US aircraft circling over Yemeni capital heighten state of alert among locals

For the second day in a row, residents of the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, awoke to the sound of a perpetual buzzing.

The threat of a terrorist attack may have shuttered the US embassy in Sana’a and spurred the departure of the bulk of its staff, but locals seem unable to escape the shadow of the continuing US presence in the country, as the sight of surveillance aircraft leaves many on edge.

Craning their necks in a street in the city centre on Tuesday, shoppers preparing for the upcoming Eid al-Fitr holiday were stopped in their tracks by the strange sight in the sky.

Staring in disbelief, they all jumped to the same immediate fear, wondering aloud whether the US's so-called drone war in Yemen had finally reached Sana'a.

By mid-afternoon, the reality had become clear: rather than a remotely piloted warplane, it was simply a manned surveillance tool. But that did little to calm the general sense of alarm as the spy planes re-emerged, heightening a state of alert stemming from an alleged terrorist plot that has led Yemeni security forces to take what they cast as “unprecedented actions” aimed at preventing militants they said had infiltrated the capital from carrying out the attack.

A day later, and the capital was growing slowly accustomed to the presence of US spy planes in the sky but anger and resentment at this loud manifestation of the US’s policies was palpable.

'Disrespectful'
"[The flyovers] mark the most disrespectful and condescending thing the US has ever done to Yemenis . . . spying on them shopping for the Eid holiday in the last days of their holiest months," said writer and youth activist Farea al-Muslimi. "The rage in the street ignited by such behaviour is something the US can scarcely afford."

Intercepted communications between al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and Nasser al-Wuhayshi, head of al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula in Yemen (AQAP), are said to have spurred the alert level, which remains vague despite its apparent intensity.

AQAP has carried out numerous attacks on foreign targets in Sana’a, including a 2008 assault on the US embassy and a 2010 assassination attempt on then British ambassador Tim Torlot’s convoy.

A Yemeni official said the US aircraft were likely to be part of a broad effort aimed at tracking suspected militants in the capital who are believed to have travelled there with the aim of launching attacks.

But rather than leading to confidence at joint Yemeni-US efforts to prevent an al-Qaeda attack, they have fuelled greater fears of what could come next. It is not just a matter of a terrorist attack: many here openly fear a US overreaction could further destabilise the situation, while others have raised the spectre that local political factions could seize upon the uncertainty for their own benefit.

Drone strikes
The foreign aircraft in the skies may clearly be for the purposes of surveillance, but they come in the midst of a sustained spurt of direct US intervention in Yemen that has seen five drone strikes in less than two weeks.

According to a report by the Washington Post, US officials have said the strikes are directly aimed at disrupting AQAP's allegedly imminent plot, targeting militant operatives before they strike. But many here have cast aspersions at the idea, noting the reported deaths of two civilians in a strike last week and stressing that the bodies of those killed in the latest strikes have yet to be identified.

Few in Sana’a are keen to express sympathy with al-Qaeda, and any large-scale attack would inevitably be met with condemnation. But on the city’s streets, people are watching as anxiously for the US’s next move as much as al-Qaeda’s. – (Guardian service)