EDITORIAL: U.S. Counterterrorism Policy Disproportionately Harms Innocent Civilians
The views expressed herein represent the views of a majority of the members of the Caravel’s Editorial Board and are not reflective of the position of any individual member, the newsroom staff, or Georgetown University.
The Yemeni revolution in 2011 prefaced the current civil war and humanitarian crisis. (Fanack)
Since 2015, Yemen has been experiencing what the United Nations designated the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis. In 2011, the Arab Spring inspired people in Yemen to rise up and demand better governance. Instead, the country began to fall apart. Today, chaos continues to reign throughout Yemen.
During former-President Donald Trump’s administration, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo designated the Houthis, a group of Islamist Yemeni rebels, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). The designation of a group as an FTO carries a multitude of ramifications; chief among them is the banning of any U.S. financial institution from conducting financial transactions with the FTO. This is designed to cut off such organizations financially, thus stripping them of some of their power.
Current President Joe Biden removed the FTO label from the Houthis to allow those living in the area to continue receiving aid. While an FTO designation does not block or prevent the distribution of humanitarian aid, it would have blocked the access of Yemeni civilians in Houthi-controlled territory to vital food imports. Yemenis import the vast majority of their food, and the majority of these imports are from the private sector. The designation deprives Yemenis of access to these vital food and aid imports.
Why do counterterrorism initiatives, meant to provide respite to civilians caught living in terrorist-controlled areas, put innocent lives in danger?
In our focus on eliminating terrorism, we fail to consider the people whom it hurts the most. Because the people most affected—Yemenis in this instance—are not U.S. citizens, they are not a focus of U.S. national security policy. It is much easier for U.S. policymakers to accept civilian casualties and collateral damage among Yemenis than among U.S. citizens—Yemenis have no say in reelection or reappointment of U.S. officials. This is a truly morally inept way of deciding counterterrorism policy. The humanitarian and moral cost of this element of counterterrorism policy is simply too high a price to pay. The U.S. government should heavily reconsider its approach to counterterrorism policy and operations.
The Death Sentence of Counterterrorism Policy
U.S. law on the designation of foreign terrorist organizations grants the U.S. Secretary of State broad authority to designate a foreign entity as an FTO if it engages in terrorist activity, defined as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents,” that threatens the security of U.S. nationals or the U.S., or if it “retains the capability and intent to engage in terrorist activity or terrorism.”
U.S. Navy Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) team members participate in a joint exercise with members of Yemen's EOD team. (U.S. Navy)
Such a designation carries severe ramifications: “It is unlawful for a person in the United States or subject to the jurisdiction of the United States to knowingly provide “material support or resources” to FTOs. Material support or resources include property, financial services, expert advice or training, facilities, and more, excepting medicine or religious materials.
The motivations for designating a group as an FTO include curbing terrorism financing from U.S. entities, setting an example for the rest of the world, stigmatizing and isolating FTOs, and deterring donations to and economic transactions with such organizations.
With Yemen’s humanitarian crisis in mind, the U.S. made exemptions to its FTO policy for the Houthis. On January 19, the U.S. declared that aid groups, the United Nations, and the Red Cross could continue to export agricultural commodities and medical goods to Yemen. However, that did little to allay experts’ concerns—the FTO designation still blocks commercial transactions with the Houthis, which are crucial for Yemeni civilians living in Houthi-controlled areas to obtain basic necessities.
“Our concern from the beginning... is the impact on the commercial sector and that the vast majority of food and other basic supplies that come into Yemen comes in through the commercial sector,” said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric.
Designating the Houthis as an FTO will cut off their supply lines, but it will also be “a death sentence to hundreds and thousands if not millions [of Yemeni civilians],” according to David Beasley, Executive Director of the World Food Programme.
Aid and Air Raids
According to the UN, Yemen is currently experiencing the largest humanitarian crisis in the world. More than 80 percent of the population, roughly 24 million people, need humanitarian assistance. 14.3 million of these people are in acute need, meaning they need humanitarian aid or protection to survive. 20 million suffer from hunger and malnutrition and two-thirds of the Yemeni population lack access to food or cannot afford to buy food. Since 2018, the country has registered more than one million cases of cholera, and 70 percent of the population lacks access to basic necessities. More than four million people have relocated, becoming internally displaced persons or refugees in an attempt to flee the war and suffering.
More than 12 million children in Yemen need humanitarian assistance, with 2.3 million children younger than five projected to suffer malnutrition in 2021. School and hospital closures especially threaten children and their futures.
The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbates the ongoing crisis as health facilities close or face shortages in critical supplies. Sanitation and health measures are also practically impossible to ensure. Yemen’s economy is near collapse, government services have practically disappeared, and the population faces increasingly dire circumstances that threaten their very survival.
The conflict began in 2015 because of dissatisfaction and frustration with the transition from President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the longtime authoritarian ruler of Yemen, to Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, his deputy, in the aftermath of the 2011 Arab Spring uprising in Yemen. The Houthis, a rebellious faction composed of Shia Muslims that fought against Saleh in the past, capitalized on popular frustration and Hadi’s corrupt regime and lack of state control to seize much of western Yemen including the capital, Sanaa, by 2015.
The Houthis, along with forces loyal to Saleh, attempted to seize the entire country shortly after, but they were forced to an effective stalemate against Hadi’s government and its international allies. Regional Sunni powers as well as the United States, the United Kingdom, and France allied with Hadi’s government to diminish the influence of Iran, which backed the Shia Houthis. The conflict has since continued, with no side gaining a clear upper hand, for more than five years. Government forces control most of western Yemen and have a nominal base in Aden, a coastal city in the south.
