Armies of Liberation

Yemenis are fleeing (not joining) al Qaeda where ever they appear. However the vast majority of civilians lack the funds to rent an apartment or to buy food once they leave their farms and possessions behind to be looted by AQAP. But if they stay, they are subject to both al Qaeda dictatorship and US drones. The US may label those who don’t flee as collateral damage or as providing material support (as the Bedouins were in the Dec 2009 US strike in Abyan that killed 43 women and children when General Patraeus implied they were acceptable deaths because they selling vegetable to AQAP, despite the fact the villagers had appealed twice to local authorities to expel the group.)

Certainly AQAP bears the responsibility for sheltering in populated areas in the first place but people in the al Qaeda occupied territories of Yemen want to know where the refugee camps are. Seriously, where are they supposed to go? And it is a US problem when an al Qaeda presence means the potential of US drone strikes. The 120,000 who fled Zinjibar last May are still in the schools of Aden. I know Yemenis’ rights are very low on Obama’s priority list, but there must be a part of the plan to increase US drone use that will deal with the public panic and mass displacement that will occur as US drones follow AQ from province to province threatening people’s lives and homes. Over 15,000 fled Raada within days of Tariq al Dhahab’s (and al Wahishi’s) appearance. They were escaping both the al Qaeda fanaticism and the threat of US drones.

While the Obama administration may try to maintain the myth in the US that they know exactly who they are hitting, and its always a precise targeting, the non-lethal impact on civilians must be considered as well. The US is playing right into al Qaedas hands with nearly every policy from the re-imposition of a dictatorship through the GCC deal to Saleh’s visit to increased drones. The US is focused on vulnerable land when it should be focused on vulnerable people.

Basically, the US is going to bomb Yemen in order to pull off an uncontested election that nobody wants (except the US, the GPC and Islah elites) in the interest of “stability.” If the expired parliament gave Saleh immunity, it can appoint Hadi. The bogus show election isn’t worth more Yemeni lives or the displacement of tens of thousands, and it certainly wont confer legitimacy when there’s only one candidate that was selected by the US. The most politically disenfranchised are going to boycott anyway: civil minded protesters, southerners and Houthis.

The National: Yemen will increasingly rely on US drone strikes to target Islamist militants threatening to disrupt a transfer of power this month, Yemeni government officials said.

The president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, is meant to hand over power to his vice president, Abdurabu Mansur Hadi, on February 22.

The run up to the transfer is being overshadowed by growing protests, including within the military, which have grounded Yemen’s air force across much of the country.

Two aides in Mr Hadi’s office said they expected a rise in drone attacks against Al Qaeda militants.

The strikes will be intensified only if necessary, to ensure that militant groups do not expand in vulnerable areas, said one of the aides. Both asked to remain anonymous. (Read on …)

The Yemeni-American teenager is widely perceived in Yemen as an innocent, and therefore his death in a US drone strike is causing mass outrage on a level much, much greater than that of his father. There is a birth certificate showing he was 16 at the time of his death, and many photos have been posted. Like the December 2009 strikes, its the civilian casualties of US drone strikes that provoke mass public outrage. Yemeni would have liked to see some evidence on Awlaki or better yet, to bring him to trial. But killing his teen-age son, or any innocent teen, is way over the top of acceptable counter-terror collateral damage, Yemenis say.

Yemen Post According to the al-Awlaki family back in Sana’a, the Yemeni capital, Abdul rahman al-Awlaki, the cleric’s son would have run away from home after news of his father’s death in a desperate bid to find him. The 17 year-old was killed subsequently in an American air raid this Friday. Outraged, his family is now speaking out against what they call a murder.

The family’s statements to the WaPo is here. His family says he ran away from home and was having a picnic when the drone hit. However what he was doing with known terrorist Ibrahim al Banaa and Fahd al Quso’s brother is unknown and not raised in the article.

Related: I posted this below but it belongs in a drone-related post: Marib Press Tribes in Marib issued a statement saying Sheikh Saleh al Taaman was killed in the air rad with Ibrahim al Banaa but not reported killed by the regime. The Sheikh was connected to the state’s security policy and paid by Ghalib al Qamish (PSO) 100K YR/month; tribesmen accuse the regime of the manipulating the terror file and US CT ops to retain power. They say the Sheikh was not listed among the dead and that’s reason to ignore the regime’s fatality lists.

