Sharif Mobley and Yemen
Sharif Mobley, a 26-year-old American native of Somali heritage, was arrested in Yemen this month in a roundup of suspected Al Qaeda members. He was being treated at a hospital in San’a [sic] when he killed one guard and wounded another in an escape attempt, officials said. Before Mobley moved to Yemen two years ago, ostensibly to learn Arabic and study the Koran, he worked for several contractors at three nuclear power plants in New Jersey from 2002 to 2008.
That Mobley worked at domestic nuclear facilities, that he is a natural-born US citizen, and that he led what was apparently a relatively unremarkable existence prior to his traveling to Yemen is likely to cause some significant consternation within the law-enforcement community and the American public. This is especially true given that the story comes on the heels of the “JihadJane” homegrown terrorism case brought to light on Wednesday. It will be interesting to see how the law-enforcement community and the American public react to these alleged “homegrown terrorist” arrests if they increase in frequency.
Beyond raising homeland security and domestic counterterrorism issues, this case also illustrates why and in what capacity US interest and engagement in Yemen has been increasing in recent months. Mobley is alleged to have ties to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the Yemeni al-Qaeda affiliate that emerged in January 2009. This is the same group from whom Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, charged with perpetrating of the 2009 Christmas Day bombing attack, allegedly received training.
US government officials had recognized for some time prior to the Christmas Day attacks that al-Qaeda was resurgent in southern Yemen, and those officials had been providing aid to and increasing pressure on the Yemeni government to act against Yemeni terror cells. The US also took direct action against AQAP training camps in late 2009, launching missile strikes against suspected training camps north of Sana’a. Yemen’s military has also stepped up its attacks on AQAP installations, launching its own missile strikes and counterterrorism sweeps with increasing frequency.
Mobley’s arrest by itself will not likely have any direct effect on the level of US engagement in Yemen. In the medium term, however, a series of unsettling, high-profile arrests like these could be seen as justifying continued pressure on the Yemeni government to further restrict AQAP’s operational space or, potentially, more direct US action.
One must be careful when drawing conclusions from Mobley’s arrest and others like it. Though Mobley’s arrest is clearly a good thing if the charges are in fact valid, that arrest is not necessarily an implicit validation of the US-Yemeni pressure and pursue strategy. More arrests of US-born terror suspects in Yemen could be evidence that the joint US-Yemeni pressure on AQAP is working. On the other hand, it could also simply mean that that there are more terrorists to catch because, in spite of US-Yemeni efforts, AQAP terror cells are proliferating faster and its camps are drawing more recruits from the US and elsewhere.
This is not to say that increasing pressure on AQAP is not going to be a critical part of any solution aimed at reducing terrorist threats emanating from Yemen; increased pressure on AQAP from a variety of sources will likely be necessary to degrade its ability to conduct attacks domestically and abroad. However, a strategy aimed at preventing Yemen from becoming an al-Qaeda safe-haven and launching pad for attacks must take into consideration that counting terrorists captured or killed can be misleading; the true effect of kinetic operations and counterterrorism dragnets on terrorist group’s capability is difficult to objectively measure.
It bears mentioning that the missile strikes carried out shortly before the Christmas Day bombing attempt generated collateral damage that provided AQAP a public relations boost by allowing them to claim, however incredibly that the strikes motivated the airliner attack. Additionally part of the surprise of the Christmas Day bombing attempt was that AQAP was able to plan and launch the attack despite AQAP being under unprecedented pressure from US and Yemeni authorities. As the Washington Post notes,
The biggest surprise of the Christmas incident, a senior administration official said, was that planning for the attack and training of the alleged bomber, Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, took place in Yemen despite the fact that “we had that place sort of blanketed, that we were working it very closely.”
Missile strikes and police dragnets can be vital and effective tools for degrading a terrorist group’s operational ability and have the benefit of producing visible, tangible results. Reliance on arrests or bodycounts as a measure of a counterterrorism strategy’s effectiveness or as driver of policy, however, can prove counterproductive.
Before assuming that arrests or dead terrorist operatives are proof of either the efficacy of US-Yemeni counterterrorism efforts or of the need to increase US engagement in Yemen to prevent more US citizens being recruited and trained for attacks, we must assess all of their possible implications and potential repercussions. Interpreting counterterrorism successes and failures from multiple angles and refraining from jumping to conclusions can help us determine how use the tools at our disposal most judiciously in support of a more effective long-term strategy.
