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[And, remember, we're just doing it to stop terrorism, right? Pay no
attention to article 1, section 8 of the Constitution. Coming next
week: a special series, "German Counterterrorism Operations in
Occupied Europe: A Reassessment."] <br>
<br>
Secret Assault on Terrorism Widens on Two Continents<br>
By SCOTT SHANE, MARK MAZZETTI and ROBERT F. WORTH<br>
Published: August 14, 2010<br>
<br>
This article is by Scott Shane, Mark Mazzetti and Robert F. Worth
[sic].<br>
<br>
WASHINGTON — At first, the news from Yemen on May 25 sounded like a
modest victory in the campaign against terrorists: an airstrike had
hit a group suspected of being operatives for Al Qaeda in the remote
desert of Marib Province, birthplace of the legendary queen of
Sheba.<br>
<br>
But the strike, it turned out, had also killed the province’s deputy
governor, a respected local leader who Yemeni officials said had
been trying to talk Qaeda members into giving up their fight.
Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, accepted responsibility for
the death and paid blood money to the offended tribes.<br>
<br>
The strike, though, was not the work of Mr. Saleh’s decrepit
Soviet-era air force. It was a secret mission by the United States
military, according to American officials, at least the fourth such
assault on Al Qaeda in the arid mountains and deserts of Yemen since
December.<br>
<br>
The attack offered a glimpse of the Obama administration’s shadow
war against Al Qaeda and its allies. <b>In roughly a dozen
countries — from the deserts of North Africa, to the mountains of
Pakistan, to former Soviet republics</b> crippled by ethnic and
religious strife — <b>the United States has significantly increased
military and intelligence operations</b>, pursuing the enemy using
robotic drones and commando teams, paying contractors to spy and
training local operatives to chase terrorists.<br>
<br>
The White House has intensified the Central Intelligence Agency’s
drone missile campaign in Pakistan, approved raids against Qaeda
operatives in Somalia and launched clandestine operations from
Kenya. The administration has worked with European allies to
dismantle terrorist groups in North Africa, efforts that include a
recent French strike in Algeria. And the Pentagon tapped a network
of private contractors to gather intelligence about things like
militant hide-outs in Pakistan and the location of an American
soldier currently in Taliban hands.<br>
<br>
While the stealth war began in the Bush administration,<b> it has
expanded under President Obama</b>, who rose to prominence in part
for his early opposition to the invasion of Iraq. <b>Virtually none
of the newly aggressive steps undertaken by the United States
government have been publicly acknowledged.</b> In contrast with
the troop buildup in Afghanistan, which came after months of robust
debate, for example, <b>the American military campaign in Yemen
began without notice in December and has never been officially
confirmed.</b><br>
<br>
Obama administration officials point to the benefits of bringing the
fight against Al Qaeda and other militants into the shadows.
