I agree with all who feel that we cannot go to war in Yemen. How can we? We are already at war not only in Afghanistan and Iraq, but at lower levels of force and/or intensity, in the Horn of Africa, Philippines, among others. We have forces in Kosovo and Bosnia, both of which are sufficently unstable as to be capable of exploding at any time.

What applies to our forces also applies to our ability to provide development assistance. Of course we can pour money into Yemen. But we don't have the people to manage the projects we might undertake. We would have to outsource development yet again. And who will oversee the contractors? We do not have enough contracting officers and officer representatives in the places to which we have already committed huge sums. And now Yemen?

We could increase our training, and supplement that with special operations. But that is not enough. If we are to provide assistance, whether military or economic, to whatever degree, we must also pressure Saleh. He needs to understand that if he simply focuses on aggrandizing wealth, as so many others have done in the Third World, his fate might be that of Third World leaders who never lived out their lives to enjoy their wealth. He needs to be pressured to reach an accommodation with the tribes, who are in the best position to deal with al-Qaida and their ilk. The biggest stick is that we would indeed walk away--from him. If we want to work only with the tribes, in defiance of Sana'a, we can. And then Saleh is lost.

The carrot is that if he works with us, on our terms, he remains in power, albeit somewhat more limited than what he has enjoyed the past few decades. More imporant, he and his family stay alive. That is a big deal--he needs only think of Saddam and his sons, or, for that matter, the Ceaucescu family.

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2009/12/yemen-as-quagmire.html

No one wants to invade and engage in nation-building. But below that threshold, I'd categorize our contributors so far into three camps: those who want to increase support to the Yemeni government, those who want to increase pressure on the government, and those who think the US should walk away.

Two bloggers emphasize increasing support, to the point of assisting the Yemeni government against internal enemies unrelated to al-Qaeda:

Larry Korb, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress:

"the Yemeni government is much more concerned with its internal problems and must therefore receive help in those areas before it gives us wholehearted cooperation in dealing with al-Qaeda."

Joseph J. Collins, Professor, National War College:

"Our goal should be to help the Government of Yemen (GoY) to get control of its country. ... Our three best tools here are security assistance, both in materiel and training; the good offices of our allies; and judicious use of predator UAVs."

Two others emphasize increasing the pressure on the Yemeni regime to make sure they use our aid against al-Qaeda rather than for self-aggrandizement:

James Jay Carafano, Heritage Foundation:

"Right now they are just trying to figure out how to hold on to power and have any influence at all outside the capital. It will take pressure and resources from the US to get them to do more."

Steven Metz, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College:

"[We must] make clear that the carrot of assistance is combined with a serious stick, so that failure to eradicate al Qaeda's sanctuary in Yemen will result in the use of force, but not in the form of occupation and 'stabilization,' but in repeated strikes as long as necessary."

One blogger suspects the best we can do is muddle through as we are doing:

Ron Marks, Oxford-Analytica:

"More aid and more firepower are simply not going to be effective.... All you can do is keep trying to work with a weak government and kill Al Queda when and wherever you can find them."

And the remaining three all suggest alternatives to US intervention in Yemen:

Michael Brenner, University of Pittsburgh:

"We repeatedly run into walls head first when we invade and occupy countries (Afghanistan, Iraq) [or] when we try to manipulate politics in places we understand poorly and that react badly to our interference (Pakistan, Somalia, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan)."

Christopher Preble, Cato Institute:

"the proposed expansion of security assistance to the government there is likely to pay only meager dividends....An equally compelling case could be made for ignoring Yemen, per se, and focusing on other means of interdicting terrorists."

Paul Sullivan, National Defense University:

"The US might serve itself best by having a very light touch in the country in many ways. It may be best to have the Arab intelligence services and others who know the country and its people well to begin to handle this situation."

I welcome further comments both from those bloggers who've already posted (especially if they take issue with my capsule summary of their stance!) and from those who have yet to chime in.

The U.S. has three immediate threats to its national security: rogue regimes like Iran and North Korea; violent extremists like al-Qaeda; and weak and failing states like Yemen, that could and can become havens for violent extremists like al-Qaeda. The U.S. policy toward Yemen should be guided by dealing with the second and third threats together.

