Dirty Wars (41 page)

The game was about getting the money and weapons and specialized training for Saleh's most elite forces to battle the domestic rebellions he viewed as the real threat to his survival. “For years we have seen some of these regimes play these types of games,” said Dr. Emile Nakhleh, the former senior CIA intelligence officer, in 2010. “
They play it for survival
, they play it to stay on our good side, they play it to get all kinds of military aid—and, in fact, the military aid is two or three times more than the economic aid that Yemen gets.... Therefore, if that's true, then they are not necessarily serving [US] strategic, long-term counterterrorism policy.”

Some seasoned Yemeni political analysts, however, believed that there was actually direct cooperation between the Saleh regime and al Qaeda. There were allegations that some members of the elite Republican Guard, the Political Security Organization and the Central Security Forces—all of which received support from Washington—were working with al Qaeda cells or had helped them with supplies, safe houses and intelligence on foreign diplomatic installations. The 2006 prison break struck some well-connected Yemeni security experts as “
an inside job
,” asserted journalist Sam Kimball in a report for
Foreign Policy.
“The prison is an imposing fortress in the heart of Sana'a, with plainclothes soldiers patrolling its perimeter. Inmates' spare cells—only plastic silverware is allowed in—are inspected several times a day. Prisoners are only allowed a half-hour a day outdoors.” Retired Yemeni colonel Muhsin Khosroof said, “We don't know how they got the tools to dig a 300-meter tunnel, and we don't know where the soil they dug out went.” Short of direct support from prison officials, he asserted, “this operation
would seem impossible
.”

The prison break would directly contribute to the growth of al Qaeda in Yemen. If what Colonel Khosroof and his colleagues alleged was true, it meant that the United States was backing the very government whose forces were facilitating al Qaeda's resurrection in Yemen.

Following the prison break, the Bush administration continued to increase military assistance to Yemen. According to the former top US counterterrorism official, Saleh had calculated that the political costs of cracking down on al Qaeda in a meaningful way—by handing over its leaders—would have been too great. “The moment he surrenders key figures, [Saleh's] gone off the cliff with al Qaeda. They won't support him any more. It means the relationship would be severely shaken.” He added that Saleh “has given the US nothing of substance for the money he has received.”

In July 2006, five months after the prison break, the United States
launched a
major expansion of Camp Lemonnier
in Djibouti, from eighty-eight acres to almost five hundred. Its force had grown to 1,500 personnel, and it served as a major hub for the CIA and a stopover point for Special Operations Forces conducting covert or clandestine actions in the region. “
Some teams use the base
when not working ‘downrange' in countries such as Kenya, Ethiopia and Yemen,” reported
Stars and Stripes,
citing the camp's executive officer, Colonel Joseph Moore.

While Saleh played his game with the United States over the escaped prisoners, the United States was gradually building up its presence in the region, although Bush administration officials continued to treat al Qaeda's regrouping in Yemen as a secondary priority. In October 2007, Saleh received
President Bush's top aide
on homeland security and counterterrorism, Frances Townsend, in Aden. During the meeting, Townsend asked Saleh for an update on Jamal al Badawi, the alleged mastermind of the
Cole
bombing. Saleh confirmed that he had been released and was “working on his farm” not far from where he and Townsend were meeting. Saleh added that he had just met with Badawi two weeks earlier. “Al-Badawi promised to give up terrorism and I told him that his actions damaged Yemen and its image; he began to understand,” Saleh said. When Townsend “expressed dismay” over Badawi's release, Saleh told her not to worry because “he is under my microscope.” It was Saleh who, according to a US diplomatic cable sent after that meeting, brought up Wuhayshi and told Townsend point blank that he had taken over as the head of al Qaeda in Yemen. Townsend, according to the cable, responded by changing the subject to Yemen's failed house-arrest system. Later in the meeting, Saleh discussed his fight against the southern secessionists, again portraying his survival as central to Washington's policies. “It is important that Yemen not reach a state of instability,” he told Townsend. “We need your support.” Townsend replied, “You do not even have to think about it. Of course we support Yemen.”

