The Reeducation of Abu Jandal

As a result, the Yemeni government sees at least some Qaeda elements more as allies than as an existential threat. The serious challenge to the regime's stability, Yemen's Foreign MinisterAbu Bakr al-Qirbi told me, is from the socialists and the Houthis. True, a new generation of more nihilistic Qaeda operatives are also a problem. But Al Qaeda "doesn't have a real agenda," says the foreign minister. Therefore, Qaeda issues and questions about the Gitmo detainees elicit apathy, at best, from Yemeni authorities. Regarding the Gitmo returnees, "do whatever you want with them," one Yemeni official told me. "Screw them, bomb them, send them to a country where they have capital punishment."

That attitude is one more reason for American officials to proceed cautiously. Rehab centers, including the Saudi program, are not voluntary. If the Yemenis are right and the United States promised to help pay for the rehab center, the Obama administration would in effect be funding an overseas prison just when Washington is trying to get out from under the shadow of the CIA's black sites and extraordinary renditions. Khaled al-Ansi, the director of the Yemeni rights group HOOD, told me that starting last fall he began complaining to American officials that an involuntary rehab center would violate detainees' rights. "The Guantánamos of Sana are worse than the real Guantánamo," says al-Ansi. One possible solution: the United States could quietly nudge the Saudis to fund the Yemeni program. Yemen's foreign minister acknowledges that idea could work, but denies it's been discussed.

Saudi Arabia's vast wealth is at least partly responsible for the relative success of the kingdom's facility. The Saudi program is hailed for its ideological persuasiveness, but in reality it probably works because the government is buying off the militants. The graduates get money, and in some cases jobs, cars and houses to help reintegrate them into society. The Yemenis, for their part, claim they don't have the funds to provide such largesse on their own. Yemen is the poorest country in the Middle East, with an unemployment rate of 35 percent. Some Yemeni officials claim they have better things to do with $11 million than start a rehab center for 100 men. "Yemen can't spend its precious money on such a center," says Abdulkarim al-Eryani, a former Yemeni prime minister and current adviser to the president. The best the government could offer graduates of the program would be jobs in the military—posts that pay about $100 per month. And giving former Gitmo detainees guns, training and uniforms poses problems of its own.

Finally, even if everything were to go right with al-Hitar's program—if the money arrived, the detainees weren't abused and the judge's persuasive powers were unusually effective—there is still no guarantee that al-Hitar's teachings would match American interests. His previous program was halted in 2005 partly because of complaints from American officials. Al-Eryani, the former prime minister, told me that U.S. authorities approached him at the time and insisted that graduates of al-Hitar's program were being captured fighting the Americans in Iraq. Even today, al-Hitar seems unapologetic. "Iraq wasn't part of the dialogue," the judge told me. "I'm not responsible for Iraq. Nobody said to make a dialogue about that." Al-Hitar explained that, personally, he was opposed to Yemenis traveling to Iraq to fight. "Jihad is worship," he said. "It's like prayer. It has conditions." Still, "if somebody wants to go as an individual, you can't tell him no."

For all his travels with bin Laden, al-Hitar's problem pupil, Nasser al-Bahri, says he never made it to Iraq. When I asked him whether he thought it was OK for young Yemenis to travel to fight abroad, he winced a little and rolled his eyes. "From my experience, sending naive young men is wrong," he said. "These guys don't understand the religion yet. They should know what jihad means first." But if he were a little younger, he told me, and weren't under surveillance, he probably would have gone himself. All al-Hitar's lectures "did not convince me," the former jihadist said. "I still hate the American arrogance. I still hate the American Army." He grinned, lifted his teacup and repeated: "I still hate."

© 2009