Dirty Wars (72 page)

Around this time, the US government began privately telling major US media outlets that were working with Shaye that they should discontinue their relationships with him. One source inside a prominent US media organization told me that the government had warned the outlet that Shaye was
using his paychecks
to support al Qaeda. A US intelligence official told another journalist for a prominent US magazine that “classified evidence” indicated that Shaye was “cooperating” with al Qaeda. “
I was persuaded
that he was an agent,” said the official. Just as it wanted Awlaki silenced, the US government wanted anyone who was putting out Awlaki's perspective or interviewing leaders of AQAP shut down.

When I met him at a café in Sana'a in 2011, Sharaf shook his head in disbelief at the notion that Shaye was pro-al Qaeda. “Abdulelah continued to report facts, not for the sake of the Americans or al Qaeda, but because he believed that what he was reporting was the truth and that it is a journalist's role to uncover the truth,” Sharaf told me. “He is a very professional journalist,” he added. “He is rare in the journalistic environment in Yemen where 90 percent of journalists write extempore and lack credibility.” Shaye, he explained, is “very open-minded and rejects extremism. He was against violence and the killing of innocents in the name of Islam. He was also against killing innocent Muslims with the pretext of fighting terrorism. In his opinion, the war on terror should have been fought culturally, not militarily. He believes using violence will create more violence and encourage the spread of more extremist currents in the region.”

In the meantime, Sharaf was encountering his own troubles with the Yemeni regime over his drawings of President Saleh and his criticism of the Yemeni government's war against the minority Houthi population in the north of Yemen. He had also criticized conservative Salafis. And his close friendship with Shaye put him at risk.

On August 16, 2010, Sharaf and his family had just broken the Ramadan
fast when he heard shouting from outside his home: “Come out, the house is surrounded.” Sharaf walked outside. “I saw soldiers I had never seen before. They were tall and heavy—they reminded me of American marines. Then, I knew that they were from the counterterrorism unit. They had modern laser guns. They were wearing American marine-type uniforms,” he told me. They told Sharaf he was coming with them. “What is the accusation?” he asked. “They said, ‘You'll find out.'”

As Sharaf was being arrested, Yemeni forces had surrounded Shaye's home as well. “Abdulelah refused to come out, so they raided his house, took him by force, beat him and broke his tooth,” Sharaf said. “We were both taken blindfolded and handcuffed to the national security prison, which is supported by the Americans.” They were separated and thrown in dark, underground cells, said Sharaf. “We were kept for about thirty days during Ramadan in the national security prison where we were continuously interrogated.”

For that first month, Sharaf and Shaye did not see each other. Eventually, they were taken from the national security prison to Yemen's political security prison, where they were
put in a cell together
. Sharaf was eventually released, after he pledged to the authorities that he would not draw any more cartoons of President Saleh. Shaye would make no such deal.

Shaye was held in solitary confinement for
thirty-four days
with no access to a lawyer. His family did not even know where he had been taken or why. Eventually, his lawyers received a tip from a released prisoner that Shaye was in the political security prison, and they were able to see him. “When Abdulelah was arrested, he was put in a narrow dirty and foul-smelling bathroom for five days. I noticed that one of Abdulelah's teeth was extracted and another one was broken, in addition to the presence of some scars on his chest,” recalled Barman. “There were a lot of scars on his chest. He was psychologically tortured. He had been told that all his friends and family members had left him and that no one had raised his case. He was tortured by false information.”

On September 22, Shaye was eventually hauled into a court. Prosecutors
asked for more time
to prepare a case against him. A month later, he was locked in a cage in Yemen's state security court, which was established by presidential decree and had been roundly denounced by human and media rights groups as illegal and unfair. The Yemeni government called it a trial. “Yeah. The trial does not pass the laugh test, at all. And the court does not pass the laugh test,” said Dayem, of the Committee to Protect Journalists. “I could not locate a single case that was tried in this specialized criminal tribunal...that met, even remotely, fair trial standards.”