Perhaps the most unusual moment during the Townsend-Saleh meeting came when Saleh brought in Faris Mana'a, a top Yemeni arms trafficker, and seated him next to Townsend. According to the United Nations, “
Despite the Somalia UN arms embargo
since 1992, Mana'a's interest in trafficking arms into Somalia can be traced back at least to 2003,” and Mana'a “has directly or indirectly supplied, sold or transferred to Somalia arms or related material in violation of the arms embargo.” As Mana'a entered the room, he was given a chair at Townsend's table. “Hey FBI,” Saleh said to one of the US officials, “if he does not behave properly, you can take him... back to Washington in Townsend's plane or to Guantánamo.” Saleh told Townsend his forces had recently intercepted a shipment of weapons from
Mana'a and given them to the Yemeni military. “He has donated weapons to the nation's military—he can be considered a patriot now,” joked Townsend. Saleh laughed. “No, he is a double agent—he also gave weapons to the al-Houthi rebels.” A US diplomatic cable Townsend authorized following the meeting proclaimed: “You Can't Make This Stuff Up.” Putting an exclamation point on the whole episode, two years later, Mana'a would go on to serve as coordinator of President Saleh's “peace” efforts with the Houthi rebels.

Townsend's interaction with Saleh—and those of other US officials—showcased Saleh's prowess in playing multiple sides in his war to maintain power. “His use of the dual threats of terrorism and instability when referring to internal conflict is also not new,” asserted the US diplomatic cable cleared by Townsend after her visit. “Saleh consistently uses this tactic when attempting to garner USG [US government] support.” Saleh clearly used this approach because it was effective. When it came to al Qaeda, the less stable Saleh's government appeared, the more money and training he could squeeze out of the United States. “All these US officials were in
way over their heads
in dealing with Saleh,” a former senior US military official who worked in Yemen told me. “When it comes to Yemen, he is so much smarter than them.”

After the US drone strike in Yemen in 2002 and the subsequent arrest of scores of suspected militants, al Qaeda in Yemen had been severely disrupted and was largely a theoretical entity. But after the 2006 prison break, the escaped prisoners rebuilt the dormant organization. Saleh did little to stop them. The United States was obsessed with Saleh's recapturing Jamal al Badawi and another
Cole
suspect, a US citizen named Jabir al Banna, and paid scant attention to the others. “The US
put a great deal of pressure
on Yemen to track both men down,” according to Gregory Johnsen, the Princeton Yemen scholar. “But, as is often the case, it was not the people the US was worried most about that caused the biggest problems, rather it was those it knew too little about that proved to be the most dangerous.”

As Saleh told Townsend during her meeting with him in 2007, al Qaeda was indeed regrouping after the 2006 prison break. And, as he said, they were led by Wuhayshi, bin Laden's former secretary. Wuhayshi was a hardened jihadist who first went to Afghanistan in the late 1990s, where he hooked up with bin Laden. In 2001, when the United States invaded Afghanistan, Wuhayshi fought in the famed battle at Tora Bora and then fled to Iran, where he was arrested and held for two years before being handed over to Yemen in 2003. He was never charged with a crime. Upon his escape from the Yemeni prison, he rebranded al Qaeda in Yemen as a regional rather than a national group, called “The al Qaeda Organization
of Jihad in the South of the Arabian Peninsula,” which eventually became AQAP. Under Wuhayshi's leadership, al Qaeda in Yemen would “
become more strident
, better organized and more ambitious than it has ever been before,” asserted Johnsen at the time. Wuhayshi “completely rebuilt the organization.” That al Qaeda was back in business played well for Saleh because it required the Americans and Saudis to deal with him—and more important, to fund and arm his regime. But JSOC was growing impatient with Saleh and would soon begin to expand its own operations inside Yemen, with or without Saleh's permission.

