Despite an ongoing dialogue between U.S. officials, human rights groups and Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh regarding concerns over the use of lethal force to quell anti- government protests throughout the Persian Gulf state, the death toll continues to rise in Yemen’s port city of Aden and in other locations. "Shooting into crowds is no …
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Amid growing pressure on President Barack Obama to intervene more forcefully in Libya, the White House Tuesday sharply rebutted charges by Yemen’s president that Washington is conspiring against his government and other Arab regimes. "We don’t think scapegoating will be the kind of response that the people of Yemen or the people in other countries …
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Tens of thousands gather in the streets of Sa’na, demanding the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh—it’s the Yemeni edition of the Great Arab Awakening sweeping the Middle East and toppling governments previously counted as US allies. Aside from framing events within this rather broad narrative, however, what is really going on inside Yemen—and why …
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Yemen is diverting U.S. military counterterrorism assistance to an abusive military campaign unrelated to terrorist threats, a prominent human rights group has learned from WikiLeaks. Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks this month stated that Yemen in 2009 repeatedly diverted U.S.-supported Yemeni counterterrorism forces and possibly U.S.-supplied military vehicles …
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A diplomatic cable published by whistleblowing platform WikiLeaks corroborates images released earlier by Amnesty International (AI) showing that the U.S. military carried out a missile strike in south Yemen in December 2009 that killed dozens of local residents, including women and children, the rights group says. In the secret cable, written in January 2010, Yemen’s …
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The drone war that has been anticipated in Yemen for the last few months has been delayed by the failure of U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) to generate usable intelligence on al Qaeda there. That failure has given the CIA a new argument for wresting control of the drone war in Yemen from the Joint …
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James Gundun on US policy on Yemen
The ceasefire announced late last week between Yemen’s government and Houthi rebels in the northern part of the country is being greeted here as an important initial step toward stabilizing the Arab world’s poorest country and reversing advances by al-Qaeda’s affiliate there. Washington wants the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh to make the battle …
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Statement before the House Foreign Affairs Committee Hearing: “Yemen on the Brink: Implications for U.S. Policy” February 3, 2010 Mr. Chairman, I am extremely concerned over current US policy toward Yemen, which I believe will backfire and leave the United States less safe and much poorer. Increasing US involvement in Yemen may be sold as …
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Parts I and II discussed how our counterinsurgency doctrine’s requirements for a reliable host-nation government, a reliable host-nation security force, and reliable intelligence are impossible to achieve in our present wars. The third and final part of the series focuses on the futility of counterinsurgency itself as a tool of U.S. foreign policy. Our counterinsurgency …
Continue reading “The COIN Myth, Part III” 
