person:gregory johnsen

  • In devising a plan in Iraq, U.S. looks to its Yemen model
    http://www.chicagotribune.com/site/la-fg-obama-iraq-yemen-20140622,0,4478205.story

    As they plan their response to the crisis in Iraq, President Obama and his top aides are hoping to replicate elements of an often-overlooked and relatively successful U.S. military operation in another war-ravaged Middle East nation: Yemen.

    […]

    Obama cited Yemen as a model when he sketched out plans Thursday to send up to 300 military advisors to Iraq to help its struggling security forces beat back Sunni Muslim militants from an Al Qaeda splinter group who have overrun parts of the country.

    […]

    “Yemen so far has worked,” said Anthony Cordesman, a former intelligence director at the Pentagon now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s not stable. It’s not clear what direction it is moving in, but the U.S. has exercised considerable influence there.”

    Yet limits of the Yemen strategy are clear.

    Despite an influx of military aid and nearly 100 drone strikes, plus about a dozen reported attacks with cruise missiles, since Obama took office, the U.S. effort has not eradicated the militant threat in Yemen, only contained it.

    Political changes that might address the root causes of the unrest have been slow and uneven, despite a compliant and cooperative leader.

    It is likely to prove more difficult in Iraq.

    Why the ’Yemen model’ may not work in Iraq — or Yemen | Public Radio International
    http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-06-25/why-yemen-model-may-not-work-iraq-or-yemen

    Middle East watcher Gregory Johnsen thinks that’s a bad idea; he’s not even sure what Obama is seeing in Yemen should be called success.

    “It just seems that the US doesn’t have a very good grasp of what’s happening on the ground in Yemen or what’s happening on the ground in Iraq, or how to solve either of these problems,” he says.

    Johnsen says the US military strategy used to hunt al-Qaeda members in Yemen has been ineffective, or even counterproductive.

    “About four-and-a-half years ago, when the US started this program of drone strikes, special forces advisors on the ground, al-Qaeda in Yemen numbered about 200 to 300 people. Now today, there are several thousand people. So what the US is doing in Yemen isn’t working.”

    He notes that US drone strikes on al-Qaeda targets, in sparsely populated regions of Yemen, have led to civilian deaths and engendered ill-will among Yemenis. 

    “The problem for the US is that if they can’t even hit the right targets in Yemen, when the targets are isolated, how do they hope to hit the right targets in Iraq, when the targets are sort of cheek-and-jowl with the civilians there,” Johnsen says.