Afghanistan and Iraq, they said, have sobered American politicians
and voters about the staggering costs of big wars that topple
governments, require years of occupation and can be a catalyst for
further radicalization throughout the Muslim world.<br>
<br>
Instead of “the hammer,” in the words of John O. Brennan, President
Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, America will rely on the
“scalpel.” In a speech in May, Mr. Brennan, an architect of the
White House strategy, used this analogy while pledging <b>a
“multigenerational” campaign against Al Qaeda</b> and its
extremist affiliates. [THANK GOD FOR AL-QAEDA; IF THEY WEREN'T
THERE , WE'D HAVE TO INVENT THEM; IN A SENSE WE DID.]<br>
<br>
Yet such wars come with many risks: the potential for botched
operations that fuel anti-American rage; a blurring of the lines
between soldiers and spies that could put troops at risk of being
denied Geneva Convention protections [WHAT SORT OF COUNTRY WOULD DO
THAT?!]; a weakening of the Congressional oversight system put in
place to prevent abuses by America’s secret operatives; and a
reliance on authoritarian foreign leaders and surrogates with
sometimes murky loyalties.<br>
<br>
The May strike in Yemen, for example, provoked a revenge attack on
an oil pipeline by local tribesmen and produced a propaganda bonanza
for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. It also left President Saleh
privately furious about the death of the provincial official, Jabir
al-Shabwani, and scrambling to prevent an anti-American backlash,
according to Yemeni officials.<br>
<br>
<b>The administration’s demands have accelerated a transformation of
the C.I.A. into a paramilitary organization </b>as much as a
spying agency, which some critics worry could lower the threshold
for future quasi-military operations.<b> In Pakistan’s mountains,
the agency had broadened its drone campaign beyond selective
strikes against Qaeda leaders and now regularly obliterates
suspected enemy compounds and logistics convoys </b>[AND A LOT OF
KIDS], just as the military would grind down an enemy force.<br>
<br>
For its part, the Pentagon is becoming more like the C.I.A. Across
the Middle East and elsewhere, <b>Special Operations troops under
secret “Execute Orders” have conducted spying missions</b>
[MAINLY, THEY SET UP DEATH SQUADS; THAT'S HOW MCCHRYSTAL LEARNT HIS
JOB] that were once the preserve of civilian intelligence agencies.
With code names like Eager Pawn and Indigo Spade, such programs
typically operate with even less transparency and Congressional
oversight than traditional covert actions by the C.I.A.<br>
<br>
And, as American counterterrorism operations spread beyond war zones
into territory hostile to the military, private contractors have
taken on a prominent role, raising concerns that the United States
has outsourced some of its most important missions to a sometimes
unaccountable private army [HOW COULD THEY MAKE SUCH A MISTAKE -
UNLESS...].<br>
<br>
A Proving Ground<br>
<br>
Yemen is a testing ground for the “scalpel” approach Mr. Brennan
endorses. Administration officials warn of the growing strength of
Al Qaeda’s affiliate there, citing as evidence its attempt on Dec.
25 to blow up a trans-Atlantic jetliner using a young Nigerian
operative. Some American officials believe that militants in Yemen
could now pose an even greater threat than Al Qaeda’s leadership in
Pakistan.<br>
<br>
The officials said that they have benefited from the Yemeni
government’s new resolve to fight Al Qaeda and that the American
strikes — carried out with cruise missiles and Harrier fighter jets
— had been approved by Yemen’s leaders. The strikes, administration
officials say, have killed dozens of militants suspected of plotting
future attacks. The Pentagon and the C.I.A. have quietly bulked up
the number of their operatives at the embassy in Sana, the Yemeni
capital, over the past year.<br>
<br>
“Where we want to get is to much more small scale, preferably
locally driven operations,” said Representative Adam Smith, Democrat
of Washington, who serves on the Intelligence and Armed Services
Committees.<br>
<br>
“For the first time in our history, an entity has declared a covert
war against us,” Mr. Smith said, referring to Al Qaeda. “And we are
using similar elements of American power to respond to that covert
war.” [IF YOU WANT A MODEL FOR WHAT WE'RE DOING , LOOK AT WHAT THE
GERMANS DID AGAISNT THE RESISTANCE IN OCCUPIED EUROPE; WE SURE HOPE
THERE WON'T BE A NUREMBERG TRIAL...]<br>
<br>
Some security experts draw parallels to the cold war, when the
United States drew heavily on covert operations as it fought a
series of proxy battles with the Soviet Union.<br>
<br>
And some of the central players of those days have returned to take
on supporting roles in the shadow war. Michael G. Vickers, who
helped run the C.I.A.’s campaign to funnel guns and money to the
Afghanistan mujahedeen in the 1980s and was featured in the book and
movie “Charlie Wilson’s War,” is now the top Pentagon official
overseeing Special Operations troops around the globe. Duane R.
