The White House has announced that President Obama “applauded Yemen’s determination to address the terrorist threat” posed by Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in a phone call to Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Thursday. An AQAP operative nearly killed 300 people in the skies of Michigan on Christmas Day, generating increased pressure from the U.S. government on the Yemenis to combat the al Qaeda franchise. Saleh has never been much of a friend to the United States, and his government has shown tremendous leniency—and in some cases outright support—for al Qaeda over the past decade, meaning that the standard for earning America’s praise on counterterrorism efforts should be relatively high.
For starters, Saleh—once known in the Middle East as “Little Saddam”—opposed the U.S. liberation of Kuwait in 1991 when Yemen held a seat on the UN Security Council. In the immediate aftermath of al Qaeda’s attack on the USS Cole in a Yemeni port in 2000, not only did some Yemeni officials try to hinder the FBI’s investigation and convince agents that the explosion was caused by a malfunction in the vessel’s operating system, but Saleh went as far as to ask the United States to help pay for damage in the port. Additionally, Saleh oversees a security apparatus that acquiesced to, and likely facilitated, two prison breaks of al Qaeda terrorists—one in April 2003 in which 10 escaped and one in February 2006 in which 23 escaped. Saleh even went as far as to appoint a man the United States considers a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, Abdul Majid al Zindani, to a presidential delegation in 2005.
The Yemeni government certainly has increased its cooperation with the U.S. government in fighting al Qaeda over the past year, perhaps due to the $67 million in military aid that Sana’a received from Washington last year and the $150 million it is receiving this year. But the Yemeni government has failed to have any significant impact on AQAP’s strength. The entire leadership of AQAP, including its leader, deputy leader, spiritual leaders, and military commanders, remains intact. Anwar al Awlaki, the English-speaking cleric sheltered by AQAP who has ties to nearly every terror attack on U.S. soil since 9/11, continues to operate in Yemen with relative impunity and likely had a role in the recent release of the group’s first English-language magazine. Furthermore, the government of Yemen still has not made any arrests in connection with the Christmas Day attack. The government of Yemen has, however, demonstrated a willingness to engage in negotiations with al Qaeda, as pointed out by Robert Worth in a recent New York Times piece.
Such lackluster results on the part of the Yemeni government to combat AQAP call into question the Obama administration’s criteria for evaluating a foreign government’s counterterrorism efforts.
Chris Harnisch is a research analyst for AEI’s Critical Threats Project.
Image by brian.ch
My brother and I went to a baseball game the other night, and watched a show of patriotism that occurs nightly at ballparks across America. Between innings, probably about halfway through the game, Lee Greenwood’s song “Proud to Be an American” came on the loudspeakers, and the big screen focused on about a dozen men and women with military haircuts sitting behind home plate in front of a sign paying tribute to our troops. Nearly every person in the stadium rose to their feet and gave our heroes an extended standing ovation.