Dirty Wars

by Jeremy Scahill

  While the Obama administration was facing intense scrutiny over its handling of the incident, it was also ratcheting up US military action against AQAP. “We have a growing presence there, and we have to, of Special Operations, Green Berets, intelligence,” Senator Joe Lieberman asserted on Fox News. Lieberman, who had traveled to Yemen in August, said, “Somebody in our government said to me in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen: ‘Iraq was yesterday’s war. Afghanistan is today’s war. If we don’t act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow’s war.’ That’s the danger we face.” Like Cheney, Lieberman, it seemed, was late to the game. The war in Yemen was already well under way.

  IN EARLY 2010, the Obama administration continued to downplay the US role in Yemen, with officials publicly repeating a version of the same line: the United States is only providing support to Yemen’s counterterrorism operations. “People ask me—the question comes up—Are we sending troops into Yemen?” Admiral Mike Mullen, the chair of the Joint Chiefs, said in a lecture at the US Naval War College on January 8. “And the answer is we have no plans to do that and we shouldn’t forget this is a sovereign country. And sovereign countries get to vote on who comes in their country and who doesn’t.” Those comments were echoed two days later by the president himself. “We’ve known throughout this year that al-Qaeda in Yemen has become a more serious problem,” Obama said on January 10. “And as a consequence, we have partnered with the Yemeni government to go after those terrorist training camps and cells there in a much more deliberate and sustained fashion.” Obama said bluntly: “I have no intention of sending U.S. boots on the ground” in Yemen. It was an incredible statement from a commander in chief who, for a full year, had troops on the ground who were entrenched, operational and growing in ranks. While the US footprint was small, JSOC was on the ground with the president’s direct authorization.

  In Sana’a, the State Department noted “steadily growing military elements based at the [US] embassy” as part of an expanding “U.S. military footprint.” Under National Security Decision Directive-38 (NSDD-38), issued in 1982, the US ambassador had authority to approve all personnel entering Yemen. In June 2010, the embassy reported that it was managing a “daily flow of proposals for engagement by the U.S. military” and requests for intelligence and military personnel to be granted “country clearances” for “temporary duty.” The Special Operations Command liaison to the embassy was Lieutenant Colonel Brad Treadway, who had served as a liaison for a team of SEALs from the Naval Special Warfare Group in Iraq in the early stages of the US invasion. He was undoubtedly a busy man, as Special Operations teams began a substantial expansion. By late January, JSOC had been involved with more than two dozen ground raids and air strikes in Yemen since the December 17 bombing of al Majalah. Scores of people were killed in the raids and strikes, and others were taken prisoner. At the same time, JSOC began operating its own drones in the country. What started as a day of coordinated strikes was turning into a sustained targeted killing campaign in Yemen coordinated by JSOC.

  “After the December thing with Abdulmutallab, [President Saleh] had to kind of show more support for our actions,” recalled Dr. Emile Nakhleh, the former senior CIA officer. “He would play the game, he would kind of look the other way when we would do certain kinds of military operations, kinetic operations against some radical groups there. When he was put under pressure, he would say it was his own operations. He played the game.”

  While US military and intelligence agencies began plotting more strikes in Yemen, General Petraeus traveled to Sana’a for another round of meetings with President Saleh and his top military and intelligence officers to ensure mission continuity after the December strikes and the failed Christmas Day bombing plot. On January 2, Petraeus kicked off the meeting by informing Saleh that the United States would be more than doubling “security assistance” to Yemen, including $45 million to train and equip Yemen’s special operations forces for aerial warfare against AQAP. Saleh asked Petraeus for twelve attack helicopters, saying that if the US “bureaucracy” held up the transfer of the choppers, Petraeus could strike a backdoor deal with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to handle the transfers for the United States. Petraeus told Saleh he had already discussed such an arrangement with the Saudis.

  Saleh told Petraeus the United States could position fixed-wing aircraft around Yemen’s territory “out of sight” and authorized them to strike AQAP when “actionable intelligence” was available. Officially, Saleh told Petraeus, Yemen did not want US forces conducting operations on the ground in Yemen. “You cannot enter the operations area and you must stay in the joint operations center,” Saleh said. But everyone at the meeting must have understood that this “requirement” would not be enforced, as it had not been in the past.

  While praising the December strikes, Saleh “lamented” the use of cruise missiles used to bomb al Majalah, according to a US diplomatic cable on the meeting, because they were “not very accurate.” In the meeting, Petraeus claimed “the only civilians killed were the wife and two children of an AQAP operative at the site,” which was blatantly false. Saleh told Petraeus he preferred “precision-guided bombs” fired from fixed-wing aircraft. Saleh even made Yemen’s deception explicit: “We’ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours,” he told Petraeus. Yemen’s deputy prime minister, Rashad al Alimi, then joked that he had just “lied” by telling the Yemeni parliament that the bombs in Arhab, Abyan and Shabwah were American-made but deployed by Yemen.

