Training | 2010.01.24
A fearful lack of proportion | Peter Preston
In airports and battlefields the west pursues security with no regard for the cost to citizens of foreign lands
Suppose you\'re a young Pakistani doctor with a practice in Doncaster or Detroit. And suppose you\'re heading back to work after a holiday in Lahore. Then stop supposing: you\'ll need to get to the airport very early indeed. Wrong passport, wrong nationality. Expect to be stopped, searched and scanned. Fear maximum hassle. So why not fill in the time by pondering simple concepts, like proportionality?
On one hand, all this sudden conflation of inspection and interrogation is down to one man, a 23-year-old Nigerian who couldn\'t set fire to his underpants. Cue Messrs Brown, Obama and sundry leaders of the west buying more costly surveillance kit, announcing more nerve-fraying terminal delays and getting anxious about Yemen.
And, on the other, cue the figures from Pakistan \'s own lousy 2009 as our doctor waits in line: 3,021 innocent civilians and soldiers killed by terrorist bombs – carnage far worse than Afghanistan endures. Does the family he left behind in Punjab live in fear? Of course. Markets, mosques, shops, hotels are all Taliban targets – and the violence is growing. President Asif Ali Zardari talks democracy and defiance. The army carries the fight into some terrorist areas. But you can\'t escape a feeling of mounting crisis, and a future without hope.
The war on terror? Here it is. The casualties of that war? Here they are. And now, as spotlights swings towards Sana\'a and political packs yelp excitedly about Yemeni training camps, Pakistan\'s problems suddenly fade from view. Other countries must hear the tough talk. One pair of pants and the west wallows in hysteria before ordering stops, searches and profilings for hapless doctors who keep health systems going. One pair of pants against 3,021 violent deaths. Is that what we mean by proportionality?
Of course, 9/11 and 7/7 both have a bearing on this equation, along with outrages from Madrid to Mumbai. Nobody\'s pretending there isn\'t a threat. But it\'s a threat to put in a commonsense context. It\'s also a threat turned almost daily into reality around many beleagured parts of our neurotic world.
There is a sort of war being fought out there – designed to keep "homelands" safe at whatever becomes the necessary cost to foreign lands. Ask Brown: Why are we in Afghanistan? – and he talks about UK shopping centres, UK railway stations, UK airports. Meanwhile, somewhere overhead, another drone misses its target, another village where women and children live turns to rubble.
Let\'s see things through other eyes: what our doctor may see. An Afghan problem, first financed and fuelled by the west. A problem that\'s grown because of oil and corruption and all the bad things that have happened in Saudi. No thanks to the west again. A problem, from Baghdad to Kabul, rooted in imported chaos. A problem that brought 12,600 violent deaths to Pakistan last year. And now the stop and search becomes almost frenzied. Pakistanis, Saudis, Yemenis, Somalis, Nigerians, Muslims. Watch the watch lists grow.
We moved to stop your average high-street stop and search because of the discrimination it signalled and anger it caused. Now judges in Strasbourg feel the same about section 44 of the Terrorism Act . These things can\'t be random. They need specific cause – otherwise the resentment it fuels is simply out of all proportion. And so, today, is the kind of targeted airport regime taking shape after Detroit on Christmas day .
It says whole nations and religions are suspect. It says war over there only matters because of what it involves over here. It seeks to keep jets safe as they fly over lands where thousands die. Does our doctor make such connections as he queues and strips? Does he feel one of us, or one of them? It\'s worth asking. Too simple? Of course. But not so simple that proportionality plays no part.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]errorism-airport-security-west
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