Ananti-social Nigerian loner makes an unsuccessful attempt to blow up an aircraft with a syringe bomb hidden in his underwear following a sojourn in Yemen and thrusts the entire world into turmoil. All of a sudden US President Barack Obama is being accused by the right of being soft on terrorism and has been forced to introduce draconian measures to prove he’s on the ball.
Once again, the traveling public must endure the consequences. Those traveling to and from the US are now restricted to one carry-on bag and must be physically patted-down by security personnel before they can board their aircraft, which not only entails personal embarrassment but also flight delays. Worst of all, passengers will not be allowed to cover themselves with a blanket or leave their seats for the final hour of their journey. There’s no way to put this delicately. What on earth does a person do who is desperate to use the toilet? The mind boggles!
It goes without saying that Britain has already caught Washington’s cold. Prime Minister Gordon Brown says Britain remains a high profile terror target and the incident involving Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab has been a wake-up call. So much so, that he’s called an international conference to ensure Yemen doesn’t become a new terror center. Here we go again! If that’s so then the Afghanistan containment has proved to be a failure.
He also says he will talk to his US counterpart to ensure this “evolving” new hi-tech terror threat to airlines is thwarted. Brown’s answer is to use £100,000 body scanners that can detect weapons and explosives hidden on the body.
Sounds good except the images they produce leave nothing to the imagination. Every contour of the body is revealed, which is a nightmare for people who value modesty such as Muslim women of cover. Moreover, the use of such equipment is likely to cause huge queues and yet more delayed flights because they are known to be slow. Amsterdam and other European cities are poised to follow suit in relation to trans-Atlantic journeys.
Would-be US tourists must ask themselves whether the destination is worth the indignities of virtual nude exposure and being tied to their airplane seats. Business travelers and students will be left with little choice.
There are many people who say they are uncomfortable with the new measures but accept they are necessary to keep them safe. But are they? Quite honestly, if the controls currently in place had worked, Abdulmutallab would never have been allowed to board in the first place.
His own father Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, a prominent banker, had been so alarmed by his son’s last telephone call that he warned Nigerian officials, who brought him to the headquarters of the CIA in Abuja on Nov. 19. Incredibly, the CIA waited more than a month before adding the disturbed young man’s name to the terrorist suspect list and didn’t even bother to append it to America’s “No-fly” list.
There is no excuse for such apathy. If an individual’s own parent denounces him as a radical who may be about to embark on a suicide mission, intelligence services should have immediately taken action. It’s ironic that thousands of innocent people have been placed on the “No-fly” list merely because their name is the same or sounds similar to that of someone suspected of being up to no good. Toddlers and grandmothers have been prevented from flying to America whereas a person who is a known threat was welcomed aboard.
The fact is that airline travel is still one of the safest modes of transport. Since terrorists turned civilian airlines into missiles on Sept. 11, 2001, there have been few such incidents in the air. Indeed, taking the train has proved to be far more dangerous.
On March 11, 2004, 10 bombs exploded on four commuter trains in the Spanish capital Madrid killing 191 and on July 7, 2005 attacks on three London underground trains and a bus killed 56 and injured 700. Then, in July, 2006 in Mumbai, India, seven explosions on trains and in stations robbed the lives of more than 174 commuters, while in November 2009 a terrorist bomb derailed a luxury train traveling from Moscow to St. Petersburg when 39 lost their lives.
That tragic incident was followed by another in Russia’s Republic of Dagestan when a bomb was detonated on the track. But nobody is talking about putting body scanners in stations, forcing passengers to take off their shoes and socks or forbidding them from carrying on beverages.
Over the past eight years, fanatics have also attacked hotels, nightclubs, places of worship, market places and even schools. The problem is that it is impossible to guard against every single incident without making everyday life miserable. Anyone seeking absolute 100 percent protection from people George W. Bush liked to call “evil doers” should build an underground bunker and stay in it. Everything we do in life comes with risk from crossing the road and driving a car to skiing or rock climbing. And when it comes to air travel passengers are more likely to be killed due to air traffic control or pilot error, bird strikes, cabin or hold fires, fuel shortage, aircraft design flaws or lightning than terrorism.
That isn’t to say that authorities shouldn’t act sensibly to reduce the threat of terrorism or hijacking in the air; the operative word being “sensibly.” The people who dream-up anti-terrorism procedures, which end up terrorizing travelers should consider this. Babies in arms, children under 16, the wheelchair bound and people over 65 are rarely terrorists. It’s fairly safe to say, therefore, that the threat from such individuals is so infinitesimal that putting them through rigorous screening amounts to an unnecessary waste of time.
One of the world’s most potentially vulnerable national airlines is the Israeli airline El Al which is also the world’s most secure, according to Global Traveler magazine. Since the 1960s, El Al has boasted an impressive safety record, which it maintains by employing stringent security measures that rely on brief passenger interviews, information from international intelligence services, the use of baggage decompression chambers simulating flight conditions that could trigger explosives, and sky marshals on every flight.
Other airlines recognize that these methods work but shy away from employing them on two counts: firstly, they are costly and, secondly, they are wary of being accused of passenger profiling. I’ve always been against profiling but when airlines are impinging on privacy with body scanners and keeping passengers strapped into their seats, profiling may be a slightly lesser evil allowing the vast majority to enjoy air travel in the way we once took for granted. The downside is that a minority will feel permanently discriminated against due to their nationality, religion or appearance.
Flying may never be the glamorous experience it once was when passengers were made to feel special but if it ever becomes humiliating or akin to torture, I, for one, will be staying close to home. ([email protected])