Clarridge, a profane former C.I.A. officer who ran operations in
Central America and was indicted in the Iran-contra scandal, turned
up this year helping run a Pentagon-financed private spying
operation in Pakistan. [THE SORT OF PEOPLE WHO LED M L KING TO POINT
OUT THAT THE U.S. IS THE GREATEST PURVEYOR OF VIOLENCE IN THE WORLD
TODAY...]<br>
<br>
In pursuing this strategy, the White House is benefiting from a
unique political landscape. Republican lawmakers have been unwilling
to take Mr. Obama to task for aggressively hunting terrorists, and
many Democrats seem eager to embrace any move away from the long,
costly wars begun by the Bush administration.<br>
<br>
Still, it has astonished some old hands of the military and
intelligence establishment. Jack Devine, a former top C.I.A.
clandestine officer who helped run the covert war against the Soviet
Army in Afghanistan in the 1980s, said his record showed that he was
“not exactly a cream puff” when it came to advocating secret
operations.<br>
<br>
But he warned that the safeguards introduced after Congressional
investigations into clandestine wars of the past — from C.I.A.
assassination attempts to the Iran-contra affair, in which money
from secret arms dealings with Iran was funneled to right-wing
rebels in Nicaragua known as the contras — were beginning to be
weakened. “We got the covert action programs under well-defined
rules after we had made mistakes and learned from them,” he said.
“Now, we’re coming up with a new model, and I’m concerned there are
not clear rules.”<br>
<br>
Cooperation and Control<br>
<br>
The initial American strike in Yemen came on Dec. 17, hitting what
was believed to be a Qaeda training camp in Abyan Province, in the
southern part of the country. The first report from the Yemeni
government said that its air force had killed “around 34” Qaeda
fighters there, and that others had been captured elsewhere in
coordinated ground operations.<br>
<br>
The next day, Mr. Obama called President Saleh to thank him for his
cooperation and pledge continuing American support. Mr. Saleh’s
approval for the strike — rushed because of intelligence reports
that Qaeda suicide bombers might be headed to Sana — was the
culmination of administration efforts to win him over, including
visits by Mr. Brennan and Gen. David H. Petraeus, then the commander
of military operations in the Middle East.<br>
<br>
The accounts of the American strikes in Yemen, which include many
details that have not previously been reported, are based on
interviews with American and Yemeni officials who requested
anonymity because the military campaign in Yemen is classified, as
well as documents from Yemeni investigators.<br>
<br>
As word of the Dec. 17 attack filtered out, a very mixed picture
emerged. The Yemeni press quickly identified the United States as
responsible for the strike. Qaeda members seized on video of dead
children and joined a protest rally a few days later, broadcast by
Al Jazeera, in which a speaker shouldering an AK-47 rifle appealed
to Yemeni counterterrorism troops.<br>
<br>
“Soldiers, you should know we do not want to fight you,” the Qaeda
operative, standing amid angry Yemenis, declared. “There is no
problem between you and us. The problem is between us and America
and its agents. Beware taking the side of America!”<br>
<br>
A Navy ship offshore had fired the weapon in the attack, a cruise
missile loaded with cluster bombs, according to a report by Amnesty
International. Unlike conventional bombs, cluster bombs disperse
small munitions, some of which do not immediately explode,
increasing the likelihood of civilian causalities. The use of
cluster munitions, later documented by Amnesty, was condemned by
human rights groups. [AND THEY SHOW CLEARLY THAT THE U.S. WAR IS TO
TERRORIZE THE POPULATION.]<br>
<br>
An inquiry by the Yemeni Parliament found that the strike had killed
at least 41 members of two families living near the makeshift Qaeda
camp. Three more civilians were killed and nine were wounded four
days later when they stepped on unexploded munitions from the
strike, the inquiry found.<br>
<br>
American officials cited strained resources for decisions about some
of the Yemen strikes. With the C.I.A.’s armed drones tied up with
the bombing campaign in Pakistan, the officials said, cruise
missiles were all that was available at the time. Drones are favored
by the White House for clandestine strikes because they can linger
over targets for hours or days before unleashing Hellfire missiles,
