Thursday, October 24, 2013

Every Yemen Drone Strike Creates 40 To 60 New Enemies, Former U.S. Official Says

A former State Department official in Yemen says every U.S. drone killing there of an al Qaeda operative creates 40 to 60 new enemies of America.

In an article for the Cairo Review posted Wednesday, Nabeel Khoury, the deputy chief of mission in Yemen from 2004 to 2007, writes, "Drone strikes take out a few bad guys to be sure, but they also kill a large number of innocent civilians. Given Yemen’s tribal structure, the U.S. generates roughly forty to sixty new enemies for every AQAP [al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] operative killed by drones."

Khoury says in the article that drones cannot substitute for coherent foreign policy in Yemen.

Read more

No comments: