While the Pentagon has been very secretive about what they’ve been doing in Yemen all year, on Wednesday officials confirmed that they have carried out “multiple ground operations,” as well as 120 airstrikes in 2017.
US operations haven’t been well-documented at all, in January, almost immediately after the inauguration, the US attacked the village of Yakla, claiming there was an al-Qaeda “collaborator” there. The troops ended up destroying most of the village in the offensive.
President Trump loudly praised the Yakla raid as a huge success, though it’s worth noting that they never tried to heavily publicize them again with such fanfare. And what have they accomplished in all these raids and airstrikes?
Well Yemen in general is a mess, of course, but the Pentagon also estimated that ISIS has doubled in size since the start of the year, though they did claim they’d degraded al-Qaeda’s “propaganda” coming out of Yemen.
That’s a mixed bag, to say the least, and it’s surprising the Pentagon would choose now to disclose these operations, given the massive humanitarian crisis caused by the Saudi invasion of Yemen, which the US has been backing from the beginning.
Source: www.antiwar.com
