The New Year started well for George W. Bush and his “war on terror”. Hot on the heels of Libya’s abandoning its WMD program and opening its facilities for international inspection comes the news that North Korea, too, is offering to have its key nuclear installation inspected next week by American investigators. While such an invitation should more appropriately go to officials from the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it is nonetheless important. Nothing can ever be taken for granted about the mercurial North Korean regime, but this pivot on the US’ “Axis of Evil” appears to be taking a conciliatory line.
The second country on that axis was Iran. Although both Tehran and Washington have made a point of declaring that US help in the wake of the awful Bam earthquake signals no change in the policy for either, privately diplomats say that quiet discussion channels have opened.
Yet the war against terrorism goes on, as evidenced by US warnings of attacks during the New Year celebrations and Washington’s sudden restrictions on flights arriving from Mexico, France and the UK. Alerts have taken place elsewhere, not least in Hamburg, where extraordinary precautions were taken to protect a military hospital, and here in Riyadh, where a BA flight has been grounded. In every case, the authorities apparently acted on “credible specific intelligence” of planned terror attacks. That none took place may have been a result of the countermeasures.
Or the intelligence may have been plain wrong. The CIA and FBI, stung by their failure to discover the Sept. 11 attack plans, have clearly decided to err on the side of caution and take seriously any intelligence they might once have discounted. But if these recent alerts have all been false alarms, the disruption they caused is doing part of the terrorists’ job for them. It is also making people, the Americans in particular, increasingly jittery. This is bad. An anxious electorate may countenance repressive measures that it would reject in calmer times.
The more sensible course would be for the security authorities to get on quietly with their work of identifying and apprehending the killers and only give out these public warnings as a rare last resort. As it stands, any time Al-Qaeda wants to turn a city upside down or bring chaos to international flights, it has only to leak a bit of misinformation through their network of sympathizers.
All children know the clear danger from the story of the boy who cried wolf. Weary of constant alarms, people’s alertness will diminish and their faith in the world’s security services will be undermined. When a real attack comes, governments may find that nobody is listening to their warnings any more. Like the wolf in the story, the terrorists will find the coast clear.