  Shortly after that meeting, Alimi told reporters in Yemen, “The operations that have been taken...are 100 percent Yemeni forces. The Yemeni security apparatus has taken support, information and technology that are not available here, and that’s mostly from the U.S. and Saudi Arabia and other friendly countries.” But most Yemenis were not buying the story. Ahmed al Aswadi, a leader of the opposition Al Islah Party, said that “it is believed by most Yemenis” that the recent strikes had been “actually carried out by U.S. forces,” adding, “U.S. policy in this region of the world is no secret. If the government doesn’t comply with U.S. demands, then they bring in drones.” During his meeting with Saleh, Petraeus had complained, “Only four out of fifty planned U.S. Special Operations Forces Command training missions with the Yemeni Air Force had actually been executed in the past year.” In interviews, Special Forces operators with experience in Yemen characterized the special ops forces they were training there as not having the will to fight and told me they increasingly felt a need to take matters into their own hands.

  In early 2010, the Obama administration canceled the scheduled repatriation of more than thirty Yemenis held at Guantánamo who had already been cleared for release. “Given the unsettled situation [in Yemen], I’ve spoken to the attorney general and we’ve agreed that we will not be transferring additional detainees back to Yemen at this time,” President Obama said on January 5. Lawyers for some of the Yemeni prisoners called the decision “unconscionable,” saying it would “effectively prevent any meaningful progress towards closing Guantánamo, which President Obama has repeatedly argued will make our nation safer.” It was clear that for the Obama administration, the Guantánamo issue, a central pillar of the president’s election campaign, was far less pressing than its counterterrorism agenda in Yemen, which had more citizens at the prison than any other nation.

  At the State Department, Hillary Clinton declared, “The instability in Yemen is a threat to regional stability and even global stability.” On January 15, more air strikes targeted suspected AQAP operatives, with missiles hitting two vehicles. Four days later, on January 19, the US government formally designated AQAP as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization.” That day, the UN Security Council, at the urging of US ambassador Susan Rice, took similar action. State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley said the moves “support the U.S. effort to degrade the capabilities of this group. We are determined to eliminate AQAP’s ability to execute violent attacks and to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat their networks.
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  On January 20, missile attacks once again targeted alleged AQAP operatives in Marib. As with the January 15 strikes, the Yemeni authorities claimed to have killed senior AQAP figures who would later prove to be alive, including Qasim al Rimi. The attacks, which included a strike on a convoy of vehicles, suggested that armed US drones were being used in Yemen. Both strikes seemed to be aimed at decapitating the AQAP leadership in Marib, centered on the suspected local leader Ayad al Shabwani. During the January 20 raids, the editor in chief of the Yemen Post, Hakim Almasmari, described sustained air strikes. “Today, there have been seventeen raids inside Marib, most of them trying to attack Shabwani and his friends,” he said. “Until now, there is only one al-Qaida leader killed. [Yemeni security forces] have troops on the ground, but doing nothing. Most of the attacks are from the air.” Eyewitnesses said that villagers were using antiaircraft guns to fire at menacing planes.

  “Mr. Barack Obama...I Hope That You Reconsider Your Order to Kill...My Son”

  WASHINGTON, DC, AND YEMEN, EARLY 2010 —In January 2010, the news leaked in the US media that JSOC had officially elevated Anwar Awlaki to the capture or kill category on its list of High Value Targets. The decision to clear a US citizen for potential targeted assassination was made following a review by the National Security Council, which green-lit the proposal to kill Awlaki. “Both the CIA and the JSOC maintain lists of individuals, called ‘High Value Targets’ and ‘High Value Individuals,’ whom they seek to kill or capture,” reported the Washington Post. “The JSOC list includes three Americans, including Aulaqi, whose name was added late last year. As of several months ago, the CIA list included three U.S. citizens, and an intelligence official said that Aulaqi’s name has now been added.”

  When the Post story was published on January 26, the CIA was quick to say that it had not cleared Awlaki for assassination. The Post issued a correction stating that “the military’s Joint Special Operations Command maintains a target list that includes several Americans.” The quibble highlighted the benefit for the White House of using JSOC to conduct lethal operations. “I think it’s a very dubious legality, because of the fact that we’re not at war,” Colonel Patrick Lang told me shortly after it was revealed that Awlaki was on a JSOC hit list. “And he’s not a member of an enemy force that is legally at war with the United States. I like law, when it comes to war. Otherwise things get very messy, very fast.” Constitutional law expert Glenn Greenwald observed at the time:

  Obviously, if U.S. forces are fighting on an actual battlefield, then they (like everyone else) have the right to kill combatants actively fighting against them, including American citizens. That’s just the essence of war. That’s why it’s permissible to kill a combatant engaged on a real battlefield in a war zone but not, say, torture them once they’re captured and helplessly detained. But combat is not what we’re talking about here. The people on this ‘hit list’ are likely to be killed while at home, sleeping in their bed, driving in a car with friends or family, or engaged in a whole array of other activities. More critically still, the Obama administration—like the Bush administration before it—defines the ‘battlefield’ as the entire world.

