Yemen wedding party goof up: US had nothing much to lose; just $80,000 and a few rifles

, Aug 11: The wedding party goof up by

drones in Yemen last year continues to chart the top headlines of news channels even now, especially when the secrets of the airstrike are out. It was a goof-up for sure and that was re-instated when the US government did not retract on its statement that they hit the right convoy and killed the right person, including a terrorist Shawqi al-Badani. If the wedding attire of the members of the ill-fated convoy is not wnough, US top officials should have seen the Yemeni tribes (to which the dead belonged to) ravage the local municipalty office.

Ironically, US chose to silence the complaining lips and the murmuring crowds with a mere compensation of $80,000 and 105 rifles and traditional arms that formed the Yemeni tribes' pride.

What happened to the wedding party that was taking its bride from the Taysi tribe to her husband from the al-Amri tribe. Although she escaped the fate of the rest of the convoy who got cut into pieces by the droning splinters, she witnessed death very closely.

When the top agencies in the USA realised the goof up, all they did was send a convoy to meet the chief of the two tribes-men and silence them with a compensation for the ' slain militants' families and a few arms.

The complexities

The most disturbing part of Political wars is that politics percolates in the life of the civilians too. What the chieftains or the 'shyakhs' termed a 'massacre' were now satisfied with a word of assurance. But mind you, the assurance was not to bring the perpetrators to justice, but of government 'redressing their GRIEVANCES' soon. Of course, with a country with no water and power, an assuarance of this kind was enough.

This is not the first time

The people behind the unplanned attack were a silent agent called the JSCOC or the Joint Special Operations Command, considered one of the elitest groups among the Delta Force and Navy SEALs. While it has conducted air strikes on some very important missions like killing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Osama Bin Laden, its goof ups are blasphemous too.

1. Before the Christmas of 2009, the JSOC targets an al-Qaeda training camp in southern Yemen. With permission from the White House, Navy ships off the coast of Yemen fired several cruise missiles equipped with cluster bombs at McRaven's targets. It was later revealed by local reporters that the tribe which was missiled was a village and not a training camp for terrorists.

2. The mistaken identity of Jabir al-Shabwani, a deputy governor in central Yemen was debatable. Based on intelligence provided by the Yemeni government, there was supposed to be an al-quaeda meeting. But the U.S. had no way to independently verify the information or determine the identities of the men it was about to kill. Shabwani, it turned out, had been meeting with al-Qaeda fighters in an effort to convince them to surrender.

3. On August 2012, a U.S. drone hit a meeting in eastern Yemen, killing a local cleric who had been speaking out from the pulpit against al-Qaeda. It was the same story the following month when a JSOC drone struck a pickup outside of Radaa, killing 11 civilians.

Who pays for it?

Secrets from sources reveal that the US and Yemen were partners in crime. While one committed blunders, the other one covered up for it. Yemen is a U.S. ally that says it approves every drone strike, but it is also so strapped for cash that the government has implemented numerous austerity measures.

Either it handed out the money and guns to cover for its partner, or the U.S. privately paid money to the families of men it publicly describes as al-Qaeda while simultaneously promoting the man responsible for the strike. In truth, only three things are known for certain: Twelve men are dead, $800,000 in cash was delivered, and the dead can't be both guilty and innocent.

With the elections in the USA just round the corner, Barack Obama is already running a risk of criticism for his foreign policies; this could just be adding fuel to the fire.

OneIndia News