#boucek

[thoughtsonyemen-blog]

Christopher Boucek's Passing

I was shocked to hear the news of Christopher Boucek's death earlier today.  Though I never had the opportunity to meet him, Boucek's works on Yemen were the first academic pieces I was exposed to on the country, and have been hugely influential on my understanding of Yemen.

Andrew Exum and Gregory Johnsen (and/or Brian O'Neill) both offer moving eulogies praising the life of this great analyst, friend, and father.

[thoughtsonyemen-blog]

Civil War in Yemen?

Jeb Boone had a pair of articles out this week warning of possible civil war in Yemen.  The two articles, one in The Telegraph and one in The Independent, reveal a picture of what could be in Yemen. 

It's important to remember that Yemen has only been a unified country since 1990 - or, rather, to remember that Yemen was split for a long time before reuniting.  British influence in Southern Yemen remained in a cultural distinction, as did the influence of socialist leadership in South Yemen. 

Both North and South Yemen have bloody histories of independence, from either or internal rule by the imamate.  Even the 1994 civil war would have been worse, most likely, if it were not for Saleh's strong command of the Northern military and his influence over jihadist fighters.  Take away that power, and civil war could be far-reaching and long-lasting.

As Christopher Boucek points out, there's no way to know for sure what will happen.  In an interview for American Public Media, Boucek was asked, "So which way does this go, then? Does this go the Libya way, with the government trying to keep itself in power by force, or does it go the Egypt way?"  He answered as follows:

I think the scenario we'll see is there will be some sort of the negotiated settlement amongst the power elite in Yemen to figure out some sort of a process by where President Saleh resigns and there's a transition to something else. We don't know what that process will be, or what will come after. And there is always a potential for things to go very, very wrong in Yemen. In a country with as many guns and grievances as there are, there's always a possibility for violence to kick off. And this is one of the things we need to be very much concerned about.

One of the points that I intended to write about before but didn't was a glimpse at why Saleh may choose to fight; it stretches the bounds of credulity to believe, as Saleh claims, that the sniper fire last week was the result of resident/protester strife.  Why would Saleh choose to ramp up violence rather than peaceably transfer out?  Besides just wanting to keep the reins of power - after 30+ years, he's surely used to it - there might be a fear factor.

One of the stories I linked to in my giant post of links was the CNN article "Hard-line approach to Arab unrest intensifies."  The author quotes Daniel Serwer, a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, who noted that "The Middle East has no model of people losing power and staying alive in their country."  It may very well be true that Saleh fears either exile or death; such a result, while possible before the shootings, is near certainty now.

What all this means for the US is still up for grabs.  The Washington Post reports that US officials have credible evidence that AQAP is close to a terrorist attack - an assertion Jane Novak finds convenient, at least, when Saleh's family members run most of the CT operations in Yemen.  We may see a push for intervention internally, from Saleh or the protesters (the fact that either side could realistically see the US backing it shows both how complicated the situation is and how convoluted our policy on Yemen has been).  Far more likely would be a push for intervention externally, from the US specifically or from the international community as a whole.  That, of course, raises a whole new set of problems.

One problem is related to US forces in the Middle East in general.  While others have noted it before, I believe it was in Michael Sheuer's new book on Osama bin Laden that I saw emphatically stated that bin Laden's primary argument against the West - by his own words - is the presence of "infidel" boots occupying Muslim lands.  Bin Laden turned against the Saudis after they wouldn't let him lead of jihadist army to take care of the Saddam problem, and instead let Americans soldiers into the Land of the Two Holy Mosques.  Buildup of an American presence in the Middle East could exacerbate, rather than solve, the problem.

Second is knowing the right type of intervention, coupled with having the resources and the tenacity to complete the job.  A great quote on Libya, which I found via Andrew Exum, comes from the Washington Post story "What bombs can’t do in Libya," [no link] by Stephen Biddle: "Elected officials find it hard to ignore events overseas that offend U.S. values or threaten peripheral interests. But they aren’t willing to risk serious commitment to deal with them. The result is pressure for intervention on the cheap."

The problem with this is that it's not good for anyone.  It is a difficult and terrible decision to send men to war; if you are going to send men to war, though, you should plan and provision them to win.  Limited interventions may sound good on paper, but they have the ability to prolong the conflict while causing further casualties for everyone involved.

