By Nicole Hunt

EU and Ukrainian officials meet in Kiev on Monday for the annual EU-Ukraine Summit, with rumours abound that President Viktor Yanukovych is planning to skip the meeting in favour of the EurAsEC summit taking place in Moscow on the same day. Yanukovych’s planned visit to Brussels in Octoberwas delayed after opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison on what the EU says are politically motivated charges.

The Gulf Cooperation Council holds its annual summit in Riyadh, the first formal meeting of leaders since the beginning of the Arab Spring last year. The meeting begins on the same day that the UN Security Council is scheduled to discuss sanctions against Iran and receive a briefing from Jamal Benomar, Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Yemen.

Leaders from the Commonwealth of Independent States meet in Moscow on Tuesday to celebrate the organisation’s 20th anniversary. The CIS was formed out of the dissolution of the Soviet Union; the initial agreement was signed by Belarus, Russia and Ukraine on 8 December, 1991, while eight more former Soviet republics joined on 21 December.

In Tripoli, Tuesday marks the deadline issued by the government and the Tripoli Council for rogue, non-Tripoli based militias to disarm and leave the city. Despite the announcement of the deadline on 6 December, clashes between militias and security forces have continued unabated.

Pending the confirmation of election results by the Supreme Court of the Democratic Republic of Congo on 17 December, President Joseph Kabila is scheduled to be sworn in for a second term in Kinshasa. International observers have raised concerns about the validity of the country’s 28 November election.

The long-awaited verdict in the ‘Government I’ genocide trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda is handed down on Wednesday in Arusha. Former Interior Minister Edouard Karemera and former President of the MRND political party Mathieu Ngirumpatse are accused of recruiting and arming the Interahamwe militia and disseminating Hutu Power propaganda.

The European Central Bank holds the first of two 36-month longer-term refinancing operations announced by ECB President Mario Draghi on 8 December as part of a series of measures to support bank lending and market activities. The LTRO comes on the same day that Italy releases Q3 GDP figures; the preliminary figures had been due in November, but were not released amid political turmoil.

Palestinian leaders meet in Cairo on Thursday, with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas expected to chair the first meeting of what would be a unified Palestinian decision-making body in place until elections are held in May 2012. Members of the Palestinian National Council, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation’s executive boards and the directors-general of various Palestinian factions are scheduled to attend.

Amid weeks of protests against the recent parliamentary elections, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev gives his annual state of the nation address in Moscow.

On Friday, the South Korean military is set to turn on the lights on three giant steel Christmas trees placed at points along the country’s border with North Korea. Pyongyang has reportedly called the trees a form of ‘psychological warfare’ and has threatened ‘unexpected consequences’ if the lighting goes ahead.

Activists in Russia have planned another mass protest against the 4 December elections on Saturday, after an estimated 50,000 people turned out for the 10 December demonstration, which was organised on Facebook. The tens of thousands already signed up to attend have clearly not been swayed by President Dmitry Medvedev’s pledge to investigate allegations of electoral fraud.

Sunday is, of course, Christmas Day. While millions worldwide will be focusing on egg nog, Christmas pudding and what Santa’s left under the tree, Pakistani cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan will be addressing a rally in Karachi, where he is said to be launching a ‘revolutionary manifesto’ ahead of elections in 2013.

Sunday also marks the 20th anniversary of the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev, who had been President of the Soviet Union from October 1988. Gorbachev’s resignation came a day before the USSR was formally dissolved on 26 December, 1991.

Each of these young men has served prison time for terror-related crimes. Now, in a highly unusual social experiment, they are being groomed for a return to society by Dr Alyami, an art therapist. Dr Alyami’s therapy programme is taking place at a former desert resort half an hour’s drive north of the Saudi capital Riyadh.

A cluster of low-rise concrete buildings has been turned over to psychology counsellors and religious sheikhs to help try and set the former extremists on a more peaceful track. Only a curl of barbed wire along the top of the perimeter wall betrays the fact that this compound is no longer being used as a family getaway. 

The detainees are free to wander around inside where they enjoy activities such as swimming or a game of volleyball on a grassy courtyard. Their sleeping quarters are modest – the bedroom I saw was a tiny space with three mattresses on the floor.

The Saudi Ministry of the Interior launched the programme after homegrown jihadis began bombing government and foreign installations inside the Kingdom in 2003, but only recently have the authorities allowed outsiders a peak inside. During a recent visit Dr Alyami was leaning over a piece of paper vigorously drawing red lines to demonstrate to the class how he expresses his own negative feelings.

One of the detainees, Mohammed, held up his work showing me an abstract paper canvas smeared with intense red and purple tones. He smiled and said it represented his negative energy. The red, he explained, was Syria, from where he had planned to enter Iraq to join the insurgency. Mohammed never made it to Iraq but when he returned to Saudi Arabia he was arrested anyway. 

Not all the former jihadis’ art is easy to decipher or interpret. During a visit in November I watched as two of them drew lines, curves and dots in shades of pink and pale blue. Dr Alyami told me that when the request first came through that he work with these students, he was reluctant.

He said: “I had that idea that these are criminals. They blow up buildings and stuff and if I go there they might go after my kids one day…when I went there I saw how simple minded these kids are…they were just like tools being used.”

Work from earlier sessions was also on display. One depicted the outline of Saudi Arabia in bright green surrounded by blue as if the country was an island. The common notion that many young jihadis are naïve and easily-led has led to widespread report for this soft approach to curing extremism inside the Kingdom.

Part of the rehabilitation is religious in orientation. The authorities say that a misunderstanding of Islam is often at the heart of the extremists’ path towards violence. Art therapy is only one of several approaches to tackling terrorism inside the Kingdom. Abdulrahman Al-Hadlaq, advisor to the Minister of the Interior, told me he’s fighting a “war of ideas” and the only way to confront it is with ideology.

As a result, Saudi authorities say they are engaging with extremists at all levels: in schools, in mosques, even inside maximum security prisons. The most extreme of the terrorists are not eligible for rehabilitation but even they are invited to attend religious education sessions.  

I was given a tour of a new “more than maximum security” prison at Al Haer 25 miles south of Riyadh. There weren’t yet any occupants for its 1200 places. Saudi security forces are also busy rounding up suspected terrorists.  While I was in Riyadh the Saudis announced the arrest of 208 extremists. And the problem of extremism in the Kingdom appears far from over. US authorities claim 40 percent of the foreign fighters who have headed to Iraq to join the insurgency over the past year are from Saudi Arabia.

Nevertheless, the Ministry of the Interior claims an 80 percent success rate with its rehabilitation programme, a statistic which is impossible to verify. Dr Christopher Boucek, who lectures in politics at Princeton University, has been closely studying the Saudi programme for the past two years. Initially  a skeptic, he says he is impressed by what he’s seen in Saudi Arabia and told me rehabilitation is fast becoming the model for countries around the world trying to tackle Islamist terrorism.

Similar programmes are underway in Egypt, Singapore and even the Americans are trying this new soft approach at Camp Cropper in Iraq. 

Nancy Durham will be speaking to Nick Fielding at the Club on  4th of February.