National Security
Pentagon Suggests There’re No U.S. Troops in Yemen — but Last Month the White House Said There Are
Amid a raft of U.S. strikes targeting Houthi rebels in Yemen, the Pentagon has boots on the ground in the country — a fact the Defense Department has recently refused to acknowledge.
“A small number of United States military personnel are deployed to Yemen to conduct operations against al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula and ISIS,” the White House told Congress in its most recent War Powers Act report on December 7.
This month, the U.S. began its military campaign against the Houthis for attacking shipping vessels in the Red Sea, a move the Yemeni rebels said was aimed at getting Israel to end its assault on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
As the U.S. began to attack, defense officials suddenly became more reticent about the American military presence in Yemen. In a press briefing on January 17, Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder was asked if he could give assurances that the U.S. had no troops on the ground in Yemen. Ryder responded, “I’m not aware of any U.S. forces on the ground.”
The National Security Council did not respond to requests for comment.
“Maj Gen Ryder’s prior assertion that there are no U.S. forces on the ground in Yemen remains accurate,” Lt. Col. Bryon McGarry told The Intercept in a statement following publication of this story.
“It’s possible that U.S. forces are spread so widely around the globe that not even the professional tasked with knowing that can keep track of it all,” said Erik Sperling, the executive director of Just Foreign Policy, who worked on Yemen as a Capitol Hill staffer. “But it’s also possible that, given the dramatic expansion in US presence in the region in recent months, he is trying to skirt the question to avoid greater scrutiny.”
“It’s possible that U.S. forces are spread so widely around the globe that not even the professional tasked with knowing that can keep track of it all.”
The Yemen conflict is a touchy subject for the Biden administration, which has repeatedly said that it is taking care not to allow Israel’s war in Gaza to metastasize into a broader regional war. As it has become increasingly difficult to deny the threat of a growing conflict, the administration is nonetheless trying.
“We currently assess that the fight between Israel and Hamas continues to remain contained in Gaza,” Ryder said on January 17, following strikes on the Houthis by the U.S. and coalition partners.
“We don’t think that we are at war,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said the next day, on January 18. “We don’t want to see a regional war.”
Her remarks were met with incredulity by one member of the press corps, who quipped: “We’ve bombed them five times now … if this isn’t war, what is war?”
Despite the rhetoric, tension with the Houthis has reached its highest point in years.
The U.S. has conducted eight rounds of strikes on Houthi targets in the past month alone. On December 18, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced the creation of a U.S.-led coalition to defend ships against Houthi attacks called Operation Prosperity Guardian. Since then, the coalition has conducted both cruise missile strikes and airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen.
The strikes came after attacks by the Houthis on merchant ships in the Red Sea, through which a substantial amount of global shipping passes. The Houthis, a rebel group in Yemen that controls most of the country’s most populous territories, blockaded the Red Sea, with the stated objective of halting Israel’s war in Gaza.
The U.S. military has quietly assigned a name to its operation targeting Houthi assets in Yemen. Observers have pointed out that formal names for operations suggest they will be long term in nature. (Officials have not identified an end date for the fight against the Houthis.) Called “Poseidon Archer,” the name for the anti-Houthi strikes is another fact the Biden administration has refused to acknowledge.
“So, this mission is just, ‘We’re striking the Houthis?’” cracked one member of the White House press corps after spokesperson John Kirby declined to provide the name. “I would — I’d refer you to the Pentagon if they’ve given it an operational name or not,” Kirby responded. “That’s really for them to speak to.”
Update: January 27, 2024
This story has been updated to include a statement from the Department of Defense that was received after publication of this story.
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Drone Strikes in Burkina Faso Killed Scores of Civilians
Three drone strikes last year by the government of Burkina Faso killed scores of civilians, according to a report released Thursday by Human Rights Watch. The attacks, targeting Islamist militants in crowded marketplaces and at a funeral, left at least 60 civilians dead and dozens more injured.
The drone strikes in Burkina Faso and Mali are just the latest in a yearslong string of atrocities carried out as part of Burkina Faso’s counterterrorism campaign against the Al Qaeda-linked Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin, or JNIM, and other Islamist militant groups that operate in the West African Sahel.
“The Burkina Faso military used one of the most accurate weapons in its arsenal to attack large groups of people, causing the loss of numerous civilian lives in violation of the laws of war,” said Ilaria Allegrozzi, senior Sahel researcher at Human Rights Watch, or HRW. “The Burkinabè government should urgently and impartially investigate these apparent war crimes, hold those responsible to account, and provide adequate support for the victims and their families.”
Map: Human Rights Watch
Burkina Faso’s government-controlled media said that all three attacks targeted and killed militants; none mentioned any civilian harm. Last August, for example, Radiodiffusion Télévision du Burkina, Burkina Faso’s government-run national television network, reported a “successful” airstrike on Islamist militants who were “preparing large-scale attacks.” After geolocating the strike site from the video, Human Rights Watch interviewed witnesses to the attack, which occurred during the weekly market day near the northern edge of the Bouro village. Survivors said that members of JNIM, which controls Bouro and the surrounding area, had arrived at the packed marketplace just before the strike.
“The market was full of civilians when the drone hit,” a 25-year-old man told HRW, noting that people travel from “all over” the region to buy and sell animals there. HRW obtained a list of 28 people killed in the attack, compiled by survivors and confirmed by two local authorities, but witnesses said the death toll was far higher. “There were hundreds of people at the market at the time of the strike,” said a 45-year-old man. “We counted 70 dead, but we only identified 28 of them. The other bodies were unrecognizable.”
The Burkinabè Embassy in Washington, D.C., did not respond to repeated requests from The Intercept to speak with the defense attaché or other officials.
“Little or No Concern for Civilian Harm”
The Burkinabè military conducted the strikes with Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones, which it acquired in 2022. At the time, Burkina Faso’s Ministry of Defense and Veterans Affairs defended the use of the country’s “limited financial resources” on drones and helicopters, touting their surveillance capabilities, the increased firepower they would provide, and their potential for “humanitarian actions for the benefit of our population.” Human Rights Watch documented casualties and damage consistent with the type of laser-guided bombs delivered by these drones.
“The Burkina Faso military repeatedly carried out drone strikes in crowded areas with little or no concern for civilian harm,” Allegrozzi said, noting that governments that provide such weapons to Burkina Faso risk complicity in war crimes.
Turkey isn’t alone in its support of the Burkinabè military. The United States has assisted Burkina Faso with counterterrorism aid since the 2000s, providing funds, weapons, equipment, and American advisers, as well as deploying commandos on low-profile combat missions. In that time, however, militant Islamist violence has skyrocketed. Across all of Africa, the State Department counted just 23 casualties from terrorist attacks in 2002 and 2003. Burkina Faso alone saw 6,130 deaths from terrorist attacks between July 2022 and July 2023, according to the Defense Department’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Pentagon research institution.
U.S.-trained Burkinabè military officers have also repeatedly overthrown the government, in 2014, 2015, and twice in 2022. Following military coups, U.S. law generally restricts countries from receiving military aid, but the U.S. has continued to provide training to Burkinabè forces, according to Gen. Michael Langley, the chief of Africa Command, or AFRICOM. Last year, for example, Burkinabè forces took part in Flintlock 2023, an annual exercise sponsored by U.S. Special Operations Command Africa. (Several past Flintlock attendees have overthrown the government, including Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, who carried out one of the 2022 coups.)
