[Peace-discuss] What Obama & the NYT want you to know about the Long War

[C. G. Estabrook]

  [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."]

      Secret Assault on Terrorism Widens on Two Continents
      By SCOTT SHANE, MARK MAZZETTI and ROBERT F. WORTH
      Published: August 14, 2010

This article is by Scott Shane, Mark Mazzetti and Robert F. Worth [sic].

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.

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.

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.

The attack offered a glimpse of the Obama administration's shadow war against Al 
Qaeda and its allies. *In roughly a dozen countries --- from the deserts of 
North Africa, to the mountains of Pakistan, to former Soviet republics* crippled 
by ethnic and religious strife --- *the United States has significantly 
increased military and intelligence operations*, pursuing the enemy using 
robotic drones and commando teams, paying contractors to spy and training local 
operatives to chase terrorists.

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.

While the stealth war began in the Bush administration,* it has expanded under 
President Obama*, who rose to prominence in part for his early opposition to the 
invasion of Iraq. *Virtually none of the newly aggressive steps undertaken by 
the United States government have been publicly acknowledged.* In contrast with 
the troop buildup in Afghanistan, which came after months of robust debate, for 
example, *the American military campaign in Yemen began without notice in 
December and has never been officially confirmed.*

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.

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 *a "multigenerational" campaign against Al Qaeda* 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.]

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.

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.

*The administration's demands have accelerated a transformation of the C.I.A. 
into a paramilitary organization *as much as a spying agency, which some critics 
worry could lower the threshold for future quasi-military operations.* 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 *[AND A LOT OF KIDS], just as the military 
would grind down an enemy force.

For its part, the Pentagon is becoming more like the C.I.A. Across the Middle 
East and elsewhere, *Special Operations troops under secret "Execute Orders" 
have conducted spying missions* [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.

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...].

A Proving Ground

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.

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.

"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.

"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...]

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.

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...]

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.

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.

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."

Cooperation and Control

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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!"

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.]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

Weighing Success

Despite the airstrike campaign, the leadership of Al Qaeda in the Arabian 
Peninsula survives, and there is little sign the group is much weaker.

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.

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?

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.

"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.

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."

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.

"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."

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.

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.

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.

When terrorists threaten Americans, Mr. Zenko said, "there is tremendous 
pressure from the National Security Council and the Congressional committees to, 
quote, 'do something.' "

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.

Muhammad al-Ahmadi contributed reporting from Yemen.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: August 14, 2010

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.
A version of this article appeared in print on August 15, 2010, on page A1 of 
the New York edition.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/world/15shadowwar.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all

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