Yemen Main Obstacle to Closing Guantanamo for Obama
The Yemeni Factor. Any route to closing Guantanamo involves repatriating most of the roughly 250 detainees still held in Cuba. Sending detainees home requires negotiating the terms of their release with the home country. Since Yemenis make up the largest group of prisoners in Cuba, talks with the government in Sanaa will be key. But Yemen has been the hardest country to engage on the issue, according to a former senior official familiar with the process. The Bush administration has asked home countries to impose restrictions on the returnees. Saudi Arabia, for example, has imprisoned some Gitmo veterans, limited the travel of others and put those it thought it could co-opt through a “de-radicalization” program. “Yemen doesn’t want to be seen as doing anything for the United States,” says the former official, who declined to be named discussing sensitive diplomacy. Even if it agreed to U.S. demands, Yemen might not have the capability to honor them. “It has areas of the country that are poorly governed and its borders are porous,” said the former official. If the new administration is willing to release detainees without demands on the home country, the process can go quickly. But the risk is that some might pose future security threats to America.
