(Newswire.net — March 18, 2015) — Since 2007, The US has supplied more than $500 million in military aid to Yemen throughout Defense Department and State Department managed programs. However, in January 2015, the political clime in Yemen changed. Iran sponsored Shiite Houthi rebels who overtook most of the political and military power in Yemen.
Amid the new circumstances, the US officials find them selves in a hostile territory and in February closed the US Embassy in Sanaa, the capitol of Yemen. By losing the influence in the region, the US lost track of $500,000,000 worth of military equipment and weaponry, donated by the US to the Yemeni government, mainly small arms, ammunition, night vision goggles, patrol boats, vehicles and other supplies.
“We have to assume it’s completely compromised and gone,” a legislative aide on Capitol Hill told the Washington Post, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
According the Washington Post, US military officials declined to comment for the record, however, an unnamed defense official source said there was no hard evidence the weaponry had been stolen or confiscated, but the Pentagon just lost track of it.
“Even in the best-case scenario in an unstable country, we never have 100 percent accountability,” the defense official told the newspaper.
Reportedly, the Pentagon officials told Washington Post that they have little information to go on and that there is not much they can do at this point to prevent the weapons and gear from falling into the wrong hands.
Pentagon have halted all military shipments to Yemen, officials said, however they redirected Yemen’s $125 million worth of military equipment and weaponry shipment as a donation to other countries in the Middle East and Africa.
Yemen was considered a success story for the White House, after the US spent $25 billion to recreate Iraqi security forces that were eventually defeated in 2014 by Islamic State fighters. However, US efforts to equip with weapons, ammunition and gear, foreign forces to combat terrorists on their soil somehow end up ingloriously.
“The administration really wanted to stick with this narrative that Yemen was different from Iraq, that we were going to do it with fewer people, that we were going to do it on the cheap,” said Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), chairperson of the House Armed Services Committee.
“They were trying to do with a minimalist approach because it needed to fit with this narrative . . . that we’re not going to have a repeat of Iraq,” he said.