American assistance has continued despite widespread documentation of Burkinabè government atrocities and the “Leahy law,” which prohibits U.S. funding for foreign security forces implicated in gross violations of human rights. “The military has been credibly accused of various instances of human rights abuses and has been implicated in the extrajudicial killings of children by human rights organizations and journalists,” the Pentagon’s Africa Center noted in reference to Burkina Faso last year. A little over a month before Langley told members of the House Armed Services Committee about continued U.S. support for Burkina Faso, Burkinabè soldiers, accompanied by militia, arrested 16 men in the Ekeou village, at least nine of whom were later found executed, according to Human Rights Watch. In April 2023, less than a month after Langley’s admission, the Burkinabè military massacred at least 156 civilians, including 45 children, in the village of Karma. And state-backed militia reportedly killed at least 70 civilians in the Zaongo village last November.
“As some U.S. military assistance still goes to Burkina Faso, under the Leahy law, the U.S. should be determining if human rights violations by members of Burkina’s junta are occurring and if the aid being provided follows U.S. law,” HRW’s Allegrozzi told The Intercept. “Human Rights Watch has repeatedly documented serious abuses perpetrated by Burkinabè security forces, including mass executions and enforced disappearances of hundreds of civilians.”
Neither AFRICOM nor the State Department responded to detailed questions about the extent of U.S. support for Burkina Faso and reports of atrocities by Burkinabè forces.
“People Were Screaming and Running”
In late September 2023, Radiodiffusion Télévision du Burkina reported on a drone strike against supposed motorbike-riding Islamist militants who traveled from Mali to a compound in Burkina Faso’s Bidi village. Locals told Human Rights Watch, however, that the attack hit a funeral for a local woman, attended by more than 100 people, and that there were no fighters at the compound at the time.
Left: Two screenshots taken from a video posted on Sept. 24, 2023, to Radiodiffusion Télévision du Burkina’s YouTube channel. It shows the activities before the strike on the compound. © 2023 Radiodiffusion Télévision du Burkina. Right: A satellite image shows the approximate distance between the motorbikes and the compound.
Satellite image: © 2024 Maxar Technologies. Source Google Earth. Analysis and Graphics © 2024 Human Rights Watch
“It hit the tent where the old and wise men were sitting and praying for the old woman who died. The explosion was so strong and loud that the ground trembled and I fell,” a 54-year-old farmer who survived the attack told HRW. “People were screaming and running. Everyone was looking for his relatives and friends or fleeing. I saw many bodies on the ground, scattered, some torn into pieces.” Survivors said that 24 civilian men and a boy were killed, and 17 others were injured.
On November 18, another Burkinabè drone strike hit a market in Mali. That evening, Radiodiffusion Télévision du Burkina reported that the Burkinabè military launched attacks on “terrorists,” hitting a “logistics base” for Islamist fighters. The video shows at least three munitions striking a crowded marketplace.
Human Rights Watch used the video and accounts from survivors to identify Boulkessi, Mali — located in an area controlled by Islamist militants — as the site of the attack. Witnesses said that several armed JNIM fighters were present but that the overwhelming majority of those in the marketplace were civilians.
“The market was beginning to fill up with lots of people, only men, mostly civilians. Women are not allowed to go to the market because of the Islamic law imposed by the jihadists,” a 21-year-old survivor told HRW. “At around 10 a.m., I didn’t see anything coming but a bomb that fell on us like an arrow, then another bomb, and a third one … I was wounded in the arm by shrapnel … I helped my comrades get out of the market despite my injury … unfortunately, one of us died along the way – he had been wounded in the stomach.” Survivors provided HRW with a list of the names of seven civilians killed and five wounded in the strike.
Human Rights Watch did not receive a response to its allegations from the government of Burkina Faso.
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Blinken Visits Nigeria as Questions Swirl About Civilian Deaths and U.S. Security Ties
The Nigerian military conducted an airstrike last month on a religious festival in the northern part of the country, killing scores of Nigerian civilians. Thirty minutes later, the military launched a second missile, killing dozens more, including people trying to rescue victims of the first strike.
The December 3 attack killed more than 120 villagers celebrating Maulud, the birthday of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, according to Amnesty International. But in a press call ahead of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip to Nigeria and several other African nations this week, a State Department official expressed annoyance when journalists asked about regional insecurity and coups, complaining that the press was not focusing on the “fun” aspects of the trip. She then challenged The Intercept’s characterization of the drone attack and defended Nigeria’s handling of the aftermath of the December airstrikes in the village of Tudun Biri.
“I wouldn’t call it an attack,” Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee told The Intercept on the January 18 call. “The Nigerians have admitted it was an operational error that tragically killed people in Kaduna State.”
“The one thing that is clear in this case is the fact that the military launched an attack which inadvertently killed innocent people,” Anietie Ewang, Human Rights Watch’s Nigeria researcher told The Intercept. “There should be less focus on semantics and more effort to ensure accountability and a stop to these unacceptable mistakes that have caused needless deaths, pain, and suffering.”
Last month’s attacks were just the latest of hundreds of Nigerian airstrikes that have killed thousands of Nigerians, including a 2017 attack on a displaced persons camp in Rann, Nigeria, that killed more than 160 civilians, many of them children. In 2022, The Intercept exclusively revealed that the attack was referred to as an instance of “U.S.-Nigerian operations” in a formerly secret U.S. military document.
While the drone that conducted the December 2023 attack was most likely a Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2, Nigeria has killed a growing number of civilians even as the United States has strengthened military ties with the West African nation and signed off on its purchase of attack aircraft and lethal munitions. The strike on Tudun Biri came just two days before a group of senators urged the Biden administration to ensure greater oversight of Israel’s use of U.S.-provided weapons in Gaza. The State Department did not answer questions about U.S. monitoring of American weapons transferred to Nigeria.
“In addition to recognizing civilian harm when it happens, it’s also important that the U.S. push for accountability and justice for that harm — both in U.S. military operations and also in partner operations, like with the case in Nigeria,” Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., told The Intercept. “I have long emphasized the importance of upholding human rights in our security relationship with Nigeria and will continue to push the State Department on this issue.”
“You Guys Are Bumming Me Out”
Phee spoke with reporters on a conference call ahead of Blinken’s trip to Cabo Verde, Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria, and Angola. The visit is his third overseas mission of 2024, following a 10-nation trip to the Middle East and a three-day sojourn to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland and amid ongoing crises in Ukraine, Gaza, and the Red Sea that have buffeted the Biden White House. The State Department emphasized that Blinken would “highlight how the United States has accelerated the U.S.-Africa partnership” regarding climate, food, and health security. During the press call, Phee took exception to repeated questions about turmoil in the West African Sahel that strayed from her “positive” messaging. “You guys are bumming me out because you’re not talking about any of the really fun and positive, forward-looking things we’ll be doing,” she said.
Blinken will spend Tuesday and Wednesday in Nigeria, where he will meet with President Bola Tinubu and Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar to discuss economic opportunities, trade, and countering terrorism.
Nigeria is West Africa’s economic leader and plays a major role in regional security issues, including responses to the coups and spiraling militant Islamist violence in the Sahel region. The country is also waging a long-running war against extremist militants and armed groups that it typically refers to as “bandits.”
Between 2000 and 2022, the U.S. provided, facilitated, or approved more than $2 billion in security aid and weapons and equipment sales to Nigeria, according to a report by Brown University’s Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies, the Security Assistance Monitor at the Center for International Policy, and InterAction. Over that time, the U.S. also carried out more than 41,000 training courses for Nigerian military personnel.
In 2021, the U.S. delivered to Nigeria 12 Super Tucano warplanes as part of a $593 million package, approved by the State Department in 2017 that also included bombs and rockets. Last May, as part of the sale, the U.S. completed a $38 million project to construct new facilities for those aircraft.
In 2022, the State Department approved the sale to Nigeria of nearly $1 billion in AH-1Z attack helicopters and supporting munitions and equipment. “The proposed sale will better equip Nigeria to contribute to shared security objectives [and] promote regional stability,” reads a Defense Department press release.
