Fragmented Sovereignty and the use of Air Power
The Case of South Arabia and Yemen
Professor Clive Jones
University of Durham
Not for Quotation without express permission of the author
Introduction
From reconnaissance missions and intelligence gathering, through to their
use as platforms for targeted killings, few technological developments in how states
now prosecute wars have provoked such fierce debate as the use of Unmanned
Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) or Drones. For many, they represent the vanguard of a new
way of war, efficacious in their reach and precision, relatively cheap to operate and
in an era of conflict defined by the strategist Thomas Hammes as ‘post-heroic’, able
to monitor and reach areas where the level of threat or indeed geographic locations
denies the use of more conventional troops.
Such casualty aversion has seen the use of Drones by the United States (and
other Western states)
increase exponentially in conflict zones, a function of
technological innovation combined with remote control that removes all physical
risk to those controlling its operational use. In turn, moral constraints over the
delivery of lethal force from on high are diluted, the analogy to a video game where
the player can switch off and walk away from the consequences of their action
providing the most common, if at times ill-informed critique.
Others go further. Critics of a Liberal world order see the issue of drones as
indicative of a West who, having been unable to subdue the ‘other’, now look at
least to contain dissonance at the margins, an act of neo-imperialism in the very best
1
traditions of the formal empires of the past.1 Indeed, putting aside for one moment
the reductive antipathy towards a West that continues to champion the ‘repressive
essence of Global Capitalism’, the analogy with empires of the past is not so
misguided. The use of airpower to subdue ‘restive natives’ was indeed part of the
aerial policing strategy developed by British Colonial officials and openly embraced
by the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the aftermath of World War One as it looked to
secure its future and thwart the avarice designs of a British Army who saw its
independence as a financial drain on an already diminishing defence budget. It
should also be noted that while its conduct in World War Two – the Battle of Britain,
the Dambusters and the strategic bombing campaign over Germany - came to
define the role of the RAF in the popular imagination,
supporting
counter-
insurgency (COIN) operations across an ever contracting empire defined its role
from the end of World War One to the beginning of the 1990s.2
The extent to which the deployment of RAF assets
controlled
the
hinterlands of Empire – most notably across the tribally based entities across the
Middle East – certainly has echoes over how Drones should and indeed are
employed against comparable targets albeit with a longer global reach. Equally, the
moral issues of remoteness stand comparison – the dropping of bombs on tribesman
from 3000 feet was as remote as it could get in the 1920s with similar comparisons
over moral rectitude to be drawn.3
However, International Humanitarian Law (IHL) has increasingly been used
to criminalise military operations – and not just those restricted to the use of air
power alone - as a means of liberal constraint focusing on civilian harm. One only
has to note the international furore surrounding the conduct of military operations
2
by the IDF in Gaza, as well as the controversy surrounding the scale and scope of
Drone strikes in Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and of course Yemen to realise the
point. Human rights lawyers such as Clive Stafford-Smith have highlighted the use of
Drones over Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia as being in total violation of
IHL, not least in terms of the civilian casualties inflicted and sovereignty infringed.
Undoubtedly such accusations carry weight, not least when seen as of a piece with a
continuing ‘War on Terror’ long sullied by the use of rendition and torture in the
public imagination. IHL is however about moderating the use of violence but NOT
prohibiting the use of proportionate, discriminate and necessary force in the
pursuit of military operations. In short, IHL recognises that civilians do die in armed
conflict and that accordingly, those that see IHL as mechanism of imposing absolute
restraint on military operations either misunderstand the remit of IHL or have
wilfully looked to politicise its implementation.
Moreover, in an era in which
domestic sovereignty remains fragmented in entities that still claim the privilege of
international legal sovereignty, the tension between what is legal and what is just in
countering threats and the means chosen to do so often defy the application of
absolute norms.4
This concentration on individual human rights and state sovereignty that
dominates debate over the use of airpower (and drones in particular) has however
obscured other lines of enquiry that offer alternative perspectives of airpower upon
tribally based societies. In the contemporary era, most obvious is how effective
are such strikes and do they necessarily alienate the target populations - not least
when collateral damage and deaths to civilians ensue – thereby driving support, for
the rebellion or insurgency? The obvious answer, and in some cases the correct one
3
might be an unambiguous yes. Equally however, our implicit understanding of the
political context in which such attacks take place are informed by a Weberian
construct of the State. The proposition put here is this might offer an inaccurate
assessment over how airpower has been perceived and indeed utilised among
peoples where a sense of identity is parochial or at best regional and where the
means and mechanisms of social cohesion, identity and legitimacy are more clan or
tribally based than any overt loyalty to state structures. In short, allegiance to a
sovereign authority remains fragmentary at best.
What emerges therefore is perhaps a ‘tribal political field’ in which the
internal balance between ruler and ruled is rarely static; rather it is constantly
renegotiated or indeed contested amid a patrimonial order that 1) has privileged
particular tribes to ensure regime longevity 2) extended or withheld material
largesse to actors, both tribal and political, to ensure immediate gains. Amid such
complex arenas in which state structures might run parallel with, but also be
challenged by a shifting tribal landscape, air power as part of a wider conflagration
might act to enhance the power of one tribal grouping over another, or one actor
over another. Accordingly, while the use of airpower might be a necessary condition
in alienating a targeted group, it might equally empower others whose interests, be
they fleeting or longer term, accord with those of the intervening actor.
