EVACUATION OF U.S. EMBASSY IN YEMEN
Background: By February 2015, the situation in Yemen had become untenable for the U.S. Embassy. In the three weeks prior, the Iranian backed Houthi militias had fired upon a U.S. Government vehicle at a checkpoint and had also seized control of the Presidential Palace and arrested the Yemeni President.
Issue: Our team was called upon to help execute the emergency action plan that we had developed for the U.S. Embassy. There were however, a number of issues, chief among them not drawing attention of the Houthi militias to our efforts. If the Houthi's believed that we were planning to draw-down and evacuate, they would take aggressive measures to keep us in place. The loss of the U.S. presence would prompt many of our allies to leave Yemen, which would be a disaster for the Houthi political effort at maintaining a semblance of legitimacy.
Insight: Our team spent a great deal of time analyzing the attack on the U.S. Government vehicle and personnel. We did not escalate the situation. Based on our analysis we believed that the Houthi militias did not anticipate our response, which led to an uneasy equilibrium. Houthi militias had anticipated a loss of life, which would have led to a rapid escalation and provided them cover to engage us further.
Since no loss of life occurred on either side, the Houthi militias were unsure of what to do. They had already executed the takeover of the capital and the seizure of the government but they had not provoked an open conflict with the U.S. Government. Our team believed that we could convince the Houthi's that we were prepared to "overlook" the matter if they would encourage this fiction.
Strategy: The strategy we developed to implement this insight was to outwardly mirror our previous patterns of behavior but in reality use them to disguise our true intentions. Utilizing this strategy we were able to reduce U.S. personnel from over 300 to approximately 120 over the course of a week. The details are proprietary.
We also had to ensure that the normal flow of local Yemeni staff was observed coming in and out of work each day. However, our local staff knew the truth, which was that we were preparing to leave. So we needed to maintain morale and discipline until our evacuation was complete. If the Houthi militias discovered our plan, based on massive absences by our local staff we would have to contemplate a military evacuation, which would introduce a great deal of risk and potential danger. To this end, our team put forth a plan to guarantee the payment of local staff salaries even after we evacuate (which when priced in the local currency represented a tiny fraction of what the cost of a full-blown military evacuation would be).
Our team then began an intensive outreach with the local staff in Arabic and they were moved by the commitment shown to them. In turn they showed us commitment by working up until the final hours of the evacuation with no loss of productivity.
When the order was given by the National Security Council, we had 72 hours to execute our final preparations, which included the logistics of ensuring nothing of value would be left behind as well as the logistics in evacuating our remaining personnel. Our insight proved valuable as the strategy we devised paid off. The Houthi militias were not prepared for our rapid departure.
Outcome: On February 11, 2015 our team successfully led a 37-car motorcade under cover of darkness to the airport, where we evacuated by chartered aircraft with the remaining 120 personnel to Oman.
Members of our team won the 2015 Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association Uncommon Valor Award for their actions during the evacuation and the events leading up to the evacuation.
Finally, our team created a scalable process for use by any organization for managing various types of risks. This process has already been briefed to and replicated by the U.S. Department of State and the Department of Defense.