Although it has not been successful with all who went through it—some re-emerged later as jihadist fighters—Saudi Arabia’s rehabilitation program for former militants has been praised as a success.
But it cannot easily be exported to other Muslim countries, writes Kamran Bokhari in Stratfor’s Global Security and Intelligence Report (May 14). Aside from the financial resources available to Saudis, a powerful religious establishment and the specific tribal structure of Saudi Arabia “enable Saudi Arabia to make considerable progress on the homefront.”
Much more than exporting this culture-specific program, the Saudis could be more effective by using the ideological proximity of Wahhabism (the major form of Islam in Saudi Arabia) to Islamist currents to help undermine Islamist radicalism, Bokhari concludes.
(http://www.stratfor.com)
