YAZID Sufaat, Mohd Lotfi Ariffin and Rafi Udin are some of the most notorious Malaysian militants, yet they were also graduates of the government’s own programme to rehabilitate violent extremists.

Think-tank Iman Research, which studies violent extremism, said the three are examples of how Putrajaya’s rehabilitation and reintegration programme (RnR) for militants is flawed.

This is despite the government’s claims that its efforts at rehabilitating violent extremists had a 97% success rate, said the organisation’s programme director Badrul Hisham Ismail.  

Lotfi and Rafi are two of the scores of extremists whom the think-tank believes either rejoined militant groups or continue to believe in militancy despite completing the government’s programme.  

In the course of its research, Iman discovered that a majority of “rehabilitated” extremists still held on to their original beliefs and continued giving financial support to violent groups.  

“It is true when the government says its anti-extremism policy has stopped terror attacks in Malaysia,” Badrul told The Malaysian Insight.  

The RnR programme was run on militants detained under the now defunct Internal Security Act (ISA).  

“But it is not true that the people who went through the programme gave up their extremist views,” said Badrul, adding that Iman Research has met with these individuals.

He, however, declined to reveal their identities.

“Our counter-terrorism policy may be really successful. But it’s not the same with the RnR programme. Just because an extremist cannot commit violent acts after he is arrested does not mean that he does not want to commit them or that he does not support them any longer.”

The authorities’ success at preventing terror attacks on home soil may also be because Malaysia itself is not a big target for local violent extremists, said Badrul.

“Extremists have priorities and most of them want to travel to conflict areas, such as Syria, Marawi (in South Philippines) and lately Rakhine (in Myanmar), to join groups who already fighting.”

This is since such war zones already have the weapons and support network necessary for these extremists to wage what they believe is holy war.

“In comparison, carrying out an attack in Malaysia is a lot more difficult,” said Badrul.

Detainees play the game

The government said it rehabilitated 97.5% or 282 of the 298 militants who underwent the programme from 2001 to 2012 – the period under which the ISA was still in use.

After the ISA was repealed and replaced with the Prevention of Terrorism and Security Offences (Special Measures) Act, Putrajaya replaced the old programme with an integrated module.

Badrul said Iman’s study was conducted among detainees under the old ISA programme. But there are no details or data about the new integrated module.

One of the reasons the old programme was flawed was because it was top-down and only looked at the religious aspect of extremism.

“So, detainees realised that if you wanted to be released early all you had to do was just follow what the facilitators wanted you to do in the classes.”

By playing along, detainees hoodwinked the facilitators into thinking that they were cured of their extremist views, he said.

“Yazid and Lotfi are prime examples of how this occurred. In fact, Lotfi was even called back to become a facilitator. But later, when he had a chance to go to Syria, he took it.”

Lotfi was killed while fighting for the Islamic State terror group in the Syrian civil war in 2014. Yazid was sentenced to seven years’ jail in 2016 after being found guilty of terrorism-related offences.

Both had been ISA detainees who were released after undergoing rehab.

Patronising tone

Former militants who spoke to Iman said another weakness with the rehab programmes is that they often patronised the detainees.  

“The problem with this is that militants are very proud, self-confident individuals. So, they don’t take kindly to being patronised. When this occurs, it creates a wall between the facilitator and the detainee.”   

A better approach to rehabilitation, said Badrul, is to adopt some of the best practices from successful programmes in Indonesia.

Compared with Malaysia, Indonesia has a variety of rehab programmes run by the government, civil society groups and the local community.

These include a restaurant that hires ex-militants as staff so as reintegrate them into mainstream society and a reconciliation programme between extremists and the families of their victims.

The lesson from these Indonesian programmes is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach, said Badrul.   

“Rehabilitation should not just be left to the authorities. Civil society organisations and local communities must also be involved as there are complex push-and-pull factors that create extremists.”

There is a combination of factors which make individuals vulnerable to extremism. These include feelings of dissatisfaction with life, weak ties with family members, poverty and ideology.  

“We cannot get people to abandon extremist thinking if we don’t deal with all these factors.” –  February 8, 2018.