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Behind drones in Yemen, a struggle to control covert ops

That failure has given the CIA a new argument for wresting control of the drone war in Yemen from the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which now controls the drone assets in the country. But some key administration officials are resisting a CIA takeover of the war in Yemen, as reported by the Washington Post.

The struggle between the CIA’s operations directorate and SOF officials over management of a drone war in Yemen has been a driving force in pushing the war against Al Qaeda and affiliated organisations into many more countries — along with President Barack Obama’s eagerness to show that he is doing more than his predecessor on terrorism. Both the CIA covert operations directorate and SOF brass regard the outcome in Yemen as the key to the larger struggle over control of a series of covert wars that the Obama administration approved in principle last year.

The CIA directorate and the two major figures in the Iraq- Afghanistan wars, Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, lobbied Obama in 2009 to expand covert operations against Al Qaeda to a dozen countries in the Middle East, the Horn of Africa and Central Asia. In spring 2009, McChrystal, then director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, persuaded the White House to give US combatant commanders wider latitude to carry out covert military operations against Al Qaeda or other organisations deemed to be terrorists, according to a May 25 report by Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic. Based on the Obama decision, on September 30, 2009, Petraeus issued an order creating a Joint Unconventional Warfare Task Force to plan and execute covert intelligence gathering in support of later covert military operations throughout the CENTCOM area.

The Petraeus order was followed within weeks by an influx of surveillance equipment and as many as 100 SOF trainers, as well as additional CIA personnel in Yemen, according to the Washington Post report.

With the support of McChrystal and Petraeus, who was then still CENTCOM chief, JSOC was given control of the covert operation in Yemen.

But JSOC stumbled badly and failed to generate usable intelligence on Al Qaeda targets.

On December 17, less than three months after the Petraeus order, a cruise missile was launched against what was supposed to have been an Al Qaeda training camp in Abyan province in south Yemen.

But the strike, which was supposed to have been attributed to Yemen’s tiny air force, was based on faulty intelligence. The Yemeni parliament found that it had killed 41 members of two families, including 17 women and 23 children. It was known almost immediately to have been a US strike. By all accounts, it was major political gift to AQAP, which has its sights set on toppling the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Al Qaeda has also been able to justify targeting the United States as revenge for the Dec 17 attack. That may have been a reference to the two parcels from Yemen to an address in Chicago intercepted Oct 29, one of which was discovered to have “explosive material”. After that strike, the CIA went on the offensive to get the administration to take control of the drones away from the SOF. A series of articles in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press in mid- to late August cited unnamed officials referring to the possibility of CIA drone operations in Yemen.

Col. Pat Lang, a former Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East with operational experience in Yemen, told IPS the CIA had benefited from JSOC stumbling. “The agency has taken advantage of every criticism of the performance of the SOF as an argument to regain control over cover operations,” said Lang. The report suggests that key officials now realise that neither JSOC nor the CIA is going to be able to obtain actionable intelligence on Al Qaeda under present circumstances.

Former DIA intelligence officer Lang agrees. He believes the Yemeni Intelligence Service, which is a “very effective secret police force” with “considerable penetration capability”, is not fully sharing the intelligence it has on Al Qaeda with US officials.

For the time being, it appears the drone war in Yemen is abeyance. But powerful bureaucratic forces will be continuing to make the case that they can justify the beginning of drone strikes there.

AQAP leaders are hoping to see the US use more military force in Yemen, according to Johnsen. “They would like nothing better than for the US to invade Yemen,” Johnsen told IPS. “The more they can show active US intervention, the better it is for them.”

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in US national security policy