Amid Yemen chaos, US finds model further imperiled

As a Saudi Arabia-led military campaign in Yemen entered its second week, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said the chaos in the country was rapidly being exploited by Al-Qaeda’s powerful local branch. But as of Wednesday, no resolution to the U.S.-supported campaign appeared to be forthcoming, with the U.S.-backed Yemeni leader still decamped in neighboring Saudi Arabia and rebels targeted by the intervention still in control of key parts of the country.

"We see them making gains on the ground there as they try to take territory," Carter said of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) on Wednesday during a briefing with reporters. "Obviously it’s always easier to conduct CT [counter-terrorism] ops when there is a stable government willing to cooperate.”

The Saudis, in coordination with nine other Sunni-majority states, began launching airstrikes in Yemen two weeks ago in an attempt to roll back territorial gains by Shia rebels it says are backed by Iran.

But so far, the military effort has failed to stymie the territorial gains made in the past months by Houthis, even as the fighting continues to place a heavy burden on ordinary Yemenis.

During the fighting, the Arab world’s poorest country has been devastated by a humanitarian crisis that has seen NGOs struggle to get staff and supplies on the ground. More than 540 people have been killed, including more than 74 children.

The United Nation’s special rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons said on Wednesday that the international community needed to urgently “prepare for massive displacement and humanitarian crisis as conflict torn Yemen further descends into chaos and civilians flee the fighting.” 

The Houthis have twice displaced Yemen’s internationally recognized president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi — first from the capital Sanaa, which they overran in September, and then the southern port city of Aden, which is now the scene of intense fighting.

The fighting in Yemen has become a major policy dilemma for the United States, which as recently as October held up the country as a model for successful counter-terrorism efforts. 

“That circumstance now obviously doesn’t exist in Yemen,” said Carter. “That doesn’t mean that we don’t continue to take steps to protect ourselves. We have to do it in a different way,” said Carter.

The U.S. has supported the current military campaign with logistical support, and on Tuesday it indicated that it was speeding up requests to provide the military campaign weapons and other resources.

“We have expedited weapons deliveries, we have increased our intelligence sharing, and we have established a joint coordination and planning cell in the Saudi operations center,” said U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday.

But Carter’s suggestion that AQAP’s gains in the country were due to the lack of a stable government seemed to implicitly acknowledge the flaws of the U.S. model, given that the restoration of Hadi’s government — the ostensible purpose of the intervention — appears tenuous so long as Houthi fighters continue to battle in Aden, Hadi’s power base, and as long as Hadi remains in Saudi Arabia, where he fled and has remained during the entirety of the military campaign.

The U.S. position in Yemen is further complicated because its principal counter-terrorism target, AQAP, is also an enemy of the Houthi movement, which U.S. is hoping to defeat with the Saudi-led military efforts.

Iran, for its part, has largely stayed on the sidelines of the military conflict, but on Wednesday it sent naval ships to Yemen’s coast. Saudi Arabia and others claim that Iran has supported the Houthis militarily. Tehran denies the claim, though it acknowledges providing humanitarian and logistical support to the group.

Iran on Wednesday called for a diplomatic solution to Yemen’s fighting, saying that its various factions must work to form a national unity government.

But a report from BuzzFeed’s Gregory D. Johnsen on Wednesday, quoting unnamed officials from Egypt, one of the participants in the campaign, suggested that a ground invasion was imminent — a further signal that the conflict may be on the verge of intensifying further.

“Ground forces will enter the war … [in] two or three days,” an anonymous official told Johnsen.