A former official of the U.S. State Department in Yemen says every drone killing by the American military there creates 40 to 60 new enemies of the United States.

In an article posted Wednesday in The Cairo Review, Nabeel Khoury, the deputy chief of mission in Yemen from 2004 to 2007, writes:

Drone strikes take out a few bad guys to be sure, but they also kill a large number of innocent civilians. Given Yemen’s tribal structure, the U.S. generates roughly forty to sixty new enemies for every AQAP [al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] operative killed by drones.

— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.