Category Archives: Issues

Saudi #women2drive

Hala Al-Dosari, a Saudi writer and activist, writes:

A simple two-line email – sent to me at the beginning of May from a mysterious account named “W2Drive” – was all it took to put Manal Al-Sharif and I on the same path. A group of Saudi women were now renewing the call that began in 1990, when an group of prominent Saudi women, mainly from academia and conservative Riyadh society, drove their cars. Their rebellious actions were in vain, for the country was on the verge of the first Gulf War, and it was easy to discredit their initiative; all it took back then was to proliferate conspiracy theories – alleging these women were pushing a foreign agenda, trying to Westernise the country and break the unity of the people.

The first campaign ended with the women involved severely punished, with a ban on work and travel that lasted for years. These women subsequently avoided any media attention for the following 20 years, putting a lid on their failed attempt.

Since then, many have eagerly awaited someone to pick up that cast-off torch and finish what was started. Manal Al-Sharif was in a prime position to do just that.

She is a successful, award-winning, US graduate of information technology, leading a career in a prestigious oil company. She is divorced with a four-year-old boy in her custody. She knows what it takes to be an independent woman in Saudi Arabia. She lives far from her parents and is committed to varying work hours, but most importantly, she can’t allow a personal driver to live in her apartment. Manal was angry and frustrated enough to upload YouTube footage of herself demanding the right to drive.

Meanwhile, BBC News reports:

Women in Saudi Arabia have been openly driving cars in defiance of an official ban on female drivers in the ultra-conservative kingdom.

The direct action has been organised on social network sites, where women have been posting images and videos of themselves behind the wheel.

The Women2Drive Facebook page said the direct action would continue until a royal decree reversed the ban.

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Turkey considers need for ‘buffer zone’ within Syria for refugees

Press TV reports:

Turkey may send its military forces into Syrian soil to establish a “buffer zone,” should the current unrest in Syria skyrocket into a refugee crisis that would pose a threat to Ankara, a report says.

The report, published in the Turkish daily Posta on Thursday, warned of the prospect of a civil war in Syria, adding that it could send around 200,000 Syrians Turkey’s way.

Referring to the likelihood of establishing the restricted area, prominent Turkish journalist Mehmet Ali Birand also emphasized that the option “was raised at the highest level, some time ago.”

Birand wrote:

The worst case scenario that Ankara fears most and will mobilize it is that the clashes expand to Aleppo and Damascus and the Assad regime decides to react extremely tough and bloody way. The meaning of this is that Assad uses all his military power and the internal conflict transforms quickly into an Alawite-Sunni clash. What is expected as a consequence of this is the flow of tens of thousands of Sunni-Syrians to Turkey. An official I spoke to on this subject said exactly this:

“Turkey has opened its territory for now, but when the figure reaches a point where we cannot handle it then we will have to close the border.”

Now, this is the situation the political power in Ankara worries about the most. The same official continued:

“We would close the border but we cannot turn our backs on neither the Sunnis nor the Alawites. If chaos starts, then we will have to form a security zone or a buffer zone inside Syrian territory.”

Yusuf Kanli adds:

Behind closed doors, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and top foreign ministry, security and intelligence officials held talks Wednesday and Thursday with Hassan Turkmani, a special envoy of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and warned him of Ankara’s deep concern for the future of its Arab neighbor.

Turkmani was reported to have been told plainly that his country had almost reached a “point of no return.” Unless the military operation was immediately stopped, urgent and radical reforms were undertaken and some key demands of the revolting people were met, the international community might be compelled to take some measures.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports:

Syrian security forces fanned out through villages and towns in the northern province of Idlib on Thursday, randomly hauling in males over age 16 as the government worked to silence a center of anti-regime protest.

In this border region, where thousands of Syrian civilians have fled to havens in Turkey, Turkish officials were preparing to send food, clean water, medicine and other aid to thousands more stranded on the Syrian side.

The unusual plan for a cross-border operation on Syrian soil appeared to have Syrian clearance, being announced by Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu after he met with an envoy from President Bashar Assad’s authoritarian regime.

“We have taken precautions and humanitarian aid will be supplied for around 10,000 people who are waiting on the Syrian side of the border,” Davutoglu said. He also reiterated Turkey’s support for major democratic reform in Syria.

The random detentions were concentrated on the major towns of Jisr al-Shughour and Maaret al-Numan and in nearby villages, an area where the army has massed troops for days in apparent preparation for a fresh military operation, Syrian human rights activist Mustafa Osso reported. He said at least 300 people were being detained daily.