Yemen provides a particularly apt case study therefore to test both the causal
relationship between the ‘tribal political field’ on the one hand, and the impact of air
power on the other. There is, as that doyen of COIN theorists, David Kilcullen has
noted, a perceived continuity here for as he notes:
4
[M]any of the people the United States is bombing with unmanned aircraft in the
21st Century - in the Horn of Africa, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Yemen – are
members of the same groups, or even descend from the same individuals, who
became the involuntary guinea pigs on whom the British Empire (the superpower of
its day) refines the Air Control techniques some ninety years ago.5
Whether the means, let alone the intent of such ‘air control’ remains
comparable with the current use of drones in Yemen is something that will be
explored in this paper. Surprisingly perhaps, a paternalistic morality of sorts did
inform the British use of airpower in Yemen or South Arabia, a morality that is
conspicuous by its absence among critics who regard Washington’s use of air power
in Yemen as little more than an industrial scale targeted assassination policy with
little grasp of regional conditions, the impact it has on indigenous communities or
the wider politics of the target state. It is an argument made most forcefully by the
Akbar Ahmed in his excoriating account of Drone Warfare: the failure of Washington
to understand both tribal society and the often fragmented relationship that such
segmentary tribes on the periphery of the state – including in Yemen - have with
central authority.6 By comparing and contrasting the use of ‘air control’ by the RAF
from the 1920s-1960s with how Drones have been used across Yemen since 2001, it
is a dilemma that this paper seeks to address.
Air Power over Yemen and South Arabia
How the British developed and utilised air power to control tribal unrest
across its empire has been well documented. Perhaps the most comprehensive
account is to be found in David E. Omissi’s work, Air Power and Colonial Control.
Published in 1990, it remains the authoritative account over how bureaucratic
politics at the heart of Whitehall, coupled with the need to ensure the security of
5
Britain’s new imperial possessions, determined the supremacy of air control
doctrine.7 Here, for the sake of clarity, it is worth noting how concepts such as ‘air
control’ and ‘air policing’ developed over time and were understood by officials,
both colonial and military in theatre.
Air control doctrine itself
developed
organically out of successive campaigns in British Somaliland, and Iraq in the
immediate aftermath of World War One. In effect, it meant that the RAF was
assigned responsibility for the defence and security of its new possessions in the
Middle East under the auspices of the Air Ministry in London. Air Policing was
therefore a natural outgrowth from this, and broadly defined, meant the use of air
assets to maintain the internal security of the state. Air proscription represented the
operational and tactical use of aircraft in an actual offensive role, while Air
Substitution was defined as the replacement of ground forces by aircraft where
time, distance and expense negated the use of troops.8
At a time when the western construct of the state, let alone sovereign
borders remained anathema to many of the indigenous peoples, be they pastoralists
or nomadic peoples unwilling to accept the imposition of arbitrary boundaries, Air
Control and the use of Air proscription in particular offered a relatively cheap and
efficient way to interdict tribes bent on cross border raiding or more seriously, to
disrupt any perceived threat to the new dispensations that had emerged as part of
the post-war settlement. Its essence was described by Air Vice Marshal Sir John
Salmond who, in reference to air action over Iraq, noted that, ‘ It is commonplace
here that aircraft achieve their results by their effect on morale, and by the material
damage they do, and by the interference they cause to the daily routine of life, and
not through the infliction of casualties’.9
6
It was disruption wrought by Air Proscription,
rather than the outright
destruction to lives and property that, it was argued, would bring about order among
errant tribesman and ensure obedience (if not fidelity) to central authority.
Moreover, the use of such measures was to be tightly controlled, with permission
sort by British Colonial officials in situ and approved by the High Commissioner. In
line with such guidelines ‘ insurgents were to be issued with a clear ultimatum
threatening air action’, which included a cut off date and time when air action may
occur and a warning that women and children should be evacuated.’ 10 Within the
broad ambit of Air Control, this very much defined the policy of ‘proscription
bombing’ but as Sebastian Ritchie has noted, by 1930 air control encompassed
more than just
inflicting punishment from the air. Across the Middle East,
Afghanistan and Imperial India, the greater number of sorties flown by RAF aircraft
were for reconnaissance (visual, armed and photographic) or for effecting morale of
recalcitrant tribes by overflights that demonstrated both capability and potential
intent.11
The RAF were however fully aware that the ‘shock of the new’ had its
limitations. Salmond believed that indigenous reaction to bombing would progress
through three stages: sudden panic,
to be followed by indifference or ‘even
contempt for air attack followed by intense weariness and a longing for peace’.12
This trinity, or variants thereof, has its more contemporary advocates that will be
explored later, but it is worth noting that the basis on which this assumption was
made was as much about explaining the immediate ability of airpower to bring about
favourable results, as it was based on evidence from the operational field. As Omissi
explained, while the initial reaction of panic was discernible in the initial forays into
7
the hinterlands of empire, adaptation and resistance to this new form of warfare,
ranging from the use of darkness as natural cover and the ability to disperse
quickly, through to the use of caves (where accessible) were soon developed. From
Transjordan through to Iraq and Yemen, the RAF too become increasingly aware of
the vulnerability of aircraft to well directed small arms fire from the ground. In
Waziristan, such was the accuracy of this ground fire that RAF planes were forced to
sacrifice accuracy for safety by bombing from higher altitudes.13
In the case of Yemen and South Arabia, the role of Air Control was, from an
operational perspective, relatively successful in the interwar period. At its core,
British policy was centred on protecting the Aden colony. Beyond Aden itself,
treaties of protection and friendship linked Britain with a series of largely Shaffei
(Sunni) tribal Shaykhs and Potentates, known as Protectorates but in an area defined
by precipitous mountain ranges and an arid coastline, the writ of the Crown – seen
in the acute levels of underdevelopment - remained limited.
