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| Yemenis surround a truck believed to have been hit by a US drone strike, killing 14 people, including 12 al-Qaida suspects, in the central province of Bayda. Photograph: Stringer/EPA |
GUARDIAN
When children in Yemen try to ignore their bedtimes, their parents have a new warning to scare them into obedience: a drone will come for them.
Farea al-Muslimi, a young Yemeni activist and journalist whose hometown was subjected to a drone strike, shared that anecdote with a Senate panel last year. He meant to impress upon US politicians what he called the “psychological fear and terror” Yemenis feel from a campaign the Obama administration is now citing as a model for its unfolding war against Islamic State (Isis).
The other counter-terrorism effort cited by the administration for the anti-Isis war is across the Gulf of Aden, in Somalia. In both countries, the US uses drone strikes, special operations raids, the occasional cruise missile and support for proxy militaries and governments to combat al-Qaida’s regional affiliates.
Yet despite years of strikes and billions spent on shoring up local forces, no end is in sight against either al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen or al-Shabaab in Somalia – an ominous indicator for a war against the far more capable and financially flush Isis.
One apparent exception to the Yemen-Somalia model of Obama’s emerging anti-Isis strategy is an explicit forswearing of US ground combat forces in Iraq and Syria, although Obama has sent significant numbers of special operations “advisers” to Iraq.
But in both Yemen and Somalia, al-Qaida’s affiliates have proven durable
While AQAP has surely lost significant leaders, it survives. Nearly five years after its attempted Christmas Day bombing, it is “still active in its efforts to attack the homeland,” Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson said on Wednesday. The deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center testified on Wednesday that AQAP remains the single greatest terrorist threat to the US domestically.