A mainly covert U.S. role in Yemen relies to a considerable extent on drones which are flown from a base in nearby Djibouti on the horn of Africa. There is also a secret base thought to be in Saudi Arabia.However, there are also special forces on the ground.
Yemeni officials also reported that the capital of Abyan province, Zinjibar was hit by missile fire from the Gulf of Aden. The Yemeni government does not have the capability to mount such an attack so no doubt it was mounted from U.S. warships. Zinjibar is occupied by the militant group Ansar al Sharia.
Hadi has so far thrown his lot in with the U.S. in making a priority attacks upon Al Qaeda and other militant groups such as Ansar al Sharia. Saleh alternated attacks with deals with the militants.
Since last May there have been 26 reported U.S,. drone strikes in Yemen. So far this year there have been a dozen already. However militants are stepping up attacks too often taking the battle to the military by attacking bases. The military has already suffered 250 killed this year and lost several bases to militants.
President Kennedy said it best: when peaceful revolution is impossible, violent revolution is inevitable.
Yemen may well have a new president; however, nothing, really, has changed in terms of the "misery index" of the Yemenite people. Poverty, corruption, and hardship hasn't been abated one single bit since the transition.
And therein lies the problem.
I can understand that the US government doesn't want the unrest here to spill over into Saudi Arabia, where a sclerotic House of Saud is barely holding on to power only through its own brand of brutal repression.
But the US government is going about suppressing unrest in Yemen in what appears to be an absolutely, hamfistedly wrong way.
In order to prevent, or at least ameliorate unrest which leads to violence and bloodshed, you have to start fixing the situations which lead to the unrest in the first place.
Enlightened US foreign policy here would insist that food aid, medical aid, education, and infrastructure be top priorities for the government, with transparency guarantees that the aid actually wound up going for the good of the people of Yemen.
The US cannot possibly be seen as the "good guy", when it is supporting another corrupt tinpot dictator with no social or moral conscience in terms of truly taking care of his or her people.
And unfortunately, that is all too often the case with US foreign policy, all over the world.
And in the case of Yemen, should President Hadi's government fall, the US will be looking at a profoundly anti-US government in Yemen, right on the border of Saudi Arabia.