Even so, in terms of 1) protecting Aden 2) upholding treaty obligations with
tribal leaders of the hinterland and 3) warding off the territorial claims of the Imam
Yahya of Yemen, the application of Air Control was, as already noted, a relative
success. From 1921 onwards, the use of air power, not least in the border areas
around Dhala and Beihan was crucial in defeating several armed incursions by
mainly Zeidi forces loyal to the Imam. Air proscription for example proved crucial
around Dhala in August 1928 in deciding the battle in favour of the frontier tribes
bound to Britain by treaty while under the rubric of air policing, proscription proved
crucial in forcing the Queteibi tribe of the Radfan to desist from exacting ‘tributes’
by force from Yemeni trade caravans transiting their territory on route to Aden. As
8
Peter Dye has notes, such air operations inside South Arabia were largely
parsimonious, both in their implementation and outcome. Between 1919 and 1939,
some 26 discreet air operations were conducted to either prevent outright banditry
or where necessary, to enforce Government control. Aside from direct operations
against Yemen which ceased in 1934, only 12 deaths were directly attributed to
aerial attacks during this period, a remarkably low level of attrition14
It was such low casualty figures that led one commentator, Air Commodore
Leslie Howard-Williams to argue in 1937 that Air Control was a more humane means
of London securing its interests across the Middle East, avoiding as it did the largescale casualties that usually accompanied the use of ground troops. Indeed, in one
incident, the Quteibi tribe complained to Colonial officers over the apparent
inaccuracy of one particular RAF attack against their villages, noting that it hardly
instilled the necessary respect or indeed confidence in Government authority.15 Of
course, aside from the self-serving nature of such comments that privileged the
position of the RAF, it was often the case that air proscription supplemented ground
operations, rather than actually supplanting the use troops. Even so, the RAF were
keen to ensure that irrespective of the nature of operations, intelligence regarding
the tribal landscape informed planning and implementation. This was not always
easy as the production of accurate and timely intelligence from tribal sources was
difficult to obtain and often had to be treated with circumspection less the inflation
of threat was used to disguise the settling of more parochial scores.16
Here, the role of both Colonial officials and RAF officers able to gather
intelligence ‘up country’ across the Middle East played a crucial role. But whereas in
Iraq and Transjordan, RAF Special Service Officers were deployed on a systematic
9
basis to work with and among particular tribes, it was only in the 1950s that a
system was put in place for what became known as RAF Field Intelligence Officers
(FIOs) across the protectorates of South Arabia.17
As one intelligence
report
described them, the FIO was ‘[A]n RAF officer who spends all his time up country
living with the bedu and trying to get intelligence back to H.Q British Forces Arabian
Peninsula. They’re a queer lot. Most of them are more Arab than the Arabs. They are
not really quite with us you might say’.
18
Putting aside the inevitable comparisons
with T.E Lawrence, these FIOs immersed themselves in the tribal landscape of the
protectorates, a role that required them to be part warrior, part social
anthropologist, part doctor, part explorer and part diplomat. Such men were
deployed for periods of anywhere between three to six months, they sole contact
with other Europeans being in the form of regular radio transmissions from their
particular ‘parish’. 19
Of course, their role was ultimately to decide when the use of air power,
either in conjunction with ground forces or as ‘air substitution’ might be justified in
defending the interests of Aden colony. This, as Priya Satia has observed with regard
to the use aerial control in Iraq in the inter-war period, is an approach where those
advocating the efficacy of air power were ‘motivated by a sense of emotional and
cultural intimacy with and affection for the victim’. 20 Satia’s argument is a scathing
critique of the almost romantic and indeed paternalistic views that marked British
attitudes towards Arabs. Indeed, the idea that the Arabs were errant children,
occasionally deserving of the sharp ‘slap’ or air power to bring about order across a
landscape that had long gripped the Orientalist imagination is a key theme of Satia’s
work, an imagination that obscured for many the harsh reality of imperial rule.
10
More to the point as Martin Thomas notes, the prime responsibility of such
personnel ‘[W]as to provide regular covert intelligence to facilitate the subjugation
of such tribal groups. Their security role was always at variance with the common
inclination among tribal control personnel to immerse themselves in Bedouin
culture’. 21
These views could equally be applied to South Arabia and Yemen during the
interwar period and after 1945. The intimacy that existed between FIOs and
Political Officers on the one hand, and tribes such as the Aulaqi on the other often
went beyond such paternalism. One former political officer, Stephen Day, recalled
of his time serving in the Western Aden Protectorate and later, the Federation of
South Arabia that British policy designed to secure the Aden base rested on the
three ‘Bs’ - bombing, bribery and bluff. This might well be a telling commentary on
the wider context of British policy in South Arabia that increasingly came under
strain from the rising tide of Arab nationalism and form 1962 onwards, the Yemen
Civil War. Even so, Day remained convinced that when applied judiciously and
supported by intelligence that had been thoroughly assessed, that air proscription
could bring about stability. In Fadhli province he noted, ‘ [T]he mere threat of aerial
action had kept the tribes onside and countered the propaganda of Cairo. Our
intelligence in the WAP was good and targets could be pinpointed accurately,
warnings dropped and buildings and livestock targeted with low risk to life.’ 22 By
way of reflection, he went on to note that such proscription was in no way
comparable to the later use of Drones by Washington in the same terrain. He also
noted however that when used in conjunction with ground forces, air power was
actually less effective, the tribes, as in the case of the Radfan feeling honour bound
11
to fight back and were able to do so effectively on ground they knew far better than
the British.
