The Pentagon is unable to account for more than
$500 million in U.S. military aid given to Yemen, amid fears that the
weaponry, aircraft and equipment is at risk of being seized by
Iranian-backed rebels or al-Qaeda, according to U.S. officials.
With Yemen in turmoil
and its government splintering, the Defense Department has lost its
ability to monitor the whereabouts of small arms, ammunition,
night-vision goggles, patrol boats, vehicles and other supplies donated
by the United States. The situation has grown worse since the United
States closed its embassy in Sanaa, the capital, last month and withdrew
many of its military advisers.
In recent weeks, members of
Congress have held closed-door meetings with U.S. military officials to
press for an accounting of the arms and equipment. Pentagon officials
have said that they have little information to go on and that there is
little they can do at this point to prevent the weapons and gear from
falling into the wrong hands.
“We
have to assume it’s completely compromised and gone,” said a
legislative aide on Capitol Hill who spoke on the condition of anonymity
because of the sensitivity of the matter.
U.S. military
officials declined to comment for the record. A defense official,
speaking on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the
Pentagon, said there was no hard evidence that U.S. arms or equipment
had been looted or confiscated. But the official acknowledged that the
Pentagon had lost track of the items.
“Even in the best-case scenario in an unstable country, we never have 100 percent accountability,” the defense official said.
Yemen’s
government was toppled in January by Shiite Houthi rebels who receive
support from Iran and have strongly criticized U.S. drone strikes in
Yemen. The Houthis have taken over many Yemeni military bases in the
northern part of the country, including some in Sanaa that were home to
U.S.-trained counterterrorism units. Other bases have been overrun by fighters from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
As
a result, the Defense Department has halted shipments to Yemen of about
$125 million in military hardware that were scheduled for delivery this
year, including unarmed ScanEagle drones, other types of aircraft and
Jeeps. That equipment will be donated instead to other countries in the
Middle East and Africa, the defense official said.
Although
the loss of weapons and equipment already delivered to Yemen would be
embarrassing, U.S. officials said it would be unlikely to alter the
military balance of power there. Yemen is estimated to have the second-highest gun ownership rate in the world,
ranking behind only the United States, and its bazaars are well stocked
with heavy weaponry. Moreover, the U.S. government restricted its
lethal aid to small firearms and ammunition, brushing aside Yemeni
requests for fighter jets and tanks.
In Yemen and elsewhere, the
Obama administration has pursued a strategy of training and equipping
foreign militaries to quell insurgencies and defeat networks affiliated
with al-Qaeda. That strategy has helped to avert the deployment of large
numbers of U.S. forces, but it has also met with repeated challenges.
Washington
spent $25 billion to re-create and arm Iraq’s security forces after the
2003 U.S.-led invasion, only to see the Iraqi army easily defeated last
year by a ragtag collection of Islamic State fighters who took control
of large parts of the country. Just last year, President Obama touted Yemen as a successful example of his approach to combating terrorism.
“The
administration really wanted to stick with this narrative that Yemen
was different from Iraq, that we were going to do it with fewer people,
that we were going to do it on the cheap,” said Rep. Mac Thornberry
(R-Tex.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. “They were
trying to do with a minimalist approach because it needed to fit with
this narrative . . . that we’re not going to have a repeat of Iraq.”
Washington has supplied more than $500 million
in military aid to Yemen since 2007 under an array of Defense Department
and State Department programs. The Pentagon and CIA have provided
additional assistance through classified programs, making it difficult
to know exactly how much Yemen has received in total.
U.S.
government officials say al-Qaeda’s branch in Yemen poses a more direct
threat to the U.S. homeland than any other terrorist group. To counter
it, the Obama administration has relied on a combination of proxy forces
and drone strikes launched from bases outside the country.
As
part of that strategy, the U.S. military has concentrated on building
an elite Yemeni special-operations force within the Republican Guard,
training counterterrorism units in the Interior Ministry and upgrading
Yemen’s rudimentary air force.
Making
progress has been difficult. In 2011, the Obama administration
suspended counterterrorism aid and withdrew its military advisers after
then-President Ali Abdullah Saleh cracked down against Arab Spring
demonstrators. The program resumed the next year when Saleh was replaced
by his vice president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, in a deal brokered by
Washington.
In a 2013 report, the U.S. Government Accountability
Office found that the primary unclassified counterterrorism program in
Yemen lacked oversight and that the Pentagon had been unable to assess
whether it was doing any good.
Among other problems, GAO auditors
found that Humvees donated to the Yemeni Interior Ministry sat idle or
broken because the Defense Ministry refused to share spare parts. The
two ministries also squabbled over the use of Huey II helicopters
supplied by Washington, according to the report.
A senior U.S.
military official who has served extensively in Yemen said that local
forces embraced their training and were proficient at using U.S.
firearms and gear but that their commanders, for political reasons, were
reluctant to order raids against al-Qaeda.
“They could fight
with it and were fairly competent, but we couldn’t get them engaged” in
combat, the military official said, speaking on the condition of
anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with a reporter.
All
the U.S.-trained Yemeni units were commanded or overseen by close
relatives of Saleh, the former president. Most were gradually removed or
reassigned after Saleh was forced out in 2012. But U.S. officials
acknowledged that some of the units have maintained their allegiance to
Saleh and his family.
According to an investigative report
released by a U.N. panel last month, the former president’s son, Ahmed
Ali Saleh, looted an arsenal of weapons from the Republican Guard after
he was dismissed as commander of the elite unit two years ago. The
weapons were transferred to a private military base outside Sanaa that
is controlled by the Saleh family, the U.N. panel found.
It
is unclear whether items donated by the U.S. government were stolen,
although Yemeni documents cited by the U.N. investigators alleged that
the stash included thousands of M-16 rifles, which are manufactured in
the United States.
The list of pilfered equipment also included
dozens of Humvees, Ford vehicles and Glock pistols, all of which have
been supplied in the past to Yemen by the U.S. government. Ahmed Saleh
denied the looting allegations during an August 2014 meeting with the
U.N. panel, according to the report.
Many U.S. and Yemeni
officials have accused the Salehs of conspiring with the Houthis to
bring down the government in Sanaa. At Washington’s urging, the United
Nations imposed financial and travel sanctions in November against the
former president, along with two Houthi leaders, as punishment for
destabilizing Yemen.
Ali Abdullah Saleh has dismissed the accusations; last month, he told The Washington Post that he spends most of his time these days reading and recovering from wounds he suffered during a bombing attack on the presidential palace in 2011.
There
are clear signals that Saleh and his family are angling for a formal
return to power. On Friday, hundreds of people staged a rally in Sanaa
to call for presidential elections and for Ahmed Saleh to run.
Although
the U.S. Embassy in the capital closed last month, a handful of U.S.
military advisers have remained in the southern part of the country at
Yemeni bases controlled by commanders that are friendly to the United
States.
Source:
Washington Post
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