Terror-driven paranoia

I was in China last week when news broke out about the latest terror threats to blow up American commercial planes that were foiled with the arrest of more than two dozens of suspects identified as British Islamic nationals based in London and Pakistan. The subsequent events were not surprising when CNN flashed reports from the United States and in London about the new restrictions imposed on all plane travellers bound for the US and the United Kingdom.

As discovered by British intelligence authorities, the suspects purportedly plotted to make use of liquid ingredients they will smuggle into the plane using hand-carried luggages. This is obviously to avoid metal detectors and enable them to put these liquid ingredients together to concoct explosives while on board the plane. Naturally, the initial reaction of both the US and British government authorities was to totally ban any liquid materials in hand-carried luggages of passengers and they provided zip-lock plastics as substitute to carry personal stuff. Soon enough, perhaps we might see enterprising minds to capitalize on this newest terrorist paranoia to come up with products like see-through hand-carried luggages.

Watching these developments unfold, I procrastinated on my flight back to Manila, waiting how our Philippine security officials would deal with this latest terror threat. True enough, Philippine authorities even went beyond the total ban of liquid-based items in hand-carried luggages by US and UK-bound passengers using the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA). They also applied the same rule to passengers to all domestic flights in the country.

I consider myself a veteran when it comes to going through international as well as local security checks as what I have done in many airports during my coverage of many presidential travels for The STAR all over the world. Certainly, the US airports are the strictest and most thorough by far in my experience before and after 9/11. But to determined terrorists ready to die for their cause, there is no fool-proof security measure that would stop them and we have seen this when 9/11 happened. This is not to say that we might as well not update our anti-terror security measures. But we must not let allow terror-driven paranoia stop our normal way of life and punish us law-abiding and peaceful citizens with these inhumane security impositions.

As always, Filipinos have the tendency to engage in upmanship to bring things to the higher level. But somewhere along the way, some common sense have to be put in place by our local law enforcement and security authorities that are more applicable to our situation rather than implementing copycat security measures way beyond reality on the ground.

We may call it OA, as in overacting, but sometimes it pays to be extra careful. At the rate a terrorist’s mind works in coming up with ways to evade vigilant security detection, these counter-terrorism measures quickly become obsolete.

And to think our Congress has yet to agree on the final form of anti-terrorism bill as our own version of protecting ourselves from homegrown terrorists as well as foreign ones. This bill was first filed right after the deadly terror attack that totally destroyed New York’s landmark buildings, the Twin Towers on Sept.11, 2001. The 9/11 event marks its fifth year and hopefully our own lawmakers would be able to pass this into law as one of our more concrete actions to deal with national security threats like terrorism.

At that time the proposed anti-terror bill was first endorsed to Congress, the favorite soundbyte of Mrs.Arroyo to justify its immediate enactment was that "poverty is the breeding ground for terrorists," as applied on the Philippine setting. When Mrs.Arroyo continued to pursue this line during a joint press conference with US President George W.Bush in her state visit to the White House in 2002, I unintentionally put her on a tight spot when I asked how the US government's decision to elevate the Philippines to the rank of "major non-NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) ally" would help Filipinos in the fight against international terrorism. I was merely pursuing a question based on the joint announcement of the two leaders about this grant to the Philippines of a "major non-NATO ally" status as the important outcome of their meeting.

I vividly recall the undisguised disagreement of Mr. Bush to this theory of Mrs.Arroyo and cited that Osama bin Laden, patron of the al-Qeada terror network, is certainly no poor man who finances terrorist attacks against the US.

The retort of Mr. Bush to my question visibly discomfited President Arroyo who had to make a rejoinder to him just to clarify her point. Last week’s foiled new terror plots against the US and UK have bolstered again this view of Mr.Bush that these terrorists are not driven by poverty but sheer ideology or cause.

Whatever causes terrorism can be any thing at all. The most important thing is to come up with countermeasures to at least reduce the levels of threat and not to delay action on possible solutions. The proposed anti-terror bill that has languished in Congress in the past years has indeed qualified the Philippines to become a full-pledged "NATO," as in No Action, Talk Only.

In the next few months, Mrs.Arroyo is bound for abroad again to attend to international obligations of the Philippines where she is expected to discuss with her peers what our country has been doing to help promote the fight against terrorism. I learned while I was in China about ongoing preparations for the participation of the President in the China-Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Expo (CAEX) or the ASEAN 10 Plus One summit scheduled this coming Oct. 31 to Nov.3. The CAEX will be held in Nanning City in Guangxi Province.

Both Chinese and Philippine government officials are in the thick of preparing for this meeting of ASEAN heads of states with Chinese Premier Wen Jia Bao and President Hu Jintao as hosts. As I gathered, Mrs.Arroyo will also take the opportunity to visit Nanchang City in Jiangxi Province, the local government officials of which invited her last year to grace the formal launching of the "sister city" agreement between Nanchang and Bohol. The last stop of Mrs.Arroyo’s visit to China is Xiamen City in Fujian Province where she will, among other things, witness the signing of the memorandum of agreement to formally establish the "sister" province between Fujian and Laguna.

Before she goes to China, Mrs.Arroyo is flying next month to Finland to chair the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) slated there. I’m afraid Mrs.Arroyo will be made to appear as making empty talks only in the fight against terrorismn unless our country comes up with a solid action on this long pending Anti-Terror bill.

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