Pentagon sends special operations team to fight Al Qaeda in Yemen

The Pentagon has launched airstrikes and sent a U.S. special operations team to southern Yemen to work with Arab military forces battling to push Al Qaeda militants out of cities and towns they captured during the country’s civil war.

The dozen or so U.S. commandos were sent to Mukalla after about 2,000 Yemeni and Saudi-led coalition troops retook the strategic seaport, oil terminal and airport in what was seen as a major victory on April 24.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, known as AQAP, had controlled the port city for a year, and it was considered their most significant stronghold. Most of the militants reportedly withdrew before the coalition advance following mediation by Muslim clerics.

The U.S. advisors are providing intelligence and other assistance to Yemeni and Arab coalition forces, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as they push west from the city, according to the Pentagon.

U.S. drones and warplanes have launched four airstrikes since April 23 that killed 10 militants, U.S. officials said.

“This is specifically about routing AQAP from Mukalla, and that has largely occurred,” Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said Friday. “This is really about providing fusion and access to U.S. information on a tactical, real-time level.”

AQAP “is a significant threat and they need to be rooted out of there,” Davis added.

The U.S. team is supposed to help coordinate aerial surveillance operations and help local commanders with mission planning, Davis said.

The Boxer, a Navy amphibious assault ship with more than 1,200 sailors and Marines aboard, is stationed offshore in the Gulf of Aden to provide medical support if required.

The special operations team is the first U.S. military unit to officially return to Yemen since March 2015, when a large U.S. military and counter-terrorism contingent was withdrawn from an air base used to launch drone strikes and raids against Al Qaeda.

AQAP has flourished since then amid the chaos of the multi-sided civil war, seizing cities and towns, looting banks, and raising millions of dollars by extorting companies, imposing taxes and export duties, and smuggling.

But the Al Qaeda franchise and its rival, Islamic State, were excluded from the cease-fire between Yemen’s government and the Houthi insurgents that took effect on April 10, leading to United Nations-brokered peace talks in Kuwait.

U.S. intelligence agencies consider AQAP one of Al Qaeda’s most dangerous offshoots because of its repeated attempts to attack Western targets.

The group attempted to bomb a U.S.-bound airliner over Detroit in 2009, tried to take down two cargo planes headed to Chicago in 2010, and claimed responsibility for the mass shooting that killed 12 people at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris in 2015.

Yemen has been engulfed in conflict since 2014, when a Shiite Muslim minority group called the Houthi overran Sana, the capital, and took over much of the government.

Houthi rebels then pushed south and appeared on the verge of capturing Aden, the country’s economic hub, when Saudi-led warplanes launched a counterattack in March 2015.

By then, the rebels had forced Yemen’s U.S.-backed president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, into exile and controlled much of the Arab world’s poorest nation.

The Houthis have fought against AQAP, Sunni Muslims whom they consider enemies. But Saudi airstrikes have chiefly targeted the Houthis, giving Al Qaeda a relatively free hand.

Seth Jones, a former U.S. counter-terrorism official now with Rand Corp., the Santa Monica-based think tank, said AQAP was losing territory until Hadi’s pro-Western government fell.

The collapse of the central government “meant a lot of pressure against AQAP had stopped,” Jones said.

Mukalla, a provincial capital with about 300,000 residents, is an important seaport and oil terminal in Yemen. AQAP used it to sell oil, control trade and move weapons in and out of their territory.

The militants’ yearlong occupation of the city, and their ability to keep order, provide electricity and other services, gave a psychological boost to Al Qaeda’s position in Yemen, said Stephen Seche, the U.S. ambassador to Yemen from 2007 to 2010.

AQAP was “operating with impunity,” he said. “They were creating a sense of security and stability and normalcy, and that is something absolutely we want to disrupt.... It gave them time to design plans, and we know they want to launch attacks.”

AQAP may have made a tactical retreat in Mukalla, Seche said.

“They will regroup elsewhere,” he said. “This is a bit of whack-a-mole.”

william.hennigan@latimes.com

brian.bennett@latimes.com