Dirty Wars (26 page)

THE “
US GOVERNMENT WAS NOT HELPING
the [Somali] government, but was helping the warlords that were against the government,” Buubaa, the former foreign minister, complained. Washington “thought that the warlords were strong enough to chase away the Islamists or get rid of them. But it did completely the opposite. Completely the opposite. It was folly, you know, a foolish idea.”

As the CIA deepened its involvement with Somali warlords, most of the JSOC and US military assets in the Horn of Africa were refocused on the war Cheney and Rumsfeld had come into office dying to wage: Iraq. This was not going to be a CIA-led war like the early stages of Afghanistan. JSOC was going to be running the show. And it would have a new leader, a “rising star” and one of the “
Jedi Knights
who are fighting in what Cheney calls ‘the shadows.'”

YEMEN,
2003-2006—
Shortly after 11:00 p.m.
on May 12, 2003, multiple teams of al Qaeda militants carried out a well-coordinated attack in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Using a combination of car bombs and heavily armed commandos, the al Qaeda cells hit three separate compounds housing large numbers of Americans and other Westerners. Among the targets hit was a facility owned by a US defense contractor, the
Vinnell Corporation
, which was training the Saudi National Guard, and another owned by a pro-US Saudi billionaire. Thirty-five people were killed and more than 160 others wounded. A few months later, in November 2003, another bomb attack targeting the
Al Mohaya housing compound
in Laban Valley killed seventeen people and wounded more than 120. The two attacks sparked a
campaign against on al Qaeda
networks in the kingdom—more than six hundred people were arrested, and others accused of complicity were hunted down and killed. Although the attacks were considered great successes by al Qaeda, the crackdown they spurred meant that the organization needed a safe base outside of Saudi Arabia. Many fled to Yemen.

During this time, the al Qaeda network in Yemen was in disarray. A year after the November 2002 drone strike, Harithi's successor,
Muhammad Hamdi al Ahdal
, was jailed, as were scores of other suspected militants. Under pressure from the United States, Saleh
arrested more than one hundred
people and locked them up, ostensibly on suspicion of involvement with the USS
Cole
attack.

The period that followed, from 2003 to 2006, was notable only insofar as the Bush administration seemed to take almost all focus off Yemen and potential al Qaeda threats emanating from the country. “
There was an interlude
of a little over two years in which it appeared as though al-Qaeda had largely been defeated in Yemen,” recalled Princeton University professor Gregory Johnsen, widely considered a leading US expert on Yemen, in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “But instead of securing the win, both the US and Yemeni governments treated the victory as absolute, failing to realize that a defeated enemy is not a vanquished one. In effect, al-Qaeda was crossed off both countries' list of priorities
and replaced by other, seemingly more pressing concerns. While the threat from al-Qaeda was not necessarily forgotten in 2004 and 2005 it was mostly ignored.” Johnsen believed this “lapse of vigilance” was “largely responsible for the relative ease” that al Qaeda had when it rebuilt its infrastructure in Yemen in the period that followed. Another factor that ultimately worked in al Qaeda's favor was Saleh's imprisonment of hundreds of people on simple suspicion of being affiliated with al Qaeda—in some cases with little or no evidence—which effectively turned the prisons into radicalization factories. “These men were tossed in security prisons with other more experienced fighters who did much to radicalize their younger more impressionable fellow inmates in the shared cells,” Johnsen told the Senate. “This problem was largely overlooked at the time” and “would come back to haunt both Yemen and the US throughout multiple phases of the war against al-Qaeda.”

Policy makers in Washington seemed to lose interest in Yemen, but the US military, especially the Special Operations community, certainly did not. While Rumsfeld tapped most of the elite hunter-killer forces from JSOC for the high-value killing campaign in Iraq, Yemen remained on the radar of these very forces, whose stated mission was counterterrorism operations. Several Special Operations veterans from this period told me they were
disillusioned
by what they saw as a misdirection of their skills for operations in Iraq that could have been used to confront the more serious threat posed by al Qaeda elsewhere.

