The Washington Post has an article on how the Obama administration is working/hoping that Saudi Arabia and its terrorist rehabilitation program might prove the solution to the problem of closing Guantanamo. The Saudis are a bit less enamored of the idea and express doubts that it would work.
The article also states that as many as 20% of those who have gone through the Saudi rehabilitation program have gone back to their evil ways. That’s a considerably higher number than had been batted about in the past. The piece notes that the successes have all been relatively minor figures, involved on the periphery of terror or not yet fully engaged. The hard core aren’t in the program, but instead are in jails.
The article is definitely worth reading in full.
U.S. Sees Saudi Program As an Option for Detainees
Sudarsan Raghavan and Peter FinnJIDDAH, Saudi Arabia — Four years after Khalid al-Jehani’s release from the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the 34-year-old Saudi lives a peaceful life in this sprawling coastal city. He has a car, a job and a well-furnished apartment — courtesy of the Saudi government.
The rehabilitation of militants such as Jehani has convinced the Obama administration that Saudi Arabia is the ideal place to send dozens of Yemenis being held at Guantanamo. For months, U.S. officials have applied pressure on Riyadh. But Saudi officials say their success with former detainees such as Jehani lies in members of his family and tribe, who keep constant watch over him, and cannot be duplicated with those whose social networks and roots lie outside Saudi Arabia.
“If I try to do something bad, my family will tell the government about me,” said Jehani, who joined a radical Islamist movement in the Philippines and trained al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan. “How can you trust that will happen with a family living in Yemen?”
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October:14:2009 - 18:10
hmm, interesting and good thoughts about rehabilitation.
But sincerely looking into the mind of a militant, he has left his family for years, been in some god forsaken desert/mountain with little food, was injured, hunted down like a animal, got arrested, abused in the prison while being locked up almost indefinitely.
Now you take this militant out give him a hearty meal of kabsa/mandi with a good job, wife, home, car, etc. with a warning be a good boy, any one would take the offer.
But what the security establishment fails to see is deep down in his heart, his convictions for taking up a career of violence still remains the same. Technically there is no solution.
Whats your opinion John?
October:14:2009 - 20:14
Another great post John! Though unfortunately another one that got me thinking about our “unfortunate” Prime Minister, and the fact that thanks to him we are the only Western nation with a citizen still in Guantanamo–and a child soldier (Omar Khadr) at that! Our Canadian Bar Association and the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry in Toronto, and his American military lawyers (one a devout Evangelical Christian) have put together a rehab program of day hospital psychiatric care to treat his PTSD, legal monitoring and trial, living with his maternal grandparents (no Al-Qaeda ties) and religious rehab through an Imam and a mosque in Toronto (ditto). The Federal Court has ordered the government to take Khadr out of Guantanamo but the Harper government is appealing it. Shameful!
As rehab programs go a 80% success rate is stupendous! All rehab programs have exclusion criteria of those who are deemed not to be able to benefit. The Saudi program is unique, or at least was the first to include religious rehabilitation, and such serious social support. These 2 factors are the ones that need to be addressed most to prevent relapse: reintegration with mainstream Islam and with mainstream Saudi society. The Saudis are wise to see that the program won’t work with Yemenis because of the problem of social integration and guarantees.
The brilliant deinstitutionalizaton program for mental patients developed in Italy failed miserably elsewhere, partly because it was applied with insufficient care and resources, and partly because there was in most places no community to send the patients back to, unlike the Italian villages where the program was the most effective. In places like Morocco it was a disaster. Change there had been so rapid that patients suddenly sent out from hospitals where they had been living for decades were in a different world. Many had never seen a streetlight before, let alone the rest of modernization post-WWII and post-independence.
All of which is to say I agree with the Saudis on this, and Obama will have to take more time and find other solutions to the Guantanamo catastrophe.
October:14:2009 - 20:19
@chiara:
I agree that as a psychiatrist you would have better educated opinion.
But given the fact that this program is public, wouldn’t the militants be trained to deceive a psychiatric assessment, and slip through the loop hole?
When polygraphs can be deceived why not psychiatrists?
October:14:2009 - 20:42
I agree with the assessment that this program wouldn’t work with non-Saudis, but I think the man quoted in the article is waxing optimistic about his family’s willingness to turn in a recidivist relative. Giving low-level operatives a job, a house, and a new life will probably work, even without family members exerting pressure privately on them to behave. However, the hardcore devotees will not be dissuaded by this, nor are their family members likely to turn them in if they do fall back into their old ways. I do not believe that the average Saudi extended family (especially the more prominent tribes) will sell out their own to the government.
October:14:2009 - 20:48
Hannah, nice to see you back!
Actually, there have been reports of several tribes doing just that. It may well be that the person they turned in was of low status in the tribe, but…
October:15:2009 - 07:47
I wonder at the way abu abdullah puts a wife in with material posessions. Interesting look into the working of his mind.
A woman is a sentient human and has her own ideas about whom she wants to marry. A terrorrist might not be most women’s first choice.
Not that that would have any weight in Saudi, where women are married off to whomever suits the mahram.
I agree with H. I think it is unlikely that families/tribes will report their own members. If they do there might be something else going on. And I thought that terrorrists were taught to despise their families? At least if they don’t think in the same line?
October:15:2009 - 08:23
@STW:
I agree with you here, but sadly though to rein in these elements thats what happens here and i am not advocating “giving wives away” as you like to think.
I advocate a better and more pragmatic approach in rehabilitation than what is being done.
October:15:2009 - 10:50
STW
“Not that that would have any weight in Saudi, where women are married off to whomever suits the mahram.”