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Bahraini blogger: State Dept knew ‘all the details’ of violent crackdown, stayed silent

Ali Gharib reports:

A Bahraini journalist and blogger spoke at the Netroots Nation conference today about how her country’s protest movement has been beaten back, the personal costs of supporting the uprising, and how the U.S. State Department remained silent.

Lamees Dhaif said that she supported the protest movement that became widespread in Bahrain following the initial outburst of the Arab Spring. “It was very simple,” she said. “Those people have rights.” But her outspoken support cost her jobs at three newspapers in one day and her family was targeted. “As bloggers, as journalist,” she said

we pay [very high] price of speaking loud. I don’t think any American citizen can understand what I’m saying. If we say one word that they consider wrong, they can punish you in every possible way. They can punish you, they can punish your family, they can hunt you everywhere. [They] tried to burned my house with family in, attacked my house. My brothers were hunted in their jobs; they were punished because of their sister. My sister [was] arrested for fifty days as a punishment to me, to force me to stop writing.

Dhaif is in the U.S. as part of a State Department-sponsored tour for foreign journalists.

Reuters reports:

The Obama administration has agreed to investigate concerns raised by the AFL-CIO labor federation that Bahrain has failed to live up to its obligations to protect workers rights under a free trade pact with the United States, the labor group said on Thursday.

“The egregious attacks on workers must end, and the Bahraini government’s systematic discrimination against and dismantling of unions must be reversed. These actions directly violate the letter and the spirit of the trade agreement,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a statement.

The Associated Press reports:

Bahrain’s ruler has canceled all vacations for top officials next month. A special center and mediator have been named for talks with opposition groups that are proposed to open July 1.

Now the question is whether anyone will show up.

The Shiite groups that speak on behalf of protesters — who took to the streets four months ago to demand greater rights — have shown no rush to embrace the appeals for dialogue by the Sunni monarchs they accuse of creating a two-tier society in the strategic Gulf kingdom.

The possible failure to open talks could be interpreted as far more significant than simply a payback snub by Bahrain’s Shiite majority after unrest that’s claimed at least 31 lives and left hundreds of people detained or expelled from jobs and studies.

It would serve as clear recognition that the complexities on the tiny island — drawing in heavyweight issues such as U.S. military interests and Arab worries over Iran — are too vast to solve over cups of tea between the rulers and the opposition.

“Events seem to have gone too far and too fast for some kind of quick fix through talks,” said Toby Jones, an expert on Bahrain at Rutgers University.

For its size — about 525,000 citizens on an island that can be crossed in 30 minutes — Bahrain perhaps packs more high-stakes challenges that any of the other Arab uprisings.

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Gaddafi losing friends and influence in Africa

Reuters reports:

Muammar Gaddafi is losing friends in Africa, the continent where his largesse once bought him the title “King of Kings” but which is now turning to other foreign allies to help shape its future.

Moves by countries including Senegal, Mauritania, Liberia, Chad and Gambia to distance themselves from Gaddafi are partly a gamble that NATO-backed rebels will finally succeed in ending his four decades of authoritarian and quixotic rule.

But they also show Gaddafi’s waning role in a region where foreign investor appetite, trade ties with Asia and a domestic yearning for democracy are all eclipsing the lure of Libyan petrodollars and weakening the old-boy networks they propped up.

“The rest of the continent has passed him by. The favors he can call in are few and far between,” said Tara O’Connor of London-based Africa Risk Consulting.

Meanwhile, Libyan rebels dismiss election offer from Gaddafi’s son:

Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi is willing to hold elections and step aside if he lost, his son said, an offer quickly dismissed Thursday by rebels and the United States.

Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera: “They (elections) could be held within three months. At the maximum by the end of the year, and the guarantee of transparency could be the presence of international observers.”

He said his father would be ready to step aside if he lost the election, though he would not go into exile.

Prime Minister Al-Baghdadi Ali Al-Mahmoudi later appeared to put the potential concession in question, telling reporters: “I would like to correct (that) and say that the leader of the revolution is not concerned by any referendum.”

He added that there was no reason for the Libyan leader to step down in any case, because he had not held any formal political or administrative post since 1977.

