Plea-Bargaining, Yemeni Style

A year ago, 23 people escaped from prison in Yemen. At least 13 of them were said to be al-Qaeda operatives. One of them was American. One of them was sentenced to die for his part in blowing up the U.S.S. Cole in 2000, an attack that killed 17 American sailors. His name is Jamal Badawi (not to be confused, please, with Jamal Badawi, the Canadian professor and Islamic scholar at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.) Yemen's Badawi was originally sentenced to 15 years in prison for the Cole bombing, though the sentence was upgrade to the death penalty.

Badawi is resourceful. He escaped from prison in 2003, was found in a cave (in bad health) and returned to a prison in Aden. Only to escape again in 2006. He was found again. Re-imprisoned. Then freed. Yes, the Yemeni government let him walk. It was Yemen's version of plea bargaining. The Yemeni government thought Badawi would be more valuable to it outside prison walls than within them, if Badawi lived up to his pledge to turn over other al-Qaeda members.

He never got the chance. The United States government protested his release so angrily, then threatened to cut off the U.S. aid Yemen receives ($25.3 million in 2007, $18.2 million requested for 2008) that the Yemeni government again shuttled Badawi back to prison. Some of the saga is related in a Times article today, though the more interesting insights focus on Yemen's dangerous social and economic state:

With a young, poor, and fast-growing population of 22 million, Yemen is rapidly approaching an economic and political crisis that could result in its becoming a failed state. The government is fighting a persistent insurgency in the north, oil supplies are dwindling, and the water table in the capital is expected (according to a World Bank estimate) to run out in two years. Like Afghanistan, Yemen has a weak government with strong tribes and mountainous terrain, and a vast weapons supply.

Rumor has it (according to a Congressional Research Service report on Yemen) that there may be as many as 60 million firearms in circulation, or about three firearms for every Yemeni man, woman and child. (Then again, let's not forget that in the United States, according to the BBC, 60 million people own 200 million firearms, a proportion more locked and loaded than Yemen's.)

Yemen, in brief, is the Arab Peninsula's Pakistan, at least when it comes to fighting terrorism. It's a nominal democracy where the government, to survive, has chosen to make deals with insurgents and terrorists, granting them a tacit measure of autonomy (the way Pakistan's government formally granted autonomy to tribal insurgents and Taliban operatives in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region) in hopes of buying some peace.

It hasn't worked exactly as planned. Al-Qaeda is quite active in the country, which it finds fertile ground for recruitment. (As of early 2007, there were about 100 Yemenis held prisoner at the American military prison at Guantanamo Bay.) But nor is it as simple as saying that the Yemeni approach is uninformed. Americans may not (or rather, very likely do not) understand the tribal culture that informs the kind of dealings that may result in a convicted terrorist returning to the street. This detail from the Times story is instructive:

Ali Saleh, another former jihadist who went through Judge Hetar’s program while in prison, now serves as a mediator between the government and Islamists. He helped negotiate the surrender of several of the 23 men who escaped from prison in Sana in early 2006. In exchange, the government agreed to make concessions, including releasing the men after their surrender, he said. “The government understands, in Yemen you must compromise to reach a solution,” Mr. Saleh said. “The Americans would like to put us all in jail. But if you do this, 10 men will become 20, 20 will become 100, and then — we will be an army.”

Read More About Yemen:

• Yemen: Country Profile
• Fabulist, Forbidding Yemen