Regional powers such as Saudia Arabia, the UAE, and Iran turned the fighting in Yemen into a proxy conflict between various international powers. Saudi Arabia and its allies—namely the U.S., the U.K., and France—backed the Hadi government beginning in 2015, lending them aid and air raids. The UAE, supporting the Southern Transitional Council (STC), has also helped to broker the 2019 power-sharing agreement between the government and the STC. Iran, on the other hand, has aided the Houthis in gathering weapons since 2014. The war has even attracted the attention and focus of terrorist organizations including Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS).
Life in Yemen for the civilians trapped between warring factions spurred on by international forces with ulterior motives has become a living hell. While some countries have contributed funds towards humanitarian aid and others have accepted small numbers of refugees, the UN and much of the international community recognize peace to be the only solution that ultimately protects civilians.
As the warring factions drag on the conflict without any change, the civilian population suffers horrendously. U.S. actions have played a notable role in extending the conflict.
The Trump administration’s designation of the Houthi movement as a terrorist organization in mid-January, quite literally the day before Biden assumed office, worsened the situation further. The terrorist designation of the movement by Pompeo established legal hurdles for conducting business with the Houthis and made it illegal to provide them with material support or resources, complicating humanitarian aid efforts. While the order did not ban humanitarian aid, it made many elements of humanitarian aid-distribution efforts challenging if not impossible. Among the potential implications was that Yemenis in Houthi-controlled territory would no longer have access to vital food imports or face increased difficulties in obtaining food in a country that imports 90 percent of its wheat and 100 percent of its rice (the two main staples of Yemeni nutrition).
The Biden administration delayed implementation and then revoked the terrorist designation to prevent the negative impact of the order. The administration officially reversed the designation on Tuesday, February 16. Nonetheless, the conflict continues to rage and while the Biden administration has demonstrated an intention to shift towards diplomacy and calls for peace, the situation is far from resolved.
In Control and Out-of-Pocket
While Yemen has received increased attention in recent years, the designation of many other groups as FTOs has harmed those around the globe in the name of counterterrorism, especially impacting those most vulnerable to violence.
Hamas, a Palestinian fundamentalist nationalist group, is one organization whose FTO status has prevented aid from reaching desperate populations. Hamas is the de facto governing body of the Gaza Strip, a disputed region between Palestine and Israel. Following its attainment of a majority in the Palestinian Parliament in 2006, Hamas’s refusal to commit to peace with Israel caused the United States, the UN, the EU, and Russia to withhold financial transactions and aid from the Palestinian National Authority.
Violence is a constant in Gaza as Israel and Hamas duel for sovereignty. (Flickr)
For the Gaza Strip, however, Hamas is a governing body, one with democratic legitimacy and an electoral mandate. With Hamas as a designated FTO, outside actors have funneled the majority of their support for Palestine—the Gaza Strip in particular—through nongovernmental humanitarian organizations. Even though Palestine is one of the largest repositories for U.S. aid, much of that money has not gone towards the development of Palestine’s own economy and infrastructure but towards security that benefits Israel’s position more than it does Palestine’s.
As a result, a population struggling with the effects of displacement, low-grade armed conflict, and the expansion of Israeli colonies has received little real benefit from international aid. When Trump withdrew U.S. aid from Palestine in 2019, it further exacerbated the severity of resource scarcity in Palestine. By labeling Hamas as an FTO, the United States has mired any attempts at peacekeeping 20 years in the past while contributing to ineffective solutions on the ground.
The U.S. waffling on the status of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has similarly damaged a larger population whose political status is virtually nonexistent. The PKK, which calls for formal recognition of Turkish Kurds, has at times resorted to violence against Turkey’s authoritarian government in response to government aggression.
While the United States relied heavily on Kurdish support for its unsuccessful campaign in Syria, the support does not go both ways. The PKK is classified as an FTO in the US. In 2019, the United States withdrew from Syria, opening areas that it had held alongside Kurdish forces to Turkish invasion. By withholding aid from an organization whose goal is to protect the Kurds from potential genocide, the United States leaves its only regional allies defenseless against authoritarian violence.
The Foreign Policy Establishment Strikes Again… and Again… and Again
Counterterrorism policies are not an end in themselves; rather, they are the means by which policymakers can keep a population safe from a climate of fear and the needless loss of life. While the U.S. could attempt to achieve this goal in many ways, it is obvious by now that, at least in Yemen, it has not succeeded in its particular approach.
It would be easy to call on the U.S. national security apparatus to reevaluate its approach to counterterrorism. But the “foreign policy blob” might be the wrong group with whom to start this dialogue.
For more than seven decades, the United States has built up a security state of epic proportions: a government whose foreign policy ultimately rests on the global projection of lethal force, with the permission of civilian authorities. The United States has created for itself a class of people—soldiers, intelligence officers, bureaucrats, contractors, consultants, engineers, scientists—whose only skill is mobilizing for war.
And other states know it. The Saudis asked the United States for help intervening in Yemen. The United Arab Emirates hired former U.S. soldiers as mercenaries to conduct lethal strikes against high-profile Yemeni targets. The yearly National Defense Authorization Act sends U.S. troops, weapons, logistical support, and money around the world. Meanwhile, foreign agents lobby on behalf of their governments for perks.
When all you have are hammers, everything looks like nails. And the United States has built the biggest force of hammers the world has ever seen.
Focusing on reexamining “counterterrorism” does not automatically shield the United States from the hubris of a bloated national security apparatus that too often “solves” problems by throwing money, logistical support, and weapons at its allies du jour.
Ending U.S. support for Saudi Arabia in the Yemen conflict is a great first step towards a better counterterrorism policy in the country. But we cannot fail to address the root of the problem: a national security apparatus complacent in the belief that our violence can end others’ violence and that our hammers are always hitting the right nails.
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