Last year, Reps. Jacobs and Chris Smith, R-N.J., called on the Biden administration to scuttle the nearly $1 billion attack helicopter deal. “We write to express our concern with current U.S. policy on and military support to Nigeria,” the lawmakers said, urging “a review of security assistance and cooperation programs in Nigeria, including a risk assessment of civilian casualties and abuses.” The Biden administration eventually held a classified briefing to address lawmakers’ questions, according to a source on Capitol Hill.
“The United States and other countries providing security assistance to Nigeria must conduct thorough assessments of civilian harm risks and condition their assistance on thorough investigations into civilian harm incidents as well as concrete changes to rules of engagement and procedures that address the risks and gaps identified,” said Vianney Bisimwa, the regional director of the Sahel program at Center for Civilians in Conflict, or CIVIC.
“A Propaganda Scheme”
Phee lauded the Nigerian government’s response to the December 2023 drone strike. “They acted with transparency, immediately acknowledged the horrific accident. They set up a reparation process and a transparent investigation,” she told The Intercept. “So, they have, I think, responded to that tragedy in a constructive way that will contribute to rebuilding confidence of the Nigerian people and the security services.” Amnesty International reported, however, that the Nigerian military engaged in a cover-up and offered contradictory explanations for that attack — first claiming the airstrike was a mistake and then, as Amnesty put it, that “suspected bandits had embedded with civilians.”
The Nigerian military has a long history of errant attacks on innocent people and has repeatedly denied responsibility for strikes and frequently been accused of covering up civilian deaths, including running what a 2023 investigation by Nigeria’s Premium Times called “a systemic propaganda scheme to keep the atrocities of its troops under wraps.”
In addition to the December 2023 strike in Tudun Biri, an attack last January killed 39 civilians and injured at least six others. Witnesses and local officials said a December 2022 strike that targeted “bandits” killed at least 64 people, including civilians. An August 2022 attack that the Nigerian military said killed a Boko Haram commander actually left at least eight civilians dead. In February 2022, a reported Nigerian airstrike on a village in neighboring Niger killed at least 12 civilians. In September 2021, following an initial denial, the Nigerian Air Force admitted that it attacked a village, killing 10 civilians and injuring another 20. That April, a Nigerian military helicopter reportedly launched indiscriminate attacks on homes, farms, and a school. And the January 17, 2017, airstrike on a displaced persons camp in Rann, Nigeria — which a secret U.S. military investigation said involved the United States — killed more than 160 civilians and seriously wounded more than 120 people.
In 2022, the Protection of Civilians in Conflict Caucus — of which Jacobs is a founder — called on Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to disclose details of the U.S. role in the 2017 airstrike on the displaced persons camp. That year, the Pentagon missed a 90-day deadline to provide answers and, last week, refused to say whether Austin ever provided the information. “As with all correspondences received, the Department responds to the authors of the letter as appropriate,” Pentagon spokesperson Lisa Lawrence told The Intercept. “I do not have anything further to share at this time.”
A source on Capitol Hill told The Intercept that the Biden administration briefed members of Congress on the 2017 attack but declined to provide details because the information was classified.
A 2023 Reuters analysis of data compiled by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a U.S.-based armed violence monitoring group, found that even outside Nigeria’s three northeastern states beset by its long-running war against Islamist militants, more than 2,600 people were killed in 248 airstrikes during the previous five years. Most victims were identified as “communal militia,” a catchall category that includes local self-defense forces, criminal gangs, and so-called bandits. An analysis by Action on Armed Violence, a U.K.-based organization that investigates civilian harm, counted 14 airstrikes that killed 399 civilians and injured 310 others between 2010 and 2023.
“There has been a concerning pattern of deadly strikes in Nigeria and civilians have paid a heavy price. This cannot go on,” said CIVC’s Bisimwa. “Scrutiny into the conduct of military operations of Nigeria’s air force is a must.”
Phee told The Intercept that Blinken would “definitely” speak to Tinubu about the strikes on Tudun Biri, noting that “promoting and protecting human rights” is “part of our ongoing dialogue” with Nigeria’s government. She went on to say that the State Department hosted a Nigerian delegation for four hours of discussion last week on such issues. “So, I’m certain,” she said, that “the Secretary will talk about it when he sees the president and the foreign minister.”
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Pensions for the “Deep State”: Republicans Push Benefits for Air America, the CIA’s Secret Vietnam-Era Airline
Rep. Glenn Grothman, R-Wis., is an ardent critic of what he’s called the “deep state,” a name for the secret security state that became a bête noire of supporters of Donald Trump as investigations against the former president mounted.
Now Grothman, along with a clutch of other Republicans, have emerged as unlikely champions of legislation to support the so-called deep state — by doling out money to former employees of the CIA’s covertly owned airline, Air America.
The Air America Act — introduced by Grothman to the House of Representatives in October and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., in the Senate — seeks to guarantee retirement benefits and official recognition for the 1,000 U.S. citizens who worked for the airline. Some would be included on the CIA’s “Wall of Stars,” which memorializes agency employees who died in the line of service.
Hired as covert operatives, Air America employees were not provided standard government forms and are unable to prove their federal employment status, which is necessary to qualify for retirement benefits.
“These patriots risked their lives,” Grothman said in a statement announcing the legislation, “fighting communism in the same way members of the Air Force did.”
Air America has been accused of running weapons and even, according to the historian Alfred McCoy, drugs in Southeast Asia — charges that the CIA and Air America veterans denied so vigorously that it set off a First Amendment battle between the agency and McCoy.
“The whole point of Air America was to kill Communists.”
During the Vietnam War, Air America played a vital but murky role in supporting CIA activities in Laos, a staging ground for operations against the North Vietnamese and, along with Cambodia, the site of an extensive, secret war led by the agency against Communists in both countries.
If ever there was a time when the intelligence community resembled something like a “deep state” — an unaccountable security state made up of unelected officials — it would have been in the Vietnam years, before congressional investigations reined in the CIA.
Tim Weiner, author of the National Book Award-winning “Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA,” told The Intercept, “The whole point of Air America was to kill Communists.”
Before Church
Owned and operated by the CIA until 1976, Air America was used as cover for agency operations in the agency’s wild west days. Until 1975, when the late Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, set up his famous investigative committee, the intelligence community ran amok, facing few outside checks.
“There was no congressional oversight of the CIA before the Church Committee,” said Weiner. “What would happen is that the director of central intelligence — Allen Dulles, for example — would come before Congress and talk to the chairman of the armed services committee and the chairman would say, ‘Y’all have everything you need?’ And Dulles would say, ‘Yes sir, it’s alright.’”
With practically nonexistent oversight, this era saw some of the CIA’s worst scandals, from attempts to assassinate foreign leaders like Fidel Castro to involvement in coups. The period coincided with the heyday of Air America operations until its dissolution in 1976, the same year that the Church Committee established the House and Senate Intelligence committees.
In 1990, an action movie titled “Air America” starring Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr. portrayed the airline as a cynical operation to smuggle heroin, an impression that persists in the popular imagination to this day.
“There were rogue Air America pilots, but the story that the CIA was smuggling dope for profit or political advantage is almost entirely a canard,” Weiner said.
“Air America’s public image has fared poorly,” aviation historian William M. Leary wrote in the CIA-published journal Studies in Intelligence, lamenting the airline’s “bum rap,” which it attributes to the 1990 movie.
That bum rap hasn’t taken hold in Congress, where a bipartisan group of 35 House members co-sponsored Grothman’s legislation. Rubio, the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, introduced the Senate version of the bill with Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the committee’s chair.