  Representative Jane Harman, a Democrat who at the time chaired the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence, described Awlaki as “probably the person, the terrorist, who would be terrorist No. 1 in terms of threat against us.” She added that the Obama administration has “made very clear that people, including Americans who are trying to attack our country, are people we will definitely pursue...are targets of the United States.” On February 3, Admiral Dennis Blair, then the director of national intelligence, testified before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He confirmed that the Obama administration believed it had the right to kill US citizens, saying “a decision to use lethal force against a U.S. citizen must get special permission” and asserted that “being a U.S. citizen will not spare an American from getting assassinated by military or intelligence operatives overseas if the individual is working with terrorists and planning to attack fellow Americans.”

  “I don’t know how comfortable people who follow these issues are when you begin to put a US citizen in the same category as a non-US citizen,” Nakhleh, who had left the CIA before Awlaki was placed on JSOC’s target list for assassination, told me. “There is some unease about this approach among people I talk to about targeting US citizens without due process.” The Obama administration apparently had little unease, however. Speaking of the US relationship with Yemen that allowed the United States to strike at will in the country, an anonymous senior administration official told the Washington Post, “We are very pleased with the direction this is going.” In Yemen, Nasser Awlaki read the story. And he decided to write directly to Obama. His letter, which was relayed to US officials by an American journalist, received no response:

  TO: MR. BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America

  I was very pleased when you were elected as President of the United States of America. In fact I spent the whole election night without sleep until it was declared by media that you were “President elect.”

  I read your book “Dreams Of My Father” and I was really moved by it. You know that I myself went to America in 1966 on a Fulbright scholarship to study Agricultural Economics when I was twenty years old. My son “Anwar” was my first born child and I distributed many cigars to my faculty and friends at the New Mexico State University when he was born in 1971.

  Because of my love of America I sent Anwar also to Colorado State University to get American education.

  My son continued his education to graduate school where he began PhD Program at George Washington University in 2001.

  Because of the unfortunate events of September eleven it became difficult for him to continue his education because of the bad treatment he got at the University and decided to go to the United Kingdom to complete his education, but he could not afford the expensive cost of his education and returned to Yemen. Since that time, he spent his time learning and preaching his religion and nothing else.

  However, he was put into prison for more than 18 months as a result of a request from the U.S. Government. The FBI interviewed Anwar for two days in 2007 and found no links between him and the events of September eleven. After he was released from prison, he continued to be harassed and decided to leave Sana’a, the Capital of Yemen and live in a small town in Southern Yemen. Again, US spy plane was flying over the town for many months and when it was known that he was being tracked to be put in prison again he went to the mountains in Shabwa Province the land of his ancestors.

  The Washington Post published an article on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 by Dana Priest in which she reported that you ordered the December 24th strike where “Anwar was supposed to be meeting with Al-Qaeda leaders.”

  The Post reported that the CIA and the JSOC added Anwar to a list of so-called “High Value targets” whom they seek to kill or capture on the assumption that Anwar Al-Aulaqi is “an Al- Qaeda” figure. You know and I know that Anwar Al-Aulaqi has never been a member of this Organization and I hope that he will never be. He is simply a preacher who has the right to spread the word of Islam and wherever he likes and this is definitely lawful and protected by the American Constitution. So, I hope that you reconsider your order to kill or capture my son based on the wrong assumption that he is a member of Al-Qaeda. Again, I would like to inform you Mr. President Obama that my son is innocent, has nothing to do with violence and he is only a scholar of Islam and I believe that this has nothing to do with terrorism. So I plead again to you that you respect American law and if Anwar ever did anything wrong he should be prosecuted according to the principles of American law.

  Sincerely yours,

  Nasser A. Al-Aulaqi

  Professor of Agricultural Economics

  Sana’a University

  The Republic of Yemen

  One Night in Gardez

  WASHINGTON, D
C 2008-2010; AFGHANISTAN, 2009–2010 —Stanley McChrystal had been off the battlefield since early 2008. After McRaven took the helm at JSOC, McChrystal returned to Washington to serve as the director of the Joint Staff, a powerful position within the Pentagon bureaucracy. His nomination had been held up by a handful of senators who wanted his possible role in the abuse and torture of prisoners in Iraq and elsewhere investigated, but he was ultimately confirmed. The move was not a demotion for McChrystal. If anything, it put him at the center of future decisions on troop deployments and the makeup of the forces that would be used in military operations. At the Joint Staff, McChrystal was instrumental in persuading Obama to spread out control of Special Operations Forces and shift some command authority over unconventional warfare to the combatant commanders. These moves, in turn, expanded the covert battlefield and facilitated the lethal operations Obama was increasingly authorizing in Yemen and other countries.

  For the first several months of the Obama administration, his national security team engaged in a heated debate over how to proceed in Afghanistan. Some military commanders had pressed for a sizable increase to the US force and a replay of the counterinsurgency tactics mythologized in the narrative about the “success” of the troop surge in Iraq, but Vice President Joe Biden and National Security Adviser James Jones advocated for a shift in the focus of the campaign to Pakistan, using a combination of Special Ops Forces and drones. “I don’t foresee the return of the Taliban and I want to be very clear that Afghanistan is not in imminent danger of falling,” General Jones said in October 2009. “The al Qaeda presence is very diminished. The maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies.”