Is America's Drone Program Working In Yemen?

Patrick Fallon / Reuters

Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic: How America’s Drone War in Yemen Strengthens al-Qaeda

The U.S. must “stop pursuing policies bound to enrage and embitter Yemenis who might otherwise be neutral,” an expert on the country argues.

Jillian Schwedler, a political-science professor in New York, spent several years during the 1990s living, traveling, and conducting interviews in Yemen, where she traversed unmarked roads in all-terrain vehicles. “What strikes me now,” she writes in a new essay about the country, “is how most Islamists saw jihadi groups as having no place in Yemeni politics.”

Today that has changed.

​Some people in Yemen who once opposed attacks on foreign countries like the United States are becoming more willing to give terrorists like al-Qaeda space to operate.

In her expert opinion, America’s drone war is largely responsible for that shift.

Update: Is the U.S. drone program in Yemen working? -- Jillian Schwedler, Lawfare

WNU Editor: There are a lot of things that are wrong in Yemen right now .... the U.S. drone program is not the big problem, The big problem is the sectarian civil war, the involvement of outside powers in this conflict,  and the failure of Yemen to function as normal state.