“I’m proud to introduce this legislation,” Warner said of the bill in a press release, “to provide well-earned benefits and formally recognize the courage of Air Americans during the U.S. war effort in Vietnam and Southeast Asia.”
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The Houthis May Have Checkmated Biden in Red Sea Standoff
Israel’s unrelenting assault on the Gaza Strip is beginning to tip the Middle East into a wider regional conflict. In the past week, the Houthis in Yemen emerged as an unlikely power player, successfully disrupting global shipping in the name of Palestinians in Gaza and goading the U.S. into launching a series of airstrikes in a failed bid at deterrence.
Over the past three months, the Houthis have attacked merchant ships passing through the Red Sea, an unexpected military intervention aimed at forcing Israel to end its U.S.-backed offensive in Gaza and allow aid into the besieged territory.
The Houthis’ squeeze on the critical trade route is already impacting the global economy: Spooked shipping companies have diverted vessels toward more costly routes, with risk insurance premiums and global shipping prices rising. The effects of the attempted blockade could soon be seen in the costs of oil and consumer goods worldwide.
The U.S. Navy, considered the security guarantor of maritime shipping routes across much of the world, was eventually pressured into action. Since last week, the U.S. launched five airstrikes on Houthi positions. The Houthis doubled down. They fired at passing ships with several more rounds of missiles and drones. The targets included U.S. commercial vessels and a U.S. Navy warship — signs that the rebels were only emboldened by the U.S. volley.
During a White House press briefing on Thursday, President Joe Biden acknowledged that the airstrikes were not stopping the Houthis but said the U.S. would keep targeting the group anyway.
With its decision to attack, the Biden administration appears to have opened itself up to a geopolitical checkmate by the Houthis. Escalating the strikes against the rebels will likely bring more shipping disruptions — potentially counterproductive to mitigating economic consequences — and risk a full-blown regional war. Negotiating or submitting to the demands of a nonstate militia group from one of the poorest countries in the world would be seen by many as a U.S. surrender and would boost the Houthis’ newfound popularity.
Battle-hardened in a brutal civil war with a Saudi-backed Yemeni government-in-exile, the Houthis look unready to back down, even inviting the wider conflict.
“The Houthis absolutely want this conflict,” said Iona Craig, a journalist and political specialist focused on Yemen. “It is part of their ideology, whose anti-American element was formed during the period of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. They now very much see themselves as the defenders of Palestinians and the people of Gaza.”
“The Houthis absolutely want this conflict. … They now very much see themselves as the defenders of Palestinians and the people of Gaza.”
With the Houthis undeterred, the U.S. State Department took a different approach on Wednesday, designating the militia as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group, a partial reversal of its decision in 2021 to remove the Houthis from the more stringent Foreign Terrorist Organization list. The new designation makes the Houthis subject to economic and political sanctions but avoids the stricter rules of the FTO list. Humanitarian groups said harsher measures would impede aid to areas of Yemen that Houthis came to control during the civil war.
Two hours after being redesignated as a terror group in the U.S., the Houthis targeted a U.S. carrier ship, and the U.S. responded with another round of strikes.
“The Biden administration seems to be hoping that degrading Houthi capabilities will coerce them to stop, but that doesn’t appear to be working,” Daniel DePetris, a fellow at Defense Priorities, a foreign policy think tank based in Washington, told The Intercept. “Everyone is deterrable, and the Houthis are not lunatics. But the problem when dealing with nonstate actors is that it requires more force to get them to change their strategic calculus.”
He added, “The Saudis also thought that they could beat the Houthis militarily without having to address any of the political demands that they were making.”
Ragtag Rebels to Regional Aspirations
Once a small, ragtag army, the Houthis learned to hit back against much more powerful militaries over years of civil war and foreign intervention — acquiring knowledge they appear to be putting into practice against the U.S.
The Houthis, officially known as Ansarallah, emerged decades ago as a movement opposed to the perceived corruption of the Yemeni government. For the past several years, the group has been at war with the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen and are currently in peace negotiations to end the conflict. The U.S. played a key role in the civil war, heavily arming — and for a time giving direct assistance to — an air campaign by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that inflicted huge civilian casualties. The onslaught failed to defeat the Houthis.
Israel’s War on Gaza
The civil war became a training ground where the Houthis learned to outmaneuver vastly superior U.S.-made weapons — especially air power — in its current operation in the Red Sea. The rebels use inexpensive anti-ship missiles and small boats to attack the shipping vessels, utilizing the advantage of light and mobile forces that drive up costs and weaken the effectiveness of enemies’ attacks from the air.
“The Houthis have a big force, but they rely on distributing their power broadly across the territory that they control. They rely more on being mobile than on heavy infrastructure,” said Baraa Shiban, a political analyst on Yemen and associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. “They have survived a long air campaign by two of the stronger militaries in the region, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and have adapted how to move and operate their forces accordingly.”
The Houthis are often dismissed as mere proxies of Iran, part of a nexus of groups referred to as the “Axis of Resistance,” which includes Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Palestinian militants of Hamas. Analysts, however, say that while Iran does provide the Houthis with money, weapons, and military training, the Houthis operate with relative political independence.
“It is robbing them of their agency when we say that the Houthis are merely stooges of Iran,” Hisham Al-Omeisy, senior adviser on Yemen with the European Institute of Peace, told The Intercept. “They have their own mindset, agenda, and ideology.”
The civil war became a training ground where the Houthis learned to outmaneuver vastly superior U.S.-made weapons.
In its most dramatic display of independence, the Houthis reportedly rebuffed Iranian efforts to stop them from taking the Yemeni capital of Sanaa in 2015, according to U.S. intelligence reports.
The Houthis have long made confrontation with the U.S. and Israel a major plank of their ideology, expressed as a blend of Islamism, anti-imperialism, and overt antisemitism. Along with other Iran-backed groups, the Houthis reject most aspects of the U.S.-backed political order in the region and have made serious threats to the stability of U.S.-allied regimes like Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
“One of the main things people miss about the Houthis is that their end goal is not just Yemen. This is an expansionist group with regional ambitions,” said Al-Omeisy. “This conflict is a perfect opportunity for them to say that they are the real vanguard of the Arab nation, while other leaders are complicit in the suffering of the Palestinians.”
Winning Hearts and Minds
At the center of the unrest in the Red Sea is the crisis in Gaza, which has been devastated by Israeli attacks since the October 7 offensive by Hamas. Though Israeli troops are carrying out the war that has killed more than 24,000 Palestinians, the U.S. is the patron and enabler. The Biden administration continues to offer unblinking financial and diplomatic support to Israel, despite mounting accusations against the U.S. of complicity in genocide.
The Houthis entered the fray almost immediately. In the days after Israel launched its retaliatory assault, the Houthis sent ballistic missiles toward Israel and began its attacks on the Red Sea shipping lanes.
The Houthis have long been a polarizing force in Yemeni politics, but they have seized on anti-American sentiment in the Arab world and the seeming indifference of pro-U.S. regimes to the suffering in Gaza to elevate their geopolitical status. Not only are the Houthis distinguishing themselves as champions of the Palestinian cause, but they are also rehabilitating their reputation at home, where they have struggled to set up a functional government amid civil war. Houthi spokespeople have become fixtures on Arabic-language television stations, where they relish their role challenging the West over the plight of the Palestinians.
Not only are the Houthis distinguishing themselves as champions of the Palestinian cause, but they are also rehabilitating their reputation at home.
Anger toward the U.S. seems likely to grow in the region, as the Biden administration appears to be putting the global economy over Palestinian lives in its strikes on the Houthis.
“The U.S. should consider that these actions in Gaza are enraging people throughout the region,” said Al-Omeisy. “The local perception is that when Palestinian blood was being shed the last three months, no one was bothered, but when the economic interests of the West were threatened, they immediately acted. This message fits right into Houthi rhetoric and is resonating very strongly in the region.”
