AI
Friday, July 02, 2010 12:27:27 AM
Australia's head-in-the-sand counter-terrorism strategy
22 June 2010
M. Adil Khan
In recent years, Australia's security risks concerning possible terror attacks on its citizens and its assets, both within and outside the country, have increased manifold. To counter these threats - these are assumed to be originating from both home-grown as well as the so-called international jihadists ("Islamist terrorists") - Kevin Rudd has revealed, in a "terror white paper", his counter-terrorism strategy for the country.
The "paper" includes all the familiar measures such as greater and harsher visa processing of citizens of some countries, especially those belonging to 10 unnamed countries (there is obvious speculation that these would be Muslim countries), biometric passport checking of travellers at the Australian airports and other ports of entry and rigorous surveillance of suspected terrorists, both within and abroad.
The white paper also includes provision for greater community level information sharing on security - perhaps a euphemism for communist era type community based mutual spying. The "counter-terror" project envisages a total expenditure of $69 million.
Protecting Australian lives and their properties, both within and abroad should indeed be the priority concern of all Australian governments. In that sense, the "terror white paper" is a timely and a much needed initiative.
However, as soon as the "paper" came out, it received criticisms from all quarters, but mainly from the civil libertarians who vehemently objected to the proposed invasive nature of some of the security measures such as intrusive airport checking. They have also criticized the "paper" for what they regard as its use of "non-diplomatic" language that quite blatantly or otherwise, points fingers at the Muslims and a large part of the Muslim world, as its anti-terror targets.
Notwithstanding the validity of some of these criticisms, the "paper" seems to have also missed
one fundamental element - Australia's foreign policy and its relationship to emerging "terror" threats.
Like its other "coalition of willing" partners engaged in the US-led "war on terror" (WOT) project, Australia's counter-terrorism measures completely ignore the political context of the "terror" and rely on the commonly if not naively held notion that "terrorism", especially the so-called "Islamist terrorism" is but a "hateful, insane scourge that spins on its own axis, in its own orbit and has nothing to do with the world around it, nothing to do with history, geography or economics". Such lateral thinking is not only unfortunate but ominously counterproductive.
Although it is conceivable that the proposed stringent policing and rigorous intelligence gatherings etc. envisaged in the "terror white paper" will have some positive bearings on terror risks at least in the short term and this is what may be needed at the present time, it is unlikely that absence of a more reflective analysis of the situation will do much to stem terrorist threats in the long run. By not focusing on the political context of the current conflicts, Australia's head-in-the-sand "terror white paper" may have significantly compromised its usefulness and obscured somewhat the basic analytical framework required of a successful and sustainable anti-terror strategy - the root cause of terror.
The paper's failure to distinguish between what constitutes a genuine terror and what is but manifestations of prolonged injustices (of which Australia itself may be an offending party) is no doubt problematic and may remain a source of much puzzle.
Origin of terror threats
Australia's current terror threats are of recent origin. These threats were not there even
a decade ago. These have become particularly evident since its participation in the "war on terror".
John Howard, the immediate past Prime Minister of Australia joined George W. Bush's "war on terror" in Afghanistan in 2001. Undertaken to punish the alleged perpetrators and the collaborators of 9/11 - the Al Qaeda and its host, the then Taliban government respectively - Muslims the world over including those who live in Australia extended the most enthusiastic of support to this phase of the Afghan war.
However, soon it became evident that Australia's collusion with the WOT project would not end with the 9/11 induced Afghanistan war. Howard joined the next WOT project, the 2003 Iraq war, with unprecedented zeal, ignoring wilfully if not arrogantly the United Nations contrary position on the subject. The UN rejected outright the claim (made by the US) that Saddam Hussein possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), a justification contentiously promoted to justify the war. It is unlikely that Australia, in the cabal of WOT would not have known of these falsehoods.
The unprovoked and illegal Iraq war, fought on false pretexts, reduced a prosperous Muslim nation into rubble. The "smart bombs" of the "coalition of the willing" killed one million Iraqis, mostly innocent civilians and displaced nearly 4.5 million.
