Terrorism, security, civil liberties and human rights organizations

[From: A Week in the Horn of Africa, Oct. 21, 2011 issue.]

Terrorism, security, civil liberties and human rights organizations 

It is axiomatic that there is always an uneasy equilibrium between security and civil rights whether in the US and the UK, and other countries like Ethiopia which have been the subject of terrorist activities. In the aftermath of terrorist attacks such as 9/11 in the US security was of course uppermost, with people more concerned about their safety, but after a few years without attacks the balance tends to shift towards civil rights, though vigilance remains the price of safety. Preventing terrorism, of course, requires different techniques from the arrest of those responsible for actual attacks, and it is not unusual for counterterrorist activities to lead to claims that the security forces have engaged in aggressive proactive operations.

In the west, civil liberty groups often express concern over security methods, and in New York, for example, there have been recent media reports of police activities including possibly “unlawful covert surveillance operations of the Muslim community.” Congressmen have asked the US Justice Department to investigate.  In fact, in the wake of the atrocities of 9/11, New York, not surprisingly, moved towards strenuous efforts at terrorist prevention rather than limiting itself to the arrests of perpetrators.  Police guidelines were changed to allow widespread monitoring of public activity and investigation of possible indications of terrorist or criminal activity. A Counter-Terrorism Bureau was set up in 2002 to provide for training, coordination and response of police units; it works closely with the Intelligence Division. Together their focus shifted from waiting for an attack to happen to trying to prevent and disrupt possible attacks. Police forces in the UK and elsewhere in Europe have done the same. This has meant that people have been arrested before terrorist atrocities have taken place, and have therefore faced lesser charges, such as fraud or conspiracy to acquire explosives, rather than terrorism or homicide. The process involves keeping a balance of security and civil liberty, and it requires accurate intelligence to separate innocent from threatening activity.

The actions of the New York Police Department apparently include open observation throughout the city in order to understand local dynamics, down to the local level, to provide the context for reporting and intelligence. This is coupled with literally thousands of calls made by the public to report suspicious activity. Undercover officers observe and talk to residents, looking for signs of criminal or terrorist activity. They are currently accused of primarily targeting Muslim neighbourhoods, hardly surprising in the context of recent terrorist activity. Despite criticisms by civil rights/human rights organizations, this is not something new. Police officers in both the US and Europe have been carrying out similar activity for years when looking for signs of criminal activity by the mafia or other criminal organizations. Whatever civil rights organizations may claim, these activities do not presume guilt. Currently, there may be considerable focus on jihadists in the West, for obvious reasons, but certainly in the UK, for example, security does not neglect to continue to collect intelligence on the IRA and Irish terrorist activity.

In fact, counterterrorist and intelligence methods are still fairly new. They continue to develop. They obviously need to be scrutinised and a proper balance found between guarding lives and protecting people’s rights, but emotive claims and allegations by external bodies with little or no understanding of local dynamics, and with no local presence, are hardly helpful. Blanket denunciations of counter-terrorist activities in Ethiopia, for example, are of no help either in limiting terrorist activities or in providing the right balance between safety for the population and civil liberties. Ethiopia, of course, has suffered a significant number of terrorist attacks over the last decade or more. Fortunately, none have been major atrocities on the scale on 9/11, the attacks on the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Selaam, or even Al-Shabaab’s latest suicide bomb in Mogadishu. There have, nevertheless, been a significant number of real, terrifying and often fatal attacks.

It is particularly unhelpful when allegations are made on the basis of information provided by groups that have been formally identified as terrorist organizations and which are externally based. The media or human rights groups use of terrorist-supplied information provides the terrorist organization with free publicity and dissemination of its own publicity. Criticisms of the counter-terrorist activities of the New York Police Department or of the Metropolitan Police Department in London are made by media organizations or civil rights bodies that operate in New York or in London. Accusations against security forces or criticisms of the activities of security departments in Addis Ababa or Ethiopia usually come from international human rights’ organizations also based in London and New York. The claims are seldom, if ever, based on accurate information or on evidence from the ground. Nor, usually, is there any sign of an attempt to try to investigate the accuracy of the claims, to express concern about the source, or cast doubt about their reality. They are claims made by opposition sources and, as such, they are apparently considered automatically, even certainly, true. Equally, any denials by government officials are immediately, and as automatically, assumed to be untrue.

Given this approach, it is hardly surprising that the methodology of these human rights’ bodies have been coming under growing criticism. It is particularly disappointing that these bodies themselves persist in assuming that they must be in the right and that any criticism of their activities should be dismissed as an attack on human rights. They smugly, and consistently, refuse to accept that they themselves might conceivably be at fault. And, sometimes, they most certainly are, though as many of the criticisms of Human Rights Watch, for example, relate specifically to its methodology and to its self-serving assumptions of certainty and superiority as they do to specific inaccuracies and errors. The criticisms have nothing to do with the general issue of human rights and everything with the way Human Rights Watch carries out its activities and with the false assumptions that it so persistently repeats.

As we noted a week or two ago, the UK Secretary of State for International Development recently told Human Rights Watch quite firmly that the British Government could not agree with either the assertions or the conclusions of Human Rights Watch over its claims of politicisation of aid in Ethiopia. He added that “we do not believe [your] report is methodologically sound” and that “it is important not to overstate criticisms in an unbalanced manner”. Given the wealth of contrary evidence that Human Rights Watch must have deliberately disregarded in order to reach its alleged conclusions, one must agree with this very compelling assessment of its activities. Indeed, the rebuke appears considerably milder than Human Rights Watch might have expected, or deserved.

*************

Re-Publishing items from A Weeks in the Horn, the weekly press release of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, do not necessarily imply an endorsement of the the claims and arguments therein by this blog.

Check the the drop-down menu at the top of this page for related news and analysis.