The Foreign Service Journal, October 2011

72 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / O C T O B E R 2 0 1 1 The Struggle Goes On High-Value Target: Countering Al Qaeda in Yemen Edmund J. Hull, ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Series, Potomac Books, 2011, $27.50, hardback, 192 pages. R EVIEWED BY P ATRICIA H. K USHLIS Ambassador Edmund J. Hull’s book, High-Value Target , was released in April. This concise, readable work, combining a memoir of his time as U.S. ambassador to Yemen (2001-2004) with contextual analysis and policy prescrip- tion, could not be more timely. A small, poor, fractured coastal coun- try abutting Saudi Arabia, Yemen is a natural home for the organization known as Al-Qaida on the Arabian Peninsula, one of the terrorist network’s most virulent nodes. Hull points out that “all recent al- Qaida successes — the [1998] attacks against our East African embassies, the attack on the [USS] Cole , and even 9/11 —were linked to al-Qaida opera- tives in Yemen.” The first al-Qaida cell in Yemen was eradicated by the gov- ernment of President Ali Abdullah Saleh while Hull was ambassador, but a more virulent version had emerged by 2009. Meanwhile, anti-regime demonstra- tions erupted in Sanaa, Yemen’s capital, last winter as part of a nonviolent civil society movement encouraged by the Arab Spring. Saleh fought back with mass arrests and firepower, but on June 4 he was severely wounded and evacu- ated to Saudi Arabia for treatment. He has yet to return, and the ongoing polit- ical turmoil has only strengthened the position of al-Qaida militants in the south. Because of the country’s tribal, reli- gious and social complexities, onemight think that this latest conflict is just an- other round of endemic warfare in a country where such groups traditionally dominate the political scene. But Hull usefully reminds us that Yemen has a vi- brant civil society movement, which the congressionally-funded U.S. National Endowment for Democracy, along with other nongovernmental organizations, has helped nurture over the years. These modernizers have learned the West’s democracy lessons well. Hull’s primary message in this book is that Washington needs to implement a policy that combines security and de- velopment to assist the Yemenis and counter al-Qaida effectively. During his time in Sanaa, the Department of De- fense, Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation all pro- vided funds for security and training. But assistance for badly needed infra- structure development — schools, hos- pitals, roads and jobs—remained woe- fully inadequate. Without security, development could not proceed. In addition, both objectives required the presence of American officials who spoke Arabic— but, as Hull points out, the United States lacked fluent Arabic-language speakers. Indeed, key country team slots remained vacant during his first year in Sanaa, and the embassy lacked adequate civilian staff throughout his three-year ambassadorship. Hull blames intransigence in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs for much of his devel- opment funding woes, a problem that persists. Although the GeorgeW. Bush WhiteHouse failed to respond to his in- creasingly urgent appeals to override the bureaucracy, Hull thanks the ad- ministration for its support throughout his tenure as ambassador in Sanaa. During his May 16 AFSA Book Notes program, Amb. Hull expressed cautious optimism that the Obama ad- ministration nowhas a counterterrorism strategy and is allocating more re- sources to Yemen. The question now is how effectively it can implement its ap- proach. (See the July-August edition of AFSA News for more details on his ap- pearance at AFSA.) Patricia H. Kushlis was an FSO with the U.S. Information Agency from 1970 to 1998. A longer version of this review appeared on Whirled View, the world politics, public diplomacy and national security blog she co-writes with former FSO Patricia Lee Sharpe (http://whirledview.typepad.com/). B OOKS