America, terrorists and Nelson Mandela
- Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own -
Woe betide the organization or individual who lands on America’s terrorist list. The consequences are dire and it’s easier to get on the list than off it even if you turn to peaceful politics. Just ask Nelson Mandela.
One of the great statesmen of our time, Mandela stayed on the American terrorist blacklist for 15 years after winning the Nobel Prize prior to becoming South Africa’s first post-Apartheid president. He was removed from the list after then president George W. Bush signed into law a bill that took the label “terrorist” off members of the African National Congress (ANC), the group that used sabotage, bombings and armed attacks against the white minority regime.
The ANC became South Africa’s governing party after the fall of apartheid but the U.S. restrictions imposed on ANC militants stayed in place. Why? Bureaucratic inertia is as good an explanation as any and a look at the current list of what is officially labelled Foreign Terrorist Organisations (FTOs) suggests that once a group earns the designation, it is difficult to shake.
The consequences of a U.S. terrorist designation include freezing an organisation’s funds, banning its members from travelling to the U.S. and imposing harsh penalties (up to 15 years in prison) on people who provide “material support or resources” to an FTO.
At present, there are 44 groups on the list, ranged in alphabetical order from the Palestinian Abu Nidal Organisation to the United Self Defense Forces of Colombia. The Abu Nidal group, according to the government’s own country reports on terrorism, “is largely considered inactive.” The Congressional Research Service, a bipartisan agency which provides research and analysis for Congress, has wondered why it is still on the list.
One can ask the same about the Colombian group, added to the list in 2001. The bulk of the paramilitary organisation demobilized years ago and the latest U.S. government report says its “organizational structure no longer exists.”
The Underwear Bomber and the war of ideas
- Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own -
Who is winning the war of ideas between the West and al Qaeda’s hate-driven version of Islam?
It is a question that merits asking again after a 23-year-old Western-educated Nigerian of privileged background, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, attempted to murder almost 300 people by bringing down a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day with explosives sewn into the crotch of his underpants.
The administration of President Barack Obama, averse to the bellicose language of George W. Bush, has virtually dropped the phrase “war of ideas.” But that doesn’t mean it has ended. Or that Obama’s plea, in his Cairo speech this summer, for a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world has swayed the disciples of Osama bin Laden, whose 1998 fatwa (religious ruling) against “Jews and Crusaders” remains the extremists’ guiding principle.
“To…kill the Americans and their allies – civilians and military – is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it,” the fatwa said. “This is in accordance with the words of Almighty Allah (to) fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together.”
That this exhortation is as appealing today, to a fanatical minority, as it was 11 years ago underlines that the United States has had scant success in meeting the objective the Bush administration set out in its 2003 National Strategy for Combating Terrorism. “Together with the international community, we will wage a war of ideas to make clear that all acts of terrorism are illegitimate, to ensure that the conditions and ideologies that promote terrorism do not find fertile ground in any nation…”
That aim was spelt out just weeks before the United States invaded Iraq, an event that provided ample ammunition for the extremists’ assertion that the West was stepping up an unrelenting war it has waged against the Muslim world for centuries. Such claims, and al Qaeda itself, should be easy to discredit, write two political scientists, Peter Krause and Stephen Van Evera in the fall issue of the Middle East Policy Council Journal.
The Islamic jihad was not the brainchild of Osama but that of the American Imperialism [with the aid and assistance of the most right-reactionary forces in every country of their occupation] whose only concern is to assist the MNCs and the TNCs in their exploitation of the abundant natural resources the world over.All talk of upholding the values- that too American ones[?]- of freedom, democracy, free choice,etc. is nothing more than a cliche to hoodwink those gullible guys in their own as well as other countries!
After all what business do the Americans have in those countries no matter what their social-economic-political systems are? If the former USSR was wrong in ‘exporting’ revolution to the third world countries how can the USA directly wage wars in the name of their brand of democracy? If America’s political evangelism is right then Osama’s and his ilk’s retaliation is also right! If America has every right NOT ONLY TO DEFEND BUT ALSO SPREAD ITS STYLE OF LIFE AND BELIEFS then how can one find fault with others who also feel that their values are being threatened?.After all it was this very same America which originally recruited and trained them in their ‘jihad’ against the truly humanizing socialist ideology that was sought to be practiced in such countries. IF communism was a taboo for them can the American way of life be sold to them in the name of pseudo-democracy?
AND lastly,no American other than the ones who are genuinely-not for tactical or personal/practical reasons-opposed to the neocolonialist wars of his country has any right to grouse against the backlash of his country’s atrocities elsewhere.Let them not gloat over their system which has driven thousands on to the streets in their own country and is ruining the lives of the millions in other countries.Because that system and its government in their country are not theirs but those of the warlords in the service of the MNCs and the TNCs.
