Despite
the growing reports of failure – and despite the death of a Navy
SEAL, and the destruction of a $70 million Osprey aircraft –
Trump’s press secretary Sean Spicer has continued to insist that
the mission was a “successful operation by all standards.”
by
Namir Shabibi and Nasser al Sane
Part
3 - A nightmare unfolds
As Abdallah
al Ameri and his neighbour Sheikh Abdallah al Taisi prepared for bed
on January 28, they could be forgiven for thinking they had suffered
enough bad luck for a lifetime. Both men, subsistence farmers now too
old to work their land, had already survived a US drone attack which
hit Abdallah’s wedding party in December 2013. They both lost their
eldest sons in that attack, which killed 12 people but which the US
has never formally acknowledged.
Their home
region of al Bayda had been battered since late 2014, as the Yemeni
government led by President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi began its
slow-motion collapse. In its place, a three-way battle erupted
between tribes allied to the government, the Houthi rebel movement
and al Qaeda militants. An international coalition led by Saudi
Arabia would join the fray the following year.
Yemen’s
hinterland, Yakla included, faced Houthi shelling, incursions by AQAP
and bombing by US drones – all on top of severe food and fuel
shortages wreaked by a Saudi-led blockade. Yemen now stands on the
brink of famine.
The day
leading up to the strike, rebel Houthis encamped in the nearby Qaifa
mountains fired Katyusha rockets at tribal militiamen in Yakla. The
militiamen were allied to the internationally-recognised government
led by President Hadi. It was a familiar exchange in an ongoing
battle for control of the region since the start of the rebellion.
But the
ominous sign of things to come was subtler. Sadiq al Jawfi, a member
of a local cross-party ceasefire committee which monitors violations
at the request of the UN Security Council envoy to Yemen, told the
Bureau that mobile phone coverage providing Yakla with its only line
to the outside world had been cut. Yemen’s National Security Bureau
(NSB), historically allied to former President Ali Abdallah Saleh and
now his Houthi allies, had a history of restricting coverage prior to
military operations.
It was a
moonless night and the calm in Yakla was punctured only by the
familiar sound of drones buzzing overhead.
In the
middle of the night US special forces flew from the aircraft carrier
USS Makin Island in Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft and landed a few
kilometres from the village. Things started to go wrong right from
the start. One of the Ospreys crash-landed, injuring three of the
troops.
“The
operation began when the soldiers landed next to the graveyard which
lies about 2km away from our town, north of Yakla”, Sheikh
Abdelilah Ahmed al Dahab said. The soldiers then proceeded on foot,
flanked by military dogs, in the direction of the village. Villagers
say there were about 50 soldiers.
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