Publication: The National