Navy SEAL: Light counterterrorism strategy in Yemen ‘a fantasy’

A Navy SEAL captain and former commander of a special operations team in Yemen said in a recent interview that a U.S. counterterrorism approach there reliant on drone strikes and special operations raids is a “fantasy.”

“The solution that some people champion where the main or whole effort is drone strikes and special operations raids — is a fantasy,” said Capt. Robert Newson in a Feb. 27 piece in the CTC Sentinel, published by the U.S. Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center. 

“It may be cheaper and safer, but without broader efforts it is like mowing the grass in the jungle,” said Newson, who is currently a military fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “You cannot hold the jungle back with a weed whacker, you need to partner with the locals to get after their own problems.”

While Newson did not name any names, the White House had maintained before the collapse of the Yemeni government in January that its counterterrorism approach in Yemen, which was mostly reliant on drone strikes, special operations raids, and a small number of U.S. forces on the ground to train Yemeni forces, was working. 

President Obama said in September that a counterterrorism strategy using airpower and supporting local partners on the ground was “one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years.” 

However, Newson, who served as the commander of a Special Operations Command task force in Yemen between 2010 and 2012, discussed shortcomings in the strategy in the piece.

Newson said counterterrorism efforts did not extend far outside of the capital of Sana’a, in order to get after Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in the south, due in part to security concerns.  

“The remit of the government does not go too far out of the capital and it is not very productive to develop counterterrorism (CT) forces primarily kept in Sana’a that rarely engaged in the fight and were controlled by very senior Yemeni leaders,” he said. 

“Al Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was taking over large swaths of the south and we thought we needed to be down there in a much more significant way. I think concerns about force protection, over increasing demand of advisors and about slippery slopes prevented a broader advise and assist effort that both DoD and the Embassy were advocating,” he said. 

Newson said it was “incredibly difficult” under the Saleh regime to get Yemeni forces to stop AQAP from taking territory in the south of Yemen, and that the terrorist group moved in “without much of a fight.”

He also said that while drone strikes were “incredibly important,” they are “only a delaying action and everywhere I have been, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, every military person up and down the chain of command acknowledges this.”

The SEAL said that with last month’s evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in Sana’a, security assistance and efforts to train and advise Yemeni local forces “are on hold,” with “only airstrikes and raids to keep AQAP on its heels.” AQAP is seen by U.S. officials as the most threatening to the U.S. of all the Al Qaeda affiliates, having carried out several attempts to attack the U.S.

While the Houthis have said they are willing to work with the U.S., Newson said giving their “ideological underpinnings … that’s going be a hard row to hoe.” Part of the Houthis’ slogan is “Death to America, death to Israel.” 

Newson said one solution to continue its counterterrorism efforts against AQAP could be to reach out to Sunni tribes in Yemen’s south, who are resisting both the Houthis and AQAP. 

“When national coherence is declining, like we are currently seeing in Yemen, it sure would be a strategic asset, even a game changer, to have a relationship with the southern Yemeni tribes,” he said.