Officials say the US has tripled the number of airstrikes against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the group’s Yemeni affiliate, this year. This is a desperate attempt to weaken AQAP, and has largely failed.
Though officials are trying to present this as proof they need even more efforts against AQAP, the reality is that US and Saudi policy in Yemen has greatly empowered AQAP over the past three years, which is why the airstrikes aren’t putting a dent in them.
AQAP has long had a presence in certain Yemeni tribal areas, but attempts to fight them on the ground virtually dried up the moment the Saudis invaded Yemen in 2015, and this allowed AQAP to spread across several areas they’d never previously held, including the major city of al-Mukallah.
At this point, AQAP is treated as a rival and sometimes ally of pro-Saudi Islamist groups in fighting the Shi’ites, and while some of the Saudis’ coalition, like the UAE, have tried to contain AQAP more, the group remains substantially stronger than they were before the Saudi invasion.
Desperate to avoid admitting what the Saudi war has actually done, the US is trying to put the focus on airstrikes against AQAP, which have always been of limited value, and pretend the AQAP surge of recent years just happened out of nowhere.
bombing from the air seems a awful lot like terrorist attacks . You can’t see who you kill . You just keep killing until you get your way . If the USA insists on bombing innocent people ? We should not be so upset when innocent people become terrorists and attack us . Just keep terrorizing us until they get their way .
It sounds like now in Yemen we are fighting against AlQaeda again . In Syria Yugoslavia and Libya we fought for AlQaida . As you may have noticed I spelled Al Quedia with a e and than changed it to a i . I like the way these Jihadist fighters keep changing their names almost as fast as the United switches sides . These names changes don’t mean much of anything they are all Muslims that want to live under Shariah law .and force you to also live under their law or cut your head off . It would be nice if we could know why we are fighting and who we are fighting . But that is not a luxury we have been able to find . We are not fighting Muslims because they are a protected religious group like Christians . We are fighting extremists , Jihadists radical Muslims and freedom fighters. when we don’t know the difference in any of them . Why don’t we refuse to fight for or against Muslims unless they attack us . There was a time foreign aid meant food medicine and help more than guns and bombs
AQAP is Saudi Arabia’s Frankenstein Just like Saudi Arabia is America’s Frankenstein. We remain complicit in every crime that occurs in Yemen including the Zaydi genocide that we quite literally fuel.
http://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/2018/01/yemen-donald-trumps-genocide.html