Awlaki moved between Shabwa and Abyan, preached openly, negotiated with a sheikh for AQAP passage through tribal territories (request denied). If Awlaki was with Saed al Shihri, its pretty clear that he was in AQAP, and pretty high up, I cant believe anybody is debating that point. Update: Anwar’s family

Awlaqi moved freely in Yemen’s lawless regions, AFP

ADEN — Long sought-after US-born Al-Qaeda cleric, Anwar al-Awlaqi, who was killed in a US air strike last week, used to move freely around Yemen’s lawless provinces and even preach in mosques, witnesses said.

During the past few months, the radical cleric had moved between the Al-Qaeda hotbed regions of Abyan and Shabwa in the south and Marib in the east, one tribal chief told AFP on condition of anonymity….Awlaqi and AQAP number two, Saeed al-Shehri, escaped death on September 20, when US drones carried out several air strikes on the village of Al-Mahfad in Abyan, the tribal chief said. (Read on …)

Yemen Observer:The leadership of Al Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was seen in the southern province of Shabwah in the south East of Yemen, after they were defeated in Abyan, reliable sources in Shabwah said Tuesday.

The sources said they saw Fahd Al Qusu, Qasem Al Raimi, and Saeed Al Shihri along with tens of their companions including Saudis and Egyptians. (Read on …)

Handy for them that the French amb is out of town, either expelled or on vacation, and RG commander and presidential son, Ahmed Saleh has open hostility to all French visitors since French officials issued statements of support for the rev. YLNG is the biggest money maker in Yemen, and TOTAL owns 39%.

If one more person tells me that AQAP will disappear when Saleh is gone, I think my head will explode. While there certainly is substantial overlap and facilitation between the two, it doesn’t matter in the outcome or for the victims.

Al Qaeda takes over new town close to huge gas project
Source : Xinhua,07/09/2011 via Nasser Arrabye

SANAA,-Al-Qaida militants Tuesday seized Rowda town in Yemen’s southeast province of Shabwa, a few miles away from the location of TOTAL-led Yemeni Liquefied Natural Gas ( LNG) Company, a provincial security official told Xinhua.

“The militants of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) took over Rowda town following fierce battles with government forces backed by the Yemeni air force,” the official said on condition of anonymity. (Read on …)

Wired: Also on Friday, another group of suspected terrorists attacked a security checkpoint in the southern province of Shabwa. At least three police officers were killed and another one was injured.

Hindustan Times:
Al-Qaeda militants have kidnapped an intelligence officer today in Yemen’s south while unknown gunmen killed a soldier and a policeman in separate attacks, a security official told AFP. “Masked Al-Qaeda armed men stopped a bus in Loder,” in Abyan province, which has become one of the jihadists’ stronghold, and “abducted a Yemeni intelligence officer named Fadhel Ahmed Mohsen,” said the official. (Read on …)

Saleh has a sudden change of heart:

WSJ: Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has been more forthcoming with information on Mr. Awlaki since the president has faced major protests in his country, a U.S. official said. Mr. Saleh has sought to use that information in an effort to gain more U.S. support, the official added. The White House has backed an Arab proposal that would ease Mr. Saleh from office…The attempt to kill Mr. Awlaki was the first known U.S. military strike inside Yemen since May 2010, when U.S. missiles mistakenly killed one of Mr. Saleh’s envoys and an unknown number of other people. That soured relations and prompted the administration to pull back.
(Read on …)

Update: The drone strike in Shabwa around midnight was launched by the US military and targeted Anwar al Awlaki, CNN is reporting. The two killed were Awlaki associates and the intel was not from the several computers seized at UBL compound.

Original: I really did mean to post this at the time. The drone strike yesterday in Shabwa that killed two AQ siblings was preceded by miss in Abyan on 4/24. One predator didn’t explode and the other hit a road. The April strike occured near Amfryad in Mudiyah where in December 2010 US missiles killed 49 civilians along with a few al Qaeda (as a parliamentary inquiry found). The last use of armed unmanned drones was in 2002 and resulted in the killing of al Harithy and US citizen Kamal Darwish, Lackawanna recruiter.

Yemen Times: ABYAN, Apr. 26th – US airstrikes in Abyan governorate are still threatening the lives of citizens. The Al-Ma’jala strike – which took place on 17 December 2009 and killed 55 people, including 14 women, 21 children and 14 alleged Al-Qaeda members – still looms large in the region’s collective memory.

According to Abyan’s security chief, Colonel Abdullah Ali Saeed, a new airstrike hit the small village of Amfryad in Mudiyah district on 24 April 2011. The attack involved two cruise missiles being launched by a US Predator drone.

The Predator was pursuing a pickup truck allegedly belonging to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) jihadists. (Read on …)