Their bid is working. Rather than weakening the Houthis, the U.S. airstrikes seem to be boosting the Houthis’ political standing throughout the Middle East, where analysts say public opinion of the U.S. has reached lows not seen since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. Polls taken among Arabs in the region show widespread anger and disillusionment toward the U.S. since the start of the Gaza war, with far more favorable views of rival countries like China and Russia.
“The Biden administration and U.S. policymakers have not yet grasped how high anti-Americanism is in the region, where it is at a level that we have not seen since the war in Iraq,” Shiban, of Royal United Services Institute, said. “Even if they claim that this is an Israeli operation and we have nothing to do with it, the Arab public does not buy it.”
With the U.S. military now stuck in an exchange of attacks with the Houthis, experts say the Biden administration has no good options.
“I don’t think that the U.S. is trying to engage in regime change in Yemen,” said DePetris, the Defense Priorities fellow, “but if this continues to snowball, that may end up being something that the administration may try to consider.”
The post The Houthis May Have Checkmated Biden in Red Sea Standoff appeared first on The Intercept.
Biden Admin Deployed Air Force Team to Israel to Assist With Targets, Document Suggests
Targeting intelligence — the information used to conduct airstrikes and fire long-range artillery weapons — has played a central role in Israel’s siege of Gaza. A document obtained through the Freedom of Information Act suggests that the U.S. Air Force sent officers specializing in this exact form of intelligence to Israel in late November.
Since the start of Israel’s bombardment in retaliation for Hamas’s strike on October 7, Israel has dropped more than 29,000 bombs on the tiny Gaza Strip, according to a U.S. intelligence report last month. And for the first time in U.S. history, the Biden administration has been flying surveillance drone missions over Gaza since at least early November, ostensibly for hostage recovery by special forces. At the time the drones were revealed, U.S. Gen. Pat Ryder insisted that the special operations forces deployed to Israel to advise on hostage rescue were “not participating in [Israel Defense Forces] target development.”
“I’ve directed my team to share intelligence and deploy additional experts from across the United States government to consult with and advise the Israeli counterparts on hostage recovery efforts,” said President Joe Biden three days after the Hamas attack.
But several weeks later, on November 21, the U.S. Air Force issued deployment guidelines for officers, including intelligence engagement officers, headed to Israel. Experts say that a team of targeting officers like this would be used to provide satellite intelligence to the Israelis for the purpose of offensive targeting.
“They’re probably targeting people, targeting officers,” Lawrence Cline, who served as an intelligence engagement officer in Iraq before retirement, told The Intercept. Targeting intelligence refers to the identification and characterization of enemy activities including missile and artillery launches, location of leadership and command and control centers, and key facilities. “What I can see is we’ve got a lot of global assets in terms of satellites and the like and the Israelis have a lot in terms of more localized radar coverage.”
The deployment guidelines were issued by the Pentagon’s Air Force component command for the Middle East, Air Forces Central, on November 21. The document provides deployment instructions to air personnel sent to the country, including an “Air Defense Liaison Team” as well as “airmen assigned as the Intelligence Engagement Officer (IEO).”
Intelligence engagement officers, Cline explained, coordinate intelligence between the U.S. and partner militaries. When deployed in Iraq, Cline, who now works as an instructor for the Defense Department Counterterrorism Fellowship Program, recalled that he and other IEOs comprised a small team who spent “probably three quarters of our time working with the Iraqis, the other quarter checking in with headquarters,” adding that “it was sort of half and half a liaison and advising.”
Asked about the airmen’s mission, the Defense Intelligence Agency referred questions to the Air Forces Central, which did not respond to a request for comment. Neither the Office of the Secretary of Defense nor Central Command responded to requests for comment.
The intelligence engagement process provides a low-profile mechanism through which the U.S. can coordinate with the Israeli military, a valuable tool amid the political sensitivity of the conflict.
A U.S. Army primer defines intelligence engagement as a “powerful” tool that is useful “especially when U.S. policy might restrict our interaction,” as it “often does not require large budgets or footprints.” Experts say that may be the case here.
Tyler McBrien, managing editor of Lawfare, a website specializing in national security law, said that there seems to be an “Israel exception” to the U.S. rules around military assistance.
Past presidents have issued several executive orders banning the U.S. government from carrying out or sponsoring assassinations abroad. This ban has been interpreted to include wartime targeting of civilians, according to a recent Foreign Affairs article by Brian Finucane, a former legal adviser for the State Department who now works for Crisis Group.
And the so-called Leahy law, a set of budget amendments named for Sen. Patrick Leahy, requires the U.S. government to vet foreign military units for “gross violations of human rights” when providing training or aid to those units. Several progressive members of Congress have raised concerns that U.S. aid to Israel — both before and during the present war — violates that requirement.
“For air advisory missions, which I imagine involve intelligence sharing and training, specific domestic legal restrictions such as the Leahy law and the assassination ban would likely come into play,” McBrien said. But the Leahy vetting process is “reversed” for Israel; rather than vetting Israeli military units beforehand, the U.S. State Department sends aid and then waits for reports of violations, according to a recent article by Josh Paul, who resigned from his post as a State Department political-military officer over his concerns with U.S. support for Israel.
“As a general matter, U.S. officials who are providing support to another country during armed conflict would want to make sure they are not aiding and abetting war crimes,” Finucane told The Intercept. He emphasized that the same principle applies to weapons transfers and intelligence sharing.
The Israeli military intentionally strikes Palestinian civilian infrastructure, known as “power targets,” in order to “create a shock,” according to an investigation by the Israeli news website +972 Magazine. Targets are generated using an artificial intelligence system known as “Habsora,” Hebrew for “gospel.”
“Nothing happens by accident,” an Israeli military intelligence source told +972 Magazine. “When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed — that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target. We are not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.”
Israel’s War on Gaza
The Biden administration has gone to great lengths to conceal the nature of its support for the Israeli military. The Pentagon quietly tapped a so-called Tiger Team to facilitate weapons assistance to Israel, as The Intercept has previously reported. The administration has also declined to reveal which weapons systems it’s providing Israel and at which quantities, insisting that the secrecy is necessary for security reasons.
“We’re being careful not to quantify or get into too much detail about what they’re getting — for their own operational security purposes, of course,” White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters during a press briefing in October.
This contrasts with its support for Ukraine, about which it has been far more transparent. The administration has provided an itemized list of its weapons assistance to Ukraine, a country facing at least as much of a threat amid the invasion of Russia. The White House has never addressed the incongruity. Past administrations have also provided detailed public information about U.S. targeting support for the Saudi and Emirati military campaigns in Yemen, which U.S. officials claim was meant to reduce civilian casualties.
The secrecy “may reflect the fact that the U.S. has interests that are in tension, the Biden administration has interests that are in tension,” Finucane said. “On the one hand, they want to publicly embrace Israel and support Israel, providing what seems to be unconditional support. On the other hand, they don’t want to be perceived as taking the country into another war in the Middle East.”
The post Biden Admin Deployed Air Force Team to Israel to Assist With Targets, Document Suggests appeared first on The Intercept.
Undercover FBI Agents Helped Autistic Teen Plan Trip to Join ISIS
Humzah Mashkoor had just cleared security at Denver International Airport when the FBI showed up. The agents had come to arrest the 18-year-old, who is diagnosed with a developmental disability, and charge him with terror-related crimes. At the time of the arrest, a relative later said in court, Mashkoor was reading “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” a book written for elementary school children.
