As I mentioned last Sunday, there's a debate going on in the Obama administration about the use of drones in Yemen for strikes against suspected militants (as opposed to just using them for surveillance). It's a hugely important debate, with implications for other parts of the world too.

We don't, of course, know exactly what people are saying in the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department, but there's a parallel debate on the internet which probably reflects some of the same arguments (examples here, here and here).

The latest contribution comes from Gregory Johnsen at the Waq al-Waq blog. (He also, incidentally, has an article in the New York Times arguing that the US has become unduly fixated on Anwar al-Awlaki – and he's certainly right about that.)

On the question of drones, he writes: "I have sat and thought ... and yet I can't find a way that using drones in Yemen doesn't exacerbate the problem of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula."

In a some ways, drones are a typically American approach to the problem: high tech, with minimal risk of casualties on the American side. But what can drone strikes actually achieve in Yemen?

Johnsen's answer is that "The results of a year of drone strikes will be no different from a year of airstrikes: al-Qaeda will gain more recruits, grow stronger, and continue to launch increasingly sophisticated attacks at the US and Europe. The US may kill a few commanders, but those men will be replaced many times over."

Johnsen argues that comparisons with Pakistan are likely to be unhelpful and a better model for Yemen would be the campaign the Saudis waged against al-Qaeda between 2003 and 2006:

"That campaign combined the hard fist of military and police power with the softer approach of encouraging qualified Islamic scholars to challenge al-Qaeda’s claim that it represented Islam. But most importantly it used al-Qaeda’s mistakes against itself, leading to a public backlash that left the terrorist organisation nowhere to hide."

I broadly agree with that, though one reason why the Saudis succeeded was that they had Yemen next door. When life in the kingdom became too difficult for al-Qaeda, they re-grouped in Yemen. Driving al-Qaeda out of Yemen too might push them into Somalia but that would be progress, further reducing the area where they can operate relatively easily.

Johnsen's main point, though, is something I alluded to yesterday: the need to change the public discourse in Yemen in order to undermine al-Qaeda's support. That is not going to be achieved by drone strikes; quite the reverse. 

"Yemenis need to be convinced that AQAP is bad for them and bad for Yemen," Johnsen writes. "But at the moment al-Qaeda is the only one doing the arguing. It puts out statement after statement that depict the group as some sort of Islamic Robin Hood defending Yemen's oppressed and weak people against western military attacks. While largely unnoticed in Washington these unchallenged and baseless claims are carrying the day in Yemen’s hinterlands."

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 20 November 2010