A V Samikkannu, Pappireddippatti, Tamilnadu, India
Why we must profile airline passengers
Philip Baum is the editor of Aviation Security International and the managing director of Green Light Limited, an aviation security training and consultancy company based in London. The opinions expressed are his own.
Whenever an individual manages to circumvent the security system designed to protect our airports, airlines and the people who use them, we ask why our countermeasures failed. And yet the real problem lies in our determination to screen everybody in exactly the same way using technologies that are not fit for purpose.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year old alleged perpetrator of the Christmas Day attack, should have been identified as a potential threat to the flight both in Lagos and again in Amsterdam. Here was a passenger who had bought an expensive ticket in cash in a country different to that of his port of embarkation or his intended destination, was traveling without any checked luggage for a two-week trip over the Christmas period, and about whom some agencies, and his father, had security concerns. It’s not rocket science we need; it’s the deployment of common sense.
Regrettably, regulators are loath to implement international profiling standards that would screen different passengers in different ways, for fear of being branded politically incorrect. Profiling is a risk analysis of a person or situation carried out by a trained, streetwise workforce. In terms of passengers, the aim is to analyze their appearance and behavior, along with their travel documents, and determine to what extent they meet our expectations for international air travel. The key advantage of profiling is that it responds to future threats as well as to those of the past and enables us to then select the right technology to screen passengers with. We are not going to ask all passengers to undergo a through-body X-ray, however safe such technologies are, but we could use the technology to screen those we have concerns about.
Detractors of profiling claim that decisions will be racially motivated, that we will start picking on young Asian men and that all Muslim passengers will be treated unfairly. Yet, the best examples of profiling actually working have identified people who do not meet such a stereotype. Anne-Marie Murphy, a pregnant Irish woman identified as a potential threat to an El Al flight in 1986, is the best example – and she certainly did not fit the terrorist stereotype. As a result the 1.5 kg Semtex-based device concealed in her bag was identified.
The limited degree of profiling that is currently done has been proven to work, when it is properly applied and enforced by trained staff. Richard Reid, the “shoe-bomber,” was identified as a possible threat on 21st December 2001 and refused boarding; he returned the next day and managed to board. The Chechen Black Widows responsible for the downing of two Russian airliners in 2004, each carrying explosive charges on (or possibly in) their bodies, were initially refused boarding. They paid bribes to be accepted, with tragic results.
It is up to security trainers to ensure that profiling decisions are based on logic rather than race, religion or skin color. In any case, aviation security is about preventing perpetrators of all acts of unlawful interference with civil aviation, such as unruly passengers, criminals and asylum seekers, not only terrorists, from boarding aircraft. Employers, meanwhile, will have to ensure that the screeners they employ have the requisite skill-set with which to perform their duties.
Profiling should be no different than any medical scan. Terrorism has many of the same traits as a disease, in this case a disease of civilization. Preventing, finding, and removing these infectious cells can be similar to doing it with real cells. We don’t cat-scan or x-ray everyone, just those with symptoms.
Look at all the countries that quickly banned imports from countries that reported Mad Cow disease, Swine flu, and Bird flu, for example. Russia and China instantly began quarantining travelers with any symptoms, even those that sat within 10 feet of anyone with symptoms. They had fever scanners set up. Russia immediately banned imports of pigs from the U.S. and Mexico. The list goes on. The point is that diseases scare the hell out of people, and they often overreact. But the result is that the originating country, where the disease started, is the one put under tremendous pressure to deal with the problem, and then prove to the world they are OK. The burden shifted to them, not the importing country.
The same logic should, and eventually will prevail with terrorists, which are spawned, bred, trained, educated, and knowingly allowed to walk proudly in their country of origin. If they succeed, they become martyrs. Those countries should be treated like intentional “carriers” and “breeding grounds” for this new disease. It should become the responsibility for those country’s leaders – national, tribal, or family – to find and remove this problem for the survival of their own country. The cost should be shifted to them.
Any country that condones terrorism in any way, should be blacklisted and their travelers put automatically into a separate screening process. Besides all of the other logical clues for screening, mostly physical, national origin should therefore be key. Hate to say it, but the U.K. has allowed itself to also become a breeding ground for terrorists. We know the terms “Londonistan” and “Eurabia.” In any case, it’s better to implement tough profiling now as a security measure instead of waiting until we are hit with a full lockdown, when the problem becomes an overreaction, harder to fix, and economically much more costly.
during the court proceeding,some of the information about MEKm`s activities declassified by state department.
according to these information the group has not ended its military operation,still intenends to use violence to achieve its political goals and trained females to be suicide bombers.in also said that much of the information the group has provided on iran`s nuclear program has been wrong.
(www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/a rticle/2010/07/16/AR2010071605881_pf.htm l)
therefor MEK exatly is a terrorist group.