US News

Obama gives CIA, military green light to step up drone attacks on al Qaeda targets in Yemen

The Obama administration has given the CIA and US military greater leeway to target suspected al Qaeda militants in Yemen with drones, responding to worries a new haven is being established from which to mount attacks on the West.

The policy shift, as described by senior US officials, includes targeting fighters whose names are not known but who are deemed to be high-value terrorism targets or threats to the US.

The White House stopped short of authorizing attacks on groups of lower-level foot soldiers who are battling the Yemeni government, the officials said.

Some military and intelligence officials privately complain that the White House is being too cautious. They argue that more-aggressive US action is necessary to combat the growing threat from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, and to help the Yemeni government regain control of southern provinces where the group and its allies hold sway.

Advocates of expanding the scope of US drone strikes in Yemen, to which the administration agreed earlier this month, say the latest US intelligence shows that AQAP has grown stronger since one of its prominent leaders, American-born Muslim cleric Anwar al Awlaki, was killed in a US strike in September.

The Islamists capitalized on last year’s civil unrest, which helped force out longtime Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and also created a security vacuum, US intelligence agencies believe.

Islamists allied with AQAP operate freely in all or parts of three southern provinces, creating the potential for a regional haven, the officials said.

“AQAP’s antigovernment insurgency and its terrorist plotting against the West are two sides of the same coin,” said a US official.

Both the CIA and US military’s Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, conduct parallel drone campaigns in Yemen.

The US initiated talks about expanding the program there in September, amid the political instability of Yemen’s antiregime uprising, Yemeni officials said.

The US applied considerable pressure to step up the program, a high-ranking Yemeni intelligence official said. Yemen’s government insisted on tough limitations, Yemeni officials said, fearing what one called an “out-of-control” drone program like the US campaign in Pakistan.

The Yemeni intelligence official said his government has the right to roll back the program. US officials said the operations are conducted with the consent of the Yemeni government.

To read more, go to The Wall Street Journal.