Thread: State Department announces closure, evacuation of US Embassy in Yemen

State Department announces closure, evacuation of US Embassy in Yemen

Published February 11, 2015 FoxNews.com

The State Department announced late Tuesday that the U.S. Embassy in Yemen had been closed and evacuated after much of the country was taken over by Shiite rebels last month.

The embassy had already been operating with severely reduced staff for several weeks. State Department spokesman Jen Psaki said remaining diplomatic personnel had been relocated "due to the ongoing political instability and the uncertain security situation."

Yemen has been in crisis for months, with Iran-linked Shiite Houthi rebels besieging the capital and then taking control and forcing the resignation of the U.S. and Saudi-backed president and his government.

Earlier Tuesday, U.S. officials told the Associated Press that the closure would not affect ongoing operations against the terror group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

"The United States remains firmly committed to supporting all Yemenis who continue to work toward a peaceful, prosperous and unified Yemen," Psaki said. "We will explore options for a return to Sanaa when the situation on the ground improves."

The State Department also issued a travel warning advising U.S. citizens to defer travel to Yemen and urging U.S. citizens currently living in Yemen to depart.

Two U.S. officials said Marines providing the security at the embassy will also likely leave, but American forces conducting counterterrorism missions against Al Qaeda's Yemen affiliate in other parts of the country would not be affected. The U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the closure publicly on the record.

Although operations against AQAP will continue, the closure of the embassy will be seen as a blow to the Obama administration, which had held up its partnership with ousted Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi's government as a model for his strategy in combatting terrorism, particularly in unstable countries.

"Yemen has never been a perfect democracy or an island of stability," President Barack Obama said late last month as conditions in the capital of Sanaa became worse. "What I've said is, is that our efforts to go after terrorist networks inside of Yemen without an occupying U.S. army, but rather by partnering and intelligence-sharing with that local government, is the approach that we're going to need to take."

The embassy closure will also complicate the CIA's operations in Yemen, U.S. intelligence officials acknowledge. Although CIA officers could continue to work out of U.S. military installations, many intelligence operations are run from embassies, and the CIA lost visibility on Syria when that embassy was evacuated in 2012. The CIA's main role in Yemen is to gather intelligence about members of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and occasionally kill them with drone strikes.

Both the CIA and the military's Joint Special Operations Command run separate drone killing programs in Yemen, though the CIA has conducted the majority of the strikes, U.S. officials have said.

There were 23 U.S. drone strikes reported in Yemen last year, 26 in 2013 and 41 in 2012, according to Long War Journal, a website that tracks them through media reports.

The Houthis last week dissolved parliament and formally took over after months of clashes. They then placed President Hadi and his Cabinet ministers under house arrest. Hadi and the ministers later resigned in protest.

Earlier Tuesday, Yemeni military officials said the Houthis, aided by troops loyal to Hadi's predecessor, former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, took full control of the key central province of Bayda province.

Bayda is the gateway to the country's south, which remains in the hands of pro-independence southerners and to the strategic oil-rich Maarib province, to the east, also still not in rebel hands.

The U.S. Embassy in Yemen is the third in an Arab country that has closed since the turmoil of the Arab spring began in December 2010. The other two were embassies in Damascus, Syria and Tripoli, Libya. The embassy in Damascus was closed in Feb 2012 and the embassy in Tripoli was closed in July 2014.

The embassy in Yemen was operating with only a small portion of its usual diplomatic staff and had closed to the public for all but emergency services in January. It had been operating with reduced manpower since September 2014, when the State Department ordered all non-essential personnel to leave the country.

In May, 2014 the embassy in Sanaa was closed for several weeks due to heightened security threats.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/02/10/officials-us-closing-embassy-in-yemen-due-to-unrest/

Official: Houthis seize U.S. Embassy vehicles, Marines' weapons at airport

By Hakim Almasmari and Greg Botelho, CNN
Updated 10:06 AM ET, Wed February 11, 2015



U.S. and UK pull embassy staff from Yemen 01:05

Sanaa, Yemen (CNN)Houthi rebels took all U.S. Embassy vehicles parked at the Yemeni capital's airport and wouldn't allow departing U.S. Marines to take their weapons with them, a top airport official in Sanaa said Wednesday.

The actions come after the United States, along with Britain, suspended operations at their respective embassies and moved out staffers because of the instability in the Arab nation.

According to the official, the Houthis seized many U.S. Marines' weapons at the airport and the American troops also handed over some to random airport officials.

Yemeni employees at the American Embassy in Sanaa also said that embassy officials burned tens of thousands of documents Tuesday night and destroyed weapons that were inside the embassy's storage warehouses.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/11/middle...est/index.html