Interesting article from The Christian Science Monitor via AOL on converting terrorists from bad guys to good guys via debate:
Click here to read this story online:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0204/p01s04-wome.htmlHeadline: Koranic duels ease terror
Byline: James Brandon Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
Date: 02/04/2005
(SANAA, YEMEN) 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."
"Yemen's strategy has been unconventional certainly, but it has
achieved results that we could never have hoped for," says one European
diplomat, who did not want to be named. "Yemen has gone from being a
potential enemy to becoming an indispensable ally in the war on terror."
To be sure, the prisoner-release program is not solely responsible for
the absence of attacks in Yemen. The government has undertaken a range
of measures to combat terrorism from closing down extreme madrassahs,
the Islamic schools sometimes accused of breeding hate, to deporting
foreign militants.
Eager to spread the news of his success, Hitar welcomes foreigners into
his home, fussing over them and pouring endless cups of tea. But beyond
the otherwise nondescript house, a sense of menace lurks. Two military
jeeps are parked outside, and soldiers peer through the gathering dark
at passing cars. The evening wind sweeps through the unpaved streets,
lifting clouds of dust and whipping up men's jackets to expose belts
hung with daggers, pistols, and mobile telephones.
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."
Only after winning the militants' trust does Hitar gradually begin to
correct their beliefs. He says that most militants are ordinary people
who have been led astray. Just as they were taught Al Qaeda's
doctrines, he says, so too can they be taught more- moderate ideas. "If
you study terrorism in the world, you will see that it has an
intellectual theory behind it," says Hitar. "And any kind of
intellectual idea can be defeated by intellect."
The program's success surprised even Hitar. For years Yemen was
synonymous with violent Islamic extremism. The ancestral homeland of
Mr. bin Laden, it provided two-thirds of recruits for his Afghan camps,
and was notorious for kidnappings of foreigners and the bombing of the
American warship USS Cole in 2000 that killed 17 sailors. Resisting US
pressure, Yemen declined to meet violence with violence.
"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.
Yet despite the apparent success in Yemen, some US diplomats have
criticized it for apparently letting Islamic militants off the hook
with little guarantee that they won't revert to their old ways once
released from prison.
Yemen, however, argues that holding and punishing all militants would
create only further discontent, pointing out that the actual
perpetrators of attacks have all been prosecuted, with the bombers of
the USS Cole and the French oil tanker, the SS Limburg. All received
death sentences.
"Yemeni goals are long-term political aims whereas the American agenda
focuses on short-term prosecution of military or law enforcement
objectives," wrote Charles Schmitz, a specialist in Yemeni affairs, in
2004 report for the Jamestown Foundation, an influential US think tank.
"These goals are not necessarily contradictory, with each government
recognizing that compromises and accommodations must be made, but their
ambiguities create tense moments."
Some members of the Yemeni government also hanker for a more
iron-fisted approach, and Yemen remains on high alert for further
attacks. Fighter planes regularly swoop low over the ancient mud-brick
city of Sanaa to send a clear message to any would-be militants.
An additional cause of friction with the US is that while Yemen
successfully discourages attacks within its borders on the grounds that
tourism and trade will suffer, it has done little to tackle
anti-Western sentiment or the corruption, poverty, and lack of
opportunity that fuels Islamic militancy.
"Yemen still faces serious challenges, but despite the odd hiccup, we
sometimes have to admit that Yemenis know Yemen best," says the
European diplomat. "And if their system works, who are we to complain?"
As the relative success of Yemen's unusual approach becomes apparent,
Hitar has been invited to speak to antiterrorism specialists at
London's New Scotland Yard, as well as to French and German police,
hoping to defuse growing militancy among Muslim immigrants.
US diplomats have also approached the cleric to see if his methods can
be applied in Iraq, says Hitar.
"Before the dialogues began, there was only one way to fight terrorism,
and that was through force," he says. "Now there is another way:
dialogue."
(c) Copyright 2005 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.