[thoughtsonyemen-blog]

Yemen's Problems

In case you needed a reminder of the economic hardships Yemen faces, check out Lahcen Achy's column "Economic Roots of Social Unrest in Yemen" (originally published in the LA Times, I believe) over at the Carnegie Institute.  While you're there, you can check out Christopher Boucek's piece from the The Hill, "Alarming Reality in Yemen," which reminds us why AQAP is such a threat.  For a taste of Boucek's post:

What makes AQAP such a potent threat to the American homeland is a combination of factors. 

AQAP has rapidly evolved into an increasingly lethal and agile organization, with a proven track record of mounting operations within Yemen, regionally, and internationally. It has a very fast learning curve, rapidly learns from its mistakes, and cycles this knowledge back into its operational planning.  

More worrisome, when initial operations have been unsuccessful, AQAP has re-attacked the same target, such as the U.S. Embassy in Sana’a (attacked twice in 2009), Saudi Prince Muhammad bin Nayef (who has survived four reported assassination attempts by AQAP), and British diplomatic targets in Sana’a (attacked twice in 2010). This should serve as a very dire warning when we consider AQAP’s two attempted attacks so far against U.S. aviation targets. 

Beyond a determination to mount persistent low-level attacks against American interests, AQAP is made even more dangerous by its highly sophisticated messaging operation. This is, after all, a terrorist organization that has taken a novel approach to recruiting and radicalizing Muslims in the West.

[...]

No longer does one need Arabic or particular know-how to navigate jihadi web forums. Non-Arabic speakers can now access this material using Google and YouTube. 

All this brings us back to the situation on the ground in Yemen, AQAP’s home base. Chronically unstable, it is a near-perfect breeding ground for terrorism.

Close quarters combat often depends on the maxim "Speed, surprise, and violence of action."  AQAP has adapted a similar philosophy, always changing and adapting but continually hitting away instead looking only for the big targets like 9/11.  Bloggers, pundits, and perhaps even our leaders too often assume that because countries like Yemen are so poor and because the goals of a group like AQAP are so foreign to us, that these jihadists are therefore unsophisticated, stupid, or backward.  There is some danger in overestimating the threat, as some have suggested we did post-9/11.  Anymore, however, I think we face a greater threat of underestimating both the ingenuity and determination of our enemy, or at least of always looking backward at the last attack for plans on how to prepare for the next one.

[thoughtsonyemen-blog]

"Everything that could go wrong in Yemen is going wrong"

Interesting interview with Christopher Boucek on Fox News.

[thoughtsonyemen-blog]

Yemen in the News

As Yemen continues to stay in the news, for various reasons, I thought it would be worthwhile to see what people have been saying lately.

First, the protests in Yemen didn't turn out quite like (some) people thought.  It is amazing how quickly the news cycle changes anyway, but I have not been hearing "Yemen is the next Egypt, which was the next Tunisia" in the last few days, probably because the "Day of Rage" didn't turn out quite as raging as some expected.  Thus, the AFP reported that, as the title to an article claims, "Yemen protests not major threat to regime."   Ibrahim Sharqieh, commenting on behalf of the Brookings Doha Center, said, "I don't see strong indicators that would suggest that they would be able to overthrow Saleh."  He elaborated, "The Yemeni opposition, they are able so far to start protests, but they are unable to maintain it, they are unable to maintain momentum."  While there were thousands of protesters in the streets, the government mobilized pro-regime demonstrators to offset the anti-Saleh groups, using an oft-followed model of co-opting the opposition's tactics and parties.

But Christopher Boucek believes that Saleh's ouster may not be the real goal:

In Yemen, "these aren't broad-based protests like we see in Tunisia or Egypt," said Christopher Boucek, an associate in the Carnegie Middle East Program.

"I think what's going on ... is elite power players trying to jockey for position ahead of some kind of negotiation," he said.

"People are trying to maximise their positions ahead of that to get more concessions from the government before going out for some kind of settlement," Boucek added.

"Within Yemen, I don't think anybody really wants to see a revolution happen."

That also goes for the international community, he said.

"Nobody wants to see the Yemeni government fall. Regardless of what you think of President Saleh or his government, the international community needs this Yemeni government to fight terrorism."

The economy, not party-organized protesters, is Saleh's biggest threat, Boucek claimed.  The AFP article suggests - and another in the Atlantic corroborates - that Yemeni protests were heavily influenced by outside leadership, rather than popular will.  As Ali Saif Hassan, the executive director of the Political Development Forum in Sanaa, told the AFP, "The slogans were rehearsed, there were no women, and the protesters dispersed at an arranged time" - namely, when it was time to chew qat.