I think this isn’t exactly accurate. While it can happen and occasionally does- especially to young brides, it is not the norm. The mahram does need to give his approval but most mahrams(usually the father) want a suitable spouse for their daughter(like most fathers)- one who will make them happy over the long term- and generally the woman gives her approval or agreement. That’s not to say they always get it right, but that is true in many populations.
Keep in mind, it is newsworthy only when she is somehow exploited or forced (or sold).
October:15:2009 - 12:42
@Sandy, True, it’s mostly the underage girls sold into marriage with old men men who get into the news. Or the young healthy innocent girls being forced to marry AIDS infected debauched cousins. Or a girl married to an unknown man only to find out he was mentally deranged.
As if not each and every one of these cases is one too many!!!
You deal easily with the fate of your sisters.
And what about the less worthy cases? The innumerable unknown women who are being forced into marriages with men who are drug addicts, or men they just don’t like? Where there is nothing in common? Or men who beat them and abuse them?
In any country outside Saudi those would be news worthy cases also.
And don’t take this lightly. Friends of mine have been forced into marriages. A girl has no say in what the family decrees. One girl was brought up almost entirely in the west. When her father died the family decided she should marry her backwards badly educated bedu-cousin. To erase the ”contamination” of being educated in the west. She did not want to. Did she have a choice? Not really. There is no escape, nowhere to go. They are completely mismatched, he hates her for being educated, and her life is hell.
The not-so-news-worthy marriages are no better.
I will admit that there are cases where the family did choose really compatibly.
Yet I think women are passed around far too easily. They still are seen as, and used as: property.
October:15:2009 - 13:06
STW
I “deal too easily with the fate of my sisters’? You have absolutely no way of knowing that. I guess if someone dissagree’s with your charactarization of Saudi societal norms, that gives you the right to pass that judgement?
Nothing you said is news to me. And it is not for you to decree what I should or should not “take lightly” nor do I appreciate the inference that I might take it lightly. All of it is dispicable and inexusable. And I agree even one case is one too many. It doesn’t change what I said.
October:15:2009 - 13:12
I though this post was about Security/ Terrorism, and now we have STW debating about Womens here.
How do Women’s issue have to do with Terrorism???
STW as Sandy says “you pass judgements too fast” and secondly you are in the wrong post to discuss womens issue here. Its a bit distracting having women’s issues being discussed when the theme of the post is about rehabilitation of militants. Jeez cool
October:15:2009 - 14:50
I don’t think the ‘women’s issue’ is entirely off-topic. The article made note that family support was a critical element of the rehab program, so much so that the government played an active role in getting its ‘students’ married. A valid question was raised about who, exactly, wants to marry a would-be terrorist, even with the government providing some sort of surety. My suspicion is that these women are from the group of those ‘unattached’ in society. That is, the orphans who were raised in government facilities.
Not much of a great deal, perhaps, but they–as the ‘students’–are laboring under huge social deprecation. A crummy marriage may be better than no marriage in their eyes. Or perhaps not…
October:15:2009 - 20:00
I see the wife and marriage as a key point of social rehabilitation, especially in a Muslim society, an Arab society, and a conservative society, ie in Saudi Arabia. That is why the government provides the job and the dowry so that the rehabilitated former terrorist can be married, integrated into society, have children, have family responsibilities and a reason to take few risks with his own life.
I have read a lot about this rehab program and don’t recall ever reading about arranged marriages, only providing the wherewithal to make the person marriageable, ie reintegration into family, and tribe, reeducation re: Islam, expressive therapy to deal with PTSD and to teach new ways of expressing anger, job, money for a dowry and wedding costs.
Abu Abdullah didn’t say a woman was handed over, only that when you are living a married life a low level former terrorist is less likely to relapse as the sociologist in the Washington Post article stated as well.
Sandy–excellent points as usual.
Abu Abdullah–of course psychiatrists can be fooled, but carefully screening and months of live in therapy ie inpatient therapy in a clinic setting that is as homelike as possible give all staff a better chance to assess the patient. Obvious some either put on a charade or relapsed after they were released. As the article also pointed out, if the government and this program don’t provide the emotional and material social support, Al-Qaeda will.
John–I do think it is a good program to stop the relapse of lower level Al Qaeda members, some of whom might rise through the ranks, others who would provide the troops. It is a much better alternative, with a much higher success rate than a “catch and release” program, or warehousing rehabilitable members of society in jails.
October:15:2009 - 21:09
I’m not criticizing the program in the least! It’s one of the few rehab programs of which I’m aware that really seem to work.
Not perfect, not for everyone, but it does appear to be getting some guys redirected in life.
Of course it is also causing some resentment among young Saudis who never went off to jihad and are still jobless, unmarried, and with crappy prospects…
October:15:2009 - 21:12
StW: I know that that happens and that once is too often. But that is not the norm in Saudi Arabia. Most men do love their daughters and want the best for them.
On the other hand, there are creeps, too.
October:16:2009 - 14:00
@chiara: as you wrote “As rehab programs go a 80% success rate is stupendous”.
Of course yes that is a good number, but again the 20% failure rate is a big risk to take in terms of National Security.
Also some of the captured AQ personnel have been known to have used their “Counter Interrogation” Techniques learnt in their training. And with the Saudi Rehabilitation program making much news, i am sure AQ will sure adopt to that in their training. Or may be they are using their counter interrogation during their rehabilitation.
Also there is a heavy risk of these 20% cases to be a sleeper cell, they may not go back to their former self in a year or two, but what if they strike back after 10 years?
It is technically, and economically not feasible to maintain surveillance on any subject for more than 5 years.
We need better and more pragmatic ways for sure.
I may be prejudiced, or jumping the gun, but security is not only about counselling, and rehabilitation.
October:21:2009 - 12:27
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