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Saudi Arabia’s no good, very bad year

Simon Henderson writes:

It’s hard to imagine a more disastrous year for Saudi foreign policy. In January, Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali fled from riotous mobs to exile in the Saudi port city of Jeddah. Now the new regime in Tunis wants him back to put him on trial. In February, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a longtime Saudi ally, was forced from office. In the space of days, Washington went from words of support for Mubarak to saying it was time to go. Then in March, after Bahrain looked as if it may concede the principle of a government ruled through the will of the people, Saudi riot-control forces backed by tanks poured across the causeway to the island.

In Riyadh and other Gulf Arab capitals, princes and sheikhs were left wondering how solid U.S. support would be for them. Last month, they got their answer, when President Barack Obama slammed Bahrain for its handling of demonstrations in his major May 19 foreign-policy address on the Middle East. To emphasize the point, when the island kingdom’s Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa, visited Washington this month, his meeting with Obama was reduced to a “drop-by,” and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton didn’t extend the courtesy of a joint press conference after their meeting.

Even Saudi dominance of international oil markets, by virtue of the country’s leadership within OPEC, is under threat. Last week’s gathering of OPEC oil ministers in Vienna ended in discord, with Saudi representative Ali al-Naimi describing it as “one of the worst meetings we have ever had.” Naimi had, a little late perhaps, been leading a ploy to increase production quotas in order to ease high oil prices, which have been threatening the world’s economic recovery. But Iran led a bloc of OPEC members that disagreed, preferring high revenues. It’s not clear who has whom over a barrel — but the Saudi response is predicted to be a unilateral increase in production. This might help U.S. gas prices, but it means that Saudi Arabia will “go it alone” instead of exhibiting world energy leadership.

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War Powers Act does not apply to Libya, Obama argues

The New York Times reports:

The White House, pushing hard against criticism in Congress over the deepening air war in Libya, asserted Wednesday that President Obama had the authority to continue the military campaign without Congressional approval because American involvement fell short of full-blown hostilities.

In a 38-page report sent to lawmakers describing and defending the NATO-led operation, the White House said the mission was prying loose Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s grip on power.

In contending that the limited American role did not oblige the administration to ask for authorization under the War Powers Resolution, the report asserted that “U.S. operations do not involve sustained fighting or active exchanges of fire with hostile forces, nor do they involve U.S. ground troops.” Still, the White House acknowledged, the operation has cost the Pentagon $716 million in its first two months and will have cost $1.1 billion by September at the current scale of operations.

The report came one day after the House Speaker, John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, had sent a letter to Mr. Obama warning him that he appeared to be out of time under the Vietnam-era law that says presidents must terminate a mission 60 or 90 days after notifying Congress that troops have been deployed into hostilities, unless lawmakers authorize the operation to continue.

Mr. Boehner had demanded that Mr. Obama explain his legal justification for passing the deadline. On Wednesday, Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Mr. Boehner, said he was still reviewing the documents, adding that “the creative arguments made by the White House raise a number of questions that must be further explored.”

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U.S. lists ally Bahrain with human rights violators Iran, Syria

Bloomberg reports:

The United States put Bahrain, a Persian Gulf ally, in the company of Iran, North Korea, Syria and Zimbabwe on its list of human rights violators presented to the UN Human Rights Council.

Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, has tried to crush protests that have wracked the country since February, as the Shiite majority population has agitated for the Sunni Muslim monarchy to allow greater economic opportunities and freedoms.

“The Bahraini government has arbitrarily detained workers and others perceived as opponents,” said Eileen Donohoe, the U.S. ambassador to the council, in a statement to the council today. “The United States is deeply concerned about violent repression of the fundamental freedoms of association, expression, religion and speech of their citizens.”

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Saudi Arabia’s silent battle to halt history

Der Spiegel reports:

Saudi Arabia feels like a realm that has come to a standstill in a rapidly changing world. Its leaders, most notably the 86-year-old King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, are pinning their hopes on the old principle of stability, as if Ben Ali had not been driven out of Tunisia, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had not been toppled and Yemen’s Saleh had not just been admitted to one of their hospitals with a piece of shrapnel in his body.

King Abdullah must have been pleased to see his enemy Moammar Gadhafi in difficulties, but it troubled him to see the avalanche the young protesters in Tunis had unleashed. He didn’t hesitate a moment before offering exile to the embattled Ben Ali.

