Scrutinize those that deserve it:
Last Nov. 11, sharp-eyed African Union troops, who serve as airport security in the failed state of Somalia, pinpointed a terrorist with a syringe detonator, lethal powder and explosives in his pants trying to board a Dubai-bound jetliner in Mogadishu.
They yanked him out of line and stopped him from getting on.
It's eerily similar in detail to the Christmas Day terror attack on a Northwest Airlines jetliner headed from Amsterdam to Detroit.
The chemicals and detonator were the same. The syringe and underwear were similar. It was consistent with the warning the al-Qaida-associated Nigerian arrested in Detroit, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, gave upon his arrest — that many more airline attacks like his were on the way. And by one news account, it happened on 11/11, a date favored by al-Qaida for strikes.
But the difference is in how it ended — in the U.S., with an unscripted passenger leaping onto the terrorist in the act of detonating himself amid burning chemicals, and stopping him.
In Somalia, the rudimentary security apparatus in the nation that ranks rock-bottom on every major development indicator stopped him before he even got on. Incredibly, it means that in this case passengers would have been safer flying out of Mogadishu than depending on elaborate U.S. security measures coming into Detroit.
How did they spot him?
Instead of going after the elderly, they zeroed in on a curiously acting young man with a terrorist profile, and gave him the extra pat-down in all the right places. That was all it took to bag a terrorist.
The Africans didn't have any special intelligence from Nigerian relatives on the other end of the continent that could be transmitted securely. They didn't have no-fly lists with expensive computer systems for accessing them. They didn't have clearance to obtain electronic intelligence of al-Qaida chatter from Yemen, which signaled that "a Nigerian" was going to try to take out a U.S. airliner.
But they did have a seriousness of purpose about stopping terror even in a garden spot like Mogadishu. "We don't know whether he's linked with al-Qaida or other foreign organizations, but his actions were the acts of a terrorist. We caught him red-handed," a Somali police spokesman told the Associated Press. Unlike the White House, he wasn't afraid to use the word "terrorist."
It comes down to the fact that Somalia has seen what terrorists do.
I think it comes down to the fact that Somalia understands how to fight intelligently.