Yemen has become a haven for al-Qaeda and poses a threat to the U.S. because it has a weak central government that has been unable to exert control since the Republic of Yemen was created 20 years ago. At the present time it is dealing with two security threats and one economic threat that have nothing to do with al-Qaeda. The primary security threat is a civil war in the North that is being waged by Shiites known as Houthis, who ruled northern Yemen from the mid 19th to the mid 20th century. There is also a growing secessionist movement in the South, whose inhabitants feel that the central government has not provided them with their fair share of resources. Finally, oil revenues, which supply the majority of government revenue, have dropped by more than 50 percent over the last five years.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has taken advantage of the instability caused by these developments to reconstitute itself and now numbers a couple of hundred people, some of whom trained and supplied the Christmas Day bomber.

The best policy for the United States is to aid Yemeni counterterrorism forces, primarily by supplying intelligence and logistic support, as we did on December 17 and December 24 in attacking al-Qaeda and helping train Yemeni forces, while working with our allies to develop an integrated and comprehensive approach to deal with the causes of instability. Sending in U.S. forces or pushing aside the Yemeni government in combating Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula would be counterproductive and undermine Yemen’s central government even more. Moreover, the Yemeni government is much more concerned with its internal problems and must therefore receive help in those areas before it gives us wholehearted cooperation in dealing with al-Qaeda.

We shouldn't even be contemplating war in Yemen, but we should also understand that the proposed expansion of security assistance to the government there is likely to pay only meager dividends.

Steven Metz gets at the nub of this problem in his two thoughtful posts. We have an unreliable ally. We have minimal capacity for making them more reliable. Neither of these observations are unique to Yemen. The same could be said of many other countries. Accordingly, we should concentrate our limited resources in a proactive and strategic -- as opposed to a reactive and haphazard -- way.

Contrast that with Jim Carafano's invocation of a new "axis of evil" and the implication that we have no choice but to deepen our involvement in Yemen (and Saudi Arabia and Somalia) while continuing to fight in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Oh, and let's not forget that there are still about 110,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

To wit: "Sorry we have to fight on so many fronts….but it beats battling them on the Tarmac in Detroit."

Sorry, but that just doesn't fly.

While impeding al Qaeda's ability to carry out major terrorist attacks has and will entail multiple fronts in many countries, it is not obvious how this fight should be conducted, nor is it obvious that the fronts in Yemen and Somalia and Saudi Arabia (or Afghanistan and Pakistan, even) are instrumental to success or failure. Safe havens exist in many places, including stable democratic countries. Are we really committed to preventing any country from providing a safe haven? Does the concept of a physical safe haven even make sense in the virtual world of globalized communications and the Internet?

Leaving aside the dubious safe haven argument, Carfano's either/or proposition (fight them there or fight them here) is equally flawed. We should think of security in layers. A man from Nigeria who trained in Yemen and attempted to detonate his underwear bomb in Detroit was thwarted by his own incompetence and the alertness of the airliner's passengers. Too close for comfort, to be sure, and we have since learned of numerous points along the way where his travels could have been interdicted. But what we've learned about this failed attack doesn't confirm that our only option is to focus on the one layer (Yemen = terrorist training ground) at the expense of the other layers. An equally compelling case could be made for ignoring Yemen, per se, and focusing on other means of interdicting terrorists that are not so heavily dependent upon unwilling and duplicitous allies, or that burden our overtaxed military with an open-ended mission in yet another failed state.

Updated at 9:12 a.m. on Jan. 6.

I cannot make any comment about any pending discussions in the government about Yemen. I am not privy to them and anything I would say would be speculation.

I will focus on some important aspects of the situation in Yemen and some ideas that might be used in this situation.

This issue violent extremism in Yemen seems to be surprisingly new to many in Washington. As is typical there are new and numerous "Yemen experts" popping up all over the media. It is amazing how opportunistic dilettantism can be and Washington is the capitol of dilettantism. I am consistently "surprised" when in high level meetings to hear some political operatives spout either complete nonsense or pretty close to it about all sorts of things they know little about. Then, voila, these dilettantes become senior officials focusing on the very issues they know enough about only to be dangerously semi-ignorant. I will not name names, but everyone on this list I am sure has met with such people.

