The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating article about the latest in US War Planning. It seems our Central Command wants to “pump as much as $1.2 billion over five years into building up Yemen’s security forces.” Well, actually they wanted $1.6 billion but they “scaled it back.”

But there’s a big problem.

Stephen Seche who has been our Ambassador to Yemen

and others have argued that Yemen doesn’t have the capacity to absorb such large sums, according to officials involved in the deliberations. They also voiced concerns that the Pentagon’s plans risked overly militarizing Yemen, and potentially fueling a wider insurgency in the country.

Read that again. The country doesn’t have the capacity to absorb the funds. Period. Dot.

So who wants to shovel the money into the pockets of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh who is under fire from two different rebellions and drawing fire from a range of human rights groups? Gen. David Petraeus who headed CentCom until he was dispatched to Afghanistan.

Even some at the Pentagon seem to be wondering about the wisdom of this plan:

“There are times when we don’t spend money, when the partner doesn’t have the carrying capacity,” the senior military official said.”

That $1.2 Billion would be a massive increase since:

Aid to Yemen under the U.S. government’s main counterterrorism program has grown from less than $5 million in fiscal 2006 to more than $155 million in fiscal 2010, the Pentagon said.

But even if Petraeus’s friends don’t get the $1.2 Billion, US Special Forces are more and more evident in the country:


Some spearhead an effort to track and kill al Qaeda leaders as part of a campaign authorized by President Barack Obama. Other teams run small development projects, a role typically handled by State Department aid officials.

The U.S. military accelerated strikes against Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula following December’s failed attempt by the group to blow up a Detroit-bound American airliner…

The White House is now weighing a proposal to add armed, aerial drones operated by the Central Intelligence Agency to the arsenal against al Qaeda in Yemen, mirroring the CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan.

It’s hard not to wonder if ginning up support for this effort was not involved in the big media play last month when two men traveling to Yemen were arrested in Amsterdam. The Yemeni government is now demanding an apology for them with rather good reason.

The ambassador explained that the “suspicious” items in Soofi’s luggage were gifts of mobile phones, watches and a medicine bottle.

“Some of his friends gave these phones and also medicine to send to their family in Yemen,” he said, adding that Soofi had taped together items intended for the same recipient.

Soofi and al-Murisi met for the first time at the airport in Chicago when they both arrived to find the gate for their flight to Sanaa via Washington closed, Obeid said. United Airlines rerouted them via Amsterdam.

“They didn’t change their tickets themselves. United Airlines asked them to take another flight,” the envoy said. “The FBI should just have asked United Airlines.

As Obama ramps up another war in Yemen, a look back at the history of western actions there is valuable, Adam Curtis of the BBC has written a great overview and notes:

The Islamism that we face today rose up in the 1970s precisely as a reaction to those corrupt regimes and their western backers. It too is an anti-colonial project that is very similar to Nasser’s vision of a united Arab world free of western influence – but with religion bolted on. And now, to fight it, we are preparing to send arms and “intelligence advisers” to help prop up a corrupt regime in Yemen.

To the Arabs in Yemen it must seem like deja vu. We are the old ghosts who have returned.