The Washington Post has a revealing look at the problems the Obama administration is facing in trying to find a home for at least some of the 97 Yemeni detainees held at Guantanamo. The administration wants to send some, perhaps most, of them to Saudi Arabia for rehabilitation, but the Saudis don’t want them. In fact, no government outside of President Saleh’s regime in Yemen wants the Yemeni detainees because they “are viewed as among the most radicalized [detainees], with deep jihadist roots inside Yemen, Osama bin Laden’s ancestral homeland.” In February, we published the findings of our study on the Yemeni detainee population and reached the same conclusion. The crux of the problem is that the Obama administration cannot repatriate them to their home country unless it is willing to bear substantial security risks. Yemen is home to one of the strongest al Qaeda branches outside of South Asia, as well as a government that is corrupt, duplicitous and has its own disturbing ties to the al Qaeda terrorist network. Known al Qaeda terrorists have a habit of “escaping” from jail in Yemen, so there is no way the Obama administration could trust Saleh’s government to keep tabs on any of the 97 Gitmo detainees. The USS Cole bombers, including Jamal al Badawi, provide a striking example. They have repeatedly “escaped” from Yemeni custody. In reality, the Yemeni government simply opened the door. Another example is Jaber Elbaneh, who, despite being convicted of participating in al Qaeda’s 2002 attack on the French Limburg oil tanker and sent to a maximum security prison, has also walked out of jail. (Elbaneh also has ties to the so-called Lackawanna Six, who were recruited in the Buffalo area by an experienced al Qaeda recruiter and sent off to training camps in Afghanistan.) Yemen is considered so untrustworthy that the Obama administration is reticent to repatriate even the 26 Yemeni detainees it has cleared for release. The Post reports: “That heightens suspicions among Saudi officials, as well as among European nations, that the Yemeni detainees constitute a risk they do not want to take.” Indeed. But what the Post did not ask is: Why would the Obama administration clear 26 Yemeni detainees for transfer if they are thought to “constitute a risk”? If the Obama administration thinks that these 26 could return to terrorism, then why release them in the first place? Doesn’t the Obama administration’s reticence to repatriate the 26 detainees tell us something about the detainees themselves, in addition to Yemen? (One of the Yemeni detainees who has reportedly been cleared for release is Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi, who was a known al Qaeda doctor at Tora Bora and has other substantive ties to al Qaeda as well.) The difficulties in play here were highlighted earlier this year when the Saudis announced that 11 of the kingdom’s 85 most wanted terrorists were former Gitmo detainees who were supposedly “rehabilitated.” The 11 former Gitmo detainees left Saudi soil with the help of other Gitmo veterans, and they all reportedly relocated to Yemen. One of the eleven, Said Ali al Shihri, is now the deputy head of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. This al Qaeda branch bombed the American embassy in Sanaa last year, killing six Yemeni police and seven civilians, including an American citizen. Another, Fahd Saleh Suleiman al Jutayli, was reportedly killed in a recent shootout between the Yemeni Army and Houthi rebels in northern Yemen. Another former Saudi rehab graduate recently tried to kill Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Nayef upon returning from Yemen. So, Yemen is not a good option. But neither is Saudi Arabia, despite the Obama administration’s repeated efforts to transfer the Yemenis there. It is telling that the Saudis don’t want the Yemeni detainees. But the Obama administration seems unfazed by their objections. The administration keeps trying to get the Saudis to take them. The lynchpin of the Saudi rehabilitation program is tribal and familial shame, but only about 20 of the 97 Yemenis have any familial ties inside the kingdom, and it is not even clear how strong those ties are. The Saudis count on the detainees’ families to keep tabs on them once they “graduate.” As evidenced by the 11 former Gitmo detainees on the kingdom’s most wanted list, that has not worked as well as was once claimed. And there are good reasons to think that it would be even less effective with the Yemenis. In written testimony given to the Senate Select Intelligence Committee earlier this year, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair highlighted some of the other problems with the Saudi rehab program. It turns out we don’t really have any means for measuring its efficacy. The Saudis “engage in a number of activities that cater to the detainees,” including caving to their demands for freedom. The Saudis inflate the program’s efficacy by excluding “many of the more hardened terrorists” and have released “mostly minor offenders.” And, most importantly, the program “does not address anti-Western/anti-U.S. views,” which should be a problem for anyone concerned with Western or American security. The Washington Post reports: “If the Yemenis participated [in the Saudi program] and then rejoined al Qaeda, it would be a severe blow to the program as well as to the kingdom’s pride.” But, what’s at stake here isn’t Saudi “pride.” The Obama administration’s principal focus should be protecting America. And sending the Yemeni detainees to either Saudi Arabia or Yemen is a bad idea. Of course, President Obama should have thought about these difficulties before issuing an order to close Gitmo during his first week in office. That is, his administration should have examined these issues before deciding to order Gitmo closed within a year of his administration taking office in order to appease European and other foreign objections. Now, his administration stands alone in trying to relocate the Yemeni detainees. The Saudis don’t want them. The Europeans don’t want them either. And Yemen is not a viable option. The only remaining question is: Why, other than to fulfill his self-imposed unrealistic deadline, does President Obama want to transfer the Yemeni detainees?