The judge read out a list of charges against Shaye. He was accused of
being the “media man” for al Qaeda, recruiting new operatives for the group and providing al Qaeda with photos of Yemeni bases and foreign embassies for potential targeting. “The government filed many charges against him,” said Barman. “Some of these charges were: joining an armed group aiming to target the stability and security of the country, inciting al Qaeda members to assassinate President Ali Abdullah Saleh and his son, recruiting new al Qaeda members, working as propagandist for al Qaeda and Anwar Awlaki in particular. Most of these charges carry the death sentence under Yemeni law.” As the charges against him were read, according to journalist Iona Craig, a longtime foreign correspondent who reported regularly for the
Times
of London from Yemen, Shaye “
paced slowly around the white cell
, smiling and shaking his head in disbelief.”

When the judge finished reading the charges against him, Shaye stood behind the bars of the holding cell and addressed his fellow journalists. “
When they hid murderers
of children and women in Abyan, when I revealed the locations and camps of nomads and civilians in Abyan, Shabwah and Arhab when they were going to be hit by cruise missiles, it was on that day they decided to arrest me,” he declared. “You notice in the court how they have turned all of my journalistic contributions into accusations. All of my journalistic contributions and quotations to international reporters and news channels have been turned into accusations.” As security guards dragged him away, Shaye yelled, “Yemen, this is a place where, when a young journalist becomes successful, he is viewed with suspicion.”

WASHINGTON, DC, AND YEMEN, LATE
2010—While US counterterrorism operations expanded in Yemen in the summer of 2010, Washington and other political and economic forces were drawing up plans for a neoliberal restructuring of Yemen's economy. Organized under the banner of “Friends of Yemen,” the US and British governments joined with the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and some of Yemen's neighbors. “
Progress against violent extremists
and progress toward a better future for the Yemeni people will depend upon fortifying development efforts,” US secretary of state Hillary Clinton said at an early meeting of the group in January 2010. This included what Aaron W. Jost, the National Security Council's director for Arabian Peninsula affairs, called “
greatly expanded
... economic and humanitarian assistance to the Yemeni people.”

The Obama administration increased USAID funding, humanitarian assistance and “democracy promotion” funds for Yemen from $14 million two years earlier to $110 million in 2010. “There is no doubt AQAP is a serious threat to Yemen, the United States, and our allies,” Jost asserted. “However, support for operations against AQAP is only one piece of the United States' strategy for Yemen.” But as a condition of the increased aid Yemen was to receive, President Saleh was forced to accept IMF structural adjustments, among them “the gradual reduction in the level of Government subsidies on fuel.” A declaration from the “Friends” openly acknowledged that “necessary economic reforms would have an
adverse impact on the poor
.”

Washington and its allies made clear to Saleh that continued military aid was conditioned on his cooperation with the economic reforms. “The Yemeni people and the international community are both confronted by real threats from AQAP, and it may take years to decisively defeat it,” Jost declared. “However, we believe that the future belongs to those who build, not to those who are focused on destruction. And the United States stands with the people of Yemen as they seek to build a more positive future and reject AQAP's efforts to kill innocent men, women and children.”

Saleh's main priority was not fighting AQAP, but rather suppressing the
internal rebellions he faced from the Houthis and the southern secessionists. But in order to continue receiving the US military aid he needed for these internal fights, he had to prove to Washington he was serious about fighting AQAP. Colonel Lang, who spent years dealing with Saleh as US defense attaché, said that Saleh was very weary of what he perceived as an attempt by the Obama administration to apply the counterinsurgency doctrine in Yemen but had to play the game to keep the military aid flowing. “
Saleh doesn't really want us
to get involved to the extent that the full implications of that doctrine would imply, because then he would be increasingly relegated to the position of a Karzai-like state—and, in fact, whereas Afghan President [Hamid] Karzai has never been able to play the game with sufficient skill, to manipulate all the factors to some end that approximates something that he wants, Saleh has. With great skill,” Lang said at the time. He added that Saleh knew that the type of money allocated by the “Friends of Yemen” and USAID and for political reform would be monitored by the United States “so that any graft that occurs does not excessively benefit him and his cronies, and other things like that which will tend to reduce his net power. So he's not gonna be really in favor of that.” But with the intense US focus on AQAP, Saleh's military aid lunch ticket, he needed to play the game.