Abdullah was disgusted to see what happened to Mubarak in Cairo. Saudi Arabia still hasn’t come to terms with the Egyptian revolution. Nevertheless, it promised €2.7 billion ($3.98 billion) to the military council in Cairo to provide the new leadership with “a certain level of comfort,” as an Arab financial expert put it. It went without saying in Cairo that the Saudis wanted the Egyptian courts to spare the elderly Mubarak, and the Egyptian chief of staff personally thanked the Saudi king for his pledge of financial support.

Abdullah noted angrily how the spark of revolution jumped to the small country of Bahrain in February, and the Shiite majority rebelled against the Sunni Al Khalifa royal family. The moderate king finally lost his patience and, in a first in Saudi history, sent the soldiers of his national guard across the King Fahd Causeway to Manama to crush the uprising.

Saudi Arabia cannot intervene directly in Syria, where the unrest began in March and came to a preliminary head last week with a massacre in the city of Jisr al-Shughour. The House of Saud and the clan of Syrian President Bashar Assad have eyed each other suspiciously for years, and yet the Saudis would like to see the Syrians released from the embrace of their Shiite archenemy Iran. But there is one concern the two leaders share: They want calm in their countries, not change. As a result, Damascus supported Riyadh when its troops marched into Bahrain, and Riyadh is remaining silent, no matter how brutally Assad’s forces crush the protests in Syria.

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Secret US and Afghanistan talks could see troops stay for decades

The Guardian reports:

American and Afghan officials are locked in increasingly acrimonious secret talks about a long-term security agreement which is likely to see US troops, spies and air power based in the troubled country for decades.

Though not publicised, negotiations have been under way for more than a month to secure a strategic partnership agreement which would include an American presence beyond the end of 2014 – the agreed date for all 130,000 combat troops to leave — despite continuing public debate in Washington and among other members of the 49-nation coalition fighting in Afghanistan about the speed of the withdrawal.

American officials admit that although Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, recently said Washington did not want any “permanent” bases in Afghanistan, her phrasing allows a variety of possible arrangements.

“There are US troops in various countries for some considerable lengths of time which are not there permanently,” a US official told the Guardian.

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Federal grand jury investigates war crimes and torture in death of ‘the Iceman’ at Abu Ghraib, plus other alleged CIA abuses

Adam Zagorin reports:

It has been nearly a decade since Manadel al-Jamadi, an Iraqi prisoner known as “the Iceman” — for the bungled attempt to cool his body and make him look less dead — perished in CIA custody at Abu Ghraib. But now there are rumbles in Washington that the notorious case, as well as other alleged CIA abuses, could be returning to haunt the agency. TIME has learned that a prosecutor tasked with probing the CIA — John Durham, a respected, Republican-appointed U.S. Attorney from Connecticut — has begun calling witnesses before a secret federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., looking into, among other things, the lurid Nov. 4, 2003, homicide, which was documented by TIME in 2005.

TIME has obtained a copy of a subpoena signed by Durham that points to his grand jury’s broader mandate, which could involve charging additional CIA officers and contract employees in other cases. The subpoena says “the grand jury is conducting an investigation of possible violations of federal criminal laws involving War Crimes (18 USC/2441), Torture (18 USC 243OA) and related federal offenses.”

In 2009 — after President Barack Obama replaced President George W. Bush — new U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder tapped Durham to review roughly a dozen cases of alleged abuse against “war on terror” suspects that had gone dormant. Holder’s decision to expand the probe occurred shortly before the CIA released a five-year-old IG report detailing a litany of detainee abuse by the agency.

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Who tried to kill Ali Abdullah Saleh?

Sarah Phillips writes:

There aren’t many foreigners traveling to Sanaa these days, but one group of outsiders is getting a lot of attention: an FBI forensics team, which reportedly arrived last week to investigate the attempted assassination of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who is now convalescing in Saudi Arabia.

Evidence from the scene indicates that the explosion may have been caused by a device that was planted inside the mosque on the presidential compound, and not by a mortar shell or rocket, as was initially reported. If true, this means that someone with close access to the president was involved, which raises the question of why members of the Yemeni regime’s inner circle — set to mark its 33rd anniversary in power next month — now appear intent on destroying each other?

To answer this question, it is necessary to look beyond the protests that have called for Saleh’s resignation and instead look at the premises of the political settlement that has held the inner circle together for so long.