And, as the article in the Atlantic points out, what the opposition in Yemen wants right now is ambiguous, complicated by the fact that "most English-speaking Yemeni journalists are associated with opposition groups, which can make understanding the motives of regular protesters very difficult."  (I have to give the Atlantic credit for this statement, because it's the first time I have seen this facet mentioned in any major news source.)  While the piece is mostly about how political reforms in Yemen are more realistic than in Egypt or Tunisia because the protesters grievances are real and long-expressed (and not merely an extension of anger towards the leader), the real point is that Saleh is willing to do just about anything to stay in power - including making major concessions.  All of this seems to add up to an idea that the power still rests with the regime, and not with the people.  On that subject, the Atlantic has another article called "Yemen's Looming Succession Crisis" highlighting the difficulties facing any presidential contender in Yemen.  While most of the information is not new to anyone studying Yemen's politics, it is a good reminder of what may come, especially as summed up in the conclusion:

Whoever takes over for Saleh will inherit an almost impossible job. Water is becoming increasingly scarce. With a median age of 17, the large youth population is maturing into an economy with a 35% unemployment rate. Yemen's relatively small reserve of oil, which could run out by the end of the decade, is the cornerstone of its economy. To appease popular unrest, in the past month Saleh has halved the income tax, restored pensions to federal jobs, increased the number of government jobs, and raised salaries for military forces. With oil revenues rapidly declining, Saleh has mortgaged Yemen's long-term security for near-term stability. These benefits will ease Saleh's transition out, but they'll also set up the next president for an economic and demographic crisis. In ten years' time, when there isn't a drop of oil left and government salaries have gone unpaid for years, when Sanaanis wait weeks for trucks of water they cannot afford, Saleh's last years could look like a relative golden age. Whoever takes over in 2013, those challenges may be more than he, or Yemen, can withstand.

Secondly in the news, protests in Yemen partially spring from socialism!  I add the exclamation point because the New American genuinely seems surprised - or, at least, seems to believe it is reporting something novel - to note that the southern secession movement has "socialist roots," as the title claims.  This despite the fact that South Yemen was for years a socialist country, and that even after the merger of the two Yemens, Saleh had to put down a socialist uprising (with the help of bin Laden's jihadists, nonetheless.)  Then again, I think the New American is the journal of the John Birch Society, which could explain the tone of writing.  Still, the article gives an overview of the socialist movement in Yemen, and news articles often leave out the socialist angle to potential secession, calling it instead (as I often do) merely "the southern secession movement."

Now that we've caught up on the protests, we can move on to al-Qaeda and, unsurprisingly, Anwar al-Awlaki.  As intelligence leaders brief congressional leaders on America's top threats, we are told that "A Yemen-based Al Qaeda offshoot now represents the biggest threat to the US as terrorist cells in Pakistan and Afghanistan weaken," as ABC News Australia puts it.  The article continues:

And the Yemeni chapter of Al Qaeda - led by radical US-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and alleged to include Australians among its ranks - now constitutes the most significant threat to the US.

"I actually consider Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula with al-Awlaki as a leader within that organisation probably the most significant risk to the US homeland," National Counterterrorism Centre head Michael Leiter told the committee.

Without reading Leiter's testimony myself, I think ABC is parsing his language incorrectly.  As I have written before, al-Awlaki is not the leader of AQAP; Nasir al-Wuhayshi is.  Canada's National Post gives a somewhat fuller account of Leiter's statement, as he apparently followed the quote above by saying, "I'm hesitant to rank them too personally, but [al-Awlaki is] certainly up there," suggesting that al-Awlaki is only one of the leaders in AQAP, rather than theleader, as ABC put it.  To that end, I think Leiter is talking more about influence than actual formal leadership, noting that "Al-Awlaki is the most well-known English-speaking ideologue who is speaking directly to folks here in the homeland," and, among several players, "al-Awlaki probably does have the greatest audience and the like. So, in that sense he is the most important."

DHS Secretary Napolitano commented as well:

The overall terrorist threat to the United States "may be at its most heightened state since the attacks nearly 10 years ago," Ms. Napolitano said, because of offshoot terrorist groups such as the Yemen-based AQAP that are placing greater emphasis on recruiting and radicalizing U.S. Muslims to carry out attacks.

"They are ... encouraging individuals in the West to carry out their own small-scale attacks, which require less of the co-ordination and planning that could raise red flags and lead to an attack disruption," she said.

Elsewhere, Napolitano is quoted as saying

This means that the threat has evolved in such a way that we have to add to our traditional counter terrorism strategies which in the past have looked at the attack as coming from abroad. The realities of today’s threat environment also means that State and local law enforcement officers will more often be in the first position to notice the signs of a planned attack.

