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NHNE News List
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Thanks to Tom Atlee.
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KORANIC DUELS EASE TERROR
By James Brandon
The Christian Science Monitor
February 04, 2005
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0204/p01s04-wome.html
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."
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