{"id":18822,"date":"2012-04-30T12:00:53","date_gmt":"2012-04-30T11:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=18822"},"modified":"2012-04-26T13:03:47","modified_gmt":"2012-04-26T12:03:47","slug":"us-expands-yemen-drone-strikes-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2012\/04\/us-expands-yemen-drone-strikes-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"US ‘Expands Yemen Drone Strikes Policy’"},"content":{"rendered":"

CIA and Pentagon given right to launch attacks even when identity of those in harm’s way is not known, reports say.<\/em><\/p>\n

Barack Obama\u00a0has approved a new policy shift which allows the Central Intelligence Agency and the US military to launch drone attacks in Yemen when the identity of those who could be killed is not known, according to US media reports.<\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/em>, quoting\u00a0administration officials, said on Thursday [26 Apr 2012]\u00a0that\u00a0the US president\u00a0approved the use of “signature” strikes this month.<\/p>\n

It also said\u00a0that the killing of an alleged al-Qaeda fighter earlier this week near the border\u00a0to Yemen’s Marib province was among the first attacks carried out under the new authority.<\/p>\n

The shift in policy is said to mark a significant expansion of the drone war against what the US alleges to be a group affiliated with al-Qaeda which is located in Yemen.<\/p>\n

The Wall Street Journal<\/em>\u00a0quotes US officials\u00a0as saying that\u00a0the amended policy includes targeting fighters whose names are not known but who are deemed to be “high-value terrorism targets, or threats to the US”.<\/p>\n

Some congressional officials have expressed concern over the use of such signature strikes, stating that they raise the likelihood of killing fighters who may not be involved in plots either to do with attacks against the US, or affiliated with al-Qaeda, potentially angering the local population and pushing them to join in the struggle against the US.<\/p>\n

The Wall Street Journal<\/em> quotes a US official as saying “Every Yemeni is armed, so how can they differentiate between suspected militants and armed Yemenis?”<\/p>\n

The signature strikes have to be approved by Yemen before they are conducted, according to Yemeni and US officials.<\/p>\n

In a related development,\u00a0Yemeni officials rejected on Wednesday a request from the CIA and US military to expand the signature strikes to the target of groups who they deem to be fighters.<\/p>\n

US officials say the CIA and US military had asked the White House for\u00a0permission to target larger groups if intelligence points to al-Qaeda-related\u00a0activity, as the CIA does in Pakistan’s tribal regions.<\/p>\n

All officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive\u00a0strategic matters.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 aljazeera.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barack Obama has approved a new policy shift which allows the Central Intelligence Agency and the US military to launch drone attacks in Yemen when the identity of those who could be killed is not known. The Washington Post, quoting administration officials, said on Thursday [26 Apr 2012] that the US president approved the use of “signature” strikes this month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-militarism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18822\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}