At the height of the Iraq war many Muslims in Australia also faced various forms of harassments both at the hands of the general public (some sections of it) as well as the intelligence agencies of the government. Influenced by the media's negative narratives, many Muslim women who wore veils (Burqas) faced verbal and other forms of abuse in the shopping malls, on the streets etc. Allegedly, during this period the intelligence agencies of the government also harassed many Muslim men and subjected them to arbitrary detentions, solitary confinements, interrogations and deportations (on false pretexts).
To think that Australia's complicity in unjust killings of their compatriots overseas and its hate based racist harassments at home, all done on false pretexts of WOT, would not irk Muslim minds and not generate feelings of resentments is to deny a rude reality.
Australia's recent 'no-vote' (cast in line with that of the US) against the Goldstone report - a United Nations report that condemned Israel (and also Hamas to a lesser degree) for committing war crimes in Gaza in 2008 that left 1400 Palestinians dead, mostly women and children, and destroyed most of its infrastructure including schools and hospitals – is also a case in point. It is a good example of how its unbridled pro-imperialist surrogating continues to deepen Muslim suspicions and consequently, sow seeds of discontent among them.
Furthermore, Australia's ambivalence to direct and/or indirect abetment of other conflicts that disadvantage the Muslims such as the bloody and continued occupation of Palestinian territories by Israel; the decades long brutal subjugation of Kashmiri Muslims by India (dictated by political and economic opportunism, Australia seems to be doing everything possible to crawl up to the Indians these days); Russian oppression of Chechens and that of the Uighur Muslims by China as well as its appeasement (done in line with US policy) of repressive but compliant Muslim governments those that consistently repress, marginalize and deny democratic rights to their own citizens add to the cumulative dismay if not the rage of many ordinary Muslims, especially the youth.
Even though many Muslims readily appreciate humanitarian aid that Australia extends from time to time to the suffering Muslims the world over (such as post-Tsunami aid in Ace, Indonesia), these acts of part time benevolence does little or nothing to remove the blemishes of its policies that prolong wider political, economic and social sufferings of their compatriots elsewhere.
It is therefore not impossible to surmise that when Australia joins initiatives that are regarded with good reason as unjust, cruel and discriminatory by 1.8 billion Muslims, it does much harm to its moral credibility and sadly, its security.
Furthermore, Australia must also ask itself whether in a changing and increasingly morphed geo-politics here many Muslim countries - some of which surround it - are becoming its important trading and investment partners it is in its best interest to piggy-back its foreign policy on projects that are regarded as unprincipled and predatory to the Muslims, by these emerging partners.
Australia also needs to weigh the risks of opportunistic superpower alliances, as observed by Arundhuti Roy: "superpowers do not forge alliances; they recruit agents". History suggests that once its needs are over, superpowers show little or no remorse in dropping like a hot potato its weaker partner, leaving the latter to fend for itself.
Today, the targets of the imperialists are the Muslims; tomorrow it may be the Chinese, who knows. Can Australia afford to put itself in a foreign policy nexus that is inherently transient, morally questionable and intrinsically self-destructive?
All nations, but most importantly the smaller nations such as Australia (a nation of 22 million) that encounter numerous security vulnerabilities including a complex geo-political and regionally, a culturally alien demographic environment, must address their security concerns more by trust building and less by military means; they must re-shape their international policies such that their principled underpinnings earns the trust of nations and become the harbinger of security; and in the process, marginalize enemies, both within and abroad.
Professor M. Adil Khan is a former United Nations official. This paper was published in Asia Times as well as Holiday (Bangladesh).
!st comment ..
tokoloshe :
26 Jun 2010 11:24:13am
David Miliband, the former foreign secretary has written an open letter in the New York Times to General David Petraeus, the new commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan setting out plans to accelerate moves towards a peace deal in Afghanistan:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/7854781/David-Miliband-How-to-end-the-war-in-Afghanistan.html
Excellent quotes from the article :
"The first time we met, you told me there is no way to kill your way to victory in a counter insurgency."
"First, include the excluded. Within Afghanistan, a political settlement needs arrangements, whether formal or informal, to ensure that the legitimate tribal, ethnic, and other groups that feel excluded from the post-Bonn political settlement are given a real stake in the political process and are able to compete for political representation."
"But allowing space for discussion to bring people from the insurgency into Afghan society, removing the violence, is not appeasement. It is exactly what we want to achieve: the end of the war, with the sustainable capacity in the country to prevent its restart."
