Page 145 - What Kind of Yemen ?
P. 145
Adnan Oktar
(Harun Yahya)
The U.N. peacekeeping force and U.S. troops withdrew from the
region on March 3rd, 1995, in the wake of increasing losses.
Military history is full of such failed rescue operations, even if
they are not always as notorious as these two. One such incident took
place in mid-December in the village of Dafaar in the Yemeni province
of Shabwa. A rescue operation by U.S. special forces ended in two
hostages, the 33-year-old American photojournalist Luke Somers and
South African teacher Pierre Korkie, being shot to death by militants.
A local al-Qaeda commander, various militants, a woman and a 10-
year-old child also lost their lives.
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel confirmed that this had hap-
pened during a hostage rescue operation. Somers and Korkie had been
held hostage in Yemen for more than a year.
Security weaknesses in Yemen mean that terror organizations
such as al-Qaeda are easily able to carry out operations. In the face of
such actions in Yemen, as in many other places in the world, the U.S.
resorts to armed intervention. Operations up until the deaths of
Somers and Korkie were generally conducted by the use of U.S.
drones; the U.S. had been conducting operations with drones in Yemen
since 2002. Yet many of these operations ended in failure, with the
deaths of many civilians. Most recently, 13 civilians died and 20 people
were injured in an aerial attack on al-Qaeda targets in the Yemeni town
of Rada.
In the wake of this, the Yemeni Parliament recently ratified a bill
banning the use of U.S. drones in operations in the country against al-
Qaeda. Under the new law, American drones are banned from playing
an active role alongside the Yemeni Army in operations against al-
Qaeda, and the government is obliged to put this decision into practice.
The significance of that decision was that it represented the first con-
demnation of the U.S. by official Yemeni institutions.
So what should be done now as Yemeni forces are unable to stop
the continuing terrorist activities in the country and external military
interventions are leading to the deaths of innocent people?
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