Terrorism & Security
posted August 21, 2006 at 11:30 a.m.

'Traveling whilst Asian'

Britain debates pros and cons of racial profiling in fighting terrorism.

By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

Two 'Asian-looking' men were removed from a British flight to Manchester, England, from Malaga, Spain, last Wednesday because fellow passengers feared they were terrorists.

The Guardian reports a number of passengers left the flight and would not return because the two men were "acting suspicious." The men, in their early 20s, were reportedly overheard speaking Arabic and were seen checking their watches.

The men were removed from the flight, questioned by police, and "forced" to fly back to England later in the week.

Muslim MP Khalid Mahmood described the incident as "hugely irrational". "People need to get their senses back into order. You can't just accuse anybody who's of Asian appearance and treat them like a terrorist," said the Labour MP for Birmingham. "If somebody is threatening anybody it's understandable, but when they are just travelling for their own needs it's not. People just need to calm down."

Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, of the Muslim Parliament of Britain, said the danger in incidents like this was that they played into the hands of extremists. "The greatest danger is that the extremists have succeeded in convincing Muslims and Arabs that the war on terror isn't a war on terror but a war on Islam and Muslims."



Sign up to be notified daily: Find out more. Subscribe via RSS Feed: What is this?

Wednesday's incident appears to be an example of what London Metropolitian Police Chief Superintendent Ali Desai decried last week: the use of screening airline passengers by a method he called "traveling whilst Asian." CTV News of Canada reports that Mr. Desai said it is a practice to be avoided.

"Passenger profiling is a very legitimate way to gather intelligence on passengers. For example, you check people's travel history, you check problematic destinations and the frequency by which people travel to those destinations," Desai told CTV Newsnet on Tuesday. "Racial profiling is you simply target particular groups on the basis of their ethnic origin, and my view is the latter is flawed and is counterproductive."

Desai made his comment after former British police chief Lord John Stevens called for the use of increased checks of "young Muslim men." The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Lord Stevens also said it was time for Muslims to stop "wailing."

"When will the Muslim community in this country accept an absolute, undeniable, total truth: that Islamic terrorism is their problem?" wrote John Stevens, former commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, in a Sunday newspaper.

In an inflammatory opinion column, he called on Muslims to "stop the denial, endless fudging and constant wailing that somehow it is everyone else's problem and, if Islamic terrorism exists at all, they are somehow the main victims."

In the CTV interview, Desai said, however, it was important to remember that Muslims as a whole have been "victims of terrorism just like everybody else."

"I think clearly what one has to bear in mind is that the Muslim community is actually victims in this. If you recall the events of 9/11 or 7/7 in London, there were many Muslim people who were actually killed in those atrocities."

Reuters reports that experts say targeting people, and not objects, is the answer to better security but that "simplistic racial profiling is not the way forward." Phillip Baum of Aviation Security Magazine says he favors a system he calls "positive profiling" built on behavior and not ethnicity.

"That is not racial profiling, I totally disagree with racial profiling," he said. "You're not exempting anybody from screening by technology but you are determining which technology to apply depending on the perceived risk a passenger poses. We are not saying all young Asian males are going to be set aside for some separate screening by definition."

Profiling is also "a bit of a blunt instrument," according to Alex Standish, editor of Strategic Intelligence Review. He said that it would be easy for "terrorist masterminds" to find people who don't fit the profile. Mr. Standish advocates security checks closer to the departure gate.

"The closer somebody gets to boarding the flight the more chance you are going to get of detecting behavioral signs as well. Screeners are spending far too long trying to confiscate scissors and shampoos and gels from people who pose absolutely no threat."

The Toronto Star reported Saturday that British human rights lawyer Aamer Anwar also said profiling people who look like Muslims may not produce the results that people think it will.

Anwar said on the practical side, not all Muslims look alike and there is a large number of white converts in the UK, so singling out those who look like practising Muslims would create a false sense of security. "As a tool, it won't even be very reliable. Muslims come in all shapes and sizes," he said.

An analysis piece from United Press International on the idea of racial profiling points out that one of last year's London bombers was originally from Jamaica and that "the white British Muslim convert suspected in last week's airline plot, [was] from the genteel Buckinghamshire town of High Wycombe."

Some analysts argue that although potential terrorists cannot be identified on the basis of their ethnic appearance, it is possible to target security processes more effectively by ruling out passengers who were clearly not engaged in terrorist activity, for example businessmen or families. But even this is a dangerous assumption to make. International terrorists have already demonstrated their ability to evade most of the security measures implemented thus far; do we believe them to be incapable of donning a business suit or taking a child on board?

As the Association of Chief Police Officers rightly warns, stereotyping terror suspects will 'create a gap' in policing for terrorists to exploit. Start looking for dark-haired individuals and one can be certain that Al Qaeda will put aside its contempt for western values and start reaching for the peroxide, if it furthers their cause.

Also...