Diplomat
Debunks Obama's Yemen 'Success' Story
by Andrew Harrod
FrontPage Magazine
February 16, 2015
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Yemen has been an "always almost failing state" for as long
as Ambassador Barbara K.
Bodine can remember, she affirmed in her February 3 Georgetown
University luncheon lecture,
"Yemen: If This is a Policy Success, What Does Failure Look
Like?" The truth of Bodine's sobering presentation to a
fifty-person conference room packed to standing-room-only was confirmed
when, eight days later, America's embassy in the capital Sanaa fell
to Houthi rebels and U.S. Marines were forced to destroy
their weapons before fleeing the country to prevent them from falling
into rebel hands. The humiliating failure of American policy demonstrated
that, President Barack Obama's wishful thinking notwithstanding, Yemen
will not be a policy success anytime soon.
Bodine, a career Foreign Service officer with extensive experience in
the Middle East, directs Georgetown's Institute for the Study of
Diplomacy. She spoke at the invitation of Georgetown's Prince
Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU). Associate
director of ACMCU and Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Professor of Islamic
Civilization Jonathan
Brown moderated and professor emeritus John Voll attended.
According to Bodine, Obama left professionals with experience in Yemen
"all baffled" when he "touted Yemen as a success" of
anti-terrorism policy in a September address.
"Whatever Yemen is, it is not yet a success," she stated,
describing the "resource deprived" country whose Sunni majority
was overtaken by an insurgency
of Shiite Houthi rebels supported by Iran earlier this year. Bodine
warned that "solutions based on our timelines" do not work for
a country like Yemen, which "never really gets fully stable, but . .
. doesn't quite go off the cliff, either." Yemenis "do
conflict resolution so well because they do conflict prevention so
poorly," she added.
Bodine criticized the Obama administration's emphasis on using drones
to fight al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which is, "in
many ways . . . the smallest problem in Yemen" given its
instability. In her words, "drones have gone from being a tool
to a strategy," but they "tend . . . to piss people off"
and do "not make friends" among local Yemenis when
unaccompanied by explanation. She also criticized the
"efficacy" of drones given that AQAP has grown from hundreds of
followers in 2009 to thousands who now control Yemeni territory.
Moreover, the Yemeni military, "never . . . a strong
institution," is often bested by Yemeni tribes and desperately needs
aid.
Bodine lamented that drone strikes "have corroded an already
fairly fragile state" and caused Yemenis to view Americans as merely
"fighting a proxy war" while "not . . . engaged in
governance" that benefits the populace. Americans "need
to be seen as visible" in their ongoing aid to Yemen and to change
their rhetoric from "always talking about al-Qaeda," which
causes Yemenis to "think that all we are is drones." Not
countering Yemeni "drivers of instability" entails that
problems other than AQAP will plague the strategically placed
country. A failed Yemeni state, for example, with twenty-five million
refugees would mean that "Saudi Arabia has a problem."
Yemen has "played host to other people's proxy battles over the
millennia," Bodine noted, such as that between the Saudi Royal
Family and Egypt's former dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser during the Cold
War. Iranians "muck around" in Yemen, supporting the
Houthis as a means of countering the Saudis, who, in turn, "muck
around" in Syria by providing aid to the rebels fighting that
country's dictator, Bashar Assad, an Iranian ally. However, she
noted, Saudi Arabia's "existential worry" in Yemen is not the
Houthis, but AQAP. "If you are overly confused, you are doing
well," she joked, in reference to Yemen's convoluted political
dynamics.
Audience members did not challenge Bodine's presentation, with one
person agreeing with her assessment that "drones are
ineffective" and commenting on the "lack of depth in our
understanding of foreign policy." Similarly, Georgetown
adjunct professor Joseph
Saba, a specialist in fragile state development with World Bank
experience in Yemen, concurred that "American interests are deeper
and broader" in Yemen than drone policy.
Bodine succeeded in her principal objective of urging a dramatic
rethinking of American policy towards Muslim-majority societies.
Yemen's decent into chaos contradicts Obama's premature proclamation of
"success," while the future remains as murky in Afghanistan as
it does with incessant efforts to achieve "land for peace" in
the Arab-Israeli conflict. The shifting sectarian political sands
in the region allow for groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria
(ISIS) to implement what Bodine termed a "brutal" yet
"very clear idea" of "governing philosophy."
Such daunting realities demand policies derived from a clear grasp of the
region's history and current affairs, not vapid pronouncements of victory
based on little more than fantasy.
Andrew E. Harrod is a freelance researcher and writer who holds a
PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a JD from George
Washington University Law School. He is a fellow with the Lawfare Project;
follow him on twitter at @AEHarrod. He wrote this essay for Campus Watch, a project
of the Middle East Forum.
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