Of course, the use of airpower on South Arabia did not occur in a vacuum.
What might have appeared acceptable in the inter-war period was now increasingly
subject to the glare of international scrutiny as resistance to the emergence of a new
Federation of South Arabia developed from an indigenous trade union movement in
Aden. This embraced wider tide of Aran nationalism sweeping the Middle East,
particularly following the Suez debacle.
military and intelligence
officers
British Colonial officials,
diplomats,
laboured to cohere the disparate political
landscape that was the colony of Aden and the protectorates of South Arabia in to
the Federation of South Arabia (FSA). That this experiment in state creation
foundered on the rocks of popular resistance from the NLF and FLOSY is well known.
However, embracing popular sovereignty was never entertained as the foundation
of state legitimacy; rather, Britain looked to empower the various Shaykhs and
potentates whose tribal base was seen as the most effective platform on which to
build state legitimacy.
A host of factors have been cited as both cause and effect as to why the
Federation failed to survive, which, despite the passage of time remain as
contentious as ever. Local politicians in what had been Aden colony, resisted the
idea that their monopoly of power, prestige and influence should be diluted by
tribal Shaykhs, Emirs, or Sharifs considered to be the very antithesis of progression
and modernity. Moreover, the styptic nature of the electoral franchise in Aden
colony served to alienate the burgeoning community of immigrant workers from
the Federal hinterland and Yemen from the very structures the British hoped would
12
secure the future stability of the FSA. When allied to the growing influence of Arab
nationalism throughout the Middle East in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the scene
was set for a sustained programme of subversion and revolt against British rule,
supported both materially and ideologically by President Nasser.
In this regard air power – not least the use of air proscription - in defending
the territorial integrity of the protectorate states such as Beihan might well have
bolstered British standing with the ruling Shaykh, but did little to encourage wider
support at the United Nations for the process of state creation. The case of the
bombing of the Yemeni fort at Harib in June 1964 is a case in point. While fully
justified in taking retaliatory action that followed the ‘proscription’ rules of the
game, Britain was widely condemned at the United Nations for this gross act of
imperial aggression. By contrast, sustained attacks by the Egyptian Air Force against
Royalist/Zeidi positions in North Yemen between 1962-1968 that often involved the
use of mustard and chlorine gas were dismissed as mere exaggeration at the time,
despite reputable reports to the contrary.
Viewed of course through a post-colonial prism, the role that air power
played in sustaining the apparatus of colonial rule, not least in policing and indeed,
occasionally punishing recalcitrant tribes certainly jars with our sensibilities. Placing
such antipathies to one side, there is perhaps lessons to be drawn in how air power,
certainly over Yemen/South Arabia was used. Aside from a strict chain of command
authorising such strikes, much was made of the need for reliable intelligence
derived from human sources - humint – in deciding the most efficacious use of air
proscription, be it actual or threatened. Indeed, at a time when the accuracy of
bombing or rocketing of particular targets was at best vicarious, the available
13
records suggest that the loss of life to such attacks was surprisingly low. On
occasions where this did occur, it was accepted with what might be called good
grace on the part of those actually being bombed as being part of the rules of the
game. To this extent, the lessons learnt and lessons lost over how air power was
deployed over Yemen/South Arabia between 1919-1967 might well illuminate the
normative, as well as practical debates over how drones have been deployed across
the skies of Yemen in more recent times.
Drones over Yemen
It is not hard to find critics of how drones have almost come to define the
use of technology in the ‘war against terror’ and more specifically, how they have
been used in several theatres in prosecuting a war against al-Qaida type
organisations, not least in Yemen.
There is insufficient time to explore the
emergence of AQAP in Yemen from 2009 onwards but suffice it to say, its increased
ability to blend in with the mainly Sunni/Shaffei tribes in the south and east of the
country - in places such as Abyan, Shabwa, Marib and the Hadramawt – is the result
of a fragmenting state and the diminishing ability of the central government to use
patrimony, mainly derived from Yemen’s ever diminishing oil reserves, to shape the
political order. In a state where governance was memorably described by the ousted
President Ali Abdullah Saleh as like ‘dancing on the heads of snakes’, presenting
himself as an indispensable ally of Washington in its war against an al-Qaida
franchise was a means by which Saleh at least hoped to benefit from American
largesse. His successor, President Abed Rabbou Mansour Hadi was even more
14
candid in his support of drone strikes against AQAP militants during a visit to
Washington in September 2012. 23
As part of this bargain, Saleh and later Hadi gave
Washington ‘carte
blanche’ for carrying out air strikes using manned aircraft, drones as well as on
occasion cruise missile strikes to his targets associated with AQAP. From a globalised
perspective, this use of airpower has a resonance of ‘ air policing’ albeit one where
distances are larger but time is compressed. From the first drone strike in November
2002 that killed the Abu Ali Al-Harithi, alleged to be the mastermind behind the
attack on the USS Cole, the United states has carried out 111 drone strikes to
February 2015 across Yemen, resulting in the death of 541 suspected militants (
some of which Washington calls High Value Targets) and 105 civilians, mainly in the
south and west of the country.24
For critics of these drone strikes, there is little that compares with aerial
proscription of British Colonial rule although in terms of ‘air substitution’ – the lack
of actual ‘boots on the ground’ to help prosecute operations against AQAP in the
more remote regions of Yemen - the parallels are obvious. This includes the cost
effectiveness of drones, an argument used by the RAF some eight decades
previously. Even so, prior warning of intent to attack a target in a village and the
use of overflights to coerce rather than bomb hardly equate with the scope and
intensity of the drone campaign. To be sure, this is a different kind of war. Religious
radicalism was hardly ever a motivating factor in the tribal rebellions of the interwar
period, let alone in deciding Yemen’s path towards independence.
