The London Ministerial on Yemen

Q1: What do we want to see emerge from the ministerial?

A1: Early drafts of the communiqué coming out of the ministerial in London suggest that a new organization called the “Friends of Yemen Contact Group” will be organized and that it will convene within 60 days. If true, this is exactly what many of us hoped to see emerge from this meeting.

The Friends of Yemen group should be composed of U.S., European, and Gulf state representatives in addition of course to those from the Yemeni government. We hope to see the European Union and United Nations also represented.

A main focus of such an organization is likely to be the difficult task of coordinating large sums of assistance and getting it to the people, as well as the services that need bolstering on the ground in Yemen. The United States only spent about $2 million in development assistance in Yemen between FY2001 and FY2006, according to a recent report from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

We hope the group conducts a needs’ assessment immediately and draws on existing large sample surveys to make initial recommendations as to the many sectors that need support, including rule of law and governance, energy diversification, health, and education. Local civil society will have a critical role to play in all this, as will tribes. By listening and responding to the needs of people on the ground and by tackling the human security dimension, the international community together with the government and civil society of Yemen can go a long way to addressing the sources of hard security challenges.

Some news sources in Yemen are also reporting a pledge by the United States of $11 million for support of a reintegration center for those Yemeni detainees currently at Guantánamo that the U.S. government has said can be released. These reports have not been confirmed, but such a center is very much needed.

Q2: How is Guantánamo connected to the ministerial?

A2: There are about 91 Yemeni detainees currently in Guantánamo, of whom 60 are ready for release according to the recommendations of the U.S. interagency task force that concluded its work last week. About five of the Yemeni detainees are said to be slated for prosecution, and the remaining 26 are currently slated for continued indefinite detention.

The United States needs to get out of the indefinite detention business. Guantánamo has been a recruiting tool for al Qaeda for numerous reasons, but indefinite detention has been a key factor. We are headed toward having Yemenis make up the majority population at Guantánamo if conditions on the ground in Yemen do not change and as other detainees are moved out of the detention facility. Once that occurs, Guantánamo will be a super-recruitment tool, especially for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Q3: What more needs to be done?

A3: CSIS, together with the Center for American Progress (CAP), convened nearly two dozen experts last week from a range of fields to hammer through what we hoped would be discussed at the London Ministerial. The policy memo Ken Gude from CAP and I produced (http://csis.org/files/publication/100125_CAP_london_yemen_ recommendations.pdf ) and a piece I wrote in Foreign Policy (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/24/ past_the_deadline_on_guantanamo ) detail some of what (if reports are correct) appears to be on the agenda in London.

There are some important differences, however. The international community as a whole—and not just the United States—needs to invest in state-of-the-art reintegration and risk-reduction initiatives. The issue of returning detainees to Yemen from Guantánamo is not only an American or Yemeni challenge. A pressing international security challenge involves developing a more precise understanding of what is needed to help individuals exiting long-term detention reintegrate successfully into society, but also what is needed to help individuals at risk for engaging in violence.

To address this challenge, the Friends of Yemen Contact Group needs to form a task force that oversees the work of the reintegration facility. Lessons learned from numerous places—Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Indonesia, Egypt, Malaysia, and Northern Ireland—need to be applied in Yemen. The task force needs to be led by internationally recognized experts on these issues.

As individually designed programs are developed, the governments involved would do well in not labeling these “rehabilitation” or “reeducation” programs. I say this not to be politically correct; I am making a statement that we collectively need to learn from the experts who have been working on these issues for some time and get smarter about what these programs really involve and how they should be resourced, staffed, and indeed identified. John Horgan’s Walking Away from Terrorism (http://www.routledgepolitics.com/books/Walking-Away-from-Terrorism-isbn9780415439442 ) is a very good place to start. He and others ought to be involved in the creation of an agreed upon protocol as to what constitutes success.

Tailor-made programs of reintegration and risk reduction could be some of the most important investments the United States, European governments, and Arab nations make in the fields of counterterrorism and development. Let’s hope the London Ministerial marks the beginning of a collective investment.

Sarah E. Mendelson is director of the Human Rights and Security Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

Critical Questions is produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication should be understood to be solely those of the author(s).

© 2010 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. All rights reserved.