Mashkoor had gone to the airport on December 18 to fly to Dubai, and from there to either Syria or Afghanistan, as part of his alleged plot to join the Islamic State. The trip had been spurred by over a year of online exchanges starting when Mashkoor was 16 years old with four people he believed were members of ISIS. According to the Justice Department’s criminal complaint, the four were actually undercover FBI agents. As a result of his conversations with the FBI, Mashkoor could face a lengthy sentence for attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization.
At an initial court hearing, family members said that Mashkoor, who had turned 18 just a few weeks prior to the arrest, had intellectual difficulties and been diagnosed with autism. Despite acknowledging Mashkoor’s family support and his young age, the judge ordered that he be detained while awaiting trial.
“It’s not lost on this court that Mr. Mashkoor is a young man with possible mental illness and the diagnosis of high-functioning autism. It is clear he has a sea of familial support,” the judge said. “But based on this evidence, there’s no reasonable assurance here that the court can simply chalk all this up to the defendant simply being a young man.”
Law enforcement agents first became aware of Mashkoor’s online activities in support of ISIS in November 2021. But instead of alerting his family, Mashkoor’s lawyers told The Intercept, FBI agents posing as ISIS members befriended him a year later and strung him along until he became a legal adult.
“It is appalling that the government never once reached out to his parents, even while they were sending undercover agents to befriend him online starting when he was 16 years old,” said Joshua Herman, a defense attorney representing Mashkoor. “Almost all of the conduct he is alleged to have committed took place when he was a juvenile.”
“It is appalling that the government never once reached out to his parents, even while they were sending undercover agents to befriend him online starting when he was 16 years old.”
More details may emerge on the circumstances of Mashkoor’s ill-fated attempt to join ISIS, but the facts as laid out in the complaint are hallmarks of terrorism prosecutions based on FBI stings: a young man with developmental disabilities, already on the police’s radar due to mental health episodes and conflicts with family, groomed as a minor over a long period by a group of undercover FBI agents. Mashkoor’s case also follows a pattern of FBI sting operations in which a teenager is arrested shortly after their 18th birthday. As in similar cases, the court documents suggest that Mashkoor was limited in his ability to execute a terrorist plot on his own.
“This case appears consistent with a common fact pattern seen in tens, if not hundreds, of terrorism-related cases in which the FBI has effectively manufactured terrorist prosecutions,” said Sahar Aziz, a national security expert and law professor at Rutgers University. “In this case, it was a 16-year-old kid who otherwise would have just sat in his relatives’ basement posting offensive content in a manner similar to a white supremacist or Proud Boy — people whom the FBI does not spend enormous resources to entrap just so they can get a high-profile press release.”
Known to Police
Mashkoor first came onto the authorities’ radar for social media posts around the time of his 16th birthday. According to the complaint, Mashkoor began posting in support of terrorism in November 2021, and a platform he used alerted the FBI of suspicious activity.
In July 2022, local police were called to Mashkoor’s home after he allegedly assaulted a family member during a dispute. At the time, according to court filings, a relative told police about Mashkoor’s mental illness and autism diagnosis. Two months later, Mashkoor began communicating with an undercover FBI agent posing as a member of ISIS.
That agent eventually introduced Mashkoor to three other FBI agents impersonating ISIS members. With their encouragement, Mashkoor developed a plan to support the terror group. Along with extensive discussions of what types of services he might provide ISIS, Mashkoor regularly confided in the agents about his boredom, family problems, hopes of getting married, and struggles with his mental health. He constantly referred to being a minor, complaining that being under 18 and subject to the monitoring of family members made it hard for him to travel or send funds, including cryptocurrency transactions that he could not figure out how to conduct.
Mashkoor’s anxieties come through in the chats included in the indictment — most of which are limited to his sides of the conversations. At one point, he told an agent that he was considering finding a wife who might be willing to join him in Afghanistan, but he worried about the possibility of abandoning her if he was killed.
Mashkoor went back and forth about whether he even wanted to join ISIS.
Mashkoor also went back and forth about whether he even wanted to join ISIS. Throughout the chats with the undercover agents, Mashkoor expressed support for ISIS and fantasized about fighting with militants abroad. But he also shared doubts about joining the group as well as concerns that he lacked connections of his own in Afghanistan and Syria. In one message, he worried that “the brothers there might not support me in getting married and may just strap something on me and throw me out into the field.” He may, he suggested at one point, instead get a job and finish high school.
In early December, Mashkoor failed to show up to a flight he had booked to Dubai. It’s unclear whether his apprehensions played a role; he told the FBI agents that he had come down with Covid.
“The whole case demonstrates the low level of maturity and social skills often found in people who suffer from autism,” said Thomas Durkin, one of Mashkoor’s lawyers. “He is fantasizing and making up plans to go to Afghanistan that he could not possibly realize on his own.”
In their conversations, agents warned Mashkoor that “life won’t be easy” after joining ISIS, while continuing to offer to help plan his journey. Despite second thoughts, Mashkoor eventually appeared to take the FBI up on their offer and went to the airport weeks after he turned 18.
“Staying here even another second is torture and I’ve only been putting up an act to please those around me,” he had told one of the agents. “But what will any of it matter once I’m 18 and gone.”
Security fencing outside FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 22, 2022.
Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The FBI’s Terror Plan
Throughout the period that he was under investigation, it’s unclear how much meaningful contact Mashkoor had with actual members of ISIS. When he originally came onto law enforcement’s radar, he was alleged to have been in communication with other supporters of the group, some of whom were later arrested in foreign countries.
At one point during the investigation, he gave an undercover FBI agent contact information for someone he said he had found in an online ISIS publication. That individual, unnamed in court documents, solicited cryptocurrency from the undercover agents and appeared to offer them assurances that it was possible to travel to ISIS territories. In conversations with an agent, Mashkoor also alluded to an ISIS contact who had suggested he conduct an attack in the U.S., but Mashkoor said he preferred to travel abroad.
But Mashkoor’s most substantive planning — the actions that landed him under a federal terrorism indictment — took place entirely with the group of undercover FBI agents who were in close contact with him over several months, testing the willingness of a vulnerable young man to commit a crime.
“It’s clearly a waste of government resources,” said Aziz, the law professor. “If there was a serious terrorist threat in America, the FBI would not be spending its time entrapping a mentally ill minor.”
The family member who went with Mashkoor to the Denver airport the day he was arrested had been unaware of his plans, according to court documents, and did not know why he was leaving the country. In one of his final conversations with an FBI agent, Mashkoor had worried about his upcoming trip and the toll it would have on his family. He asked the agent whether it would be permissible to leave behind a message for them. As he told another agent, he had tried “to think of something to say” to his father, but whenever he tried to convey that he was leaving for good, his “throat clenches and nothing comes out.”
“My family know I am leaving but don’t know why and they are very sad and it’s been having a toll on my mental health,” Mashkoor told the agent. “I don’t know how to properly say my final goodbyes to them or how to convey the reasons why I left without compromising myself.”
The post Undercover FBI Agents Helped Autistic Teen Plan Trip to Join ISIS appeared first on The Intercept.
Rep. Sara Jacobs Urges Pentagon to Make Amends to Family of Drone Strike Victims
Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., has urged the Pentagon to immediately make amends to a Somali family following an investigation by The Intercept of a 2018 U.S. drone strike that killed a woman and her 4-year-old daughter.
Her call for action follows a December open letter from two dozen human rights organizations – 14 Somali and 10 international groups — calling on Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to compensate the family for the deaths. The family is also seeking an explanation and an apology.
The April 1, 2018, attack in Somalia killed at least three, and possibly five, civilians, including 22-year-old Luul Dahir Mohamed and her 4-year-old daughter Mariam Shilow Muse. A U.S. military investigation acknowledged the deaths of a woman and child but concluded their identities might never be known. This reporter traveled to Somalia and spoke with seven of their relatives. For more than five years, the family has tried to contact the U.S. government, including through U.S. Africa Command’s online civilian casualty reporting portal, but never received a response.