The first spectacular rupture within the group came on March 21, when Gen. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar publicly defected from the Saleh regime three days after snipers gunned down peaceful protesters in Sanaa, killing more than 50 people. Ali Mohsen is the country’s most powerful military leader and a distant cousin of Saleh. A fight between the two men has been simmering for at least a decade; empathy for the protesters was certainly not the only factor contributing to Ali Mohsen’s decision to jump ship. The rivalry between the two former allies was probably more decisive.

By joining the opposition movement, Ali Mohsen and other defectors from the regime have not necessarily heralded a new era for the Yemeni people. Instead, they appear to be settling old scores.

Al Jazeera reports:

President Saleh once compared his rule to “dancing on the heads of snakes”.

Earlier this year, Saleh appeared to stumble as protests engulfed the nation and succeeded in bringing together formerly disparate groups of military officials, politicians, tribal chiefs and demonstrators. The 69-year-old leader – who has reportedly maintained power through a network of patrimony and cronyism – seemed to have been caught off guard when, inspired by the Arab Spring, hundreds of thousands of Yemenis took to the streets to demand an end to his 33-year rule.

Now in its fourth month – one of the longest uprisings of the Arab Spring thus far – it is a testimony to both the protesters’ determination and Saleh’s elusive style and stubborn politics. Although the demonstrations turned the tables of power on Saleh, he did not change his modus operandi, opting instead to treat the crisis as if it were a minor impasse. He attempted to bargain his way out and coupled empty promises with brute force.

Saleh initially offered not to run for re-election in 2013 and stated that his son, Ahmed Ali, head of the elite Republican Guard, would also not stand. It was the same promise he made in 2005, announcing he would not be a candidate in the 2006 election. He reneged on his word just three months before polls opened.

This time round, the nation would reject his offer. Demonstrators wanted nothing less than an immediate transfer of power and settled in for the long haul. Protests soon spread to other cities and Saleh began to respond with violence, particularly in the city of Taiz, where demonstrators were hit hardest.

The watershed moment that would mark a major turning point in the conflict was the March 18 attack against protesters. Known as “Bloody Friday”, 52 demonstrators were killed when they were fired upon by government-controlled gunmen.

The incident resulted in mass defections and resignations from top military and civilian officials, including several Yemeni ambassadors. To spare himself of the embarrassment of further political losses, Saleh sacked his entire cabinet on March 20.

Just one day later, General Ali Mohsen, Saleh’s former chief military advisor, defected – pledging to protect the demonstrators in Change Square – and signalling the first major blow to the regime. According to Gregory Johnsen, a former Fulbright Fellow in Yemen and expert witness on the country to the US Congress, the defection indicated a break between Saleh’s immediate family and the rest of his supporters in the military.

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Iran postulates first nuclear test

Jamsheed K. Choksy writes:

Media outlets and blogs in Israel, England, and the U.S. have responded with considerable incredulity to claims by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of sanguine reactions if Iran tests an atom bomb.

The IRGC’s scenario underscores an unfortunate reality, however. After years of hollow threats, politicians and generals in the U.S., E.U., and Israel likely will adapt to the mullahs obtaining a nuclear weapon. World stock markets would follow their lead and recover from initial tumbles. Crude oil and natural gas prices may surge for a while but will fall back down. Arab countries relying on petroleum revenues to stay afloat and Western ones needing a steady flow of energy to power their societies are likely to back away from challenging Iran.

In February 2011 a new U.S. National Intelligence Estimate maintained an earlier conclusion that Iran’s leadership had not yet made the decision to assemble nuclear weapons. Indeed, until now, Iran has gone back and forth with the West at the negotiating table. The Revolutionary Guards’ statement seeks to break the deadlock by suggesting Iran’s policymakers should not fear domestic and foreign consequences of crossing the nuclear breakout threshold.

There is history in Iran for such media-based nuclear maneuvers. The Islamic Republic recommenced its atomic program, originally begun by the last shah, after suffering Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons attacks during the 1980s. But even then only concerted pressure persuaded its first Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. A major turning point occurred in October 1988 when a speech by Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, then speaker of Iran’s parliament, recommending atom bombs was published by the IRGC.

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Syrians vent rage in tent camps on border with Turkey

The Los Angeles Times reports:

They were once ordinary Syrians: farmers with fields to tend, doctors with patients to treat, students with exams to take and homemakers with children to nurture.

But after longtime Syrian President Bashar Assad’s security forces stormed their towns and villages in an attempt to crush a largely peaceful pro-democracy movement, they represent the emerging human toll, a small segment of the many thousands of Syrian civilians who have fled into the hills or across the border into Turkey to escape the violence.

