Australia on high terror alert

S P SETH

Australia is in a state of high alert against a terrorist attack that might arise from suspected Islamic militants within the country. The media here was reporting sensational accounts of an alleged terrorist plot thwarted by timely police raids, the biggest ever with over 800 security personnel, on a number of properties in Sydney and Brisbane, nabbing 17 suspects of which only one has been charged. The said plot was designed to kidnap any individual (s) in a public place, behead him and put this on social media sites to maximize the terror effect. So far, there is nothing concrete to back up this account, apparently based on official leaks. But when asked in a television interview to confirm the veracity of this widely reported account, Andrew Colvin, the commissioner of the Australian Federal Police was more nuanced. He said, “Look, I think what we need to do is to understand that the plot was about violence against members of the public. Now, how that was actually going to manifest itself, we’re not 100 per cent sure.” He didn’t rule out any form of violence by the terrorists explaining that, “Beheadings, obviously, is something that we’re concerned about, but we shouldn’t narrow our thinking just to beheadings… you could think about shootings or knife attacks—a range of things…” In other words, the precise information about a possible terrorist plot/attack is lacking. According to one account, an Australian Muslim enlisted in the Islamic State group passed on phone instructions to a follower in Australia urging him that it was time to “show we can kill a kafir [non-believer].”

This is creating a certain level of hysteria at two levels. First, with the visible presence of police and security at public functions, parliament and other places, and raising the alert level to high, there is some panic here and there. And when reading with the statement from the ISIS spokesman urging its supporters to kill Australians, among others, it is only reinforcing fears. The ISIS statement was apocalyptic in some ways and worth quoting at some length. Addressing the “fighters of Islamic State”, it said, “What threat do you pose to the distant place of Australia for it to send its legions towards you? “ This is a reference to Australia’s commitment of military assets to ‘degrade and destroy’ IS in Iraq. The IS statement then exhorts its followers to kill its enemies, almost anywhere and everywhere.

The statement is quite chilling in its scope, saying, “If you can kill a disbelieving American or European—especially the spiteful and filthy French—or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the other countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however it may be.” It goes on to list specific ways in which this might be done like: “Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car, or throw him down from a high place, or choke him, or poison him.” In other words, IS supporters in these countries are urged to act on their individual initiative to strike terror.

At the same time, there is a realization of IS vulnerabilities from air attacks, appealing the Almighty for intervention. The IS statement says, “O Allah, you know our weakness. We have no way to deal with their airplanes…O Allah do not let them be above us while we are higher than them…” But eventually, IS will prevail because its enemies “… will pay the price when your economies collapse. You will pay the price when your sons are sent to wage war against us and they return to you as disabled amputees, or inside coffins, or mentally ill.” And it goes on to say, “You will pay the price as you walk on your streets… you will not feel secure even in your bedrooms.” And worse, “We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women, by the permission of Allah, the Exalted.”

This mixture of bravado, vulnerability and a messianic zeal to wreak havoc anywhere and everywhere has created a bit of panic in Australia and elsewhere. And when a Muslim youth stabbed two policemen and, in turn, was shot dead, it simply reinforced the sense of panic. This 18-year old young man was said to have extremist connections and was seen wrapped in an IS flag in a shopping centre a few days before he was shot. In this climate of hysteria, a uniformed Australian naval officer reported that two persons of Middle Eastern appearance had assaulted him, though he later withdrew his complaint to the police. Which led the chief of the Australian military to apologize to the Middle Eastern community for this bizarre incident or lack of it. In the midst of fears of a terrorist threat from within the Australian Muslim community from some of its hot heads, the government has rushed a raft of anti-terrorist legislation that will expand the powers of the intelligence and security agencies, grant them immunity from acts in the line of duty, and introduce more pervasive surveillance of the internet. Some of the new legislative provisions are likely to interfere with freedom of the press on pain of long sentences for their infringement.

Not surprisingly the Muslim community is on edge. At a recent TV forum, some of the Muslim women on the panel and in the audience voiced their fears, such as verbal and physical abuse that are already happening as some among them are easily identified with their veil or scarf. The larger concern is that whenever there is terrorist violence anywhere in the world, the entire Muslim community is somehow expected to prove their credentials and loyalty. In a recent opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald, Lydia Shelly, who converted to Islam and married a Muslim man, has talked about how things changed for her “when I made the choice to wear a scarf.” She writes, “They have tried to frame me as a terrorist sympathizer. They have implied that every Muslim woman has the potential to be a ‘jihad baby maker’. Now even my womb has a become a battle ground, with my ovaries being tested for loyalty.”  Even accounting for some exaggerated fear; it is still a very worrying image of a community feeling itself under siege.

And this sense of siege was only reinforced when the wearing of burqa was framed as a security issue, particularly when wearing in and around the national parliament. George Morgan, a Sydney academic, sought to give it a certain perspective in a Sydney Morning Herald article when he wrote, “Although no one in Australia has yet been killed by a Muslim terrorist, we are in the midst of an intense moral panic about Islam—a moment of incandescent media coverage and hyperbolic public debate, in which we lose all sense of proportion, demonize young men with long beards [and women wearing niqab], and sign away basic freedoms in the cause of counter-terrorism.”

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au