The Yemen Model was the rubric for the Obama Administration's attempts to neutralize foreign terrorist groups hostile to the United States.
US President Barack Obama often cited the Yemen Model as his vision for dealing with insurgent groups. [1] [2]
Under the Yemen Model, the United States provided weapons, logistics, transportation and cash to a local proxy force, while committing no or few US troops. [3] The United States also carried out air strikes and targeted killings of suspected opposition leaders.
The model was named after the conduct of the United States' continuing conflict in Yemen. The US wanted to minimize the ability of the Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) group to attack US territory, while at the same time, the Obama Administration wanted to commit as few resources to the fight as possible. [4]
The United States picked a proxy force (in this case, tribes allied with government leader Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi), armed and trained them, and used them as a ground force against Al-Qaeda factions in exchange for US aid to the regime, totaling more than $600 million. [5] The United States also conducted a significant low-tempo air and drone campaign starting in 2009. The US also occasionally launched commando raids inside Yemen and did base some military personnel in and around al-Annad air base in the south of the country. [6]
The Obama Administration often defended its actions in Yemen as effective, and a model for other conflicts. [1] [5] [7]
During the early stages of the current American conflict in Iraq, Obama cited the Yemen Model as the inspiration for the conduct of the war. [1] [7] He went so far as to mention Yemen as a model for success during his first speech about the new war in September 2014. [2]
The Administration also defended its efforts in Somalia as an outgrowth of the strategy. [8]
The United Arab Emirates Armed Forces are the armed forces of the United Arab Emirates. They are also occasionally referred to as "Little Sparta", a nickname that was given by General James Mattis a former United States Marine Corps General and Secretary of Defense, due to their active and effective military role and power projection in the surrounding region compared to their relative size.
In its war on terrorism in Yemen, the US government describes Yemen as "an important partner in the global war on terrorism". There have been attacks on civilian targets and tourists, and there was a cargo-plane bomb plot in 2010. Counter-terrorism operations have been conducted by the Yemeni police, the Yemeni military, and the United States Armed Forces.
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The Al-Qaeda insurgency in Yemen is an ongoing armed conflict between the Yemeni government, the United States and their allies, and al-Qaeda-affiliated cells in Yemen. It is a part of the Global War on Terror.
Drone warfare is a form of aerial warfare or marine warfare using unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAV) or weaponized commercial unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). The United States, United Kingdom, Israel, China, South Korea, Iran, Italy, France, India, Pakistan, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and Poland are known to have manufactured operational UCAVs as of 2019.
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United States drone strikes in Yemen started after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, when the US militant attacked Islamist military presence in Yemen, in particular Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula using drone warfare.
This is a list of aviation-related events from 2015.
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The Islamic State – Yemen Province is a branch of the militant Islamist group Islamic State (IS), active in Yemen. IS announced the group's formation on 13 November 2014.
The US intervention in the Syrian civil war is the United States-led support of Syrian opposition and the Federation of Northern Syria during the course of the Syrian Civil War and active military involvement led by the United States and its allies — the militaries of the United Kingdom, France, Jordan, Turkey, Canada, Australia and more — against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and al-Nusra Front since 2014. Since early 2017, the U.S. and other Coalition partners have also targeted the Syrian government and its allies via airstrikes and aircraft shoot-downs.