“Increased chatter” has become a familiar phrase since 9/11. Its source is normally an intelligence agency or a multiple of intelligence agencies that have gleaned information from agents on the ground or from message interceptions indicating to specialists something wicked is brewing, something that threatens a country’s or countries’ security. This non-idle “chatter” is analysed and, depending on this analysis, terror alerts are flashed around the world.
Saudi security services were yesterday reported to have warned of a potential Al-Qaeda plan against Europe and France in particular. An alert was issued recently by the United States and passed on to a number of governments warning that Mumbai-style attacks were being planned on the European continent. It is still in force and the US has warned citizens travelling around Europe to be on the lookout for any possible terrorist activity.
A report from Washington quoted an official in the US media warning, in addition, that check-in zones “and any part of an airport complex that (could) be accessed” by non-travellers could be vulnerable”.
If one were to obey the warning and avoid hotels, or what Sweden was later to describe as “public spaces” when it joined up with the US, Britain, France and Japan and warned countrymen to be watchful “around public buildings, at tourist attractions, on public transport and in other places with large crowds”, the answer, of course, is to return home or not leave it – where one would still need to be watchful anyway!
Such “alerts”, of course, cannot be decried. On the contrary, it is a cynical person who fails to be impressed by the sheer genius that goes into the effort to keep Americans and Europeans, in particular, informed as to their vulnerability to attack from time to time.
On this occasion and according to reports, unusual activity in North Waziristan and the interrogation of a German of Pakistani origin were responsible for the warning first issued in America and corroborated by Britain. Agencies on both sides of the Atlantic picked up that activity in Pakistan and linked it to an interrogation where it was revealed that German and British “personnel” hiding in Pakistan were in touch with plotters of terror in a number of cities in Europe. Germany alone remained fairly sanguine about the whole business.
One sassy, or saucy, source maintained that this alert was America’s way of “deploying the fear factor” by jogging European opinion to admit the reality of the threat. Ironically, US airlines flying the Atlantic route ignored the administration’s warning altogether. This fearlessness was not adopted by Britain, Sweden and Japan, which all warned citizens about travelling. In fact, apart from bomb threats to the Eiffel Tower, which turned out to be unfounded, arrests in different parts of the country were made by France’s anti-terror squads. Nine of 12 men taken into custody were investigated for suspected links to a “terrorist enterprise”. Three others were picked up when the French police found their mobile numbers on that of a man arrested in Italy.
What this means, apart from the obvious efficiency of American and European operators on the lookout for potential terrorist activity, is that there exists an extraordinary level of cooperation between the network of international agencies and a highly efficient sharing of intelligence information. And, irrespective of whether the US has ulterior motives to issue such alerts, the fact remains it is always better to be safe than sorry.