Yemen is a complex country. It is a lot more like Afghanistan than any other Arab country. It is distinctly tribal and the concept of revenge and hospitality are similar to pukhtunwali rules in many ways. Yemen is a poor country with a fairly weak government. It is running out of water. The water table in Sana, for example, is dropping at a fast rate and some people are even talking about moving the capitol at some time in the not too distant future. Unemployment and underemployment are vast. Infrastructure is poor. Security services are limited by their funding, equipment, and more.

Many of the piracy acts in the Gulf of Aden are there for a reason. The pirates don't expect much of a response. They are right. The Yemeni Coast Guard is tiny and mostly ineffective in a part of the world where such an organization should have significant clout.

Yemen also has had a tough history of separatism and rebellion. There are some places in Yemen that are pretty much lawless, excepting the laws of the local tribes.

Yemen is also the poorest Arab country and it is right beside the rich Arab oil states. Yemen has considerable inequality inside its country as well. Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis have moved to the richer Gulf countries in order to seek a better life. Hundreds of thousands were also tossed out of the Gulf countries due to Yemen's support of Iraq in the 1990 Gulf war. (These ejections occurred at about the same time the Palestinians and Jordanians were tossed out.) Many of the returning Yemenis have never even lived in Yemen until they arrived with literally the shirts on their backs and a knapsack. This ejection was one of the many economic and social shocks Yemenis have experienced in the last few decades.

Yemen is the home of the Bin Laden family. They are from the Hadramut area of the country. Osama's father went to Saudi Arabia to make his fortune and he did just that -- many times over. He is one of the very few super success stories of the Yemeni immigrants to Saudi Arabia, but that story has many sad and horrific notes. However, I don't give too much weight to the Bin-Laden-is-from-Yemen argument for the causes of extremism in Yemen. It is far more complex than that.

There are extremist preachers in Yemen and they have been there for a very long time. Parts of Yemen are safe havens for extremists of all varieties. Its physical topography is just about right for such folks to find hiding places in caves and what not. Its mountains, valleys, islands (over 200 hundred of them), its part of the Rub al Khali (a beastly hot desert that goes into Oman and Saudi Arabia), and its malarial swamps give Yemen a rather complex and menacing combination that could be taken advantage of by those with ill intent.

Its social and economic topography is just about right for recruitment of the hopeless youth as well as the well-off younger people with an attitude and nothing to do. It is famously the place of Qat, a drug that dulls the mind and energizes the body. This is a bad combination for frustrated youth. Indeed, Yemen is a transshipment point for all kinds of drugs smuggling, as well as arms and people smuggling. The Somali connection to this is more known than the other criminal gang connections via other nearby states and beyond.

Yemen also has a growing Shia-Sunni problem in the areas where the Shia Houtis are found. Some believe Iran is involved. This dispute could also be attracting non-state Sunni and Shia extremists from other countries into the country. Given that Yemenis are about 40 percent Shia and 59 percent Sunni (and 1 percent other religions) this is a source of tension that has to be dealt with very carefully and mostly by the Yemenis themselves.

This brings me to one of my main points. If Al-Qaeda and other extremists groups in Yemen, who have now become a threat worldwide, although a limited threat so far, are to be dealt with in a long-term sustainable manner then much of the hard work and hard thinking need to be done by the Yemenis, the Arabs, and the Muslim world at large. Sending in a large amount of US soldiers would likely inflame the region even more so and may increase recruitment into the extremist groups in Yemen. Hence, the problem just might get worse.

The US might serve itself best by having a very light touch in the country in many ways. It may be best to have the Arab intelligence services and others who know the country and its people well to begin to handle this situation better with the cooperation of the very much stretched thin Yemeni government. If anything is to be done it has to be done with clear and present information and with strategies that make sense.

These are complex and dangerous times for Yemen, the region, and well beyond. Parts of Yemen have become safe havens for violent extremists. It makes sense to disrupt and damage their networks, finances, and more. It makes sense to track down the worst of them to get them out of circulation. It also makes sense to work in clever and quiet coalitions to help alleviate the economic, social, and other pains of the Yemenis. It makes a great deal of sense to look at strategies toward Yemen in a 10-30 year policy framework. These problems will not be solved overnight. It will take time, patience, and some real serious and creative thinking way out of the box.