As smaller-scale attacks become an increasing threat, particularly easy to carry out ones in the vein of Mumbai, the intelligence community is once again going to have to become a dynamic player, using new methods and new strategies while making sure that American rights and civil liberties are not violated.  It's certainly not an easy position to be in, but then again, AQAP and other elements of al-Qaeda aren't trying to make it easy on us.

[thoughtsonyemen-blog]

Reuters on Yemen

Reuters has three articles out this week that I’ve been mulling over today.  The first is titled “Saudi Arabia plays Yemen double game says experts,” which is rather stating the obvious.  In essence, what the author writes is that Saudi Arabia, Yemen’s largest neighbor, is responsible for being a stabilizing factor in Yemen through financial aid, but also that it is a destabilizing factor by spreading that money around to the tribes instead of only giving it to the central government.

"The Saudis have refused flat out all Yemeni requests to desist from paying Yemeni tribes," according to Yemeni political analyst Abdul-Ghani al-Iryani.  That money is ostensibly to gather intelligence from the tribes on where al-Qaeda may be hiding, but it also helps fund Saudi-styled religious education, which tends to clash with Yemen’s Zaydism and Shafi’ism.  (Shelagh Weir wrote about the influx of Wahhabism for the Middle East Report back in 1997.)  Saudis also likely benefit from smuggling over the porous Yemeni border.

It should come as no surprise that Saudi Arabia is playing a “double game” in Yemen; as this article briefly notes, Saudis remain some of the chief donors to al-Qaeda, despite the fact that Saudi Arabia is supposed to be one of the US’s main allies in the war on terror.

Saudi Arabia comes up again in the next article, titled “Analysis: Pakistan talks of al Qaeda having to leave region.”  According to this piece, new intelligence insights suggest that Pakistan is willing to help work a deal in Afghanistan whereby the Taliban would break off its alliance with al-Qaeda in return for a brokered deal pulling US and NATO troops out of Afghanistan.  Pakistan, which has backed the Taliban for some time (again, despite being an ally in the war on terror), would presumably let Taliban leadership leave Pakistan to return to Afghanistan, but would then place pressure on al-Qaeda leadership in Pakistan, theoretically arresting or removing them.  The Taliban would supposedly be ok with this because “there has been a steady drip-feed of reports that they were annoyed with bin Laden for bringing the U.S.-led war to their country by launching the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.”

(As a bit of an aside, in a 2003 article for the Review of International Studies titled “Mullah Zaeef and Taliban diplomacy: an English School approach,” Paul Sharp recounts the diplomatic effort by the US to get the Taliban turn bin Laden over.  Based on a combination of Taliban desire for UN recognition and prohibitions under Sharia law and “Pashtun conventions” against turning bin Laden over to a “secular power” – as well as, no doubt, other factors – the Taliban refused.  They argued that instead, “the US would have to provide evidence of his involvement in terrorist operations to the Supreme Court of Afghanistan which would try him with the aid of religious scholars from Saudi Arabia and a third or fourth country and possibly with monitors from the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC).”  There’s a lot more interesting details to the story in Sharp’s article, but in hindsight we can at least say that the Taliban had a chance to separate from their symbiotic relationship with al-Qaeda once before.)

Back to the second article.  Reuters quotes Gilles Dorronsoro at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who said, "The Pakistani military establishment remains the Taliban's most critical patron [….] If the United States wishes to negotiate an orderly withdrawal of coalition troops and a guarantee that al Qaeda will not return to Afghanistan, it must make a deal with the only parties who can deliver on it: Pakistan and the Taliban."  Pakistan, like Saudi Arabia, plays both ends toward the middle on terrorism.

If al-Qaeda is kicked out of Pakistan, among the more logical places for its leadership to relocate is Yemen, where AQAP has become among the most active branches of AQ.  Bruce Riedel raised this as somewhat of a possibility – he was actually referring to “new operations” for AQ – in his 2007 piece, “Al Qaeda Stikes Back.”  As Riedel noted in his article, AQ thrives in failing states, perhaps more so than in absolutely failed ones or when trying to take on powerful ones.  Saudi Arabia is understandably concerned about AQ operations in Yemen because bin Laden wants the Saudi state toppled, AQAP is already targeting the Saudis, and Saleh’s grasp on the Yemeni government, such as it is, is rather weak.  If AQ proper relocated to Yemen, not only might the (somewhat) US-friendly government in Yemen fall, but the whole country could collapse, which if nothing else would dramatically threaten Saudi oil production and distribution.

