Jihad Watch: "Yemen is like a bus station — we stop some terrorists, and we send others on to fight elsewhere ... We appease our partners in the West, but we are not really helping."

February 1, 2008

"Yemen is like a bus station — we stop some terrorists, and we send others on to fight elsewhere ... We appease our partners in the West, but we are not really helping."

Hardly a partnership, then, is it? More on this story. "Yemen’s Deals With Jihadists Unsettle the U.S.," by Robert F. Worth for the New York Times:

SANA, Yemen — When the Yemeni authorities released a convicted terrorist of Al Qaeda named Jamal al-Badawi from prison last October, American officials were furious. Mr. Badawi helped plan the attack on the American destroyer Cole in 2000, in which 17 American sailors were killed.

But the Yemenis saw things differently. Mr. Badawi had agreed to help track down five other members of Al Qaeda who had escaped from prison, and was more useful to the government on the street than off, said a high-level Yemeni government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Mr. Badawi had also pledged his loyalty to Yemen’s president before being released, the official said.

The dispute over Mr. Badawi — whom the Yemenis quickly returned to prison after being threatened with a loss of aid — underscored a much broader disagreement over how to fight terrorism in Yemen, a particularly valuable recruiting ground and refuge for Islamist militants in the past two decades.

Yemeni officials say they have had considerable success co-opting jihadists like Mr. Badawi, often by releasing them from prison and helping them with money, schooling or jobs. They are required to sign a pledge not to carry out any attacks on Yemeni soil, often backed by guarantees from their tribe or family members. Many have taken part in an Islamic re-education effort led by religious scholars, now being copied on a wider scale in Saudi Arabia.

A number of these former jihadists have become government informants, helping to capture a new generation of younger, more dangerous Qaeda militants — some of them veterans of the war in Iraq — who refuse to recognize the Yemeni government. Others have become mediators, helping persuade escaped prisoners to surrender.

But American counterterrorism officials and even some Yemenis say the Yemeni government, more than others in the region, is in effect striking a deal that helps stop attacks here while leaving jihadists largely free to plan them elsewhere. They also say the Yemeni government caters too much to radical Islamist figures to improve its political standing, nourishing a culture that could ultimately breed more violence.

Yes.

“Yemen is like a bus station — we stop some terrorists, and we send others on to fight elsewhere,” said Murad Abdul Wahed Zafir, a political analyst at the National Democratic Institute in Sana. “We appease our partners in the West, but we are not really helping.”

[...]

That same year, Mr. Saleh hit on an idea that he hoped would satisfy both his American and Islamist partners: “al hiwar al fikri,” or intellectual dialogue. This was an effort to inculcate the idea that Islam, properly understood, does not condone terrorism. Sessions began with hundreds of former jihadists who remained in prison without charges.

That old chestnut. Terrorism, perhaps. But what about jihad?

[...]

Some critics have dismissed the dialogue program, which lapsed in 2005 after terror attacks dropped off, as a sham in which inmates feigned conversion to get out of prison. But Nasser al-Bahri, a former driver for Mr. bin Laden who spent four years with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, said it was more like a raw bargain: exempt Yemen from your jihad and you will be left alone.

“It changed their behavior, not their thoughts,” said Mr. Bahri, a cheerful, talkative 33-year-old who once went by the nom de guerre Abu Jandal. “Judge Hetar cannot cancel jihad. It is in the roots of our religion.”

Read it all.

Posted by Marisol at February 1, 2008 12:34 AM
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"The dispute over Mr. Badawi — whom the Yemenis quickly returned to prison after being threatened with a loss of aid"

...a loss of aid? -- to Muslim Yemen? Yes American taxpaying chumps, you're cutting welfare checks to Yemen. From the USAID website:

Traditional Yemen Seeks to Move Forward

In Marib Governorate of Yemen, Ali Benzaid Abdelhadi is chairman of the Parents Council at a school being expanded and refurnished by U.S. aid. His forehead shows the mark left from Muslim prayers.

...while the American taxpayer shows the mark where their brains have been sucked out...

Yemen is a friendly and hospitable Middle Eastern country on the southern rim of the Arabian Peninsula place where U.S. assistance workers and their projects are welcomed.

...gee, I wonder why?...

These friendly ties exist even though Yemen, birthplace of Osama Bin Laden's father, has seen important Al Qaeda operations such as training camps and the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole.

...oddly enough!...

In 2003, after an interruption of seven years, USAID restarted its assistance program […] The focus of the aid program was on maternal and child health, basic education, income, food security and democracy.

...that's certainly my top priority too -- income, health care, and food security for Muslims!

In recent years, foreign diplomats and tourists have been kidnapped in tribal areas to pressure the government to provide benefits or release prisoners. The foreigners were all released after a few hours or days but those incidents discouraged tourists, investors and development.

...the fools were frightened of a few kidnappings and stopped paying welfare -- can you imagine?...

