Re-education at Abu Ghraib

(Hat tip: Jihad Watch

In "Anti-Jihad U.: Bringing insurgents in from the cold" in City Journal (thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist), Judith Miller takes up Major General Douglas Stone's claim to use the Qur'an to teach jihadists to lay down their arms and become peaceful, law-abiding citizens. But once again, as in earlier coverage of this initiative, she doesn't offer any specifics whatsoever about how exactly he does it.

When much of the world thinks about America’s treatment of detainees in Iraq, it thinks of torture, humiliation, abuse, and pictures from Abu Ghraib. But do most people know that the American military is now running one of the Middle East’s largest Islamic schools for those detainees? Or that it sponsors religious discussion programs among them about Islam? Or that it trains suspected insurgents to be carpenters, farmers, and artists who are paid for their work each day? The school, programs, and training are core elements of the American military’s radically new approach to detention in Iraq, an integral part of its counterinsurgency effort.

For the past nine months, Task Force 134—led by Major General Douglas M. Stone, a two-star Marine general who oversees civilian detention in Iraq—has been experimenting with a series of unconventional initiatives at two large “camps” where 23,245 suspected insurgents, Iraqi and foreign, are being held. The aim of these programs, which I visited in April, is not only to accelerate the identification and release of those falsely accused of “jihadi” activity, but also to de-radicalize and rehabilitate others who may have joined the insurgency primarily to feed their families, or because they were motivated by a militant, perverse interpretation of Islam.

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A major tipping point in the program, say officers, was when detainees began volunteering for the classes being offered. Although al-Qaida detainees and the Takfiris (another group of religious extremists) pressured fellow Iraqis against participating in the very popular religious discussions, over 3,000 detainees have done so. “After Iraqis here learn how to read and write, they can read the Koran themselves for the first time,” says Sheikh Ali, a Sunni who counsels detainees and who, like most of the Iraqis working in the program, declined to have his surname used and must live in an American-guarded compound to avoid reprisals. “I’ve seen detainees break down and cry when they realize that the conduct they thought was sanctioned by God is actually a sin.”

Detainees began volunteering for religious discussion—in addition to the Arabic, civics, history, science, geography, and math that are also offered—after American soldiers physically separated “extremist” elements from the overwhelming majority of camp “moderates.” “Empowering the moderates and isolating extremists has been key for us,” says Stone. When moderate inmates identified the extremists to soldiers and demanded their removal, Task Force 134 knew that its approach was working.