With Shiite rebels eroding Yemen’s government, President Obama’s anti-terror strategy — which included using Yemen as a model for action against Islamic terrorists and even opening a terrorist halfway house in the troubled gulf country — is in free fall.
But the White House is declining to say whether the administration plans to go ahead with its plans to open a rehabilitation center for Guantanamo Bay detainees in Yemen.
Administration sources early Thursday said it has re-imposed a ban on sending detainees to Yemen, according to the Associated Press.
Late Wednesday the government of Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi announced an agreement with the Houthi militia that calls for the Shias to withdraw from areas of the presidential palace they conquered this week and release a relative of Hadi’s. In exchange, the government will cede more power to a Shiite minority estimated to make up 35 to 40 percent of the country’s population.
In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, Obama asserted that his foreign policy and leadership in the Middle East was “smarter” than that of his predecessor President George W. Bush, emphasizing diplomacy over military might and conducted through international organizations like the United Nations rather than unilaterally.
The president’s emphasis on international cooperation was evident over the last few years in his efforts to work with European allies in talks with Iran to halt its nuclear program and over last summer and fall when he worked to put together a coalition of Arab allies to confront the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
But critics also point out areas in which Obama’s reliance on international cooperation seems to have been wrongheaded, most notably his decision last fall to tout Yemen as an example of a place where his counter-terrorism policies were working.
In addition, in the fall of 2013 the White House confirmed that it was working with the U.N.’s Interregional Crime and Justice Institute steering group to help the Yemeni government create and fund a rehabilitation and reintegration program for Guantanamo Bay detainees.
“We believe the establishment of a credible, sustainable program would be an important step for the Yemeni government in bolstering their counter-terrorism capabilities,” National Security spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden told the Washington Examiner at the time.
Two-thirds of the remaining 122 prisoners remaining at Gitmo are Yemeni. The Pentagon considers 47 of them low-risk and cleared them for transfer years ago.
Obama first banned transfers to Yemen in January 2010 after prodding from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee.
Feinstein was reacting to news that a Nigerian man who attempted to blow up an airliner headed to Detroit on Christmas Day had trained with AQAP in Yemen. Just days before that botched attack, the Obama administration transferred six detainees from Guantanamo to Yemen.
When asked Wednesday if Obama’s plans for a Yemeni rehab center were still operational, considering the turmoil in Yemen, the White House referred the question to the State Department, which referred it to the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Institute office in Italy. That office did not immediately respond.
The rehab center faces fierce resistance from Republicans on Capitol Hill who have long opposed returning Yemeni detainees to their home country, citing recidivism rates for former Gitmo detainees who have returned to the battlefield and Yemen’s long-term instability.
This week Houthi rebels seized the capital of Sanaa and overran the presidential palace. The country also remains a hotbed for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, one of most virulent offshoots of the terrorist group that attacked the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001.
Several top Republicans on Capitol Hill, including Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who chairs the Armed Services panel, were quick to point out the unrest in Yemen both before and after Obama’s State of the Union speech.
“In Yemen, the country President Obama once hailed as a successful model for his brand of counter-terrorism, al Qaeda continues to facilitate global terrorism, as we saw in the barbaric attacks in Paris,” McCain said Wednesday. “And Iranian-backed Houthi rebels have pushed the country to the bring of collapse.”
The collapse of Hadi’s government, a strong U.S. ally, also shuts down one of the few spigots of information and counter-terrorism cooperation in the Arab world.
Just last week, Rep. Dutch Ruppersburger, D-Md., a senior member of the Intelligence panel, told the Examiner that the Yemeni government was a bright spot in an otherwise dismal picture. Ruppersburger noted that Yemen helps the U.S. track terrorism suspects’ travel in and out of the country in an attempt to combat the foreign-fighter threat.
But prominent Democrats, such as Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, this week said the situation on the ground in Yemen’s capital had become so dangerous that the United States might have to close the embassy there immediately. The U.S. embassy in Sanaa remains open, but American warships are steaming toward Yemen in apparent preparation for an evacuation.
In the fall of 2013, the U.S. was forced to close embassies across the Arab world and the Middle East out of concern regarding a terrorist threat emanating from al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan and their counterparts in Yemen.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Wednesday that Obama is keeping a close watch on developments in Yemen and has reduced embassy staff to essential workers after others fled the country.
Even though al Qaeda leaders in Yemen continue to plot attacks and reportedly assisted and funded the Paris attacks, Earnest insisted that, for all the instability in the nation, the U.S. has successfully continued to apply pressure on the AQAP leadership there and prevent it from establishing a safe haven.
The safety of Americans in Yemen is the administration’s top priority right now, Earnest said.
“We are monitoring this minute by minute,” he said. “We’ll take whatever steps are necessary to protect American citizens up to and including evacuating the embassy if we determine that’s necessary.”
Considering the current and previous unrest and instability in Yemen, counter-terrorism experts doubt the wisdom of setting up a terrorism rehabilitation center in the middle of an al Qaeda hotbed where there has been a history of terrorists breaking out of prison.
“I think it’s a mistake to assume that the Yemenis have ever had a handle on their security — nobody ever really controls Yemen,” said Jonathan Schanzer, vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “They have long had a weak central government … so what we’re seeing now is jarring but not surprising.”
Rehabilitating terrorism suspects or long-held detainees is “a very inexact science to say the least,” Schanzer told the Examiner. “The idea that you can do this successfully is not realistic, and choosing a country that has been deeply unstable as long as I can personally remember is foolish.”
