253 Javier Jordán Drone attacks campaign in Yemen the country, in those areas where the AQAP militants were hiding out. This was complemented by similar missions using US Navy combat airplanes. Saleh made it a condition that all of the images captured by the drones had to be sent to an operations centre that was set up, with the help of the CIA, at the Yemeni ministry of defence. So as not to make American too obvious, Saleh proposed that, as the same way as happened in December, responsibility for the attacks should be attributed to the national air force.31 Years before, in October 2002, the death of Al Harizi used by being fired on by a Predator had provoked a strong reaction in the streets of the capital. According to one of the American cables published by Wikileaks, in January 2010, President Saleh told General Petraeus –the chief of the Central Command at that time- “we will keep on saying that the bombs are ours, not yours”.32 The position of the Yemeni government is now more explicit. On a trip he made to the United States, in September 2012, the current president, Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, acknowledged that the American attacks come with permission from his Government. He justified that stance by arguing that unmanned aircraft have more advanced technology and they are more accurate than Yemeni military aviation.33 The United States carried out a fresh air strike in mid-January 2010, followed by two more over the course of the same year. Ten new attacks took place in 2011, four of which were carried out by armed drones, including the one that ended Anwar Al Awalki’s life in the month of September. The first assault with a CIA drone happened at the start of May 2011.34 The trend towards the use of UCAVs was confirmed in 2012, when all of the aerial actions were known to be carried out by unmanned aircraft. The number of strikes increased considerably following the resignation of President Saleh in February. In total, in 2012, forty-two air strikes were counted, as compared to sixteen recorded during the preceding three years. Figure 1 sets out the timeline of the strikes. One factor that explains the increase in the bombing is that, in April 2012, the Obama Administration authorised the use of the so-called signature strikes: attacks against places and individuals that, because of their patterns of behaviour (detected using SIGINT, HUMINT or IMINT), suspicions arose that there were activities of Al Qaeda militants, even though the identity of the person or persons in question was 31 Aid, Mathew M., Intel Wars. The Secret History of the Fight Against Terror, (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2012), pp. 149-150. 32 Bergen, Peter & Rowland, Jennifer, “Obama ramps up covert war in Yemen”, CNN, June 12, 2012. 33 Miller, Greg, “In interview, Yemeni president acknowledges approving U.S. drone strikes”, The Washington Post, September 29, 2012 34 Ackerman, Spencer, “CIA’s Drones Join Shadow War Over Yemen”, Danger Room, June 14, 2011.
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