Last October we watched the saga of Noel Sciberras in Libya, abducted by a gang in Tajoura and held prisoner for over a month until he was freed and brought back home to Malta. There have been other incidents since, thankfully also resolved safely. This week’s drama in Brussels brought home once again, the proximity between Malta and the chance victims of the ISIS bombings at Zaventem airport and the Metro.
Lorenzo Vella was one of the Maltese caught up in the terrible events at the airport. There could have been many more as Brussels has become home to many Maltese persons working and studying there. Being the Easter period too, with many people on the move to travel home for the feast, our thoughts immediately went to their safety.
In contrast to the real concern and fear felt on hearing the news of the bombings, we also could read other stories that portray a much more relaxed and casual attitude to the realities of terrorism raging around us, much of it in close proximity.
On an almost daily basis, press releases tells us of where Henley and Partners and our Prime Minister are marketing Malta’s citizenship scheme. The latest to come out this week is the residence scheme for Chinese. These projects do not have a direct connection with terrorists or terrorism but certainly, they do afford a structure which could be utilised and abused. Besides any potential danger to us, it suggests a fantasy and a detachment from real events facing western society. The idea that somehow we are isolated or have special protection from threats is leading us away from tackling the risk in a serious and credible manner.
Quick to pick up on an opportunity, the ISIS organisation will be the first to see the opening which has been created in Turkey. By granting the Turks fast track travel visas, all it takes will be a fake passport and some money to grease palms and recruits will be jet setting it around the Schengen territory in no time at all. I do not agree that it is Schengen which should be scrapped but certainly eyes should open, wide and quick, to the extensive grasp of suicide bombers and their psychopathic reach.
When Salah Abdeslam was caught last week, he should have been driven blindfolded directly to a Paris cell, instead of taking the scenic route. His value for questioning was huge. Why should he have been afforded the luxury of the legal system when he caused so much atrocity and may have held the information about the forthcoming attack in Brussels? He is even a French national. He could have had a lawyer in Paris. It is a known fact too that Belgian police are struggling with cuts and cannot even afford to buy proper protective gear or road worthy cars, although they keep up their good work. The special gear they wore in the chase after the Paris attacks was loaned to them by the Americans.
The problem is not just for us here on Maltese soil but also for our security abroad. Tuesday’s events were a very close call. It is even quite arrogant of our country to just seek its own self-interest, with total disregard for the imminent threats facing Europeans on a daily basis by flaunting Schengen and our European status as a commodity whilst all around us people have to look over their shoulder whilst sipping a coffee, riding a train, queueing to board a flight or actually sitting on a plane.
The same sentiment rises too as countries like Greece and Italy struggle to cope with desperate refugees and migrants and Malta parties on St Patrick’s day in the thousands – an event not part of our cultural or social history. Do we risk becoming an outcast of Europe or the butt of jokes? We cannot pick and choose our connections. Either we are in Europe and with Europe, Paris and Brussels or we are some rag tag outfit that has no sense of occasion, history, place or destiny.
These suicide bombers are not after destroying our way of life – there is enough confusion there already. They are out to destroy life itself. It is as though life and the value of a human being offends them. Adventure and violence lure them and their evil attacks. There is nothing noble or truthful in their ignominious actions. They are a bunch of idiots who kill. We who are their target, afford them the courtesy of thinking that they are equal value persons. It must stop here. All decisions should support life if there is to be peace in the world. But those who perpetrate such violence will suffer the consequences. Those who walk into an airport in a civilised country, wheeling a trolley full of explosives onto a hall of innocent people serve Satan, are Satan.
Beheadings, indoctrination of young children, women taken as sex slaves, rape, destruction of cultural and religious heritage, persecution, drug- fuelled rampages are not the work of rebels who fight for a cause. The problem is that in the West we have put God aside and humanised Him to the extent that we have stripped him of the divine and as with all things politically correct, Satan’s army are afforded the same status. A psychopathic killer is given a context and deemed to be discussed at a European Summit where a resolution is taken to fight anyone who will threaten our way of life, as though that is something that supersedes human life itself.
Our way of life does not belong to the Parisians or to the Americans only. It belongs to anyone who gives a value to life, the family, peace. It is experienced on different levels, in nature and the environment, in the dignity of man and work, his home and family and freedom to be. We Are. We Live. Not perfectly, not always successfully or very healthily but we care and sympathise with one another.
After feeling relieved that no Maltese were killed, we then share in the suffering of anyone who lost a loved one. We think of the babies who lost parents and mothers and fathers who lost children, husbands who lost wives and women mourning their husbands. Young people who were on a journey or on their way to a holiday.
It is imperative that the security of every man, woman and child in Europe and all around the globe becomes the number one task of world leaders. Let us have Schengen but let us have equal resources for all member states to provide adequate security services and legal systems that help prevent events rather than offer rights to terrorists when something does happen.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls says one of the lessons learned from yet another attack in a European Union nation is that the bloc’s 28 nations must heavily increase their investments in anti-terror measures and security system in the coming years. Valls mentioned specifically that more funds will be needed for “manpower, technology — to face the types of threats that we will have to face.”
If the UK vote to leave Europe we have an even bigger problem on our hands because their intelligence services are essential to avoid greater attacks on European soil and one of their frustrations with the European Union is that they do not have the final say on homeland security. It is time to pool our agencies and information. Finding a way to work with Russia would also be helpful. Also giving more serious investigation to persons flagged by Turkey as dangerous suspects.
Waiting for America is like praying for rain. If Assad needs to go, he should go. If he is necessary to peace then let him make peace and stop gassing the citizens of Syria and causing them to risk their lives to flee from war. If the Arabs need to overcome all their tribal differences for the sake of destroying ISIS, it really is time to do that now. How twisted and childish of all leaders that they allow the scum of the would-be Caliphate to exist on their soil, in their own back yard. Do they really believe that they can use it as a tool or gain some advantage from it?
For goodness’ sake, Google executives boasted about how they would not allow the FBI to open the phone encryption of the San Bernardino killers. Surely I would not protest to allow them to break into their data, if it meant gaining intelligence and information that could keep me safe? After all, ISIS use social media and information technology in a very sophisticated way, both to recruit fighters and jihadists and to organise their attacks. Allowing the jihadists power over the information technology is as good as giving them special privileges over the people who risk their lives trying to keep the world safe.
Some credible attention on our part, as an EU member, as a country and as individuals, in the protection of life and the sharing of common values in our international relations would be appropriate before it’s too late.