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2933846.htm#comments
22 June 2010
M. Adil Khan
In recent years, Australia's security risks concerning possible terror attacks on its citizens and its assets, both within and outside the country, have increased manifold. To counter these threats - these are assumed to be originating from both home-grown as well as the so-called international jihadists ("Islamist terrorists") - Kevin Rudd has revealed, in a "terror white paper", his counter-terrorism strategy for the country.
The "paper" includes all the familiar measures such as greater and harsher visa processing of citizens of some countries, especially those belonging to 10 unnamed countries (there is obvious speculation that these would be Muslim countries), biometric passport checking of travellers at the Australian airports and other ports of entry and rigorous surveillance of suspected terrorists, both within and abroad.
The white paper also includes provision for greater community level information sharing on security - perhaps a euphemism for communist era type community based mutual spying. The "counter-terror" project envisages a total expenditure of $69 million.
Protecting Australian lives and their properties, both within and abroad should indeed be the priority concern of all Australian governments. In that sense, the "terror white paper" is a timely and a much needed initiative.
However, as soon as the "paper" came out, it received criticisms from all quarters, but mainly from the civil libertarians who vehemently objected to the proposed invasive nature of some of the security measures such as intrusive airport checking. They have also criticized the "paper" for what they regard as its use of "non-diplomatic" language that quite blatantly or otherwise, points fingers at the Muslims and a large part of the Muslim world, as its anti-terror targets.
Notwithstanding the validity of some of these criticisms, the "paper" seems to have also missed
one fundamental element - Australia's foreign policy and its relationship to emerging "terror" threats.
Like its other "coalition of willing" partners engaged in the US-led "war on terror" (WOT) project, Australia's counter-terrorism measures completely ignore the political context of the "terror" and rely on the commonly if not naively held notion that "terrorism", especially the so-called "Islamist terrorism" is but a "hateful, insane scourge that spins on its own axis, in its own orbit and has nothing to do with the world around it, nothing to do with history, geography or economics". Such lateral thinking is not only unfortunate but ominously counterproductive.
Although it is conceivable that the proposed stringent policing and rigorous intelligence gatherings etc. envisaged in the "terror white paper" will have some positive bearings on terror risks at least in the short term and this is what may be needed at the present time, it is unlikely that absence of a more reflective analysis of the situation will do much to stem terrorist threats in the long run. By not focusing on the political context of the current conflicts, Australia's head-in-the-sand "terror white paper" may have significantly compromised its usefulness and obscured somewhat the basic analytical framework required of a successful and sustainable anti-terror strategy - the root cause of terror.
The paper's failure to distinguish between what constitutes a genuine terror and what is but manifestations of prolonged injustices (of which Australia itself may be an offending party) is no doubt problematic and may remain a source of much puzzle.
Origin of terror threats
Australia's current terror threats are of recent origin. These threats were not there even
a decade ago. These have become particularly evident since its participation in the "war on terror".
John Howard, the immediate past Prime Minister of Australia joined George W. Bush's "war on terror" in Afghanistan in 2001. Undertaken to punish the alleged perpetrators and the collaborators of 9/11 - the Al Qaeda and its host, the then Taliban government respectively - Muslims the world over including those who live in Australia extended the most enthusiastic of support to this phase of the Afghan war.
However, soon it became evident that Australia's collusion with the WOT project would not end with the 9/11 induced Afghanistan war. Howard joined the next WOT project, the 2003 Iraq war, with unprecedented zeal, ignoring wilfully if not arrogantly the United Nations contrary position on the subject. The UN rejected outright the claim (made by the US) that Saddam Hussein possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), a justification contentiously promoted to justify the war. It is unlikely that Australia, in the cabal of WOT would not have known of these falsehoods.
The unprovoked and illegal Iraq war, fought on false pretexts, reduced a prosperous Muslim nation into rubble. The "smart bombs" of the "coalition of the willing" killed one million Iraqis, mostly innocent civilians and displaced nearly 4.5 million.
At the height of the Iraq war many Muslims in Australia also faced various forms of harassments both at the hands of the general public (some sections of it) as well as the intelligence agencies of the government. Influenced by the media's negative narratives, many Muslim women who wore veils (Burqas) faced verbal and other forms of abuse in the shopping malls, on the streets etc. Allegedly, during this period the intelligence agencies of the government also harassed many Muslim men and subjected them to arbitrary detentions, solitary confinements, interrogations and deportations (on false pretexts).