The root causes of the spread of violent extremism need to be dealt with as the world deals with the violent extremists themselves. If we don't do that then we might see a stemming of violence springing out of Yemen and other countries and then we will be "surprised" when it comes back again. Like I said earlier Yemen is a lot like Afghanistan. However, there are also big differences between the two countries. There is also a huge variety of strategic parameters to contend with across and within Yemen itself.

I wish the Yemenis well. They deserve more peace and prosperity. The violent extremists are a danger to us. They are a far greater danger to the Muslim world. What we are seeing now is another "Fitna", a time of chaos and violence in the Muslim world. The biggest losers and the people who are dying and being crippled the most by these violent extremists are the Muslims. It is time for the US, the EU, China, Russia, Japan, and many others to team up with the best and the brightest in the Muslim world to get a much better handle on this situation. Yemen is just a small tip of the large iceberg that is out there.

Steven Metz’s use of the ‘insanity’ metaphor in reference to prospective actions in Yemen is apt. I would suggest an elaboration: serial head banging against multiple walls. For that is what we have been doing in our eight year ‘war on terror.’.

We repeatedly run into walls head first when we invade and occupy countries (Afghanistan, Iraq); when we try to manipulate politics in place we understand poorly and that react badly to our interference (Pakistan, Somalia, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan); when we broadcast that our objective is zero threat and absolute security; when we make believe that the rest of the world should or could see things the way we head bangers do.

We appear trapped in a room convinced that behind one of the walls lies the promised land - if only we could find through dint of physical effort the right access point. This is multi-layered insanity. It is we ourselves who have created this chamber of tears. For one thing, we angrily keep stoke stoking our collective fears. Witness the hysterical reaction to the underwear bomber. This inept try is the most serious in eight years. That should be occasion for some relief and satisfaction, despite the demonstration of our equally inept security services.

A second element is our tolerance for sloppy thinking and, consequently, the mis-guided policies that it engenders. The Afghan escalation is the latest case in point. However one judges the merits of the course taken, the public arguments justifying it are full of holes. Obama’s statements on the subject, frankly, are disdainful of public intelligence – much less that of people like us. Third, the national discourse on terror has been irretrievably politicized in the worst sense of the term. Posturing and electoral calculation predominate. Candor is away with the leave of our leaders. Every public figure – elected or unelected, national or local, Republican or Democrat – jumps in as if it were ‘garbage time’ in a mid-season NBA game.

It is said that we are all in this together. If literally true, then we all are responsible, to varying degrees, for this endless exercise in self-defeating folly.

cheers

Remember the Axis of Evil?…Its Back

Our problem is bigger than Yemen. Al Qaeda in the Arabia Peninsula has a presence in Saudi Arabia. Last August they tried to assassinate the Saudi prince in charge of counterterrorism operations in his country. There is also the problem of "Al Shabaab", the terrorist group based in Somalia. The have sworn allegiance to al Qaeda. They definitely have links to Yemen and they have threatened the United States.

That’s right my friends—it is another axis of evil and you have to go after all three parts of the problem to take the network down.

The Saudi’s have actually been doing their part. That’s why they tried to kill the prince leading the counterterrorism effort.

The administration is going to have to roll up its sleeves if it wants any sustained effort to succeed in Yemen. Yemen’s government is a reluctant ally more concerned about Houthi rebels and secessionists than al Qaeda. Right now they are just trying to figure out how to hold on to power and have any influence at all outside the capital. It will take pressure and resources from the US to get them to do more.

I actually worry more about the third axis. Somalia is almost completely lawless and ungoverned. The Somali government is simply a government in name only and next to worthless. There is significant because there are Somali Diaspora here and some have been recruited to go back home and fight with the militias. Others have conducted terrorist attacks on behalf of Al Shabaab. Don’t be surprised if the next domestic terrorist threat comes out of this quarter. There the US and other allies need to rely on the oil spot strategy….find bits of the country that are stable and that we can work with, support them and grow from there.

In the meanwhile, we’ve got to win in Afghanistan and Pakistan and crush al Qaeda’s leadership once and for all. That would be a deep psychological blow to these affiliated movements. Though they have their own agendas, losing al Qaeda central will cool their global aspirations.

Sorry we have to fight on so many fronts….but it beats battling them on the Tarmac in Detroit.

