The Cipher Brief: Why is the U.S. involved in a supporting role in Yemen? What are the top U.S. national security interests there?
Donegan: We are most concerned about direct threats to the United States of America. People tend to forget that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), lives and breathes right there in Yemen. Those are the people that made the bomb that was meant explode on an airplane flying from Amsterdam to Detroit, directly targeting U.S. citizens.
As a result of U.S. counterterrorism efforts - the bomb maker in that case has since been killed, but al-Qaeda’s mechanism for reaching out and attacking the United States and the West is still there. Yemen is where AQAP lives and breathes, and it is where they plan their attacks, whether they're directly planning them or inspiring others to carry them out, that's where it starts. Our national interest is in keeping the pressure on AQAP and destroying their capability to carry out attacks against the U.S. and our interests. Since the current U.S. President has taken office, our counterterrorism efforts in Yemen have put more pressure on AQAP, and I think our efforts have knocked Al Qaeda back. But that wasn't the case before the early part of 2017.
Vice Admiral Kevin Donegan (ret), Former Commander, U.S. Fifth Fleet, the 32 Nation Combined Maritime Forces
"That said, al-Qaeda is not completely gone. They have been under increasing pressure, and while they may have been somewhat eviscerated in the last year or so, they continue to take advantage of the conflict in Yemen to recruit, train and plan attacks against the U.S. and the West."
The second national interest the U.S. has in Yemen goes to the heart of our economy. It is about the free flow of commerce for the U.S. globally, which is threatened by the conflict in Yemen, because the conflict has spilled into the maritime; first with the attack in the Bab-el-Mandeb, located at the southern end of the Red Sea, in October of 2015. That’s when a UAE-contracted ship got attacked. And then our own U.S. ships were attacked multiple times in the Red Sea and near the critical choke point of the Bab-el- Mandeb, which prompted us to respond by attacking onshore radar sites with cruise missile strikes. These attacks on shipping have continued and are problematic, because of their direct impact on the flow of commerce, especially out of the Middle East, which means primarily oil and natural gas. People like to think and talk about the U.S. being energy independent, however, even though we are now making enough of our own energy to be self-sufficient, the price of oil and natural gas are determined globally and any upsetting of the flow of oil or gas to market significantly impacts the global price of oil - which means the price of oil we pay at the pump here in the U.S. And, even though we may be energy independent, our allies and partners that we trade with are not.
Third, we don't want Iran to be the controlling interest in Yemen. Simply put, we do not want another Hezbollah-like group to have a safe haven in Yemen where Iran can use them as their proxy. It cannot become another place where Iran can keep their name off attacks and just throw money and weapons in there and let the Houthis do Iran's work. It’s a problem because Iran is very happy to have missiles lobbed into Saudi Arabia or use their weapons to disrupt the flow of Saudi oil tankers transiting the Bab-el-Mandeb. The weapons the Houthis are using to launch these attacks, cruise missiles and remote-controlled explosive boats are lethal, but not precise, meaning commercial shipping is threatened by these attacks, not just coalition ships.
Vice Admiral Kevin Donegan (ret), Former Commander, U.S. Fifth Fleet, the 32 Nation Combined Maritime Forces
"Those are our three primary national interests in Yemen. By the way, there's also a new entity called ISIS-Y, which is called ISIS in Yemen. That group has been growing because when you beat up al-Qaida other bad actors tend to move in and fill the void, again by the chaos caused by this conflict. For now, our counterterrorism efforts are keeping U.S. pressure on both al-Qaeda and ISIS-Y and U.S. naval forces and those of our allies have been able to keep commerce flowing."
The Cipher Brief: Given that those are the primary national security interests, what can be done to address them?