To think that Australia's complicity in unjust killings of their compatriots overseas and its hate based racist harassments at home, all done on false pretexts of WOT, would not irk Muslim minds and not generate feelings of resentments is to deny a rude reality.
Australia's recent 'no-vote' (cast in line with that of the US) against the Goldstone report - a United Nations report that condemned Israel (and also Hamas to a lesser degree) for committing war crimes in Gaza in 2008 that left 1400 Palestinians dead, mostly women and children, and destroyed most of its infrastructure including schools and hospitals – is also a case in point. It is a good example of how its unbridled pro-imperialist surrogating continues to deepen Muslim suspicions and consequently, sow seeds of discontent among them.
Furthermore, Australia's ambivalence to direct and/or indirect abetment of other conflicts that disadvantage the Muslims such as the bloody and continued occupation of Palestinian territories by Israel; the decades long brutal subjugation of Kashmiri Muslims by India (dictated by political and economic opportunism, Australia seems to be doing everything possible to crawl up to the Indians these days); Russian oppression of Chechens and that of the Uighur Muslims by China as well as its appeasement (done in line with US policy) of repressive but compliant Muslim governments those that consistently repress, marginalize and deny democratic rights to their own citizens add to the cumulative dismay if not the rage of many ordinary Muslims, especially the youth.
Even though many Muslims readily appreciate humanitarian aid that Australia extends from time to time to the suffering Muslims the world over (such as post-Tsunami aid in Ace, Indonesia), these acts of part time benevolence does little or nothing to remove the blemishes of its policies that prolong wider political, economic and social sufferings of their compatriots elsewhere.
It is therefore not impossible to surmise that when Australia joins initiatives that are regarded with good reason as unjust, cruel and discriminatory by 1.8 billion Muslims, it does much harm to its moral credibility and sadly, its security.
Furthermore, Australia must also ask itself whether in a changing and increasingly morphed geo-politics here many Muslim countries - some of which surround it - are becoming its important trading and investment partners it is in its best interest to piggy-back its foreign policy on projects that are regarded as unprincipled and predatory to the Muslims, by these emerging partners.
Australia also needs to weigh the risks of opportunistic superpower alliances, as observed by Arundhuti Roy: "superpowers do not forge alliances; they recruit agents". History suggests that once its needs are over, superpowers show little or no remorse in dropping like a hot potato its weaker partner, leaving the latter to fend for itself.
Today, the targets of the imperialists are the Muslims; tomorrow it may be the Chinese, who knows. Can Australia afford to put itself in a foreign policy nexus that is inherently transient, morally questionable and intrinsically self-destructive?
All nations, but most importantly the smaller nations such as Australia (a nation of 22 million) that encounter numerous security vulnerabilities including a complex geo-political and regionally, a culturally alien demographic environment, must address their security concerns more by trust building and less by military means; they must re-shape their international policies such that their principled underpinnings earns the trust of nations and become the harbinger of security; and in the process, marginalize enemies, both within and abroad.
Professor M. Adil Khan is a former United Nations official. This paper was published in Asia Times as well as Holiday (Bangladesh).
!st comment ..
tokoloshe :
26 Jun 2010 11:24:13am
David Miliband, the former foreign secretary has written an open letter in the New York Times to General David Petraeus, the new commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan setting out plans to accelerate moves towards a peace deal in Afghanistan:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/7854781/David-Miliband-How-to-end-the-war-in-Afghanistan.html
Excellent quotes from the article :
"The first time we met, you told me there is no way to kill your way to victory in a counter insurgency."
"First, include the excluded. Within Afghanistan, a political settlement needs arrangements, whether formal or informal, to ensure that the legitimate tribal, ethnic, and other groups that feel excluded from the post-Bonn political settlement are given a real stake in the political process and are able to compete for political representation."
"But allowing space for discussion to bring people from the insurgency into Afghan society, removing the violence, is not appeasement. It is exactly what we want to achieve: the end of the war, with the sustainable capacity in the country to prevent its restart."
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2933846.htm#comments
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