reducing the risk that women, children or other noncombatants will
fall victim.<br>
<br>
The Yemen operation has raised a broader question: who should be
running the shadow war? White House officials are debating whether
the C.I.A. should take over the Yemen campaign as a “covert action,”
which would allow the United States to carry out operations even
without the approval of Yemen’s government. By law, covert action
programs require presidential authorization and formal notification
to the Congressional intelligence committees. No such requirements
apply to the military’s so-called Special Access Programs, like the
Yemen strikes.<br>
<br>
Obama administration officials defend their efforts in Yemen. The
strikes have been “conducted very methodically,” and claims of
innocent civilians being killed are “very much exaggerated,” said a
senior counterterrorism official. He added that comparing the
nascent Yemen campaign with American drone strikes in Pakistan was
unfair, since the United States has had a decade to build an
intelligence network in Pakistan that feeds the drone program.<br>
<br>
In Yemen, officials said, there is a dearth of solid intelligence
about Qaeda operations. “It will take time to develop and grow that
capability,” the senior official said.<br>
<br>
On Dec. 24, another cruise missile struck in a remote valley called
Rafadh, about 400 miles southeast of the Yemeni capital and two
hours from the nearest paved road. The Yemeni authorities said the
strike killed dozens of Qaeda operatives, including the leader of
the Qaeda branch in Yemen, Nasser al-Wuhayshi, and his Saudi deputy,
Said Ali al-Shihri. But officials later acknowledged that neither
man was hit, and local witnesses say the missile killed five
low-level Qaeda members.<br>
<br>
The next known American strike, on March 14, was more successful,
killing a Qaeda operative named Jamil al-Anbari and possibly another
militant. Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch acknowledged Mr. Anbari’s death.
On June 19, the group retaliated with a lethal attack on a
government security compound in Aden that left 11 people dead and
said the “brigade of the martyr Jamil al-Anbari” carried it out.<br>
<br>
In part, the spotty record of the Yemen airstrikes may derive from
another unavoidable risk of the new shadow war: the need to depend
on local proxies who may be unreliable or corrupt, or whose agendas
differ from that of the United States.<br>
<br>
American officials have a troubled history with Mr. Saleh, a wily
political survivor who cultivates radical clerics at election time
and has a history of making deals with jihadists. Until recently,
taking on Al Qaeda had not been a priority for his government, which
has been fighting an intermittent armed rebellion since 2004.<br>
<br>
And for all Mr. Saleh’s power — his portraits hang everywhere in the
Yemeni capital — his government is deeply unpopular in the remote
provinces where the militants have sought sanctuary. The tribes
there tend to regularly switch sides, making it difficult to depend
on them for information about Al Qaeda. “My state is anyone who
fills my pocket with money,” goes one old tribal motto.<br>
<br>
The Yemeni security services are similarly unreliable and have
collaborated with jihadists at times. The United States has trained
elite counterterrorism teams there in recent years, but the military
still suffers from corruption and poor discipline.<br>
<br>
It is still not clear why Mr. Shabwani, the Marib deputy governor,
was killed. The day he died, he was planning to meet members of Al
Qaeda’s Yemeni branch in Wadi Abeeda, a remote, lawless plain dotted
with orange groves east of Yemen’s capital. The most widely accepted
explanation is that Yemeni and American officials failed to fully
communicate before the attack.<br>
<br>
Abdul Ghani al-Eryani, a Yemeni political analyst, said the civilian
deaths in the first strike and the killing of the deputy governor in
May “had a devastating impact.” The mishaps, he said, “embarrassed
the government and gave ammunition to Al Qaeda and the Salafists,”
he said, referring to adherents of the form of Islam embraced by
militants.<br>
<br>
American officials said President Saleh was angry about the strike
in May, but not so angry as to call for a halt to the clandestine
American operations. “At the end of the day, it’s not like he said,
‘No more,’ ” said one Obama administration official. “He didn’t kick
us out of the country.”<br>
<br>
Weighing Success<br>
<br>
