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Terrorist Rehabilitation 101

Analyzing New 'Soft' Approaches to the War on Terror

by Mark DeYoung

The U.S. recently announced the funding for a new $11 million terrorist rehabilitation center in Yemen. This new facility will admit the remaining Yemeni detainees of Guantanamo Bay, with the goal of putting them through a series of psychological treatments, religious reeducation classes and other exercises designed to reintegrate extremists to normal society. With the world anticipating the close of Gitmo, many are asking for more detail about the success and failure of existing terrorist rehab programs.

Saudi Arabia has one of the most sophisticated government-sponsored terrorist rehab programs in the world. Their program includes extensive religious reeducation (to guide participants to a more peaceful understanding of Islam), psychological counseling, vocational training, sporting activities and even art therapy. When detainees graduate, they may receive a car, housing and money to find a new wife. The graduates are also subject to extensive surveillance post release. In a program that is constantly being adjusted to reflect best practices, the terrorists are generally treated as victims in need of help.

The Saudis themselves claim a recidivism rate of 10-20 percent in their official stats, without disclosing the total number of detainees that have gone through the program (although estimates are at about 3000 total). Compared to the 68 percent rate of re-offense on the part of American male criminals, the program appears to be remarkably successful.

But can such programs be trusted to protect the public?

According to official reports, 11 of Saudi Arabia’s 85 most wanted terrorists have been through their rehabilitation program. One of the most disturbing recent examples of a recidivist is the now deputy leader of al-Qaeda in Yemen, who claims to be the mastermind of the failed Christmas day bombing.

On top of the most newsworthy and troubling failures, experts cite other reasons why this program may be questionable and the numbers misleading.

Distinguished journalist (and author of many books on Saudi Arabian politics and culture) Robert Lacey was granted full access to the Saudi rehab camps for a PBS special. While there, he discovered a compound nearby for less malleable prisoners, and was told that some of the most extreme jihadists have refused to participate in the program altogether. This suggests that the program only serves terrorists who are willing to go through the “deradicalization” process (which makes the success rate understandably higher).

Thomas Joscelyn, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, claims that Saudi officials are not tracking released detainees thoroughly enough to accurately measure recidivism. “Al-Qaeda and the terror networks aren’t usually broadcasting when the terrorists go back, so you find out someone is a recidivist only when they are captured or unusually visible,” he said.

Dr. John Horgan, director of the International Centre for the Study of Terrorism at Penn State University, brings up another pressing concern with the program. He suggests that there are no reliable risk assessment indicators to guide officials when deciding to release a prisoner. When Horgan asked program administrators how they determined whether it was safe to free a detainee, all they could say was that “they got a feeling.”

The Saudi program is also criticized for not exploring anti-Western and anti-U.S. views, focusing instead on conflicts between Muslims. Experts wonder whether a program with such a glaring oversight can ever impact the new reality of global terrorism against the West.

Indonesia is another country with a prominent rehab program, taking in criminals from their homegrown terrorist network, Jl. They’ve had a reasonable level of success, but recently had a very public case of recidivism when a rehab grad engaged in a public shootout with police. Also, it is suspected that the Jakarta bombings of 2009 were directly linked to Jl members. Indonesian rehabilitation counselors have stated that it is almost impossible to completely destroy the jihadist mindset, suggesting the possible futility of terrorist rehab efforts.

The government of Singapore also claims a highly developed rehab program, using a multi-faceted, holistic approach. To date, they claim a 100% success rate, yet only 40 men have passed through their system.

Another common criticism of terrorist rehab is that they are often administered in cultures where established educational systems help create the problem itself. With madrasas and other schools that inculcate Islamic extremism, can the problem ever really be abated? Southeast Asian terror expert Ken Ward made this point in relation to Indonesia’s efforts. “It’s almost as though the Indonesians are willing to allow people to acquire radical Islamic beliefs and then later try to de-radicalise them, rather than try to de-radicalise the education system.”

With a limited amount of actual documentation on terrorist rehabilitation programs and their effect over time, it is hard to say whether the world community should trust them as an effective solution to reduce and eliminate violent terrorist acts. What we do know is that the existing programs seem to produce a lower re-offense rate compared to rehab efforts for other types of crime. So, at face value, they are very effective. The problem seems to be whether the general public can tolerate any failure rate, since even one recidivist may mean the difference between public safety and another 9/11.

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(The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Headline Bistro or the Knights of Columbus.)