Global Economics CIA officer who is a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies, in an e-mail. Yet it reaches only a small number of militants and falls short of “dealing in a more wholesale manner with the roots of jihadi radicalism in the kingdom,” he wrote. The authorities work with Sunni clerics to help deter young Saudis from going on jihad, train the police to identify and arrest returning jihadis, and try to disrupt the financial networks supporting them. More than 2,600 Saudis have traveled to Syria since 2011 to fight for militant groups such as Islamic State, and 668 have returned, according to the Ministry of the Interior. Many end up in al-Ha’ir or other top-security prisons. So do Saudis who funded, recruited, and housed the fighters. The number of inmates at the maximum-security prisons now exceeds 4,200, according to official figures. That number includes jihadis and others, such as rebellious Saudi Shiites, who are deemed enemies of the state. All the inmates at al-Ha’ir get a monthly allowance of 2,000 riyals ($533), which they can withdraw from ATMs in the prison, and they have opportunities for education and access to psychologists. “The main purpose is to rehabilitate them,” says Colonel Mohammed “Abu Salman,” the head of al-Ha’ir. For security reasons the colonel gives his nickname only. In a courtyard inside al-Ha’ir, young men, all jihadis, sit on benches talking. One says he’s a Saudi American from Texas, giving no further details. Another says he fought six months with a group linked to Islamic State in Aleppo. He says he headed home when he grew worried about his family and was arrested when he landed at the airport in Jeddah. In al-Ha’ir’s medical ward, a 25-year-old man lies in bed, paralyzed from the waist down. He says he was shot by a sniper in the province of Idlib in northern Syria, after two years fighting for the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front. He made it to Turkey, where Saudi diplomats helped get him home. He says he now regrets his journey to Syria, knowing he’ll probably never walk again. —Glen Carey
Currencies The Mighty Pound With the fate of the euro in question over the past three months, the big winner in the currency market has been the British pound. Investors spooked by the prospect of Greece’s exit from the euro zone were drawn to the pound’s stability and the U.K.’s strengthening economy.
The pound’s rise is “due to the relative economic outperformance we’ve seen, rather than any big change in rate expectations.” —Simon Smith, chief economist at FXPro Group
The best and worst performers Change in the value of major currencies vs. the U.S. dollar from April 13 to July 13 -10%
-5%
0%
5%
10%
British pound Danish krone euro Swedish krona Swiss franc
19
Singapore dollar The pound climbed
5.7%
The kiwi fell to its lowest level in
Taiwanese dollar Norwegian krone Brazilian real Canadian dollar
beating the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, the FTSE 100, gold, and oil
Australian dollar Japanese yen
5
years before recovering slightly
Mexican peso South African rand South Korean won New Zealand dollar
Rise of the pound Deutsche Bank GBP Trade Weighted Index, which tracks the British pound against a basket of currencies
Index value
Favorable wage data and a bullish statement from the Bank of England drove this rally
90.0
87.5
The bottom line The Saudis are trying everything from prison to hotel privileges to turn jihadis into responsible citizens. Edited by Christopher Power Bloomberg.com
By David Goodman and Mark Glassman
4/13/15
The pound dipped on preelection fears of a minority government but rebounded when the Tories won a majority
85.0 7/14/15
DATA: COMPILED BY BLOOMBERG
