U.S. blacklist : ‘Countries of interest’ sing the same tune

“The new directive includes long-term sustainable security measures developed in consultation with law enforcement officials and our domestic and international partners.” The measures mean that citizens of the designated and affected countries will be pulled aside for pat-downs and extra hand baggage searches no matter where they are travelling from. Their luggage and clothing will […]

“The new directive includes long-term sustainable security measures developed in consultation with law enforcement officials and our domestic and international partners.”

The measures mean that citizens of the designated and affected countries will be pulled aside for pat-downs and extra hand baggage searches no matter where they are travelling from. Their luggage and clothing will be checked for traces of explosives and they will be required to pass through controversial full-body screeners at airports equipped with the machines.

The rules also affect all passengers on flights originating in or passing through the 14 affected countries. Every passenger on board those planes, no matter their nationality, even though citizens of those affected nations already require a visa to travel to the U.S.A. will be specially singled out for the extra screening.

The blacklist includes the four countries America considers to be “state sponsors of terrorism” – Iran, Syria and Sudan – plus its old Cold War sparring partner, Cuba. There are then another 10 alleged “countries of interest” – Afghanistan, Algeria, Lebanon, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Iraq.

This act by the United States of America has generated mixed reactions from the affected countries. The reactions, however, have similar undertones from many of the countries. Some governments are unhappy at being singled out. Nigeria, for example, described their black-listing as an ‘unfair’ knee-jerk reaction to the fact that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the man arrested for the failed Christmas Day bombing, is one of its citizens.

“His behaviour is not reflective of Nigeria and should therefore not be used as a yardstick to judge all Nigerians,” said the Information and Communications Minister, Proffesor Dora Akunyili. “It’s unfair to discriminate against over 150 million people, because of the behaviour of one person.” Within the week, Nigeria even went further to threaten diplomatic friction if Washington’s decision is not quickly reversed.

Muammar Gaddafi was also reported to have received the news that Libya is on the list while hosting a military parade. But as usual, the Colonel was said not to have been surprised or disappointed that Libya has been blacklisted. Next to Gaddafi were President Saleh of Yemen (on the list) and President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela (still not on the list as at the time of this analysis).

Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, which are also new additions to the list of ‘countries of interest’, regard their inclusion as a public insult. A few months ago, President Obama was bowing to the Saudi King. Today, the Kingdom is mentioned in the profiling blacklist. This is one of the dynamics of international political relations.

For Pakistan, a lot of observers were not so surprised, considering the intelligent reports filtering around that another unit of Al-Qaeda is still hiding in the northern region of the country. Cuba has lodged a formal protest against new U.S. rules tightening security checks for airline passengers travelling from or through Cuba.

“We categorically reject this new hostile action by the government of the United States that stems from the unfair inclusion of Cuba in the so-called list of countries supporting terrorism,” the message said

One of the centres of attraction in the whole issue is Yemen. In its reaction as a state on behalf of the state, the Yemeni Foreign Minister, Abu Bakr al-Kurbi, rejected any comparison between his country and Afghanistan as an Al-Qaeda haven. “Yemen is capable of confronting these groups, but it needs international aid to form and train anti-terrorist units as well as economic aid, since the problem also has an economic dimension.”

From the North of Africa, Algeria could not hold her shock and apparent disappointment for the country’s inclusion in the blacklist. In his statement, Abdellah Baali, Algeria’s ambassador to Washington has termed the measure finding Algerian travellers at risk for Americans as “discriminatory,” even though he acknowledged that U.S.A. has the right to ensure the safety of its citizens.He stated that he would file an official protest very soon. Algeria, the only Maghreb country affected by this blacklist, has not yet reacted to the fact that France has decided to declare ‘suspect’ all Algerian travellers going to its territory from 1st January, 2010. This is seen as a double blow for the North African state.

From the Middle East, Lebanon reacts: “Would it be simpler just to put the whole world on?”

As the debate on the effectiveness or otherwise of the body scanners at various airports in the world rages on, different professionals have put forward their divergent views on the issue. Despite the stands already taken by America, chances that such views would bring a change in decision are very, very slim.

According to Bruce Schneider, a security technologist and author of several books on computer security, including “Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly about Security in an Uncertain World.”

There are two kinds of profiling. There’s behavioural profiling based on how someone acts and there’s automatic profiling based on name, nationality, method of ticket purchase and so on. The first one can be effective, but is very hard to do right. The second one makes us all less safe. The problem with automatic profiling is that it doesn’t work. Terrorists can figure out how to beat any profiling system.

Terrorists don’t fit a profile and cannot be plucked out of crowds by computers. They’re European, Asian, African, Hispanic and Middle Eastern, male and female, young and old. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a Nigerian.

Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, was British with a Jamaican father. Germaine Lindsay, one of the 7/7 London bombers, was Afro-Caribbean. Dirty bomb suspect, Jose Padilla, was Hispanic-American. The 2002 Bali terrorists were Indonesian. Timothy McVeigh was a white American. The Chechen terrorists who blew up two Russian planes in 2004 were female. Palestinian terrorists routinely recruit “clean” suicide bombers, and have used unsuspecting Westerners as bomb carriers.

Without an accurate profile, the system can be statistically demonstrated to be no more effective than random screening.

Michael German, a former F.B.I. agent, is policy counsel for the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union and the author of Thinking like a Terrorist.

“The recent attempted airline attack screams loudly for better security measures from our government. But the government’s plan to subject citizens of certain countries to enhanced security does not fit the bill. It is a pretext for racial profiling, which is both ineffective and unconstitutional. We need to direct resources to investigations based on facts rather than bias.

Racial profiling is a shortcut based on bias rather than evidence. There simply is no reliable “terrorist profile.” Take, for instance, the Belgian woman who became a suicide bomber in Iraq in 2005; or “shoe bomber” Richard Reid and London subway bomber Germaine Lindsay, who were both British citizens of Jamaican descent. Terrorists do not come in a particular colour or from a particular place.

Racial profiling is also unworkable. Once aware of national profiling, terrorists will simply use people from “non-profiled” countries or origins, like FBI’s most-wanted Al-Qaeda suspect Adam Gadahn, an American. What will we do? Keep adding more countries to the list of 14 until we’ve covered the whole globe?