Yemen in the crosshairs

[IndianaGreen]

Yemen in the crosshairs

Elizabeth Schulte reports on the Obama administration's latest front in the so-called "war on terror."

January 4, 2010

The Obama administration appears to be moving quickly toward deadly assaults on Yemen. But while U.S. officials try to claim that targeting Yemen is about protecting the U.S. from terrorist attack, Yemen has been in the U.S. sights for some time. The only difference now is it's out in the open.

Long before a young Nigerian stepped onto a Northwest flight wearing explosives, the U.S. was fighting a covert war in Yemen.

On December 17, the U.S. military launched Cruise missiles against two alleged al-Qaeda sites in Yemen on orders from Obama. It took several days for U.S. officials to admit the its role in the strikes, with news reports from Yemen initially attributing the attacks to the Yemen Air Force.

ABC News reported that after the December 17 air strikes, the president called to "congratulate" Saleh. Yemen opposition forces said the raids killed 63 people, 28 of them children, in the province of Abyan. In addition to the air strikes, Yemen security forces conducted raids in three more locations, in which as 120 people were reportedly killed. Again, according to opposition leaders, many of the dead were civilians.

American drones have been conducting a covert assault on alleged al-Qaeda bases in Yemen for about a year. CIA agents have been on the ground there, as have American Special Forces, who are also involved in training Yemeni military forces.

Before the Christmas incident, the U.S. already had plans to increase its spending on counterterrorism in Yemen from $67 million this year to as much as $190 million in 2010, reported the Wall Street Journal. Publicly disclosed Pentagon counter-terrorism funding for Yemen grew from $4.6 million in 2006. This doesn't include funding for classified intelligence work.

http://socialistworker.org/2010/01/04/yemen-in-the-crosshairs