Despite the airstrike campaign, the leadership of Al Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula survives, and there is little sign the group is
much weaker.<br>
<br>
Attacks by Qaeda militants in Yemen have picked up again, with
several deadly assaults on Yemeni army convoys in recent weeks. Al
Qaeda’s Yemen branch has managed to put out its first
English-language online magazine, Inspire, complete with bomb-making
instructions. Intelligence officials believe that Samir Khan, a
24-year-old American who arrived from North Carolina last year,
played a major role in producing the slick publication.<br>
<br>
As a test case, the strikes have raised the classic trade-off of the
post-Sept. 11 era: Do the selective hits make the United States
safer by eliminating terrorists? Or do they help the terrorist
network frame its violence as a heroic religious struggle against
American aggression, recruiting new operatives for the enemy?<br>
<br>
Al Qaeda has worked tirelessly to exploit the strikes, and in Anwar
al-Awlaki, the American-born cleric now hiding in Yemen, the group
has perhaps the most sophisticated ideological opponent the United
States has faced since 2001.<br>
<br>
“If George W. Bush is remembered by getting America stuck in
Afghanistan and Iraq, it’s looking like Obama wants to be remembered
as the president who got America stuck in Yemen,” the cleric said in
a March Internet address that was almost gleeful about the American
campaign.<br>
<br>
Most Yemenis have little sympathy for Al Qaeda and have observed the
American strikes with “passive indignation,” Mr. Eryani said. But,
he added, “I think the strikes over all have been
counterproductive.”<br>
<br>
Edmund J. Hull, the United States ambassador to Yemen from 2001 to
2004, cautioned that American policy must not be limited to using
force against Al Qaeda.<br>
<br>
“I think it’s both understandable and defensible for the Obama
administration to pursue aggressive counterterrorism operations,”
Mr. Hull said. But he added: “I’m concerned that counterterrorism is
defined as an intelligence and military program. To be successful in
the long run, we have to take a far broader approach that emphasizes
political, social and economic forces.”<br>
<br>
Obama administration officials say that is exactly what they are
doing — sharply increasing the foreign aid budget for Yemen and
offering both money and advice to address the country’s crippling
problems. They emphasized that the core of the American effort was
not the strikes but training for elite Yemeni units, providing
equipment and sharing intelligence to support Yemeni sweeps against
Al Qaeda.<br>
<br>
Still, the historical track record of limited military efforts like
the Yemen strikes is not encouraging. Micah Zenko, a fellow at the
Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations,
examines in a forthcoming book what he has labeled “discrete
military operations” from the Balkans to Pakistan since the end of
the cold war in 1991. He found that these operations seldom achieve
either their military or political objectives.<br>
<br>
But he said that over the years, military force had proved to be a
seductive tool that tended to dominate “all the discussions and
planning” and push more subtle solutions to the side.<br>
<br>
When terrorists threaten Americans, Mr. Zenko said, “there is
tremendous pressure from the National Security Council and the
Congressional committees to, quote, ‘do something.’ ”<br>
<br>
That is apparent to visitors at the American Embassy in Sana, who
have noticed that it is increasingly crowded with military personnel
and intelligence operatives. For now, the shadow warriors are taking
the lead.<br>
<br>
Muhammad al-Ahmadi contributed reporting from Yemen.<br>
<br>
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:<br>
<br>
Correction: August 14, 2010<br>
<br>
An earlier version of this article misstated that Micah Zenko was
still at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Mr. Zenko, a
fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is no longer at the
Kennedy School.<br>
A version of this article appeared in print on August 15, 2010, on
page A1 of the New York edition.<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/world/15shadowwar.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all">http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/world/15shadowwar.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all</a><br>
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