In August 2010, following the rash of killings of Yemeni military and intelligence officials by the motorcycle assassins, Yemeni forces launched a major offensive in the Lawdar District of Abyan, an alleged AQAP stronghold. In several days of gun battles, a dozen Yemeni soldiers were reportedly killed, along with nineteen people the Yemeni government identified as al Qaeda figures. At least three civilians were also killed, and scores of others fled their homes. “
Security forces have taught the terrorists
of Al-Qaeda a hard lesson and inflicted painful hits on them, forcing those terrorist elements that tried to hide, to flee after dozens were killed and wounded,” Yemen's deputy interior minister, General Saleh al Zaweri, declared.

That assessment was not shared in Washington. JSOC forces were scoring occasional victories against AQAP, but Yemeni Special Operations Forces were perceived as lazy and largely incompetent by their American counterparts and Saleh's double-dealing often resulted in shoddy intelligence. In short, there was what senior US officials described as a “
dearth of solid intelligence
” in Yemen. JSOC's forces were certainly more than capable of finding, fixing and finishing targets, but those operations required solid intelligence. “
All Land Rovers
look pretty much alike,” a former high-ranking U.S. intelligence official familiar with operations in Yemen told the
Washington Post
. “You have to have something that tells you this is the one to follow.” The CIA had historically culled personnel
from JSOC and other special operations units for lethal missions, but the ascent of JSOC within the Bush and Obama administrations had altered that process. JSOC, insiders told me, wanted to run point—and the CIA was not happy about it.

The day the Lawdar offensive was over, on August 25, the
Washington Post
and
Wall Street Journal
both ran front-page stories that were clearly based on leaks from the CIA and its allies in the administration. “
For the first time
since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, CIA analysts see one of al-Qaeda's offshoots—rather than the core group now based in Pakistan—as the most urgent threat to U.S. security,” the
Post
story began. The
Wall Street Journal
added that the administration was considering plans to “
mount a more intense
targeted killing program in Yemen.” The
Post
went on to quote an unnamed senior administration official as saying that AQAP was “
on the upswing
,” adding that, between Pakistan and Yemen, “the relative concern ratios are changing. We're more concerned now about AQAP than we were before.” The official said, “We are looking to draw on all of the capabilities at our disposal,” describing plans for “a ramp-up over a period of months.”

The leaks appeared to reflect a power play by the CIA to assert a greater role in Yemen operations, which had become dominated by JSOC. “You're not going to find bomb parts with USA markings on them,” the senior official said, clearly referencing JSOC's December 2009 Tomahawk strike in al Majalah and the misinformed attack in Marib that killed the deputy governor on his negotiation mission. The official made it clear that the White House was considering a plan to deploy more CIA drones.

“
The Agency has taken advantage
of every criticism of the performance of JSOC as an argument to regain control over covert operations,” said Colonel Lang, who spent his career working with both Special Operations Forces and the CIA, including operationally in Yemen. “The competition between the military clandestine services and the CIA is greater than ever before.” Although the CIA was clearly seeking an advantage in its power struggle with JSOC over control of the Yemen ops, there was also a crucial strategic interest on the part of the administration in making a shift in the CIA's direction: placing JSOC forces under the sponsorship of the CIA would, under US law, allow “
elite U.S. hunter-killer teams
” to operate far more freely in Yemen without the consent of Yemen's government.