Donegan: First, the U.S. could go in and lead a large-scale stabilization effort in Yemen. I’d say that’s not what we want to do - for a thousand reasons - in my mind, we do not want to sacrifice our treasure for what would be an absolute long-term grind. It is a hugely complex battlefield right now, because there are so many different entities in Yemen; you have the legitimately-elected Yemeni government, Hadi’s government; you have people who were loyal to Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was the president before Hadi; you have the Houthi’s, who have taken over a large portion of the country; You have al-Qaeda; you have ISIS Yemen; you have the UAE working as part of the Saudi-led coalition and the Yemeni government forces against the Houthis; and then you have other nations who are there to help in that coalition effort. It is also a country where local governance is often provided by the tribes who often switch allegiences among those different groups based on who they presume to be winning. That’s a lot of things going on. At the same time, the country is experiencing horrible famine because all this conflict keeps food and aid shipments from being able to move around on the ground to those who need it most. So, a large-scale stabilization effort would be fraught with a lot a lot of complexity.
The second thing is that we could do nothing. I talked about why doing nothing can be harmful to us because it will allow al-Qaeda to grow, and ISIS-Y to grow. And then on top of that, this fight has spilled into the maritime at a critical choke point potentially impacting the flow of commerce and Iran is already getting a solid foothold with their Houthi proxies.
The third option can be what we're doing now, which is contain this thing as much as we can and try to get the warring factions to the table - while we keep pressure on al-Qaeda in Yemen and prevent the spillage into the maritime. That involves, in some ways, the issue of helping Saudi Arabia. But we have to remember that the Houthis have attacked Saudi Arabia up north, across their border and have launched missiles into Saudi Arabia. So that's why the Saudis are in this. They have also been attacked in the maritime with explosive boats and missiles which have targeted their ships at sea and onshore infrastructure. So those are the three options we're stuck with.
The Cipher Brief: What about the humanitarian crisis? The United Nations estimates that more than 16,000 civilians have been killed or injured since the war started. A lot of those deaths have been caused by airstrikes, which Saudi Arabia carries out.
Donegan: It’s important to understand that the Saudis have taken a fair amount of blame for the conflict in Yemen, mainly because of reported civilian casualties from airstrikes. That said, it's also important to note that they didn't start this current violence that is going on in Yemen. The history and the blame there lies directly with the Houthis who went into Sanaa and deposed the legitimate government and President Hadi, and then continued south and took over the large population centers of the country. The reason I mention that is because that unlawful action by the Houthis set the stage for a series of bad things to happen, including the growth of AQAP and ISIS-Y, humanitarian aid flow to be reduced, contributing to what was an already bad humanitarian situation in Yemen and it provided an opportunity for Iran to take advantage of this chaos.
Vice Admiral Kevin Donegan (ret), Former Commander, U.S. Fifth Fleet, the 32 Nation Combined Maritime Forces
"But the humanitarian crisis is now the overriding issue and there are a couple of things to understand about it. Most important, is that the conflict is causing the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. The food situation in Yemen has been bad for some time. They've had water issues for a long time. And there's always been some kind of crisis there. Now, when you have a prolonged conflict and things can’t move freely on the ground, that's just going to exacerbate the crisis to what you see so vividly on the news today."
As you know, the Saudi-led coalition, which is the Saudis and the UAE and some others, have now engaged in an offensive operation into Hodeidah, which is a port that is west of Sanaa. The fear at the time was that an operation on that port was going to further prevent humanitarian aid from coming in. The Saudis however, claim that they're going to keep that port open and allow aid to come in. But a couple of facts are important to know about the port: when the Houthis were in control of the port, most of the stuff that came into the Hodeidah port went to Sanaa, which is the capital and where the Houthis are. So even though there was famine in many parts of the country, before the coalition started to move against the port, its safe to say the Houthis were eating well in Sanaa. The humanitarian aid that did come in through that port was a small percentage, maybe 20 percent or less of the goods and unfortunately, that aid was not making a right turn and going to those places that needed it. So to sum all this up - the quickest and best way to solve the humanitarian crisis is to get some kind of cease fire in place now and then get the conflict resolved across the table. Only then can we start getting the needed aid into the hands of the people of Yemen that badly need it.
It was reported that the coalition said, 'we'll stop our attack against the port if the Houthis are going to come to the table and the U.N. will help us broker an agreement’. I think everyone wants this thing to end, it's been going on too long. I don't see a military solution and I also don't see a large stabilization effort having any chance for success, when the warring factions haven't agreed to stop warring.
