Does Obama face the prospect of boots on the ground in Yemen?

Only last September, Barack Obama had referred to the Yemen strategy as an appropriate example of how to “handle” Iraq and Syria. The approach would be one of training and equipping local security forces in sustained but low-level engagement and, if the Yemen approach is repeated, relying heavily on reconnaissance and armed drones to weaken opponents.

The war in Iraq and Syria has now gone well beyond that. There have been more than 3,000 air strikes and drone attacks on more than 2,000 targets in less than six months — yet the Yemen policy was still viewed as one that could prove an effective model.

One core problem, though, is that the drone operations that were run both by the CIA and U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, were highly dependent on intelligence on AQAP obtained by Yemeni government security and intelligence branches. Furthermore, they had the approval of the government in Sana’a so the Obama administration could claim legitimacy for its actions.

Remote control lost
With the ousting of the Hadi government, both elements are now in question — the intelligence will probably dry up and if some kind of reasonably stable government replaces Hadi then a new regime could claim infringement of sovereignty. If that regime is Houthi-dominated, as seems likely, then while they have little liking for AQAP, they are equally opposed to U.S. policy which they see as interference in the independence of the state.

This leaves the Obama administration with a major dilemma. For the past three years Obama has been deeply reluctant to engage in Yemen, Iraq, or Syria with significant deployment of ground troops. The preferred option has been termed “remote control” with greater reliance on armed drones, privatized military, special forces, and other means — a rapidly developing military approach currently being researched by the Remote Control Project and the subject of a seminar at Leicester University on 11 February.

So far, the U.S. approach in Yemen has been almost entirely dependent on drones and training local forces, but now the pressure is on to extend this to the direct use of Special Forces. This is already starting to happen in Iraq and Syria with influential Congressional leaders such as chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, John McCain, calling for a further expansion of Special Forces operations.

Following the events of the past week in Yemen, McCain and others now want a similar expansion there — and even while this pressure builds there is news of repeated violent engagements between Canadian special forces and Islamic State paramilitaries in Iraq.

When the air strikes against Islamic State started last August, Obama, Francois Hollande, David Cameron, Tony Abbott, Stephen Harper, and other Western leaders all said that that was as far as it would go. This is clearly not the case and not only is mission creep already happening in Iraq and Syria, it now looks highly likely in Yemen as well.

Paul Rogers is Professor of Peace Studies at University of Bradford. This story is published courtesy of The Conversation (under Creative Commons-Attribution/No derivatives).