Does President Obama still believe that Yemen is one of his biggest Middle East success stories?
Thursday’s prison break in eastern Yemen, where masked gunmen freed a top al Qaeda commander and 270 terrorists, was just the latest nightmare in a seemingly uncontrollable downward spiral into chaos.
The same week, China became the latest nation to evacuate its citizens from the war-torn country — only the second time its military has ever rescued its nationals from a danger zone.
Yet it was just six months ago that the president, in a White House speech, cited Yemen as a place where the United States had successfully pursued a “strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines.”
Even The New York Times called that claim “absurd.”
It wasn’t true then, and it’s bitterly painful now.
In fact, al Qaeda in Yemen is growing stronger by the hour — on Friday, it seized control of the major coastal city of Al Mukalla, routing government troops.
Also growing stronger are the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels who forced President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi to flee to Saudi Arabia.
As the rebels continue to press forces loyal to the deposed government, al Qaeda has a virtual free hand. Oh, and now a Yemeni affiliate of ISIS has popped up, too.
The result, as Katherine Zimmerman of the American Enterprise Institute notes, is that “no one is fighting al Qaeda today” in Yemen. And the withdrawal last month of 125 US advisers means Washington is no longer getting first-hand intelligence.
Yemen, in short, is no success story — it’s a disaster, brought to you by the same president who not long ago jokingly dismissed ISIS as a “junior varsity” team.
And, sadly, the very same president who now maintains that his unsigned, unpublished framework “cuts off every pathway” for Iran to acquire weapons of mass destruction.