The White House has already increased the numbers of CIA officers
in Yemen, in anticipation of that possibility. And it has stepped up the
schedule to construct the base, from a two-year timetable to a rushed eight
months.
The Associated Press has withheld the exact location of the
base at the request of US officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity
because portions of the military and CIA missions in Yemen are classified.
The current campaign is run by a military counterterrorism
unit, the Joint Special Operations Command, with the CIA providing intelligence
support. JSOC forces have been allowed by the Yemeni government of Ali Abdullah
Saleh to conduct limited strikes there since 2009. Saleh loyalists have
recently allowed expanded strikes by US armed drones and even warplanes against
Al-Qaeda targets who are taking advantage of civil unrest to grab power and
territory in Yemen.
CIA Director Leon Panetta said last week that agency
officers were working in Yemen together with JSOC, as well as other areas where
Al-Qaeda is active. But the CIA would not confirm the White House decision to
build the CIA base or expand the agency's operations in Yemen.
The new base suggests a long-term US commitment to fighting
Al-Qaeda in the region, along the lines of the model used in Pakistan, where
CIA drones hunt militants with tacit, though not public, Pakistani government
approval. Drones like Reapers and Predators are unmanned aircraft that can be
flown from remote locations and hover over a target before firing a missile.
Yemeni officials have indicated their preference toward
drones, versus allowing US counterterror strike teams on Yemeni soil, saying
they are less apt to incense the local population. But the new base would
enable continued operations without Yemeni approval.
If the Yemenis halt cooperation with US counterterrorist
forces that would also likely mean a shift to putting the CIA in charge of the
Al-Qaeda hunting mission in Yemen, senior US officials said.
While that policy debate plays out in Washington, US special
operations forces based outside Yemen are taking aim almost daily at a greater
array of targets that have been flushed into view by the unrest. US forces have
stepped up their targeting as well, because of the besieged Yemeni government's
new willingness to allow US forces to use all tools available — from armed
drones to warplanes — against Al-Qaeda as a way to stay in power, the US
officials said.
The US needs to keep the pressure on, to break Al-Qaeda's
momentum there, the State Department's counterterror coordinator, Daniel
Benjamin, said.
There are growing concerns that AQAP will use the chaos to
acquire more weapons, and also to fuel connections between Al-Qaeda-linked
militants there and Al-Shabab insurgents in Somalia, he added.
The Obama administration has been working for months in concert
with the mediation efforts of Yemen's Gulf neighbors to persuade Saleh to
transfer power. Saleh was evacuated for emergency medical treatment in Saudi
Arabia, after being hit by explosive devices planted in the presidential mosque
more than a week ago.
The US has continued to press for a deal in the hope that a
political solution could pre-empt any plan by the Yemeni leader of 33 years to
return. That, officials fear, could lead to further instability.
Benjamin said he is hopeful that counterterrorism efforts
will continue in Yemen, as the political transition moves along and a new
government takes hold.
But another US official said Yemeni opposition groups have
voiced criticism of the US counterterror program and vowed to stop it, should
they take power.
Since 2009, Yemen has allowed JSOC to employ a mixture of
armed and unarmed drones, ship-fired missiles, small special operations teams
working with Yemenis, and occasional warplane bombing runs. But permission was
on a case-by-case basis, and waxed and waned depending on the mood of the
mercurial Yemeni president.
With AQAP essentially in control of large swaths of Yemeni
territory, the Yemeni government now hopes US targeting will remove some of the
enemies threatening the Saleh regime. That new target-at-will attitude was
reinforced after the attempt on Saleh's life, both US and Yemeni officials say.
The US forces are also taking advantage of the fact that
more Al-Qaeda operatives are exposing themselves as they move from their
hide-outs across the country to command troops challenging the government.
That has led to the arrests of Al-Qaeda operatives by Yemeni
forces, guided by US intelligence intercepts, and those operatives are talking
under joint US-Yemeni interrogation, providing key information on Al-Qaeda
operations and locations, US officials said.
That in turn led to the best opportunity in more than a year
to hit US-born radical activist Anwar Al-Awlaki in early May. A host of
technical difficulties meant three separate attempts, by two types of unmanned
armed drone-craft and warplanes all failed, prompting some grousing among
intelligence agencies that CIA-led strikes might net better results.
But the CIA has neither the drones nor the personnel to take
the lead in the operation at present, two officials say.
Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had long urged Al-Qaeda not
to directly challenge Saleh but to keep Yemen as a haven from which to launch
attacks against the United States, while AQAP leaders argued that they should
overthrow the Yemeni government. A record of that debate between Bin Laden and
the Yemeni Al-Qaeda leadership was found among the records at the compound in
Pakistan where Bin Laden was killed by US forces on May 2.
Bin Laden warned the Yemeni offshoot that its leaders would
be targeted more aggressively and easily if they tried to take power, just as
they are now, the officials said.
