Making Sense of Drone Deployment in Yemen

Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi is an unlikely advocate for American power. Born during the heady days of Arab nationalism, Yemen’s president came of age in an era and region shaped by anti-colonial sentiment. His political party advocates Arab unity in the face of Western imperialism. His tribal and religious allies threaten jihad against foreign intervention. His predecessor even went so far as to support Saddam Hussein in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, casting it as a war against the Arab Nation. Confronted with a restive population and complex political transition, Hadi had every incentive to conceal or condemn US counterterrorism operations on Yemeni soil.

Yet advocate he did. Appearing before the UN General Assembly on September 28, 2012, Hadi urged the international community to bolster his fragile government’s campaign against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and Ansar al-Shari’ah, its local auxiliary: “We invite our international partners in combating terrorism to provide more logistical and technical support to [Yemen’s] security forces and counter-terrorism units.” Two days later, Hadi endorsed covert US operations in Yemen during remarks at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. Speaking through a translator he publicly acknowledged that the United States was using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, to augment the Yemeni Air Force’s strikes on terrorist targets.