Pentagon Confirms ‘Multiple’ US Ground Operations in Yemen

Officials Offer Few Details on the Raids

While the Pentagon has been very secretive about what they’ve been doing in Yemen all year, on Wednesday officials confirmed that they have carried out “multiple ground operations,” as well as 120 airstrikes in 2017.

US operations haven’t been well-documented at all, In January, almost immediately after the inauguration, the US attacked the village of Yakla, claiming there was an al-Qaeda “collaborator” there. The troops ended up destroying most of the village in the offensive.

President Trump loudly praised the Yakla raid as a huge success, though it’s wort noting that they never tried to heavily publicize them again with such fanfare. And what have they accomplished in all these raids and airstrikes.

Well Yemen in general is a mess, of course, but the Pentagon also estimated that ISIS has doubled in size since the start of the year, though they did claim they’d degraded al-Qaeda’s “propaganda” coming out of Yemen.

That’s a mixed bag, to say the least, and it’s surprising the Pentagon would choose now to disclose these operations, given the massive humanitarian crisis cause by the Saudi invasion of Yemen, which the US has been backing from the beginning.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.