By SCOTT SHANE,
MARK MAZZETTI
and ROBERT F. WORTH


WASHINGTON - 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 Qaeda in the remote desert of Marib Province.

But the strike, it turned out, had also killed the province’s deputy governor, who Yemeni officials said had been trying to talk Qaeda 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 Mr. Saleh’s air force. It was a secret mission by the United States military, according to American officials, and part of the shadow war that the United States has been conducting against Al Qaeda and its allies.

In roughly a dozen countries, 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.

Virtually none of the newly aggressive steps have been publicly acknowledged. White House officials point to the benefits of bringing the fight against Al Qaeda and other militants into the shadows. Afghanistan and Iraq, they said, have sobered American politicians and voters about the staggering costs and repercussions of big wars.

Instead of “the hammer,” in the words of John O. Brennan, President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, America will rely on the “scalpel.”

Yemen is a testing ground for this “scalpel” approach, and the results so far demonstrate some of the perils of the new strategy.

The initial American strike in Yemen, on December 17, hit what was believed to be a Qaeda training camp in Abyan Province. The Yemeni government said that its air force had killed “around 34” Qaeda fighters there.

But the Yemeni press quickly identified the United States as responsible for the strike. A Navy ship had fired the weapon in the attack, a cruise missile loaded with cluster bombs, according to Amnesty International.

A Yemeni Parliament inquiry found the strike had killed 41 members of two families near the makeshift Qaeda camp.

American officials cited strained resources for decisions about some of the Yemen strikes. With the C.I.A.’s armed drones tied up in Pakistan, the officials said, cruise missiles were all that was available at the time.

Obama administration officials defend their efforts in Yemen. The strikes have been “conducted very methodically,” and claims of innocent civilians being killed are “very much exaggerated,” said a senior counterterrorism official.

On December 24, another cruise missile struck in a remote valley called Rafadh. The Yemeni authorities said the strike killed dozens of Qaeda operatives, including the leader of the Qaeda branch in Yemen, Nasser al- Wuhayshi, and his Saudi deputy, Said Ali al-Shihri. But officials later acknowledged that neither man was hit.

The next known American strike, on March 14, was more successful, killing a Qaeda operative named Jamil al-Anbari and possibly another militant.

In part, the uneven record of the Yemen airstrikes may derive from another unavoidable risk of the new shadow war: the need to depend on local proxies who may be unreliable or corrupt .

Meanwhile, the leadership of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula survives , and there is little sign the group is much weaker. Attacks by Qaeda militants in Yemen have increased again, with several deadly assaults on Yemeni army convoys .

As a test case, the strikes have raised the classic trade-off of the post- September 11 era: Do the selective hits make the United States safer by eliminating terrorists? Or do they help the terrorist network frame its violence as a heroic religious struggle against American aggression ?

Most Yemenis have little sympathy for Al Qaeda and have observed the American strikes with “passive indignation,” said Abdul Ghani al-Eryani, a Yemeni political analyst. But, he added, “I think the strikes over all have been counterproductive.”

The historical track record of such limited military efforts is not encouraging. Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, has found that these operations seldom achieve either their military or political objectives.

But he said that over the years, military force had proved to be a seductive tool that tended to dominate “all the discussions and planning” and push more subtle solutions to the side. This is apparent to visitors at the American Embassy in Sana, who have noticed that it is increasingly crowded with military personnel and intelligence operatives. For now, the shadow warriors are taking the lead.


Attacking Al Qaeda in Yemen

For months, the United States has waged a military campaign against Al Qaeda in Yemen, as operatives have created strongholds there. Obama administration officials say that the strikes have killed dozens of militants, although they add that
none of the group’s leaders have been killed. Critics say the strikes have sometimes been counterproductive, missing
targets and killing civilians, which has generated resentment among local people.

THE NEW YORK TIMES