At first, the news from Yemen on May 25 sounded like a modest victory in the campaign against terrorists: An airstrike had hit a group suspected of being operatives for Al-Qaida in the remote desert of Marib Province, birthplace of the legendary queen of Sheba. But the strike, it turned out, had also killed the province's deputy governor, a respected local leader who Yemeni officials said had been trying to talk Al-Qaida members into giving up their fight. Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, accepted responsibility for the death and paid blood money to the offended tribes.
The strike, though, was not the work of Saleh's decrepit Soviet-era air force. It was a secret mission by the U.S. military, according to U.S. officials -- at least the fourth such assault on Al-Qaida in the arid mountains and deserts of Yemen since December.
The attack offered a glimpse of the Obama administration's shadow war against Al-Qaida and its allies. In roughly a dozen countries -- from the deserts of North Africa, to the mountains of Pakistan, to former Soviet republics crippled by ethnic and religious strife -- the United States has significantly increased military and intelligence operations, pursuing the enemy using robotic drones and commando teams, paying contractors to spy and training local operatives to chase terrorists.
The full article chronicles many more targets and strikes.
By: Brant
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