In mid-2003, in Yemen, the ground was being laid for a resurgence of al Qaeda, as President Saleh found himself fighting to put down a domestic insurrection. In 2004, the
Houthi minority launched
a military uprising in the north, spurring a military offensive by Saleh that resulted in the deaths of hundreds, including Hussein Badreddin al Houthi, the leader of the rebellion. His brother, Abdul-Malik al Houthi, eventually succeeded him and continued the fight against Saleh. In confronting the Houthis during the period known as “the six wars,” which spanned from 2004 to 2010, Saleh used both al Qaeda and Saudi forces, as well as his own US-trained-and-equipped
Special Operations Forces
. An al Qaeda spokesman, Ahmad Mansur, claimed the Yemeni government had solicited al Qaeda's support in fighting the Houthis in return for “
eas[ing] the persecution
of our members.” This account was
backed up
by several former senior US intelligence and military officials.

Saleh also relied heavily on the Saudis in this effort. At one point, the Saudis were reportedly giving Yemen
$10 million a month
to fight the Houthis. For the Saudis, the situation in Yemen presented an array of challenges beyond the Houthi rebellion. Overall, the kingdom was Yemen's
biggest sponsor, giving Saleh's government an estimated
$2 billion a year
in aid. To justify their wars against the Houthis to the United States, Saleh and the Saudis consistently used allegations of Iranian support for the Houthis and deliberately conflated them with al Qaeda.

While he worked various angles to try to bolster his own military and political objectives, and the CIA and JSOC entrenched deeper in Yemen from the US base nearby in Djibouti, Saleh used the US desire to take custody of
Cole
bombing suspects to leverage additional support. Despite repeated requests from the FBI and other US agencies and officials, Saleh refused to hand over the top suspects in the bombing, including Jamal al Badawi, whom the United States explicitly asked be extradited after he was
indicted in 2003
in federal court in the United States. “
The Yemeni constitution prohibits
handing over any Yemeni,” Saleh told the
New York Times.

Instead, Saleh brokered a scheme wherein most of the suspects would be prosecuted and sentenced in Yemen. In 2002, under pressure from Washington to do something, Saleh had created what he called a “
dialogue council
” to “confront” the jihadists on his soil through rehabilitation and reconciliation. “The
Yemeni state felt an urgent need
to act against radical Islamism,” observed terrorism researcher Ane Skov Birk. “This need arose from a perceived danger to the state partly from the militants themselves, and partly from the possibility of an American led war on Yemen if the state failed to act against these militants.” Hundreds of Yemenis were taken into custody as part of the program, and there were reports of torture and cruel treatment that amounted to “
gross violations
of the detainees' rights.” Between 2002 and 2005, more than three hundred Yemenis were released. Several of the program's “graduates” would go on to
return to the struggle
, fighting in Iraq or joining al Qaeda or other militant groups in Yemen, and the program was eventually discontinued in 2005. For seasoned observers of Yemen, Saleh's game over the
Cole
suspects was akin to a hostage scheme aimed at wresting more money, training and military hardware from the United States. Handing them over to the United States would be a political disaster internally for Saleh and would take away his negotiating power with Washington.

“
After the
Cole
, Saleh knew al Qaeda couldn't be trusted, but he wouldn't drop that card,” said the former top US counterterrorism official who worked extensively in Yemen during this period. He told me that once al Qaeda suspects ended up in jail, Saleh would eventually “release them through a fictional ‘rehabilitation' program where they would swear on the Koran to renounce terrorism or through pardons or by simply allowing them to escape.” In 2003, ten of the leading
Cole
suspects
escaped from prison
, beginning a multiyear pattern of arrests, convictions, escapes and rearrests. “
Al-Qaeda intends
to cause just enough sporadic damage to persuade [Saleh's] regime that it is best to curtail its efforts to destroy al-Qaeda and to allow the group to operate relatively freely in and from Yemen as long as no major attacks are staged in the country,” observed former senior CIA official Michael Scheuer. Saleh's approach to alleged al Qaeda operatives, Scheuer asserted, “almost certainly equates to a license for the militants to do what they want, where they want, as long as it is not in Yemen.”

From 2003 to 2006, while Saleh's government remained largely off the Bush administration's radar, there was an occasional meeting to demand action on the
Cole
suspects. In 2004, James Pavitt, the CIA's deputy director of operations, told the 9/11 Commission, “
Our operations
, in concert with our partners, are gaining ground against the core of al Qaeda,” adding: “Two and a half years ago we would have listed our top concerns: Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Southeast Asia,” but today, “almost every senior target is gone in Yemen, killed or captured.” In reality, a sleeping giant was just waking up.

