"The remote control war of the US in Yemen has already cost many lives and even more of hearts and minds."...
8/2/12, "Yemenis question US strategy in fight with al-Qaeda," BBC,
"The US drives the war effort here and despite growing poverty and malnutrition, America's recently boosted humanitarian package to Yemen still lags behind its military aid.
In recent months the US also increased drone attacks on militants.
Last year, one such attack killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born cleric who preached jihad online and is believed to have been an inspiration to some of the 9/11 bombers.
Awlaki's death was a big victory for the US, but the US Center for Constitutional Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union claim that it was unconstitutional.
Together with Awlaki's family, they have filed a lawsuit in the federal court suing senior CIA and military officials. They argue that the killing of US citizens by their own government in drone strikes in Yemen violates both the US constitution and international law.
Khaled, a young tribesman from Marib province, admits he does not know much about intricacies of international law but is adamant that killing people without trial or solid evidence is wrong.
"We were against Osama Bin Laden because he killed people without putting them on trial, and now they [the Americans] are doing the same here," he says.
Khaled's cousin, a local tribal sheikh, was recently killed in an American drone attack along with his 14-year-old son. ...
"This is how you create grievances and revenge. My cousin had 30 children - what will happen to them? Will they end up as criminals or militants because there is no-one offering them an alternative," Khaled says.
After the attack, Khaled says, militants approached his cousin's eldest son.
They offered him compensation and bought him a new car. He has now joined al-Qaeda.
Khaled says al-Qaeda is a problem, but the way America and the Yemeni government are fighting them, he says is simply counter-productive.
"There are many types of al-Qaeda. The majority of them are not ideological. If you enforce security and rule-of-law and improve the economic situation then al-Qaeda will lose support and without support they will be easy to finish off," he says.
Under the President George W Bush, the US was often frustrated with Yemen for promising to join the fight against al-Qaeda while turning a blind eye to the group on the ground.
"In the past when [Ali Abdullah] Saleh was in charge, he was not sincerely fighting al-Qaeda, but now we should be given a chance to fight ourselves," says Mr Iriyani.
"For the first time we see the army successfully rooting out al-Qaeda militants. Why don't the Americans give Yemenis a chance to fight our own fight, and not complicate things with drone attacks," he says.
The remote control war of the US in Yemen has already cost many lives and even more of hearts and minds, and that, many believe, makes it much harder to win a battle which neither Yemen nor the world can afford to lose."
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