Working in this country has proved fascinating and challenging and rewarding, to both USAID expatriates as well as the Yemeni aid staff. Teaching midwives to deliver babies and vaccinate them, keeping camels and goats free of disease, helping local councils take charge of their budgets and improving badly-needed schools are making a difference in the lives of the people of Yemen.

HA!-HA!-HA!-HA!-HA! -- our taxes being spent on camels and goats in Yemen! Yes! Aren't we proud!

America is run by crazy people.

Posted by: Zeno

at February 1, 2008 4:45 AM

"Yemeni officials say they have had considerable success co-opting jihadists like Mr. Badawi, often by releasing them from prison and helping them with money, schooling or jobs.""

....ok. but not with our money...no more aid to Yemen...cut the funds...stop the deliveries of food, medicine, weapons, ...everything we send stops immediately....

and Ban Muslim Immigration...

Posted by: exsgtbrown

at February 1, 2008 6:49 AM

The article above -- "Yemen's Deals With Jihadists Unsettle the U.S." – is about more than Yemen. It is about, as well, without that country being mentioned, Saudi Arabia.

The article explains that Yemen has hit upon a way to deal with its own homegrown terrorists. The method is simply to extract from them a promise not to attack Infidels in Yemen itself, or possibly – the story does not make it clear – not to commit acts of terrorism within the territorial waters of Yemen, which would prevent a repetition, presumably, of the attack on the U.S.S. Cole. And of course it should. But Yemen's government is not doing anything different from what the Saudi government is doing with its much-heralded-in-the-West "deprogramming" of Saudi terrorists. They are told, those Saudi terrorists and supporters of Al Qaeda, to understand that the benigh Al-Saud are good Muslims, that they do everything they can for Islam, that they spend hundreds of billions, for example, helping to pay for mosques and madrasas, that they fund campaigns of Da'wa, and that any dealings they have with the Americans or other Westerners are undertaken solely as a temporary measure, intended to strengthen the forces of Islam, and contrary to what Bin Laden charges, they have no intention of "taking Jews and Christians as friends," no intention of allowing non-Muslims to live permanently in Saudi Arabia, no intention, that is, of ever violating the Qur'an, the Hadith, the Sira. And with a team of clerics carefully chosen for their bought-and-paid-for loyalty to the Saudi regime, some of those Saudi terrorists are indeed persuaded to stop declaring the Al-Saud "infidels" and to concentrate their anger on the real Infidels, whom they are free to attack, just as long as those attacks take place outside Saudi Arabia.

That, as has been noted repeatedly here, is what Saudi "de-programming" efforts are all about. And it is the same in Yemen. Here are excerpts from that article:

That same year, Mr. Saleh hit on an idea that he hoped would satisfy both his American and Islamist partners: “al hiwar al fikri,” or intellectual dialogue. This was an effort to inculcate the idea that Islam, properly understood, does not condone terrorism. Sessions began with hundreds of former jihadists who remained in prison without charges.

“It came from the idea that terror depends on ideology, and that thought should be confronted with thought,” said Hamoud al Hetar, the cleric and judge who led the program.

A cleric would sit for several hours with three to seven prisoners, mostly outside the prison, and discuss Islamic law and ethics, Judge Hetar said during an interview at his home in Sana.
At first, the Saudis and others derided the idea as too soft. At the same time, many Yemeni religious scholars refused to participate out of fear that they would be assassinated by militants, Judge Hetar said. Gradually the program gained acceptance, and Saudi Arabia soon adopted its own version, including therapy and a more comprehensive reintegration program.
Some critics have dismissed the dialogue program, which lapsed in 2005 after terror attacks dropped off, as a sham in which inmates feigned conversion to get out of prison. But Nasser al-Bahri, a former driver for Mr. bin Laden who spent four years with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, said it was more like a raw bargain: exempt Yemen from your jihad and you will be left alone.
“It changed their behavior, not their thoughts,” said Mr. Bahri, a cheerful, talkative 33-year-old who once went by the nom de guerre Abu Jandal. “Judge Hetar cannot cancel jihad. It is in the roots of our religion.”

Sitting on the floor of a bare living room in his Sana apartment, Mr. Bahri said the government helped him buy a taxi and pay for business school after his release in 2003. Although he says he still supports Al Qaeda’s global goals, he also urges other Islamists to avoid any violence in Yemen.

Ali Saleh, another former jihadist who went through Judge Hetar’s program while in prison, now serves as a mediator between the government and Islamists. He helped negotiate the surrender of several of the 23 men who escaped from prison in Sana in early 2006. In exchange, the government agreed to make concessions, including releasing the men after their surrender, he said.
“The government understands, in Yemen you must compromise to reach a solution,” Mr. Saleh said. “The Americans would like to put us all in jail. But if you do this, 10 men will become 20, 20 will become 100, and then — we will be an army.”

