Did an 8-Year-Old Spy for America? U.S. Drone Killed Yemeni Man After Boy Planted Tracking Chip
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JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We end today’s show with a shocking new story out of Yemen. The article is called "Did an 8-Year-Old Spy for America?" and it’s written by Gregory Johnsen for The Atlantic
magazine. In it, Johnsen writes that the United States was able to
target an alleged al-Qaeda operative named Adnan al-Qadhi for an
American drone strike after U.S. allies in Yemen convinced an
eight-year-old boy to place a tracking chip in the pocket of a man he
considered to be his surrogate father. Shortly after the child planted
the device, a U.S. drone tracked and killed al-Qadhi with a missile.AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we go to Gregory Johnsen, author of a new book, The Last Refuge: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America’s War in Arabia. A former Fulbright fellow in Yemen, he’s a Ph.D. candidate in the Near Eastern Studies Department at Princeton University.
Gregory Johnsen, welcome to Democracy Now! Tell us this story.
GREGORY JOHNSEN: Right. So this is—it’s a heartbreaking, it’s a tragic story, obviously, any time a little boy is used as a pawn between different sides. The drone war that’s been going on in Yemen is a very shadowy war. So this is a case where a little boy was living in this village. He was taken in by this individual, a man named Adnan al-Qadhi, who for a long time was a military officer in the Yemeni military. And at a certain point, the U.S. felt that this individual had become a leader in al-Qaeda, he was one of the imminent threats, the individuals that the U.S. wants to target and kill in Yemen. And so, allies in Yemen, apparently without the knowledge of the United States, convinced this little boy to plant a tracking chip on Adnan al-Qadhi. He was then killed, actually the day after President Obama won re-election last fall. So, on November 7, 2012, this particular individual, Adnan al-Qadhi, was targeted and killed by a drone strike.
And then the story goes on, and it gets even worse, because this little boy and his biological father, who helped convince him to plant the chip on his surrogate father, were then kidnapped by al-Qaeda. And we believe that his biological father was later executed. So this is a situation where the eight-year-old boy lost both his surrogate father and he lost his biological father. It’s tragic and heartbreaking.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And there’s actually a jihadist video where both the father and the boy are—
GREGORY JOHNSEN: Right.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —are heard confessing to what they had done?
GREGORY JOHNSEN:
Yeah, so there is a confession video that came out back in April in
which al-Qaeda put together this sort of—it’s a propaganda video, and it
has clips of both the boy and his father telling the story of what they
claim to have done.
AMY GOODMAN: Who were the allies that got the little boy to plant this chip?
GREGORY JOHNSEN:
Well, this is Yemeni intelligence. This is the Republican Guard. These
are the people that the U.S. works with on the ground. And the reason I
think this is so important is because we often talk about drones as this
amazing piece of technology, and we all know, from reporting that
people like Jeremy Scahill and others have done, that the U.S. has been
carrying out strikes in Yemen for the past three-and-a-half years, and
drones are something that the U.S. continues to argue are this
scalpel-like approach which we can go and get only the bad guys and no
one else. The problem with that is that drones are a dependent piece of
technology, which means they rely on intelligence from the ground. And
the U.S. is very, very weak in human intelligence on the ground in
places like Yemen, so they often rely on partners like Yemeni
intelligence, like Saudi intelligence, and these groups don’t have the
same moral and ethical framework that we often take for granted. And so,
the U.S. is really getting into bed with some very questionable people
here.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And the whole issue of Yemen’s track record in terms of using children in war, in combat?
GREGORY JOHNSEN:
Right. This is something that the State Department documents every year
in its Trafficking in Persons Report. And, in fact, in 2008, Congress
passed a law, the Child Soldier Prevention Act. And this has been—this
is a law that’s been in effect since 2010. And basically what it says it
that any country that the U.S. designates as using children in
conflict, the U.S. cannot then provide military training, and they can’t
provide military weapons. Now, this is something that impacts a lot of
different countries, but President Obama, for the past three years, has
signed—each and every year that the law has been in effect, he’s signed a
waiver exempting Yemen from that. And Yemen is the only country in the
world that’s received a waiver each and every year, a full waiver.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: So, in essence, that waiver then allows Yemen to do something like they did in this case and employee an eight-year-old boy.
GREGORY JOHNSEN:
Right, so there’s a little bit of willful ignorance going on. So the
U.S. is aware that Yemen uses children in conflict, but Yemen is also
very important for counterterrorism. And so, this is one of those issues
where an ethical and a moral claim comes up against what the U.S.
considers to be a security claim, and the U.S., on this side, has
decided, "Well, we know Yemen does this, but we’ll sign a waiver, and
we’ll continue to support them, because Yemen is such an important
country in our fight against al-Qaeda, in our fight against terrorism."
AMY GOODMAN: And yet, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP, is only growing as the drone strikes grow.
GREGORY JOHNSEN:
Right. This is one barometer. It’s only one barometer of how strong it
is, but the U.S. has been carrying out strikes since December of 2009.
And in December 2009, this is, of course, when they put the underwear
bomber on the plane bound for Detroit. He came very close to bringing
down that airliner. At that point, the group was about 200 or 300
individuals. The U.S. has been bombing the three-and-a-half years since.
