April 26, 2009

No Easy Answer for Obama on Yemeni Gitmo Detainees

This is a good round up in the New York Times about the problem of returning Yemenis from Gitmo to Yemen where support for "resistance" is governmental policy, prisons have a revolving door and jihaddists are defined by their willingness to negotiate with the government (and we see how well that's working out in Swat).

Commenting on the NTY article, The Weekly Standard notes Yemeni detainee al-Hilal, a top Political Security Officer with foreknowledge of 9/11, phoned home from Gitmo and accused Yemeni President Saleh of using the detainees as bargaining chips, and two days later, al Hilal's two young sons were killed (playing with a hand grenade?) while home alone.

Speaking of bargaining chips, the Miami Herald reports the Defense Department's request for $83.4 billion in supplemental funds included $81 million to fund President Barack Obama's order to move or release the 240 or so detainees by Jan. 22. The Yemeni govt puts the price tag at about a mil per detainee to take them back but notes the Obama administration appears to have rejected its offer.

The Obama administration’s effort to return the largest group of Guantánamo Bay detainees to Yemen, their home country, has stalled, creating a major new hurdle for the president’s plan to close the prison camp in Cuba by next January, American and Yemeni officials say. “We’re at a complete impasse,” said one American official who is involved in the issue but was speaking without authorization and so requested anonymity. “I don’t know that there’s a viable Plan B.”

The Yemenis not only are the biggest group of detainees, but also are widely seen as the most difficult to transfer out of Guantánamo. Other countries are wary of many of the Yemeni detainees because jihadist groups have long had deep roots in Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the Arab world and the homeland of Osama bin Laden’s father. If the Yemenis are not sent home, there may be few other options for many of the 97 men, detainees’ lawyers and human rights groups say...The Bush administration also failed to reach a deal with President Saleh, but the Obama administration had hoped to get increased cooperation from Yemen, which critics say has a history of coddling Islamic extremists and releasing convicted terrorists. Complicating the task is the fact that security in Yemen has been deteriorating for more than a year, with several terrorist attacks, including a suicide bombing outside the American Embassy compound in September that killed 13 people.

And then there's Yemen's role in piracy and instability in Somalia, the collective punishment of its civilians n Sa'ada, the institutionalized looting of the South, and Yemen's role in smuggling substantial quantities of drugs, weapons and persons all over the region.