The article – by Robert Worth – does not mention what should be of greatest interest to readers. This method of dealing with terrorists by the not-to-be-trusted government of Yemen is not one whit different from what the Saudi government is doing with its much-heralded (by naïve and miscomprehending Westerners) of Saudi terrorists. They are told, those Saudi terrorists and supporters of Al Qaeda, to understand that the benigh Al-Saud are good Muslims, that they do everything they can for Islam, that they spend hundreds of billions, for example, helping to pay for mosques and madrasas, that they fund campaigns of Da'wa, and that any dealings they have with the Americans or other Westerners are undertaken solely as a temporary measure, intended to strengthen the forces of Islam, and contrary to what Bin Laden charges, they have no intention of "taking Jews and Christians as friends," no intention of allowing non-Muslims to live permanently in Saudi Arabia, no intention, that is, of ever violating the Qur'an, the Hadith, the Sira. And with a team of clerics carefully chosen for their bought-and-paid-for loyalty to the Saudi regime, some of those Saudi terrorists are indeed persuaded to stop declaring the Al-Saud "infidels" and to concentrate their anger on the real Infidels, whom they are free to attack, just as long as those attacks take place outside Saudi Arabia.

The story in the Times limits itself to explaining the deep unhappiness, among policymakers in Washington, with the attitude and behavior of the Yemeni government. The Saudi government is no different. When will the dots be connected?

Posted by: Hugh

at February 1, 2008 8:10 AM

Yemen's population is almost equally divided between Shi'a (slightly less than half) and Sunni Arabs (slightly more than half). A Shi'a revolt in the north, at one time, I gather, supported, by the hyper-Sunni Saudis -- who have always been worried about the Yemen, and Yemeni immigrants (at one point the Saudis expelled one million of those immigrants, out of such fear that they might unsettle the regime) -- continues.

Need one note, yet again, that the Sunni-Shi'a fissure in Iraq, if allowed to develop, and such development would require the Amerians not to do much of anything, but rather to cease to do so much, as they now are (nearly 4,000 dead, 30,000 wounded, and more than one trillion dollars spent or committed to future expenses) doing in Iraq, almost all of it directed at keeping the country together, at helping everyone and his brother to "reconcile," and especially to working at preventing, or closing up, the gap between Sunnis and Shi'a rather than observing and exploiting, the consequences of that Sunni-Shi'a rift, consequence which, as repeatedly noted here, would or could include Sunni-Shi'a troubles in, inter alia, eastern Saudi Arabia (where the Shi'a of that country are concentrated, along with the oilfields), Bahrain (where a Sunni "king" rules over a population that is 70-75% Shi'a and does not much care for the way the Sunnis lord it over them), in Pakistan (where a Sunni terrrorist group, Sipaha-e-Sahaba, specializes in killing Shi'a professionals), in Lebanon (where the Shi'a Hezbollah have maddened the Christians, the Druse, and, it should not be forgotten, the Sunnis as well), in Syria (where the Sunni Arabs who hate their Alawite rulers, whom they regard as non-Muslims, might also be whipped up against the Shi'a backer -- Iran -- of those same Alawites), Kuwait (which has a Shi'a minority, existing not-quite-at-perfect-ease, and if the Shi'a were to be seen as stalking-horses for the aggressive "Persians" that might cause a certain difficulty), even in Dubai (where "Shi'a" or "Persian" money, perhaps hundreds of billions, has or is being invested even as the Shi'a of Iran enroach on territory that the U.A.E. claims as its own), and, of course, and here I will end where I began -- in Yemen, with that simmering revolt of Shi'a tribes in the north.

Something to think about, in the Pentagon, and at the State Department. That is, if anyone cares to weaken the Camp of Islam -- and so far, there are no signs of recognition of such a need, such a desideratum. The old ray-bolger problem, but now a collective one: "If They Only Had A Brain."

Posted by: Hugh

at February 1, 2008 9:10 AM

"The old ray-bolger problem, but now a collective one: "If They Only Had A Brain."

Posted by: Hugh "

..bwahahahahahaha

Posted by: exsgtbrown

at February 1, 2008 9:26 AM

Further evidence of a State that admits that this is a State sponsored war.

Posted by: alaskan1000

at February 1, 2008 12:50 PM

....ok. but not with our money...no more aid to Yemen...cut the funds...stop the deliveries of food, medicine, weapons, ...everything we send stops immediately....

and Ban Muslim Immigration...
Posted by: exsgtbrown

-----------

Vote McCAIRNn and you'll be sure to see all of these foolish things stopped.

/sarc off

Posted by: Allah Schmallah

at February 1, 2008 1:12 PM

This is what they're all doing.

I'm sure of it.

==================

The baloney about mohammedanism disallowing jihad is such a beautiful play.

They can get the object and victims of jihad to promote mohammedanism for them, in the hope of fending off jihad.

While the jihaddis on the other side beat the fools into submission.