PAKISTAN,
2006–2008—Donald Rumsfeld's run as defense secretary met an inglorious end in late 2006. A half-dozen retired generals, some of whom were important commanders in the Iraq War, joined several Republican and Democratic lawmakers to spearhead a campaign demanding his resignation. Many sought to blame him for the deteriorating situation in Iraq, others for the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. The Republicans suffered major losses in the 2006 midterm elections and handed the Democrats a majority in both the Senate and House, which many political analysts attributed to growing opposition to the Iraq War. Among those in the White House who had pushed hard for Bush to keep Rumsfeld on board was Dick Cheney. Although President Bush initially stood by Rumsfeld, he eventually accepted the resignation. Rumsfeld was undoubtedly a major figure in the secretive assassination and torture bureaucracy launched post-9/11, but his departure would not radically shift the course of the actions and programs he had helped to shape.

In December 2006, Robert Gates succeeded Rumsfeld. Gates had a close working relationship with the CIA, where he had spent much of his professional career. He first worked for the Agency in the late 1960s and ultimately went on to serve as its director in the early 1990s—the
first basement-level recruit
to rise through the ranks to become director. Gates had done several stints with the NSC and also had close ties to US Special Operations Forces. He was investigated over his alleged role in the Iran-Contra scandal, and though the independent counsel concluded Gates “
was close to many figures
who played significant roles in the Iran/contra affair and was in a position to have known of their activities,” it was determined that his role “did not warrant indictment.” Gates was also a key player in the
US-fueled war in Afghanistan
against the Soviets in the 1980s. Among his first acts at the Pentagon was to put Pakistan firmly back on the US targeted kill campaign's radar.

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee three
months into Gates's tenure, Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, director of operations for the Joint Staff, asserted that US military commanders had “kill-capture” or “
direct action authorities
in Afghanistan,” making them “free to strike against those demonstrating a hostile act.” Lute, however, added that those authorities also permitted operations inside Pakistan. If “the enemy” attempts “to flee across the border, [t]hen we have all the authorities we need to pursue.” When asked about authority to engage in more invasive operations, such as directly targeting Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, Lute said he would only discuss it in closed session.

The “hot pursuit” arrangement had infuriated the ISI since it was first brokered by Musharraf and JSOC in 2002. Everyone in Pakistan knew the CIA was operating extensively in the country—every drone strike was a stark reminder—but the US military could not be perceived to be in the country for any purpose other than training Pakistani forces. While the Pakistani military and ISI were agitating for less US action on their soil, JSOC had been “
pushing hard
” for years to have greater latitude from the White House to strike inside Pakistan. JSOC wanted permission to hit, even in cases where the operation was more involved than the simple pursuit of suspected al Qaeda operatives across the border. “Give us greater latitude, we've got to hit where their sanctuaries are,” was how a US official described JSOC's pitch at the time.

Although Pakistan was a fierce negotiator—at times outmaneuvering the United States—at the end of the day, it needed Washington's money, weapons and support. The bottom line, therefore, was that if Pakistan didn't want to deal with certain terrorist elements, JSOC and the CIA would. And the White House would sign off on it. In JSOC's case, that meant targeted raids into Pakistan. “I think this is one of those things that the
Pakistanis looked the other way
at times, much like the drone program,” Anthony Shaffer, the DIA operative who worked on Pakistan extensively, told me. “I don't believe for a minute that President [Asif Ali] Zardari and [ISI chief] General [Ashfaq Parvez] Kayani, and even Musharraf before, didn't know we would be doing some of that.”

By 2007, the budget for US special operations had
grown by 60 percent
from 2003 to more than $8 billion annually. In January, President Bush announced the “surge” in Iraq. The number of conventional US forces was expanded by 20,000, but Bush also authorized a dramatic increase in targeted killing operations, spearheaded by JSOC's forces. The operation was General McChrystal's swan song at JSOC. By the end of 2007, the president began declaring the Iraq surge a success. This freed up JSOC to refocus on Pakistan.

Late in 2007, the Bush administration began drafting plans for a substantial
escalation of the use of US Special Operations Forces inside Pakistan. The plan, however, was stalled as a result of the ongoing fight for control of Pakistan operations between the CIA and the Pentagon, described by the
New York Times
as “
bitter disagreements
within the Bush administration and within the C.I.A.” over “whether American commandos should launch ground raids inside the tribal areas.”