America's Dangerous Game

Last year, the Obama administration celebrated the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a leading figure in al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), as the latest military victory in its new counter-terrorism strategy focused on covert kill/capture operations. In the US, the al-Awlaki strike looked like a clear tactical victory against AQAP, which Washington now considers its most dangerous enemy in the 'war on terror'. But from a Yemeni perspective, the US' covert military campaign seems to be undermining its own strategic interests. Critics say that even when they hit their intended targets, US missile strikes and raids just further destabilise the country. And the American need for proxy forces and intelligence tied the US into a dangerous and compromising alliance with Yemen's embattled and unpopular president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. Now he has been forced out by protests against his authoritarian regime, the White House's efforts may come to naught. America's Dangerous Game, from filmmakers Richard Rowley and Jeremy Scahill, reveals the full scale of the covert war in Yemen and asks the question: Is the US creating more enemies than it can kill or capture?

Jeremy Scahill is an American journalist currently writing for The Nation. He is the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army

It is a private military base, spread over seven thousand acres, near the town of Moyock and the Great Dismal Swamp, with firing ranges, tactical exercise areas and an armoury (containing more than a thousand weapons, according to the Virginian-Pilot, the local newspaper, though there is no law preventing Blackwater stocking as many as it wants). There are also the 21st-century equivalent of barracks (convention-style hotel rooms), an office block in which the door handles are fashioned from machine-gun barrels, and a memorial rock garden to the 25 Blackwater employees and one Blackwater dog killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The centrepiece of the memorial is a bronze sculpture of a pensive boy hugging a folded American flag to his breast. Since Pizarro visited (he later recruited hundreds of Chilean mercenaries to work in Iraq for Blackwater, some of them amnestied for their deeds under the Pinochet regime), construction has continued apace. Blackwater is building a 6000-foot airstrip and facilities to house its aviation wing of 20 transport planes and helicopters, as well as a large hangar for the construction of airships and a plant to make an armoured vehicle called the Grizzly.

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