Anyway I was right about one thing…it is going to be a Long War.

A story in today's New York Times bears directly on this issue. It says, "Mr. Saleh, 67, is wily, witty and fit. But he has been spending less time in the past two years managing the complicated tribal and regional demands of fragile Yemen than trying to consolidate the power of his family, the analysts say...Mr. Saleh presents the Obama administration with a problem that is all too familiar in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He is amenable to American support, but his ineffective and corrupt bureaucracy has limited reach. And his willingness to battle Al Qaeda, which he does not view as his main enemy, is questionable."

In other words, President Saleh is playing the United States just like the regimes in Kabul and Islamabad, doing just enough anti-extremism to keep U.S. aid flowing or increasing, while actually concentrating on holding personal power rather than eradicating the root causes of extremism. All the while, Americans cling to the notion that our interests and those of our partners are identical or, at least, nearly identical.

Yemen has been a serious problem for over 15 years, going back way before the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000. Yemen was always a weak and fractious state. It has had a few continuing internal rebellions. Later, it became a "default location" for radical elements and former jihadis from GTMO and Saudi Arabia. As the Saudis turned up the heat on their own AQAM, many of them simply went down to Yemen.

Our goal should be to help the Government of Yemen (GoY) to get control of its country, solve its indigenous problems and get the AQAP presence down to locally manageable level. That said, we have a choice of means. We don't have to send in the Marines. Our model here should be not what we have done in Iraq and Afghanistan, but what we have done in the Philippines. This is not about closing with and destroying extremists, rather it is much more about helping the GoY help itself.

Our three best tools here are security assistance, both in materiel and training; the good offices of our allies; and judicious use of predator UAVs to improve situational awareness and to take out targets on a very selective basis. We clearly need to make common cause with the Saudis and engage here with them in a "joint" operation. They can provide local intelligence and help to fund Yemeni arms purchases. Many of the worst radicals in Yemen are also from Saudi Arabia. Many of these jihadis are failures of GTMO or the Saudi rehab program. If repatriated, the Saudis should be able to figure out what to do with them.

On this subject, BBC is now quoting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton talking tough on Yemen.

Updated at 12:11 p.m. on Jan. 5.

One of the things I always try to do when writing these entries is to remain positive. The world is filled with doomsayers and, Lord knows, no one ever made money in DC with a stream of good news. Bad for business. That being said, the very thought of Yemen makes me depressed.

From what I know of it, Yemen makes Afghanistan look organized. The government is barely there and many within the government are willing to trade with whomever looks likely to take care of them financially or politically. Outside of the capital city, Sanaa, it is the wild frontier. Yemen is, at best, a shifting, dangerous political sandbar. The kind of place Al Queda thrives.

The U.S. has already been in there for some time with aid -- lethal and non-lethal. The effects so far have been obviously limited. They say that insanity is repeating the same process over and over again and expecting different results. I hope that is not our intent in Yemen. More aid and more firepower are simply not going to be effective.

So what can we do with Yemen. About what we are right now. This is a problem that can only be ameliorated, not solved with "nation-building" tactics. All you can do is keep trying to work with a weak government and kill Al Queda when and wherever you can find them.

I would love to know where our dear friends in Riyadh are on the subject. They have pushed a bit on the border -- in response to our pleading no doubt. However, it would seem to me that even they must realize that a broken Yemen is not in their best interest.

The explosion of interest in Yemen and, more importantly, the initial reaction--send more money--is one more demonstration of the deep flaw in American strategy which assumes that partner regimes share our interests and priorities and, if given enough attention and assistance, will destroy our enemies for us. Eisenstein once said that insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome, Yet that is the basis of American strategy.

The worst possible course of action would be for the United States to attempt to create a more pliable regime in in Yemen (thus creating one more Iraq and Afghanistan). The most likely course of action is for the United States to increase the amount of assistance to the point that the Yemeni regime develops a vested interest in giving Washington the impression that it is doing what America wants (all the while skimming a good portion of the money). A third would be to make clear that the carrot of assistance is combined with a serious stick, so that failure to eradicate al Qaeda's sanctuary in Yemen will result in the use of force, but not in the form of occupation and "stabilization," but in repeated strikes as long as necessary.