Equally, the
increased ability of AQAP to ingratiate itself with the tribal landscape of Yemen has
15
made it far harder in practice to differentiate tribal actors from militant players.
Indeed, they are now often synonymous. As Zvi Bar’el notes:
Al-Qaida’s fighters in Yemen have been following a different tactic from the one that
guided them in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. They try to become absorbed in the local
Yemeni population and marry women who belong to the local tribes there. They also
invest heavily in developing the local infrastructure. In Iraq, they fought Sunni tribes
and [attacked] Shi’ite targets. In Saudi Arabia they struck government targets and
peeved the Royal family. In Yemen on the other hand, they act as a welfare
institution similar to Hamas in the Gaza strip, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and
Hezbollah in Lebanon. They buy medicine for the tribesmen in the areas where they
live, open schools, dig wells and finance weddings.25
Evidence suggests that this strategy has had some success, particularly in the
provinces of Abyan and Shabwa where the immediate appeal of al-Qaida amid the
widespread poverty and limited social mobility has been amplified by over a decade
of central government indulgence of Islamists across south Yemen.26 The governor
of Abyan Province, Ahmed bin Ahmed al-Misri for example claimed that a paucity of
security forces has meant that AQAP was actively winning the battle for ‘hearts and
minds’ among the tribes, a situation that could only be alleviated if targeted social
development among the tribes, in effect propaganda by deed, proved to be of a
scale and intensity that swamped that of AQAP.27 To date, such development
projects have yet to be realised. Instead, the more immediate security threat from
AQAP elicited military aid from Washington totalling $160 million by the end of
2010 towards enhancing the training and capabilities Yemeni special forces. 28
The profile of AQAP, said to number around 200-300 hard core militants,
many with experience of jihad in Iraq would certainly appear to justify such
investment. Two Saudis, Nasir al-Wahishi, a former aide to Bin Laden, and Said Ali
al-Shehri, an ex-inmate of Guantánamo Bay, are regarded as highly capable
operational commanders.
Veterans of the Iraq and Afghan conflicts, both proved
16
immune to Riyadh’s de-radicalisation programme. They now represent a second
generation of jihadis whose ideology
now shapes the worldview of
younger
recruits, offering as it does a sense of purpose, however misguided, beyond the
poverty of their immediate environment.29
But while AQAP might see its longevity best secured among a wider tribal
milieu, it is this environment which may offer the best means of at least containing
this franchise. One
Shaykh, Abdullah al Jamili from
al-Jawf province openly
admitted to a role in arbitrating between AQAP and the government, a role no doubt
replicated by other tribal groupings. Indeed, if one accepts this as part of the
‘political field’ where tribal sovereignty is exercised, it makes perfect sense for
elders to engage in this particular form of negotiation if it protects the position and
status of the tribe.30 This in turn points to the possibility of longer term, indigenous
modes of containment for while it is tempting to highlight the radicalisation of the
tribes by AQAP, the reverse is equally as likely as tension between tribal identity and
a Salafi-Wahhabi worldview that denies importance to such primordial identities
inevitably clash. In short, the activities of AQAP in the Yemeni milieu are as likely to
be constrained by tribal bonds as by any external military intervention.
The question therefore is whether in fact drone strikes have had the opposite
effect, or what has often been termed ‘blow back’. To use but one example: in
August 2012, Salem Ahmed bi Ali Jaber, a 40 year old cleric from the small village of
Khashamir in Abyan province and a fierce critique of AQAP, was incinerated in a
drone strike that also killed three members of al-Qaeda who had come to
remonstrate with him. As The New York Times noted of the attack, Salem Jaber was
precisely the type of religious and tribal leader ‘ crucial to American efforts to
17
eradicate Al Qaeda’ in Yemen.31 The targeted assassination of AQAP ideologue and
US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki
in September 2011 however remains the most
controversial case of putting ‘war heads to foreheads’ given that Awlaki himself had
never been formally charged with any crime. As Derek Gregory argued, the use of
drones in this respect had allowed for the ‘expansion of the physical space of war
and the contraction of the moral space of war’. 32
Whether in fact normative controls over the use of lethal ordinance are any
more relaxed for Drone operators as they are for fast jet pilots of attack helicopter
crews remains beyond the scope of this study. Rather it how they are used that is of
particular concern in the case of Yemen, not least because the chain of command is
opaque between the Pentagon (JSOC) and the CIA which operates a separate
programme. Whatever the control arrangements – and Obama is said to approve
the target list for both bureaucracies - it is a fact that such targets are framed
through the prism of a counter-terrorism campaign, rather than a broader COIN
strategy.
