The Obama administration has quietly deployed troops to help fight in Yemen over the past two weeks, with little public attention.

Yemen now joins a series of other Middle Eastern countries in which U.S. troops are on the ground without declaration of war and approval from Congress, combating extremist groups that have benefited from U.S. policies.

The military did not reveal until Friday, May 6, that it had sent troops to Yemen. The Pentagon refused to say what kind of forces it deployed or how many U.S. troops there are, only describing it as a “very small number.”

The Pentagon says it is intervening to support its ally the United Arab Emirates, or UAE, in its fight against what is widely recognized to be al-Qaeda’s most dangerous affiliate.

Yet the destructive Saudi-led war the U.S. has backed for more than a year is the reason al-Qaeda and other extremist groups have grown so quickly in the country.

In March 2015, a coalition of Western allies led by Saudi Arabia and armed and supported by the U.S. and U.K. began a brutal bombing campaign in Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East.

Extremists groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS have exploited the chaos this war has created in order to grow.

As Salon has frequently reported over the past year, U.S. military officials as prominent as Secretary of Defense Ash Carter were warning as early as April 2015, less than one month into the war, that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, had “seized the opportunity of the disorder there and the collapse of the central government.”

Reuters published a report in April detailing how the U.S.-backed Saudi-led “war in Yemen has made al-Qaeda stronger — and richer.”

A prominent journalist warned in a recent column that AQAP was the ultimate winner of the disastrous U.S.-backed Saudi war in Yemen, describing it as “Iraq all over again.”

Al-Qaeda has created what is effectively a mini-state on the south coast of Yemen, where it controls a 340-mile area in which it reigns over the local population and collects taxes.

AQAP is one of the most extreme branches of al-Qaeda. It took responsibility for the January 2015 attack on the Paris office of the magazine Charlie Hebdo.

ISIS has also capitalized on the chaos of the war and carved out its own territory in Yemen.

Almost exactly one year after the New York Times published the article “Al Qaeda Is Capitalizing on Yemen’s Disorder, U.S. Warns,” the Obama administration deployed troops to fight the very same extremists who have benefited from its policies.

“U.S. counter-terrorism efforts have been undermined by Yemen’s civil war,” Reuters acknowledged in its report. “Prior to the Mukalla offensive, AQAP was estimated to have become more powerful than at any time in its history.”

A Pentagon spokesperson told a news briefing on Friday that the U.S. forces in Yemen are filling a variety of roles, providing aerial refueling, security, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, planning, medical support and more.

Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis said “AQAP remains a significant security threat to the United States and to our regional partners and we welcome this effort to specifically remove AQAP from Mukalla and to degrade, disrupt and destroy AQAP in Yemen,” Reuters reported.