Luke Somers, the American hostage. Yahoo/AP
An American photojournalist and a South African teacher were killed in a failed rescue attempt in Yemen. Yahoo/AP. The two men, American Luke Somers and South African Pierre Korkie, were apparently shot by Al-Qaeda during or shortly before the rescue attempt. Tragically, Korkie was due to be released on Sunday. President Obama ordered the raid after Al-Qaeda released a video indicting that Somers was to be executed on Saturday. The video made demands but it is unclear what those demands were. In addition, a drone strike killed nine Al-Qaeda members in Yemen on the same day but it is unclear if the strike was related to the mission. This is the second failed attempt to rescue Somers as a strike last month failed due to the fact that he was not where he was suspected to be. The raid did release eight people, but none of them were the American.
My Comment:
Yet another botched raid. I'm all for trying to rescue hostages but the U.S. governments track record lately hasn't been great. There was the raid in Syria that failed, the first raid in Yemen and now this third one that ended with two hostages dead. I understand that there is a real possibility that the military manages to pull these off successfully and it never makes the news, but when it goes wrong the whole world knows.
Of course this was an impossible situation. Somers was due to be executed today, so this was the only chance to save him. It didn't work out, and for now it is pointless to speculate on why they failed or which organizations were involved. The only good news, such as it is, is that the hostages were killed by their captors and not by their rescuers. It was worth trying but it did not work out as planned. To be perfectly fair to the president, I may have done the same thing...
Time will tell how big of an impact this will have. The fact that Korkie was due to be released by Al-Qaeda in just a day may end up being unpopular in South Africa. After all, he would have almost certainly lived if the rescue attempt had not happened. I have sympathy of course, but there is another aspect of this that makes me very uncomfortable. The only way Korkie would have been released is if someone paid Al-Qaeda's ransom demands. If that is the case then that does not sit well with me at all. Paying ransom for hostages only encourages further hostage taking and any country or organization that pays for hostages should really rethink things.
Still, this is a tragedy for all involved. Except Al-Qaeda of course. Sure they almost certainly took casualties in this raid and I doubt they will get the ransom money for Korkie now. But this is a propaganda coup for them, and a needed one at that. Al-Qaeda has fallen off the news pages lately due to ISIS overshadowing them. This operation, while painful for the organization, will lead to prestige, funding and new recruits. Even though it was most likely a Pyrrhic victory, they were still able to stop a major U.S. operation from completing their mission.
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