One particular study identifies five particular forms of blowback that are
manifest in Yemen: the ability of AQAP to recruit from among those whose
friends/relatives have been killed in drone strikes encouragement of retaliatory
attacks on critical infrastructure; the lack of accountability of the US drone
programme because of the grey areas surrounding responsibility which denies a
clear strategy; the continued destabilization of Yemen more generally as drones
deny coherent governance and finally, how the support of Sana’a for drone strikes
denies it legitimacy in the tribal lands of Abyan and Shabwa and Marib provinces in
particular.33
18
Of these, the first form of blow back has attracted the most attention. As in
Afghanistan and Pakistan, much is made of how these ‘signature strikes’ – the
targeting of groups whose activity over a period of time (and perhaps as a target of
opportunity) suggests involvement in militant activity. In a country such as Yemen
awash with weapons, the carrying of assault rifles for example by young males from
the age of 10 upwards is a common occurrence. These strikes, which undoubtedly
have claimed many innocent lives highlight all too clearly
the vagaries of
dependence on technical intelligence in deciding targeting policy.34 Aside from their
offensive capabilities, drones are in fact integrated aerial platforms that provides
ISTAR: Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance. In terms of
targeting militants, this will often tell the operators a great deal about the
capabilities of individuals and groups but little in the way of appreciating a wider
cultural landscape when the carrying of weapons is as much as sign of tribal fidelity
and indeed manhood as it is of any malfeasance.35
Here, the contrast with the role of SSOs and RAF FIOs of years gone by is
striking,
since it is precisely their direct knowledge of their
tribal areas of
responsibility that allowed for the more judicious use of air proscription, usually with
a clearly defined political end. This use of Humint (Human Intelligence) has, from the
authors own interviews, been largely missing in the current US drone campaign in
Yemen. Most intelligence leading to targeting decisions has been gathered from
Yemeni government sources whose veracity cannot always be checked or, in a
technical innovation first developed and used in Iraq, tracking the use of mobile
phone usage to construct the scope and scale of the network that might constitute
an AQAP cell or unit. Reliance on such technical data however comes at a cost for
19
possession of a telephone number of a suspected militant cannot be taken as fool
proof evidence of culpability. Only one case has come to light where Humint
appears directly to have led to the killing of a member of AQAP – Anwar al-Awlaki based on information provided by a Danish Muslim convert Morten Storm.
Leila Hudson goes further, arguing that signature strikes with their attendant
civilian casualties (estimates range between 72-171 deaths between 2009-2013
alone) have only contributed to the fragmentation of Yemeni sovereignty, boosting
the standing of AQAP and its more parochial manifestation, Ansar Al-Sharia and
their calls for the establishment of local ‘Emirates’ from which the ‘far war’ against
the United States can be prosecuted. ‘When state power is exercised from the sky
(not just through strikes but through surveillance)’, she notes, it leaves a vacuum to
be filled on the ground’. Drones in this regard only serve to undermine the already
‘weak legitimacy of central government’, because however technologically
sophisticated, the remain limited to a one-dimensional role in the administration of
state justice.36
This is a powerful argument. Yet supporters of the CT role of drones in Yemen
point out two things: 1) the sovereign authority in Yemen may be weak but it
invited and indeed supported the use of US air power over its own sovereign
territory and 2) since 2011 and despite AQAP’s stated global intent of targeting
Washington, there have been no attacks on United States targets emanating from
Yemen. This in turn points to what supporters of drones such as Daniel Byman see as
the efficacy of drones: the killing of HVTs that undermine the planning capabilities of
AQAP and the disruptive impact that the very presence of drones has upon the
ability of AQAP to organise effective operations.37 Equally, evidence also suggests
20
that the actually targeting of HVTs and their allies where accurate and proportionate
does not result in greater tribal support for AQAP. For example, one drone strike
that killed the Said Ali al-Shihri, a deputy of AQAP in January 2013 was met with
knowing approval among tribes in Marib province, not least because of a series of
bloody attacks claimed by AQAP in the capital San’a, including a suicide bomb attack
on a military parade rehearsal that killed over 100 people, Many of whom came from
areas in and around Marib.38 By contrast,
signature strikes have produced tribal
backlash against the central government, precisely because even if those killed or
wounded have jihadi affiliations, such individuals tend to be recruited locally and
have broader identities beyond fidelity to an Islamist group. As Christopher Swift has
observed, the push of poverty as much as the pull of militancy determines
association with AQAP and its affiliates.39
It is here perhaps that the difference with the concepts such as ‘air control’
and ‘ air proscription’ of the past is most profound. For the RAF, such measures were
a means to an end, the protection of British interests in and around Aden and later
on, the attempt to cohere the protectorates into a coherent state. Indeed, as
Stephen Day recalls, bloody internecine feuds that often marked rival tribal claims
over territory were on more than one occasion brought to a conclusion by the
judicious use of air proscription that often satisfied honour on all sides. By contrast,
the use of drones has become an end in itself, or as one commentator, Audrey Kurth
Cronin noted, a case of tactics themselves driving the strategy.40
In the case of
Yemen, Washington’s focus has been on investing time and resources into a military
that represented sectarian and tribal interests at the expense of an accountable
process of governance seen as legitimate and credible and investment in resources
21
that benefit a people estranged from effective central rule and where the tribal
landscape itself has become increasingly fragmented as the very weight of neopatrimonial largesse shifts from the state to AQAP.
