Thursday, 31st December 2009
The lessons of flight 253
The attempt by Al Qaeda to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day should have taught us various lessons. The first is that 8 years after September 11, flight security remains largely ineffective. Hundreds of millions if not billions have been spent in securing airports and airplanes. But it didn’t prevent Umar Farouk Abdul Muttalab, a known-terrorist sympathiser, from passing through two separate airports (Lagos and Schiphol) and boarding two separate flights planes, while carrying explosives.
Predictably, the knee jerk reaction of the US Government and other governments has been to tighten further the already invasive security restrictions that all travellers by air have to face. Now we are being told that we will not be allowed to access our hand baggage in overhead lockers during flights. We will not be allowed to leave our seats during the last hour of a long-haul flight to go to the toilet. We will not be allowed to have any object, such as a laptop computer, on our knee, in case it is being used to conceal a bomb. Ludicrously, some airlines have even banned the screening of flight-maps, so that would-be bombers have no clear idea of the aircraft’s proximity to big cities. The fact that a glance out of the window may provide this information seems to have escaped some security chiefs.
All of these restrictions are simply fatuous, pointless and represent a victory for the terrorists. The apparent “technical failure” of Muttalab’s deadly device and the decisive and courageous action of passengers and crew, prevented a catastrophic explosion on Northwest Airlines flight 253 on Christmas Day. But despite all that, Al Qaeda have enjoyed worldwide press coverage. While the West puts in place procedures aimed at preventing a recurrence of the most recent attempt at blowing up a plane, Al Qaeda will have moved on and will be planning something entirely different, for which we have no protection.
We need to look again at airport and airline security and ask ourselves why, for example, there has been no attack on an El Al plane for 41 years? The last and only successful hijacking of an El Al Aircraft took place on July 23, 1969. The reason is clear. It is because the Israelis have perfected their own comprehensive security system. El Al is the only airline company in the world to pass all baggage through a decompression chamber, simulating pressure during flight, to counter the threat of pressure-bombs. They extensively use an intelligence database to check passengers and they train their security personnel to “profile” them, watching for suspicious or nervous people, rather than wasting time on intrusively searching elderly ladies and children. There are armed air-marshals on every El Al flight and every day, undercover examiners routinely test their own security teams at various airports around the world.
It’s this mixture of technique, intelligence, common sense and human intuition that drastically reduces the risk and makes El Al the “world’s most secure airline”, (‘Global Traveller’ magazine, 2008).
But we should also have learned a second lesson from the failed Christmas Day bomb. The attempt to blow up flight 253 has surely reminded us that far from being a busted flush, Al Qaeda is very much an active frontline player, able to organise and inspire Jihadists worldwide. We were assured that the Pakistani army had Al Qaeda and the Taleban on the run in Pakistan and Western military forces were slowly but surely winning the war in Afghanistan. We were told that it was only a matter of time before Bin Laden himself would be captured. Now we discover to our horror that Al Qaeda has gained a firm foothold in Yemen and Somalia. It was from their base in Yemen that Al Qaeda was able to send Umar Farouk Abdul Muttalab, a young, radicalised Nigerian engineer from a respectable and wealthy family, on a suicide mission to blow up Northwest Airlines flight 253 as it came in to land in Detroit.
Clearly the West is not winning the “long war” against the terrorists. Nor are we winning the battle for hearts and minds. We need to re-think airport security to prepare for the attacks of tomorrow, rather than the attacks of yesterday. We need to look beyond airports and planes and prepare for attacks on heavily populated soft-targets like trains, football grounds and shopping malls.
But of equal importance is the urgent need to get the message across that the US and Europe are a force for good, not evil; that Islam is not the sole monopoly of Al Qaeda and the fundamentalists; that Islam and the Koran can exist side by side with other faiths and cultures and that life without constant war and bloodshed can be good and productive.