THE UNITED KINGDOM,
2003—As the Iraq invasion was quickly transforming into an occupation, Anwar Awlaki returned to Yemen, but there, his father persuaded him to
give Britain another shot
. Anwar left his family in his parents' care and returned to the United Kingdom, where he would remain for almost two more years, often preaching at well-known mosques.
Among Awlaki's sponsors
were the Muslim Association of Britain and the Federation of Student Islamic Societies, both of which had strong ties to the global Muslim Brotherhood organization. His partnership with these organizations is likely to have been one of expediency, noted researcher Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, who conducted an extensive historical study of Awlaki's life, “whereby
they sought to co-opt
a charismatic young preacher in order to help them gain influence among Western Muslims, and in return, they opened up to him the benefits of their considerable organizational capacities, providing Awlaki with ready-made large audiences and venues.” Awlaki went on a speaking tour across Britain in 2003, lecturing at prominent universities and colleges and community organizations on the “war against Islam” and the role of Muslims in the Western world. “His popularity in the West was now at its peak, and he drew in large crowds,” according to Meleagrou-Hitchens. Dr. Usama Hasan, the former imam of the Tawheed Mosque in Leyton, North London, said that Awlaki had become “one of the
icons of Western Salafism
and would pack out every venue he spoke at. People were excited to see him.”

Awlaki continued to spread his message and, though many of his speeches focused on religious teachings or making modern analogies to Muhammad and other prophets, his politics were clearly growing more militant. His sermons resonated with young people who were coming of age in an era where they perceived their religion as being demonized. “There is a global culture that is being
forced down the throats
of everyone on the face of the earth. This global culture is protected and promoted. Thomas Friedman, he is a famous writer in the US, he writes for the
New York Times.
He says the hidden hand of the market cannot survive without the hidden fist. McDonald's will never flourish without McDonnell Douglas—the designer of F-15s,” Awlaki said in one sermon. “In other words, we are not really dealing
with a global culture that is benign or compassionate. This is a culture that gives you no choice. Either accept McDonald's, otherwise McDonnell Douglas will send their F-15s above your head. It is very intolerant culture that cannot coexist with anything else. It uproots every other culture on the face of the earth. Just cuts the roots of it. And you have a quote here by [Russian historian and Soviet dissident] Alexander Solzhenitsyn...'To destroy a people, you must sever their roots.' And the only ideology that is standing up to this global culture is Islam.” Awlaki decried the reality he perceived among young Western Muslims, that they

have more in common with the rock star or a soccer player than they would have with the companions of Rasool Allah [the prophet Muhammad]. You would find that our youth know more about pop stars than they know about the Sahaba [companions] of Rasool. In fact even sometimes more than the Anbiya [Prophets]. How many of our youth know the names of all of the Anbiya of Allah? How many of our youth know the names of the Sahaba? But ask the same person to name the soccer players on their favorite team or their best basketball players and they would go down the list. So there is a serious identity crisis that is going on among Muslims.

Awlaki would weave in pop cultural references with stories from the Koran. He railed against the corporate media and international human rights organizations, which he denounced as propagandists for those who were “plotting to kill” Islam. In London, Awlaki delivered a speech in which he warned young Muslims not to be taken in by the perceived kindness of their non-Muslim neighbors or friends. “The important lesson to learn here is never,
ever trust a
kuffar
[a nonbeliever]. Do not trust him. Now, you might argue and say, ‘But my neighbor is such a nice person, my classmates are very nice. My coworkers, they are just fabulous people, they're so decent and honest. And, you know, the only problem is that we Muslims are giving Islam a bad name. If these terrorists would just stop what they're doing,'” Awlaki said. “Now, I'm not going to argue that your neighbor is not a nice person. Or your classmate. They truly might be decent and nice people. But, brothers,” he added, “this person that you know is not the one calling the shots. And when the Quran talks about” the nonbelievers, “it talks about the leaders,” those who “are pulling the strings. Don't make a judgment” based “on Jane Doe and John Doe. You don't make it based on Joe Six-Pack or Sally Soccer Mom.” The nonbelievers, he said, were intent on destroying Islam. “We need to wisen up and not be duped,” he told the rapt audience. “Malcolm X used to say, ‘We've been bamboozled.'”