It is a dilemma that Washington has yet to fully address, although in fairness,
the current Houthi advances across Yemen have for now pushed to one side the
efficacy or otherwise surrounding the US drone campaign against AQAP and its
affiliates. There is of course an irony that at a time when military technology was far
less advanced and targeting far less accurate, the policy of air control developed by
the RAF was determined by a probity for rules of engagement that, while serving the
broader imperial project, appeared sensitive to a wider cultural landscape. By
contrast, the compression of what Derek Gregory has called the ‘kill chain’ has
produced ‘a reliance on target signatures’ that ‘substitutes for local knowledge of
the cultural landscape’, a situation compounded by the formalised methods of
analysis that inform signature strikes.41 More broadly, if the use of drones over
Yemen does indeed equate to a new form of global ‘air control’ or indeed ‘air
policing’ across a fragmented polity, Washington needs to re calibrate not the use of
drones per se, but whether how they have been used has created more problems
for the United States, its Yemeni allies and the region that it has actually solved.
Conclusion
We’re getting so good at various electronic means of identifying, tracking, locating
members of the insurgency that we’re able to employ this ….almost industrial scale
CT killing machine that has been able to pick out and take off the battlefield not just
top level al-Qaeda level insurgents, but also is being used to target mid-level
insurgents.42
22
Thus wrote that doyen of COIN experts, John Nagl in describing how drones
had informed the campaigns in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. As impressive as this
may appear - and undoubtedly the damage and disruption caused to both core alQaeda and its various franchises has been profound – it has come at a cost. The
most profound of course has been in human terms, innocent lives eviscerated while
the constant ‘buzz’ overhead of drones on station has disrupted the daily rhythm of
village life less any gathering be construed as suspicious and invite attack from
above. Others point to evidence that Drones in Yemen induce forms of trauma, both
in terms of the anxiety they induce among a largely tribal populace and in their
surveillance capabilities that impinge upon social mores and patterns in deeply
conservative societies. 43
The technology incorporated in the drone platform - the ability to stay on
station for length period of time, the surveillance and intelligence gathering
capabilities – is a world away from the aerial platforms that comprised air control
across the skies of South Arabia half a century previously. But while we should not
forget that imperial ambition and interests determined the very presence of the
RAF in South Arabia, the application of air control to protect Aden colony, not least
in the prosecution of air proscription, was for the most part determined by an
aversion to civilian casualties and informed by an understanding of the tribal and
cultural landscape that embraced the human factor. It might not have been perfect
and mistakes were undoubtedly made but even so, this form of aerial policing looked
to influence or cajole groups towards a defined political end. Where air proscription
was used, disruption to daily patterns of life was deliberate, but the primary targets
were property not people.
23
If drones therefore represent the new vanguard of air control, it is one in
which increasingly, the means have become an end in themselves and with no clear
path discernible over how they might serve a wider agenda of political reform amid a
polity where effective governance remains a rare commodity. We should not forget
of course that the British use of airpower in South Arabia was but one tool to try and
leverage influence in the tribal hinterlands towards a defined goal. The failure of
Britain to cohere South Arabia in a stable Federation, followed by its ignominious
withdrawal in November 1967 has many causes but the use of airpower was not one
of them. By contrast, in its use and application of airpower across Yemen ,
Washington is directly impacting upon the allegiances of tribal landscape and
through signature strikes in particular, denying agency to more indigenous forms of
governance that might well be best placed to counter the threat of AQAP. This is not
to deny a role for drones as such, but it is to suggest that in employing signature
strikes (and even where a HVT might be killed), tactical benefits are often
outweighed by strategic costs. A moral ambiguity undoubtedly hangs over the use
of air control by the British in defence of its imperial interests, not least across the
Middle East. But the principles of air control were framed by an attempt to
understand the local environment even if at times such framing was informed by
racial stereotypes and a rather paternalistic attitude towards the ‘noble Arab’ on the
other. By contrast, the use of drones has been devoid of such local understanding,
often too reliant on intelligence derived from technical means and surveillance that
imputes ill intent to patterns of repeat behaviour. By looking back to how the past
principles of air power determined relations on the ground in South Arabia,
Washington might well marry air control more effectively to governance on the
24
ground, rather than restricting the exercise of state power across so much of Yemen
purely to an aerial platform.
1
See Medea Benjamin, Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control (London: Verso, 2013), pp.246.
For a most precise account of RAF operations in COIN see Sebastian Ritchie (a), The RAF, Small
Wars and Insurgencies in the Middle East, 1919-1939 (London: Ministry of Defence/Air Historical
Branch, 2011), pp.95; Sebastian Ritchie (b), The RAF, Small Wars and Insurgencies: Later Colonial
Operations, 1945-1975 (London: Ministry of Defence/Air Historical Branch, 2011), pp.155.
Bruce Hoffman, British Air Power in Peripheral Conflict, 1919-1976 (RAND Corporation), pp.121.
3
David Kilcullen, ‘ Lawrence’s Ladder: Tribal Irregulars and an actor based theory of modern war’, in
Karl Erik Haug and Ole Jørgen Maaø (eds), Conceptualising Modern War (London: Hurst, 2011),
p.314
4
Stephen D. Krasner, ‘ Sharing Sovereignty: New Institutions for Collapsed and Failing States’,
International Security, 29/2 (2004), pp.85-120.
5
Kilcullen, p.314.
6
Akbar Ahmed, The Thistle and the Drone: How America’s War on Terror became a Global War on
Tribal Islam (Washington, D.C: Brookings Institute, 2013), pp.303-335.