“I find it deeply troubling that after the Department of Defense confirmed that a U.S. drone strike killed civilians, Luul Dahir Mohamed and her daughter, Mariam Shilow Muse, in 2018, their family has reportedly yet to hear from DoD — even years later,” said Jacobs, a member of the House Armed Services Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where she serves as ranking member of the subcommittee on Africa. “While the U.S. government can never fully take away their loved ones’ pain, acknowledgment and amends are needed to find peace and healing.”
Jacobs’s call for reparations comes on the heels of the Pentagon’s late-December release of its long-awaited “Instruction on Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response,” or DoD-I, which established the Pentagon’s “policies, responsibilities, and procedures for mitigating and responding to civilian harm.”
The document, mandated under the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, and approved by Austin, directs the military to “acknowledge civilian harm resulting from U.S. military operations and respond to individuals and communities affected by U.S. military operations” including “expressing condolences” and providing so-called ex gratia payments to next of kin.
“We welcome this policy, which is both the first of its kind and long overdue. But like any policy, what’s on paper is just the first step,” said Annie Shiel, the U.S. advocacy director for the Center for Civilians in Conflict, one of the groups that authored the open letter about the Somalia strike. “The real measure of its success will be in implementation, and how or whether it delivers results for civilians – both by preventing a repetition of the devastating civilian harm caused by U.S. operations over the last twenty years, and by finally delivering answers and accountability to the many civilians harmed in those operations who are still waiting for acknowledgement from the U.S. government.”
Although the DoD-I also mentions “ensur[ing] a free flow of information to media and the public” and the need for public affairs personnel to “provide timely and accurate responses to public inquiries and requests related to civilian harm,” the Pentagon did not respond to questions about the letter to Austin, the DoD-I, or Jacobs’s comments. Another set of questions about civilian harm, emailed to the Defense Department in September 2022, also have yet to be answered. “I have pressed for responses to your questions,” Pentagon spokesperson Lisa Lawrence wrote in an email late last month. “As with all queries, it takes time to coordinate.”
In 2022, following increased scrutiny of the U.S. military’s killing of civilians; underreporting of noncombatant casualties; failures of accountability; and outright impunity in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere, the Pentagon pledged reforms. The 36-page Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan, known in Washington as the CHMR-AP, provides a blueprint for improving how the Pentagon addresses noncombatant deaths but lacks clear mechanisms for addressing past civilian harm. Jacobs — founder and co-chair of the Protection of Civilians in Conflict Caucus — has been one of the foremost elected officials pressing the Pentagon to take greater accountability for civilian casualties. Last July, she introduced the Civilian Harm Review and Reassessment Act, which would require the Defense Department to examine and reinvestigate past civilian casualty allegations, stretching back to 2011, and make amends if necessary.
The 2024 NDAA, passed late last year, included another provision, authored by Jacobs and Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., requiring the director of national intelligence to notify Congress if U.S. intelligence, used by a third party, results in civilian casualties. Jacobs’s efforts also led to a Government Accountability Office assessment of the effectiveness of civilian harm training including an evaluation of the efficacy of current methods. That report, due by March 1, is nearly complete according to Chuck Young, a GAO spokesperson.
“After U.S. military operations have caused civilian harm, victims, survivors, and their families often face significant obstacles to getting answers and acknowledgment from the U.S. government, let alone amends for what happened,” Jacobs told The Intercept, referencing the April 2018 drone attack that killed Luul and Mariam. “I urge the Department of Defense to live up to its responsibility in the CHMR-AP to make amends for past civilian harm and immediately address this case.”
The post Rep. Sara Jacobs Urges Pentagon to Make Amends to Family of Drone Strike Victims appeared first on The Intercept.
New Bills Aim to Block U.S. Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia, UAE Amid Concerns of Regional Conflict
Rep. Ilhan Omar is introducing two pieces of legislation to block U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, citing atrocities committed by both countries. The U.S. made high-profile sales to both countries in December, shoring up their offensive capabilities amid the possibility of a regional war and a growing risk of confrontation with Yemen’s Houthis.
The Saudi bill is the Minnesota progressive’s latest attempt to hold the Saudi regime to account for its sordid human rights record. It would stop the sale of aircraft support, intelligence sensors, and other materiel relied upon by the Royal Saudi Air Force amid a blockade that has devastated Yemen’s population. In December, the State Department approved a $582 million sale to Saudi Arabia to renew its drone surveillance system.
The UAE also recently escalated its involvement in the war on Yemen, leading to Houthi rocket attacks that have eroded the sense of security the Emirati states had cultivated. Omar’s measure would prohibit the sale of high explosive rockets, radar systems, and other military equipment to the UAE. In December, the State Department approved an $85 million sale of high explosive rockets and defense-related radar equipment to the UAE.
The closely focused bills make no mention of regional dynamics. In a statement to The Intercept, Omar pointed to human rights abuses committed by both countries as the basis for the legislation. “These sales go directly against our values as well as the cause of peace and human rights,” Omar said in a statement to The Intercept.
President Joe Biden campaigned in 2020 on making Saudi Arabia a “pariah” for its murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, saying that there was “very little social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia.” Since becoming president, however, the Biden administration has authorized billions in weapons sales to the oil-rich monarchy. In 2021, Omar introduced similar legislation to block a $650 million sale of missiles and other weapons to the kingdom.
“It is simply unconscionable to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia while they continue to kill and torture dissidents and support modern-day slavery,” Omar said. “Saudi Arabia executed over 170 people in the last year alone — including executions just for Twitter posts.”
Making a Killing
Last year, Saudi Arabia sentenced a retired teacher to death for posts on X critical of the Saudi royal family and calling for the release of imprisoned Islamic scholars. The year prior, Riyadh sentenced a 72-year-old dual U.S.-Saudi citizen to 16 years’ imprisonment for posts on X critical of the Saudi regime. Saudi Arabia also sentenced a Saudi Ph.D. student residing in the U.K. to 34 years’ imprisonment for simply following and retweeting activists critical of the regime.
Though Saudi Arabia formally abolished slavery in 1962, its coercive treatment of migrant domestic workers has been described by Human Rights Watch as “clearly” amounting to “slavery.” The Biden administration acknowledges this, describing slavery without using the word “slavery”; the State Department’s most recent report on the country’s human rights practices stating that “forced labor occurred among migrant workers” and that Saudi law “does not prohibit or criminalize all forms of forced or compulsory labor.”
In 2013, U.S. law enforcement officials reportedly investigated a “possible case of modern slavery” at a Saudi diplomatic compound in Virginia involving two women from the Philippines. A State Department spokesperson said that the investigation was complicated by the possibility that suspects enjoyed diplomatic immunity, which has prevented prosecution in previous cases. A similar case in London involving a Filipina domestic worker exploited by a Saudi diplomat made its way to the U.K. Supreme Court, which ruled that diplomats cannot hide behind diplomatic immunity in slavery cases.
Omar also condemned the UAE’s secret arms sales to Sudan. In September, a New York Times report revealed that the UAE was engaged in a sophisticated covert operation to supply weapons to the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, a paramilitary linked to Russia’s Wagner Group that is carrying out ethnic cleansing in Darfur.
“The United Arab Emirates have been violating the UN arms embargo in Darfur to support the RSF, which the State Department recently determined is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity,” Omar said. “They have also been arming the Ethiopian government, which has been accused of atrocities in Tigray, Amhara, and Oromia.”
“Refugees International is shocked by today’s New York Times report,” Jeremy Konyndyk, a former top USAID official under the Biden administration, said of the news in a press release, adding that “the UAE has allied itself with the perpetrators of the 2003 Darfur genocide.”
