perfidy

In loving memory of Minister Emeritus Windy City Mike’s occasional coffeehouse sets back in the halcyon days of college and too many cigarettes, and his audience favorite, “Talkin’ To My Neighbor Ed Blues,” I offer this left-field story of Yemen’s success in fighting terrorism.

In this era of war and mistrust, fueled by mutual distrust, rampant misperception, and the more than occasional exploding object, it is popular to decry the “know your enemy” argument as being a mushyheaded, bleeding-hearted leftist approach to reducing the number of terrorists and incidents of terrorism in the world. Many argue that the only ways to achieve this end are either 1) kill all the terrorists (which earns the A. Jackson Prize for clarity of purpose), or 2) kill all the terrorists we can, meanwhile making sure the social conditions that created them are minimized or eliminated (which earns the W. Wilson Prize for ambition of goal). There are many, many merits to recommend these two approaches, but there are numerous drawbacks as well.

The incomplete success of the Jackson and Wilson plans to combat terrorism has resulted in a situation where, as one Iraqi interlocutor of Michael Totten put it, the best sentiment we can hope for in the Middle East is, “Thank you for coming, now please leave and take us with you.” (or, as Minister Mike once put it, “Yankee go home!... Stay for some mezza?”). As far as that gets us, that’s pretty good, and in fact as good as we can expect. But we still face a situation where, inescapably, no matter what the US does, we’re still the asshole. This is, of course, fine. Pleasing everybody will get us all either dead or in burqas, and sharply reduce the number of opportunities Americans have to be complacent about being #1. But this also means that any help we as a society can get from within the Islamic world to combat terrorism through soft means (those avenues which are shut off to us in our capacity as King Badass/ Great Satan / Corrupter of the World / Main Destination for Everyone’s Emigrants) is welcome.

Which is why this story is so fascinating. A young Yemeni judge named Hamoud al-Hitar has begun engaging in Koranic debates with the terror-inclined zealots arrested in his country, with the aim of talking them out of their terrorist ways.

According to the Christian Science Monitor (linked above), it’s working.

When Judge Hamoud al-Hitar announced that he and four other Islamic scholars would challenge Yemen's Al Qaeda prisoners to a theological contest, Western antiterrorism experts warned that this high-stakes gamble would end in disaster.

Nervous as he faced five captured, yet defiant, Al Qaeda members in a Sanaa prison, Judge Hitar was inclined to agree. But banishing his doubts, the youthful cleric threw down the gauntlet, in the hope of bringing peace to his troubled homeland.

"If you can convince us that your ideas are justified by the Koran, then we will join you in your struggle," Hitar told the militants. "But if we succeed in convincing you of our ideas, then you must agree to renounce violence."

The prisoners eagerly agreed.

Now, two years later, not only have those prisoners been released, but a relative peace reigns in Yemen. And the same Western experts who doubted this experiment are courting Hitar, eager to hear how his "theological dialogues" with captured Islamic militants have helped pacify this wild and mountainous country, previously seen by the US as a failed state, like Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Since December 2002, when the first round of the dialogues ended, there have been no terrorist attacks here, even though many people thought that Yemen would become terror's capital," says Hitar, eyes glinting shrewdly from beneath his emerald-green turban. "Three hundred and sixty-four young men have been released after going through the dialogues and none of these have left Yemen to fight anywhere else."

. . . . . . .

Seated amid stacks of Korans and religious texts, Hitar explains that his system is simple. He invites militants to use the Koran to justify attacks on innocent civilians and when they cannot, he shows them numerous passages commanding Muslims not to attack civilians, to respect other religions, and fight only in self-defense.

For example, he quotes: "Whoever kills a soul, unless for a soul, or for corruption done in the land - it is as if he had slain all mankind entirely. And, whoever saves one, it is as if he had saved mankind entirely." He uses the passage to bolster his argument against bombing Western targets in Yemen - attacks he says defy the Koran. And, he says, the Koran says under no circumstances should women and children be killed.

If, after weeks of debate, the prisoners renounce violence they are released and offered vocational training courses and help to find jobs.

Hitar's belief that hardened militants trained by Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan could change their stripes was initially dismissed by US diplomats in Sanaa as dangerously naive, but the methods of the scholarly cleric have little in common with the other methods of fighting extremism. Instead of lecturing or threatening the battle-hardened militants, he listens to them.

"An important part of the dialogue is mutual respect," says Hitar. "Along with acknowledging freedom of expression, intellect and opinion, you must listen and show interest in what the other party is saying."

. . . . . . . .

"It's only logical to tackle these people through their brains and heart," says Faris Sanabani, a former adviser to President Abdullah Saleh and editor-in-chief of the Yemen Observer, a weekly English-language newspaper. "If you beat these people up they become more stubborn. If you hit them, they will enjoy the pain and find something good in it - it is a part of their ideology. Instead, what we must do is erase what they have been taught and explain to them that terrorism will only harm Yemenis' jobs and prospects. Once they understand this they become fighters for freedom and democracy, and fighters for the true Islam," he says.

Some freed militants were so transformed that they led the army to hidden weapons caches and offered the Yemeni security services advice on tackling Islamic militancy. A spectacular success came in 2002 when Abu Ali al Harithi, Al Qaeda's top commander in Yemen, was assassinated by a US air-strike following a tip-off from one of Hitar's reformed militants.

The Monitor notes that terrorist activity has declined markedly in Yemen since this program was begun, though much of the credit also goes to an aggressive government policy against militant Islamic madrassas and training camps. Of course, Yemen has a long way to go from the point of view of the US. It is still a hotbed of anti-Western sentiment and the attendant poverty and desperation that such sentiments are a convenient outlet for. But, if the talking cure is working in Yemen (and I'm willing to bet that a Koranically-focused 'suasion technique will actually stick, will little backsliding), more power to them. Maybe it can work elsewhere too.