Yemen(?) method of converting suicide bombers

[nancylebov]

I recently read something about a method of converting (pre-)suicide bombers, and dcseain asked me for a source. I can't find it, but I'm hoping that there's enough overlap between what I read and what my readers read that one of you has seen and remembered it.

IIRC, the Yemenite governent would have a moderate Muslim cleric met with five or six guys who'd been told that suicide bombing was the very thing to do to please Allah, and the guys would be told it was their job to convert the cleric. The success rate for the cleric in converting them was extremely high.

Got it. nhw pointed me at a BBC article, which was enough to get me to a more thorough account.

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.

Folks, this is important. I've been mistrusting force and punishment as easy defaults for a long time, and here's some evidence that treating people as though they're conscious actually works. Mind you, it's a good thing that the Koran is a relatively sane document--the project would have been a lot harder if the Koran weren't.

Comments

[redbird]

Tangential, at best, but I am reminded of how Arafat convinced the Black September terrorists--part of his own organization, one he no longer found useful--to stop being violent. The PLO went to Palestinian towns and refugee camps, and recruited attractive single women, telling them they were needed for a very important patriotic mission. The women who accepted were then taken, in groups, to meet groups of the Black September terrorists. After a while, all the no-longer-terrorists had settled down, started families, and found dying for the cause much less appealing.

This probably wouldn't have worked if they'd been self-organizing rather than accustomed to the idea that Arafat was the head honcho.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Weren't/aren't some of the current batch of bombers married?

[nwhyte]

There was a bit about this on BBC Radio 4 last Sunday - see programme summary here. The relevant speaker is probably the last named:

Judge Hamoud al-Hitar, leader of Yemeni project to re-educate Al Qaeda prisoners in Islamic theology.

I'll have to leave you to google the rest of it yourself but the programme should still be available to download off the BBC site.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much--the bbc piece led me to an article I'll be linking to in my original article.

[bradhicks.livejournal.com]

Cripes, was that all the way back in February I bookmarked that? No wonder Yahoo no longer had it cached. Yeah, the CS Monitor article is the one I'd seen previously.

As far as I can tell, the Yemeni approach hits al Qaeda and other Wahabbi terrorists at a week spot. To inspire the necessary fanaticism, the jihadi imams have gone to tremendous lengths to portray their struggle as a fundamentalist defense of the Koran. Since the membership consider themselves to be first and foremost fighting for the Koran, and only secondarily for their nation, for their race, or against the Jews, then hitting them back with the Koran has a chance to work.

If al Qaeda were primarily a nationalist or racist movement, this approach might not work so well.

[dcseain.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I sent a link to this entry to my friend in Holland who had asked about it. Fascinating article.