US asks to deploy troops to Yemen

Chiara Onassis | 2 April 2012

SANA’A: As more attacks by al-Qaeda militants against Yemen armed forces in recent weeks and the announcement of yet another defeat and the death of dozens of soldiers, the White House reached out to President Abdu Rabbo Mansour Hadi asking him to approve the deployment of American troops in Yemen.

Only a month ago residents in Socotra, an archipelago off the coast of the Gulf of Aden told the press that American soldiers had temporarily used their islands, giving more credence to declarations made by the American Defense Department earlier this year that the US was working at establishing several mobile army bases in the region to fend off the Iranian “threat” and give more mobility to its troops.

With a presence of Marines in Sana’a, the capital and given Yemenis’ reservations towards more American intervention, President Hadi is looking over the potential repercussions of his decision.

Caught in between an enemy which has a reach that is expanding at lightning speed with more towns and villages falling everyday under the control of the Islamists, and the fear of popular outrage if foreign boots are to enter Yemen, President Hadi is facing his toughest challenge to date.

As tensions are rising in the capital, Sana’a with a return of armed militias in some parts of the city, the US embassy asked all their nationals to immediately evacuate the country, warning of a potential “meltdown.” The warning came after Americans were targeted by al-Qaeda militants, with the death only weeks ago of an American teacher in the southern city of Taiz, a flashpoint of the revolution and threats made against AMIDEAST, an American language institute in Aden.