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On Yemen - CAPTAIN ROBERT A. NEWSON, MILITARY FELLOW - CFR
[CombatingTerrorismCenter, WestPoint] CTC: Can you briefly describe your role and experiences in Yemen in 2010-2012, and what your key takeaways were from a strategic U.S. counterterrorism perspective?CAPT Newson: I was the commander of Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT) Forward (SOC FWD) in Yemen. SOC FWD was an extension of SOCCENT, part and parcel with the command in Tampa. It was a task force with minimal staff and a joint force that primarily trained and advised Yemeni partners, but we also conducted civil affairs and military information support operations. And we were deeply embedded with the embassy and their activities. I have three primary takeaways. First, our security assistance process is not tailored to the current fight. It is a Cold War model that values delivery as the key metric, and is un-tethered to the timing that would facilitate the advise and assist effort. So, for example, shipments of materials in Yemen would arrive based on equipment availability or supplier timelines, not when we actually needed them to be there, or not be there. Oftentimes a huge shipment of supplies or weapons would arrive at the same time we were trying to play a little hard ball with them and it undermined our efforts. So we argued to zero effect that U.S. assistance efforts should be conditional and adjusted to conditions on the ground; it should be a pull from guys forward rather than a push from contractors or the system. Having control of who gets what when is an extremely powerful tool for advisors. If they don't have that it is very difficult to sometimes motivate the folks we are working with. So that was lesson number one. Lesson two has to do with getting out of the capital and really working with the frontier forces. The remit of the government does not go too far out of the capital and it is not very productive to develop counterterrorism (CT) forces primarily kept in Sana'a that rarely engaged in the fight and were controlled by very senior Yemeni leaders. So we wanted to work with the Southern Regional Command, which is division level and brigade commanders that engage in the fight in the south. This was especially the case after President Saleh left power and President Hadi took control. Al Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was taking over large swaths of the south and we thought we needed to be down there in a much more significant way. I think concerns about force protection, over increasing demand of advisors and about slippery slopes prevented a broader advise and assist effort that both DoD and the Embassy were advocating. And then my third lesson is about intelligence and logistics advise and assist efforts, and they are just as critical as training fighters and supplying weapons. This includes developing intelligence centers, which we did, and all-source intelligence capacity, which Yemen had but which was not well coordinated. It also included developing logistics supply plans and increasing the professionalism of support functions. All of this is critical to morale and fighting capacity, and what we saw in Yemen was that without a good supply system, without a good pay system, without the intelligence support, they were left facing the opponent without a lot of knowledge or motivation. In depth at the link Posted by: 3dc 2015-03-27 |
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