All of which brings us to the third Reuters article, “Analysis: WikiLeaks raises risks to U.S. effort in Yemen."  The State Department documents released by WikiLeaks reveal a Yemeni government partnering with Western powers to fight al-Qaeda, a president who is willing to tell American leaders “We'll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours,” and a system that uses outside funds for its own gain. 

Though an unnamed Pentagon official makes the cogent point that “AQAP really doesn't need U.S. government cables to feed their hate-filled propaganda machine,” the real risk could be in the influence AQAP has over the Yemeni populace.  Gregory Johnsen is quoted in the piece suggesting that Saleh’s machinations won’t surprise educated Yemenis but could surprise those in the more outlying areas.  Tie that in with AQAP’s social and propaganda moves to curry favor with the Yemeni people, and you have a real threat on your hands.

The US really needs to get a handle not only on al-Qaeda leadership and movements, but also on its allies' goals and motivations.  Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are going to look out for their own good before that of the US, despite America's power.  While the war on terror cannot become an entirely Americanized operation - as has been suggested is problematic in Afghanistan - we do have to recognize that each member of any coalition looks home before abroad.  We need to make sure we are doing to the same to prevent our "friends" from driving us under while propping themselves up.

I’ll leave you with some thoughts from Christopher Boucek in an October Carnegie Q&A called “Terrorism Out of Yemen.”  While I probably would have placed Yemen  behind AfPak as the most dangerous threat to the US for terrorism, simply because bin Laden and others in the formal leadership structure of AQ are thought to be in Pakistan, when asked “How does Yemen compare to other states the United States is concerned about?” Boucek replied as follows:

The threat coming out of Yemen is now greater than the one coming from al-Qaeda’s central leadership in South Asia. Other states of concern—from Afghanistan to Pakistan to Somalia—do not pose as immediate a threat to the United States as Yemen does. AQAP is a more pressing concern for U.S. national security as the group is agile and opportunistic—actively looking for openings to inflict harm around the world.

There’s more to his answer to that question and others, and it’s worth the read.

[thoughtsonyemen-blog]

Yemeni Experts

When Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to set off a bomb on Northwest Airlines flight 253 a little over a year ago, Yemen was pushed into the media spotlight once again.  Like the USS Cole attack, the so-called "Underwear Bomber" made a name for the country as a source of terrorism, or at least a safe haven for terrorists from other places.  (Abdulmutallab was, after all, Nigerian, and went to Yemen for training.)  Over the course of the year, as the news media began exploring the amalgamation of Saudi and Yemeni elements of al-Qaeda in the new al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and as further terrorist attacks and threats emanated from the small country, it became clear that the West has few experts to whom to turn to gain information on what could be the next battleground in the "War on Terror."

Almost without exception, the Yemeni experts to whom the media turns are Gregory Johnsen, a PhD student at Princeton and proprietor of the blog Waq al-Waq, and Christopher Boucek of the Carnegie Foundation.  I think these guys are both great, and they have wonderful insights on the country and culture of Yemen.  I've learned a lot by reading their stuff.  Boucek's paper "Yemen: Avoiding a Downward Spiral" from last September is a great place to start reading to understand Yemen's plight.  (I think that paper has now been expanded into a book.)  Johnsen's forthrightness on his blog can be refreshing when compared to all of the academic writing on the subject.  But when it comes down to it, these guys are pretty much it.

I don't mean to suggest that there are not other scholars on Yemen.  Robert Worth has done a pretty good job reporting on Yemen for the New York Times, and Victoria Clark's book Dancing on the Heads of Snakes (a review of which is here) is one of the best I have read on modern Yemen.  (Admittedly, the pool from which to draw is rather small.)  Paul Dresch and the late Fred Halliday are obvious leaders in the more anthropological/historical study of Yemen, and Tim Mackintosh-Smith is likewise well known for his ethnography of the country.  Multiple news sites have run blurbs on Yemen - the Christian Science Monitor, for one, has consistently reported on Yemen's struggles - but ultimately, almost all commentary sources back to Johnsen and Boucek.

Yemen poses a danger to the US and other Western countries right now for many reasons, chief among which (for Western analysts and government officials, at least) is its status as a harbor for al-Qaeda.  Without understanding the language and culture of Yemen (or other countries, for that matter), it is far too easy to merely claim Yemen is another Afghanistan and that what works or doesn't there will be the same for what works or doesn't in Yemen.  Western governments and NGOs need to be training people to delve as fully as possible into Yemen's background via education and cultural immersion so that we can make wise decisions on how to proceed in this volatile area of the world.