The US military announced that it launched four separate airstrikes against al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen in three different provinces over the span of a week at the end of April. The airstrikes coincided with the US-backed United Arab Emirates offensive against al Qaeda in southern Yemen.
US Central Command, or CENTCOM, announced the airstrikes in a press release. According to CENTCOM, 10 al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) fighters were killed and another was wounded in the operations. CENTCOM listed the four airstrikes as follows:
— An April 23 strike on April 23 [sic] killed two al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula operatives in west-central Yemen’s Marib governorate.
— An April 25 strike in the Abyan governorate near Yemen’s southern coast killed two al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula operatives near Yemen’s southern coast.
— A second April 25 strike killed two al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula operatives near Azzan in central Yemen.
— An April 28 strike killed four al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula operatives and injured one in central Yemen’s Shabwah province.
CENTCOM said that AQAP “remains a significant threat to the region, the United States and beyond” and “has a destabilizing effect on Yemen.”
AQAP “is using the unrest in Yemen to provide a haven from which to plan future attacks against our allies as well as the US and its interests,” CENTCOM continued. In the past, the US has targeted top AQAP leaders as well as operatives who were plotting attacks on the West. But the US also launched airstrikes in support of conventional Yemeni military operations against the jihadist organization.
The US has now launched 15 airstrikes against AQAP in Yemen this year. Four of those strikes took place in April and six more in March.
The uptick in strikes coincided with AQAP’s rapid expansion of control in areas in southern Yemen since the spring of 2015. AQAP seized large areas in the southern Yemeni provinces of Abyan, Hadramout, Lahj, and Shabwah starting with the provincial capital of Mukallah in March 2015. Last month, the Unite Arab Emirates, backed by Yemeni forces and the US military, retook control of Mukallah. AQAP claimed it withdrew without a fight to protect civilians, and promised to return. AQAP is also said to have withdrawn from Lahj and its capital of Houta while putting up minimal resistance. This tactic allows AQAP to preserve its forces for future battles.
In addition to the airstrikes, the US military has committed a small number of ground forces to aid the UAE and local Yemeni forces that are battling AQAP in the south. A small number of troops are said to be aiding the UAE in Mukallah as well as Yemeni forces in Lahj, according to US News and World Report.
While AQAP has lost ground in Hadramout and Lahj, it still controls significant territory in Shabwa and Abyan, and maintains a sizable presence in many other Yemeni provinces. Yemeni forces, backed by the US military, were able to drive AQAP from territory it controlled in southern Yemen from 2011 to 2012, but was unable to hold the ground as it has been preoccupied with a Houthi rebellion that cost the government the capital of Sana’a and much of northern and central Yemen.
1 Comment
One can only hope that at some point this will become as important to our government as any other conflict in this area. Obviously our enemies find this and other areas such as Libya and the Sinai and central Africa to be places the U.S. has not enough interest to pursue. We (Americans) must take this to the limit, show these Islamist terrorists that we will enforce the ideals put forth by our constitution that all are equal. That women are not commodities and religions of all kinds are equal. Islam is not the only faith, we all have a place here on earth. Who ARE you to claim that your religion or faith could be above and or beyond the rest of ours?