Drone Blowback is Real

A new analysis finds five ways drone strikes in Yemen are hurting American interests.

A U.S. drone killed six people in Yemen earlier today. As Reuters pointed out, “this is the fourth strike in two weeks” in a single province in the country. “Our approach has been to develop operations in each of these areas that will contain al Qaida and go after them so they have no place to escape,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told a Senate committee in June.

A new analysis questions that assumption. Published in the Middle East Policy Journal, the article looks at Yemen and concludes that increased drone strikes “will produce distinct forms of blowback,” the CIA-coined term describing the unintended actions that harm America resulting from U.S. policies. Overall, “this will manifest itself in terms of increased recruitment for al-Qaeda or affiliated groups and a reduction of the Yemeni leadership’s ability to govern, increasing competition from alternative groups.”

Written by three scholars at the University of Arizona, “Drone Warfare in Yemen” finds five distinct forms of blowback:

• Attacks on America targets such as the 2009 Khost bombing of a CIA Camp
• Increased ability of Al Qaeda to recruit new members, particularly those who had loved ones killed in drone attacks
• Decreased U.S. accountability, resulting from control of the drone program oscillating between the CIA and Joint Chiefs of Staff
• Continued destabilization of Yemen
• An increasingly precarious alliance between the American and Yemeni governments

The authors make the compelling points that drone programs rely on the support of the local regime. Whatever benefits this has over the short-term, over the long-term it makes those regimes lose legitimacy in the eyes of their own people. Such a development can be deadly — al-Qaida first declared war on the United States in no small part because it saw Saudi Arabia and Egypt as puppets of the Americans.

It is no coincidence that the increased frequency of drone attacks after 2009 coincided with the domestic unrest in Yemen, the authors say. On June 3, 2011, the leader of Yemen, Ali Abadallah Saleh, who cooperated with the United States even ashe tolerated al-Qaida elements, was injured in attacks on his compound, compelling him to go to Saudi Arabia and New York City for medical treatment. A new government may come to power that is less hospitable to American interests, as was the case in Egypt. The United States should welcome a government beholden to its people — but the result may not always be so benign, as was the case with Iran in 1979 More