Pullout may hamper counter-terror effort
With no troops in Yemen, U.S. loses information about militants’ locations.
WASHINGTON — All remaining U.S. government personnel withdrew from Yemen over the weekend as fighting erupted near the last safe haven for American special forces there and an Iran-backed militia took control of key locations in the country’s third-largest city.
The U.S. departure as Yemen further descends into chaos is likely to hamper the American counter-terrorism campaign against two potent extremist groups, Islamic State and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
About 100 American special operations troops evacuated Al Anad air base in southern Yemen on Saturday as Al Qaeda militants fought house-to-house in a nearby town. The withdrawal comes a month after the U.S. Embassy in the capital, Sana, was vacated during clashes between Shiite Muslim rebels and government forces.
“Due to the deteriorating security situation in Yemen, the U.S. government has temporarily relocated its remaining personnel out of Yemen,” State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke said in a statement.
The Islamic State militants, who control large areas of Iraq and Syria, are extending their reach into both North Africa and Yemen, on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. Intelligence officials worry that the militants will exploit the lawlessness in places such as Yemen and Libya and expand their influence and recruit fighters, as they have elsewhere.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, the most resourceful and dogged of Al Qaeda’s affiliates, has long used Yemen to plot and stage attacks
against the West.
The U.S. plans to continue to fly armed drones over Yemen and strike at leaders of cells plotting to attack Western targets, officials said. But without Americans on the ground and no friendly local intelligence service to turn to for help, the U.S. will have much less information about the location of militant leaders.
Despite the drawbacks, U.S. officials decided that the danger of remaining in Yemen proved too great. Backed by Iran as well as ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh, militias from the northern-based Houthi faction overran additional territory in Yemen’s southwest, taking control of the international airport and government buildings in Taizz and persuading some of the city’s security forces to turn against the government.
The Shiite-led Houthis, whose leaders have received training and weapons from Iran, now control Sana and nine of the country’s 21 provinces.
The rebels’ newest push further endangers the rule of President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, a close ally in U.S. counter-terrorism efforts whom the White House still considers the sole legitimate authority in the country.
Hadi, who fled Sana last month for the southern city of Aden, gave a defiant televised speech Saturday accusing Iran of orchestrating a coup against him and appealing to the U.N. for “urgent intervention.”
The speech inflamed rebel leaders already incensed by the gruesome suicide bombings at Shiite mosques in Sana on Friday that killed at least 137 men, women and children.
Islamic State leaders announced responsibility for the mosque attacks, the first claim of a major attack in Yemen by the group. Islamic State also claimed to be behind the museum attack that killed 20 foreign tourists and a policeman in Tunisia on Wednesday.
CIA Director John O. Brennan said Sunday that he is concerned about the expanding reach of the group, which ratcheted up its campaign against the U.S. on Saturday by posting online the names and addresses of 100 American military personnel and encouraging its followers to assassinate them.
“This is something that clearly is not just restricted to Iraq and Syria,” Brennan said on “Fox News Sunday.” “So we cannot relent.”
U.S. intelligence officials are also concerned that the turmoil gives Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula “breathing room” to plot attacks against the United States. Dozens of members of the group have been killed in a campaign of U.S. drone strikes in Yemen over the last several years.
The group said it planned the deadly shootings in January at the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. In 2010, bomb makers for the group hid explosives inside printer cartridges shipped to the U.S. after having concealed a bomb in the underwear of an operative who boarded a Detroit-bound flight on Christmas Day 2009. Both times, the bombs were discovered before they detonated.
Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said the withdrawal from Yemen is going to hurt the ability of American intelligence services to watch Al Qaeda and Islamic State militants in the region.
“We are withdrawing completely,” McCaul said, speaking on ABC’s “This Week.” “We will have no intelligence footprint or capabilities to monitor what groups like AQAP, ISIS and the Shia militants are doing in the region,” McCaul said, using an alternative acronym for Islamic State.