Hundreds have set up a temporary camp in a muddy field on their country’s border with Turkey.

Now, they draw fetid water from a well and relieve themselves in the woods. They rely on handouts of food from relatives smuggled from across the border. They seek medical care at a makeshift “clinic,” a tarp where a 30-year-old pharmacist attempts to give medical advice.

The Washington Post reports:

The Syrian military widened its crackdown on anti-government protesters Tuesday, dispatching tanks to at least two more locations, including a town near the border with Iraq, as the government sought to extinguish an expanding rebellion that has appeared to threaten the army’s cohesion.

Tanks moved into position on the outskirts of the eastern border town of Deir al-Zour, site of some of the biggest protests of the three-month-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s government. Activists said tanks were also converging on the town of Maarat al-Nouman on the highway between Hama and Aleppo, where protesters reportedly burned government buildings over the weekend.

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Missing $6.6 billion Iraq money may have been stolen, auditors say

The Los Angeles Times reports:

After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the George W. Bush administration flooded the conquered country with so much cash to pay for reconstruction and other projects in the first year that a new unit of measurement was born.

Pentagon officials determined that one giant C-130 Hercules cargo plane could carry $2.4 billion in shrink-wrapped bricks of $100 bills. They sent an initial full planeload of cash, followed by 20 other flights to Iraq by May 2004 in a $12-billion haul that U.S. officials believe to be the biggest international cash airlift of all time.

This month, the Pentagon and the Iraqi government are finally closing the books on the program that handled all those Benjamins. But despite years of audits and investigations, U.S. Defense officials still cannot say what happened to $6.6 billion in cash — enough to run the Los Angeles Unified School District or the Chicago Public Schools for a year, among many other things.

For the first time, federal auditors are suggesting that some or all of the cash may have been stolen, not just mislaid in an accounting error. Stuart Bowen, special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, an office created by Congress, said the missing $6.6 billion may be “the largest theft of funds in national history.”

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CIA expanding its global assassination program

In the United States, “profiling” is a dirty word — and rightly so. It is one way in which state power transgresses civil rights with the consequence that individuals can be subject to unjustified questioning or detention. But when the US employs profiling overseas, the targets don’t just get arrested, they get killed — killed merely on the basis of suspicions about who they are and what they might be doing. An individual for whom an arrest warrant couldn’t be issued because investigators had not even been able to establish his name, can nevertheless be eliminated — no further questions asked. Whoever the US government calls a terrorist it also claims the right to kill.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The Central Intelligence Agency is preparing to launch a secret program to kill al Qaeda militants in Yemen, where months of antigovernment protests, an armed revolt and the attempted assassination of the president have left a power vacuum, U.S. officials say.

The covert program that would give the U.S. greater latitude than the current military campaign is the latest step to combat the growing threat from al Qaeda’s outpost in Yemen, which has been the source of several attempted attacks on the U.S. and is home to an American-born cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, who the U.S. sees as a significant militant threat.

The CIA program will be a major expansion of U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Yemen. Since December 2009, U.S. strikes in Yemen have been carried out by the U.S. military with intelligence support from CIA. Now, the spy agency will carry out aggressive drone strikes itself alongside the military campaign, which has been stepped up in recent weeks after a nearly yearlong hiatus.

The U.S. military strikes have been conducted with the permission of the Yemeni government. The CIA operates under different legal restrictions, giving the administration a freer hand to carry out strikes even if Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, now receiving medical treatment in Saudi Arabia, reverses his past approval of military strikes or cedes power to a government opposed to them.

The CIA has been ramping up its intelligence gathering efforts in Yemen in recent months in order to support a sustained campaign of drone strikes. The CIA coordinates closely with Saudi intelligence officers, who have an extensive network of on-the-ground informants, officials say.

The new CIA drone program will initially focus on collecting intelligence to share with the military, officials said. As the intelligence base for the program grows, it will expand into a targeted killing program like the current operation in Pakistan.

While the specific contours of the CIA program are still being decided, the current thinking is that when the CIA shifts the program from intelligence collection into a targeted killing program, it will select targets using the same broad criteria it uses in Pakistan. There, the agency selects targets by name or if their profile or “pattern of life”—analyzed through persistent surveillance—fits that of known al Qaeda or affiliated militants.

By using those broad criteria, the U.S. would likely conduct more strikes in Yemen, where the U.S. now only goes after known militants, not those who fit the right profile.

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