| The United States may be losing the war against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The past five years have seen an increase in sophistication and scale of terrorist attacks and the group's ideological message remains persuasive for many disenfranchised Yemenis. Terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman believes that AQAP is now as much of a threat as Al Qaeda central. 1 To confront the threat, the United States is spending more money than ever on Yemen. According to the Congressional Research Service, the Obama administration requested ;This paper compares the US counterterrorism program in Yemen to those in Pakistan and Colombia. It measures the effectiveness of these counterterrorism programs using six factors -- customized programs, high-level US political engagement, high-level US military engagement, training and equipment, government cooperation, and funding support. An analysis of these factors produces two main observations. First, only by applying all of the aforementioned factors will the United States have a chance at success. Second, intergovernmental cooperation is a precondition for a successful counterterrorism assistance program.3;The author identifies two underlying causes for the failure of US counterterrorism programs: 1) the government partner's unwillingness to conduct counterterrorism operations and 2) a US government focus on crisis management instead of sustained political engagement. The paper's final chapters offer remedies to these and other issues, with the hope that implementing them can turn counterterrorism failure into success. One solution is to institute a "trust, but verify" 4 approach with partner governments to observe counterterrorism operations, with future assistance predicated on performance. The paper concludes by offering a new path for the US counterterrorism assistance program in Yemen.;1 Bruce Hoffman, Director of the Center for Peace and Security Studies, Georgetown University Walsh School of Foreign Service, personal interview, March 30, 2011. 2 Jeremy Sharp, "Yemen: Background and U.S. Relations," Congressional Research Service Report (3 March 2011), 1. 3 For an abbreviated look at this paper's conclusions, see Summary of Findings on page 9. 4 A phrase coined by US President Ronald Reagan that refers to United States-Soviet Union relations during the Cold War. |
