Too Liberal or Too Incompetent to Control Terrorism

There are chilling similarities between the Charlie Hebdo (Paris, France) and 9/11 (NYWTC, US) terror attacks. And no, I am not talking about the death and mayhem, but the intelligence failures that felled two of the most sophisticated and developed countries in the world. Just take a look at this.

Cherif Kouachi had actually been convicted on a terror charge in 2008 in France. He spent 18 months in jail for recruiting Al-Qaeda fighters to send to Iraq. I assume he must have been psychologically mapped for future terror proclivity. Critical details must have been captured in a special high security biometric database. And sophisticated technology must have been employed to keep him under constant watch, because he was a known terrorist at large in Paris.

His brother Saidhad travelled to Yemen in 2011 to receive arms training. That too was known. And both the brothers were on the ‘US no-fly’ list for years. So if the Americans had banned them, why did France let them out of sight?

Amedi Coulibaly, the third terrorist who attacked the Jewish grocery store, had also served a prison sentence for trying to help the Paris metro bomber escape. I assume he too must have been put under constant hi-tech surveillance.

And yet, these known, convicted, under-watch terrorists were allowed to attack their targets at will, with a mocking impunity.

Fourteen years ago, American intelligence had suffered the same ignominy. Throughout the spring and summer of 2001, US intelligence detected and reported heightened Al-Qaeda activity. In May, CIA Director George Tenet warned US President George Bush of increased “chatter” about an attack, but ‘the threat was assumed to be an overseas one’, writes Condoleeza Rice.

Two experts from Israel’s Mossad traveled to Washington a month before the attacks to alert intelligence officials about a large terrorist cell, with links to Bin Laden, planning a major operation inside the US. On 6 August 2001, Bush’s daily brief bore the title, ‘Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US’.

As Tenet told the 9/11 Commission, ‘the system was blinking red’. As it turned out, the 9/11 operation’s alleged mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was also on the FAA’s ‘no fly’ list, exactly like the French terrorists.

So what is it? Incompetence? Under-manned and under-equipped agencies? Or are western democracies a bit too liberal with internal citizenship rights, for their own good?

Perhaps a bit of everything.