Instead of the group getting smaller, like we’d think, the group has
actually more than tripled in size. So it’s well over a thousand members
today. And Senator Susan Collins, back when John Brennan was giving his
confirmation hearing, Senator Collins asked Brennan what I think is
really the important question. And she said, "Look, if al-Qaeda is
growing, instead of getting smaller, shouldn’t we re-evaluate our
approach to how it is that we’re fighting this group around the world?"
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, and it’s just—it’s not just in Yemen.
GREGORY JOHNSEN: Right.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ:
We’re having the same situation in Syria, increasingly again in Iraq,
and now of course in Egypt. Now, the—I would be stunned if the current
spate of violence in Egypt doesn’t end up creating many more jihadists
who recognize that the United States is financing this slaughter by the
Egyptian military.
GREGORY JOHNSEN:
Right. You look around the globe, you look in North Africa, you look in
the Middle East, and it’s a very frightening situation right now. We
just had prison breaks in Iraq. A number of trained jihadis got out of
prison. This is like a shot in the arm to al-Qaeda in Iraq.
AMY GOODMAN: Five hundred people escaped, and it was Abu Ghraib—
GREGORY JOHNSEN: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: —the famous prison where the U.S. was involved with torture.
GREGORY JOHNSEN:
And then we see what’s happening in Libya, with a prison break there,
and in Pakistan. We see what’s happening today with the Day of Rage in
Egypt. It’s a time where the Obama administration has claimed—and I
think rightly—they’ve claimed that they’ve sort of disrupted and
dismantled the organization in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but now the
organization is much longer in Yemen, in Libya, in Iraq, in Syria. It’s a
very worrying development.
AMY GOODMAN:
Talk about the closing of the consulates, embassies, diplomatic posts
throughout the Middle East. This was unprecedented—still in Yemen.
GREGORY JOHNSEN:
Right. I think what we have here is that the U.S. took this—the State
Department said it took this step out of an abundance of caution. So
what’s happened apparently is that U.S. intelligence analysts
intercepted some electronic chatter between Ayman al-Zawahiri, who’s the
head of al-Qaeda’s global network, and the head of al-Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula in Yemen. But the problem is, is that intelligence
analysts, they’re essentially trying to put together a puzzle, but they
don’t know what the puzzle looks like.
AMY GOODMAN: Doesn’t that mean they know where they each are now?
GREGORY JOHNSEN:
I don’t think—I don’t think that means that. I think what it means is
that they have some indication that something might have been happening.
So we saw, by how many embassies, how many consulates were closed, that
the threat itself was very vague. And I think this is something that
we’ll continue to live with, and particularly in the aftermath of
Benghazi. The United States is really going to have to determine where
it goes on the risk management versus risk aversion.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Your book is entitled The Last Refuge: Yemen....
Could you talk about the—Yemen’s role right now in the Arab world in
terms of al-Qaeda and the jihadist movement, and especially after
the—Yemen participated in the Arab Spring—
GREGORY JOHNSEN: Right.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —in the protest against the—Abdullah Saleh?
GREGORY JOHNSEN: Right.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Could you talk about its role now?
GREGORY JOHNSEN:
Yeah, absolutely. So, President Obama and most U.S. national security
officials continue to say that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, this
group that’s based, that’s headquartered in Yemen, they continue to be
the most active and the most dangerous node of al-Qaeda. And I think
they’re correct. This is an organization—we talked about them putting
the bomb on the plane on Christmas Day. In 2010, they attempted to send
cartridge bombs to the U.S. And in 2012, there was this underwear bomb
2.0, which, thankfully, they gave to an undercover agent who was working
for Western and Saudi intelligence. But what we’ve seen is that in
2004, 2005—you know, one of the most frustrating things for me and, I
think, for a lot of people is that, look, the U.S. has more money, the
U.S. has more men, it has better technology, it has better weapons, and
it’s self-evidently right in this war, and yet, in a place like Yemen,
it appears to be losing on the ground. And that’s really, really
frustrating. And I think that begs a number of interesting questions
about how it is that the U.S. handles this fight.
AMY GOODMAN:
I mean, I don’t know if people realize the U.S. has launched 21 air
strikes in Yemen, vast majority drones, displacing Pakistan as the
epicenter of the covert air war—
GREGORY JOHNSEN: Right. What we’ve seen—
AMY GOODMAN: —so far this year.
GREGORY JOHNSEN:
Yeah. What we’ve seen just in the past two weeks, there have been nine
or 10 strikes. And the U.S. says that they killed the four guys that
they were looking for. The problem is, is that they also killed 33 other
people, who we’re still struggling to identify. And that’s really
important. Who are these individuals that the U.S. has killed? It’s
great if you kill the guys that you’re going for. No one in Yemen is
upset when a high-value target is killed. What they’re upset about are
the women and the children and the tribesmen, the civilian casualties.
And that’s really driving recruitment for al-Qaeda.
AMY GOODMAN: Gregory Johnsen, thanks so much for your amazing book, The Last Refuge. We will link to it at democracynow.org.
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