The post New Bills Aim to Block U.S. Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia, UAE Amid Concerns of Regional Conflict appeared first on The Intercept.
Exclusive: Israeli Military Censor Bans Reporting on These 8 Subjects
Weapons used by the Israel Defense Forces, security cabinet leaks, and stories about people held hostage by Hamas — these are some of the eight subjects the media are forbidden from reporting on in Israel, according to a document obtained by The Intercept.
The document, a censorship order issued by the Israeli military to the media as part of its war on Hamas, has not been previously reported. The memo, written in English, was an unusual move for the IDF’s censor, which has been part of the Israel military for more than seven decades.
“I haven’t ever seen instructions like this sent from the censor aside from general notices broadly telling outlets to comply, and even then it was only sent to certain people,” said Michael Omer-Man, a former editor-in-chief of the Israel’s +972 Magazine and today the director of research for Israel–Palestine at Democracy in the Arab World Now, or DAWN, a U.S. advocacy group.
Titled “Operation ‘Swords of Iron’ Israeli Chief Censor Directive to the Media,” the order is not dated, but its reference to Operation Swords of Iron — the name of Israel’s current military operation in Gaza — makes clear that it was issued sometime after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel. The order is signed by the chief censor of the Israel Defense Forces, Brig. Gen. Kobi Mandelblit. (The Israeli Military Censor did not respond to a request for comment on the memo.)
The document was provided to The Intercept by a source who himself was given a copy by the Israeli military. An identical document appears on the Israeli government’s website.
“In light of the current security situation and the intensive media coverage, we wish to encourage you to submit to the Censorship all materials dealing with the activities of the Israeli Defense Forces (I.D.F.) and the Israeli security forces prior to their broadcast,” the order says. “Please update your staff of the content of this letter, with an emphasis on the news desk and field reporters.”
The order enumerates eight topics the media are forbidden from reporting on without prior approval from the Israeli Military Censor. Some of the topics touch on hot-button political issues in Israel and internationally, such as potentially embarrassing revelations about weapons used by Israel or captured by Hamas, discussions of security cabinet meetings, and the Israeli hostages in Gaza — an issue that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been widely criticized for mishandling.
The memo also bans reporting on details of military operations, Israeli intelligence, rocket attacks that hit sensitive locations in Israel, cyberattacks, and visits by senior military officials to the battlefield.
Concerns about the politicization of the military censor are not merely hypothetical. Last month, the Israeli censor reportedly complained that Netanyahu was pressuring him to crack down on certain media outlets without legitimate reason. Netanyahu denied the charge.
Self-Censorship and Secrecy
The Israeli Military Censor is a unit located within the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate. The unit is commanded by the chief censor, a military officer appointed by the defense minister.
Since Israel’s war on Hamas started, more than 6,500 news items were either completely censored or partially censored by the Israeli government, Guy Lurie, a research fellow at Jerusalem-based Israel Democracy Institute, told The Intercept.
“People self-censor, people do not even try to report the stories they know won’t get through.”
To put the figure in context, Lurie said it was about four times more than before the war started, citing a report in the Israeli outlet Shakuf based on freedom of information requests. The number of submissions to the censor, however, are significantly higher at this time of heightened conflict, so Lurie noted that news items are facing a normal level of censorship in light of the ratio to total submissions.
The actual number of new stories affected by the censor, however, can never be quantified. Because of a system of close relationships and a feeling for what to expect, Israeli journalists can censor themselves.
“People self-censor, people do not even try to report the stories they know won’t get through,” Omer-Man said. “And that is really showing right now in how little regular Israelis are seeing in the press about what is happening in Gaza to Palestinians.”
Chief Censor of the Israel Defense Forces, Brig. Gen. Kobi Mandelblit.
Photo: IDF
It is these kinds of unofficial censorship that give the censor in Israel its power, said experts.
In a 2022, a State Department report on human rights in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories took on the military censor, singling out two Arabic-language newspapers in occupied East Jerusalem. While noting that the IDF censor didn’t review the papers, the State Department said, “Editors and journalists from those publications, however, reported they engaged in self-censorship due to fear of retribution by Israeli authorities.”
At one time, the censor had an Editors Committee composed of three members: one from the press, one from the military, and a publicly elected member who served as chair. Though the Editors Committee no longer officially exists, a similar, albeit informal body still maintains some sway.
Though the law that mandates the censor gives it widespread powers, the censor maintains its respectability in Israel by being politically independent and exercising restraint, especially in comparison to other countries in the region.
“If you look at the law that governs censorship, it’s really draconian in terms of the formal authorities the censor has,” Lurie told The Intercept. “But it’s mitigated by this informal arrangement.”
Almost all of it happens in secret: Committee discussions are confidential, as are most communiques between media outlets and the censor.
Asked why the processes are so secretive and why even the news organizations won’t speak out, one Western journalist based in Israel and Palestine, who asked for anonymity to avoid reprisals, had a blunt assessment: “Because it’s embarrassing.”
Foreign Press and the Censor
That the memo of directives for the current Israeli war on Gaza was in English suggests that it was intended for Western media. Foreign journalists working in Israel must obtain government permission, including a declaration that they will abide by the censor.
“In order to get a visa as a journalist, you have to get approval from GPO” — Government Press Office — “and therefore you have to sign a document that says you will comply with the censor,” said Omer-Man. “That in itself is probably against the ethics guidelines at a bunch of papers.”
Nonetheless, many journalists do sign the document. While The Associated Press, for instance, didn’t respond to The Intercept’s query about whether it cooperates with the military censor, the news wire has in the past reported on the issue, including admitting that it holds itself to the directive.
“The Associated Press has agreed, like other organizations, to abide by the rules of the censor, which is a condition for receiving permission to operate as a media organization in Israel,” the agency wrote in a 2006 story. “Reporters are expected to censor themselves and not report any of the forbidden material.”
Israel’s War on Gaza
Asked if it complied with guidance from Israel’s military censor and whether its compliance had changed since the onset of the war, Azhar AlFadl Miranda, the communications director for the Washington Post, told The Intercept in an email, “We aren’t able to share insight,” adding that “we don’t publicly discuss our editorial decisions.”
The New York Times told The Intercept, “The New York Times reports independently on the full spectrum of this complex conflict. We do not submit coverage to the Israeli military censor.” (Reuters did not answer The Intercept’s questions.)
Foreign press that cooperates with the censor is subject to the same system: Many stories don’t get passed through the censor, but certain issues merit submitting the stories.
“They know that they need to pass onto the censor reports that they want to publish on certain subjects,” said Lurie. “There are subjects that the media know that they need to get the censor’s approval.”
One of the things that makes the written, English-language censorship order unusual, however, is the order’s overt reference to the Hamas war. “I’ve never seen that for a specific war,” Lurie said.
“There are subjects that the media know that they need to get the censor’s approval.”
One subject known to be sensitive in Israel is the country’s covert nuclear arsenal. In 2004, BBC journalist Simon Wilson interviewed Mordechai Vanunu, a whistleblower on the nuclear program, who had just been released from prison. The Israeli censors demanded copies of the interview, but Wilson did not comply.
Wilson was then barred from reentry, and the Israel government demanded an apology. Initially, the BBC refused to furnish one, but eventually the worldwide news giant folded.
“He confirms that after the Vanunu interview he was contacted by the censors and was asked to give them the tapes. He did not do so. He regrets the difficulties this caused,” the BBC said in the apology. “He undertakes to obey the regulations in future and understands that any further violation will result in his visa being revoked.”
The apology, like so much else of the censor’s work, was to have remained secret, according to a 2005 Guardian story, but the BBC accidentally posted it on its website, before quickly removing it.
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