7
David E. Omissi, Air Power and Colonial Control: The Royal Air Force 1919-1939 (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1990).
8
Peter Dye, ‘ Royal Air Force Operations in South West Arabia 1917-1967’, in Joel Hayward (ed), Air
Power, Insurgency and the “War on Terror” (Cranwell: Royal Air Force Centre for Air Power Studies,
2009), pp.47-48.
9
Quoted in Group Captain Peter W. Gray, ‘ The Myths of Air Control and the Realities of Imperial
Policing’, Aerospace Power Journal (2001), p.5 at
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj01/fal01/gray.html accessed on 19 June
2012.
10
Ritchie (a), p.8.
11
Ritchie (a), pp.84-85.
12
Omissi, p.110.
13
Omissi, pp.12, 113.
14
Dye, p.54.
15
Dye, pp.54-55.
16
Ritchie (a), p.45.
17
Martin Thomas, ‘Bedouin Tribes and the Imperial Intelligence Services in Syria, Iraq, and
Transjordan in the 1920s’, Journal of Contemporary History, 38/4 (2003), pp.548-49. Thomas makes
the point that initially at least, that RAF officers who formed the bulk of SSOs had far less experience
of Arab and Muslim societies than their army counterparts.
18
‘ A Man in a Kufiyyah’, Secret: Air Ministry Secret Intelligence Summary, 14/9 (September 1959),
p.22.
19
Sqn Ldr C.M.G Watson, ‘ Field Intelligence Officers in the Aden Protectorate’, British Army Review
(date unknown) at
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCIQFjAA&url=htt
p%3A%2F%2Fwww.faoa.org%2FResources%2FDocuments%2FYemen_BAR__FIO_in_Aden_%255BBritish_Army_Rev%255D_110323.doc&ei=mGgmVaD4FcSwsAHKt4KQCA
&usg=AFQjCNHdRLIKZyvLf4y7r58uCGRF0cuXkw&bvm=bv.90237346,d.bGg
Accessed 9 April 2015.
20
Priya Satia, ‘ The Pain of Love: The Invention of Aerial Surveillance in British Iraq’, in Peter Adey,
Mark Whitehead and Alison J. Williams (eds), From Above: War, Violence and Verticality (London:
Hurst, 2013), p.223.
21
Thomas, p.549.
22
Stephen Day, ‘ Aden and the Gulf: some Reflections’. Paper given to the conference Aden and South
Arabia: A Retrospective in the failure of State Creation’, Durham University, 15 January 2015.
23
Andrew Hammond, ‘ Yemeni debate over drones emerges post-Saleh’, The Daily Star (Beirut), 18
October 2012.
24
See http://www.longwarjournal.org/yemen-strikes
25
Zvi Bar’el, ‘Yemeni Steps’, Ha’aretz (in English), 5 February 2010 at
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1147708.html accessed on 12 April 2010.
2
25
26
Interview with member of the GPC, London 14 December 2010. (Name withheld on request).
Donald Macintyre, ‘Yemen “cannot contain al-Qa’ida’, The Independent, 12 January 2010.
28
Iona Craig, ‘ Britain and US send more special forces to aid war on terror’, The Times, 8 January
2011. In the same period, US Development aid to Yemen totalled $58.4 million. British aid in 2009
distributed through the Department for International Development totalled £30 million for the same
period.
29
James Hider, ‘ “Orchard of fighters” has grown out of poverty and mistrust’, The Times, 4 January
2010.
30
Richard Spencer, ‘ Yemen: the war on terror and a deadly game of cat and mouse’, The Daily
Telegraph, 13 November 2010.
31
Robert F. Worth, Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane, ‘ Drone Strikes Risks to Get Rare Mpoment in the
Public Eye’, The New York Times, 5 February 2013.
32
Derek Gregory, ‘ Lines of Descent’, in Adey et al (eds), p. 54.
33
Leila Hudson, Colin S.Owens, David J. Callen, ‘ Drone Warfare in Yemen: Fostering Emirates
through Counter-Terrorism?’, Middle East Policy, 19/3 (2012), p.144.
34
Ibrahim Mothana, ‘ How drones help al-Qaeda’, The New York Times, 13 June 2012.
35
See Vivian Salama, ‘ Death from Above: American Drone Strikes are Devastating Yemen’, Rolling
Stone Magazine, 14 April 2014. Salama makes the point in this article that drones do not ‘allow much
interpretive room’ for cultural gestures.
36
Hudson et al, p.151.
37
Daniel Byman, ‘ Why Drones Work: The Case for Washington’s Weapon of Choice’, Foreign
Affairs, 92/4 (2013), pp.32-43.
38
Robert F. Worth, Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane, ‘ Drone Strikes Risks to Get Rare Mpoment in the
Public Eye’, The New York Times, 5 February 2013.
39
Christopher Swift, ‘Arc of Convergence: AQAP, Ansar al-Shari’a and the struggle for Yemen’, CTC
Sentinel, 5/6 (2012), p.3.
40
Audrey Kurth Cronin, ‘ Why Drones Fail: When Tactics Drive Strategy’, Foreign Affairs, 92/4
(2013),pp.44-45.
41
Gregory, pp.63-64.
42
Quoted in Gregory, p.63.
43
Vivian Salama, ‘ Death from Above: American Drone Strikes are Devastating Yemen’, Rolling Stone
Magazine, 14 April 2014.
27
26