Our intelligence services haven't a clue so relax and enjoy your holiday
ROD LIDDLE
Ivhat you need in front of you for this useful publicservice exercise is a piece of string cut to precisely five and one-tenth of an inch in length and a flat atlas of the world with a scale of one inch to 1,026 miles. Don't worry, it's a fairly common scale, especially in those rather agreeable old atlases that identify the capital of Portuguese East Africa as being Lourenco Marques, and so on. It goes without saying that the atlas should use Mercator's Projection; none of that politically correct stuff which portrays Great Britain as a withered runner bean near the North Pole and half the size of Belize, to boot.
What I have spent, oh, days working out for you is where you might go on holiday this summer without being vaporised by some deranged Muslim fanatic, convinced that he is about to enjoy the lubricious services of 72 virgins for all eternity without paying by the hour. And I've done that by comparing the official British and US security warnings with what has actually occurred by way of alQa'eda attacks. Let me explain.
In the late summer and early autumn of last year we were told, repeatedly, that Britain itself — and most probably London — was the likely target of an al-Qa'eda atrocity. Could be chemical, could be biological. Might be one of those dirty bombs or just a bunch of nutters in a convoy of clapped-out Peugeots with ten pounds of Semtex in each boot — the security services weren't clear about this, but they were sure that London was the next big target.
On 12 October they were proved to be precisely 8,208 miles wide of the mark when two bombs were detonated outside nightclubs on Kuta Beach in Bali. Suddenly London was no longer the focus. We were told, with conviction, that the next attack would be in Malaysia. I remember very well the warnings, because I was having a thoroughly enjoyable holiday there at the time. The Malaysians, of course, were furious at the damage done to their tourist industry and complained volubly. And then, sure enough, al-Qa'eda struck — at the Mombasa Paradise Hotel in Kenya, 4,104 miles from where we were warned that such an outrage was a likelihood.
This year, the US security services received detailed information which led them to issue immediate warnings for Washington and New York. Security was stepped up and federal police were placed on alert. Within a couple of weeks, al-Qa'eda murdered 34 people — in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, some 5,130 miles distant from the predicted atrocity.
And finally, last week. the British and American governments suddenly announced that nobody should go anywhere near Kenya. Flights were cancelled; holidaymakers were brought home. The Kenyans complained. And one day later al-Qa'eda bombed hotels and a Jewish cultural centre in Casablanca, killing 41 people — 3.600 miles from Nairobi.
Now, here's where the piece of string and the atlas come in. The mean distance between the countries subject to those furious securityservice warnings and those where the bombing actually took place is 5,260 miles. So here's what to do. Wait for the next official warning; it will come soon enough. Let's assume, for the purposes of this article, that it is Nepal. Then 1) Place your piece of string on Kathmandu. 2) Circle it through 360 degrees. 3) Make a note of the countries touched by the end of the string (South Africa, Brazil, Franz Josef Land. Sierra Leone, and so on). 4) Remove these countries from your list of possible itineraries. Go anywhere else, and you should be fine. Or dispense with the string altogether and simply board the first flight to Nepal. Whatever.
I suppose you could argue that this is a juvenile and facetious approach to a very serious and sensitive subject. Fair enough. It's also a little hard on MI6 and the CIA, who are not, after all, the bad guys in this scenario. But it is nonetheless true that my facile little formula would be no less effective in providing you with information about where to go safely on holiday (or business) than, say, the government's frequent security warnings and the Foreign Office's ludicrous 'Know Before You Go' website. Because what this whole business tells us is horribly straightforward: our counter-terrorist information-gathering isn't very good.
Take the US warnings about Washington and New York. These were distributed nationally after information was extracted from Abu Zubaydah, the most senior alQa'eda operative to be captured by the US. Clearly, old Abu told his interrogators that the US was next on the list. Equally clearly, either his interrogators hadn't tortured him enough and he was lying through his broken teeth, or he hasn't got a clue what's going to happen. I suspect it's the latter.
The evidence is growing that al-Qa'eda exists only as a sort of invisible franchise with no central command or communication structure. The cells, spread throughout the world, operate independently and without reference to each other. They are `al-Qa'eda' only in the sense that this is a convenient and memorable name for them; really, they are nameless and alone, except for their benighted faith. Their leader is not Osama bin Laden, even if they do have his picture on their bedroom walls alongside Kylie, but a twisted version of Allah; and that's about it.
And so the frequently bellowed warnings to avoid Malaysia, Kenya, Thailand, and so on are not merely useless, but counterproductive. As well as infuriating the government of each country concerned, and antagonising the indigenous population to such a degree that its residual goodwill to the West may soon evaporate, it tells the Western traveller nothing of value and instead offers a concession to those who wish to see the West suffused with fear.
On the Foreign Office website I mentioned earlier there are generic warnings about potential al-Qa'eda terrorist attacks everywhere — including, should you be contemplating such a trip, Laos, the Falkland Islands and Andorra. I know because I looked them up. It would be more useful, and more honest, if on every webpage the following was written instead: 'We haven't a clue where the terrorists will strike. We don't know who they are or where they live. The next atrocity might just as easily take place in your back garden. If you're going abroad, anywhere in the world, you might perhaps restrain yourself from visiting Israeli Friendship Centres, as these are considered a little de trop by a certain, violently inclined type of person. Other than that, have a nice time and be polite to the locals, except in Belgium, obviously.'
More British subjects meet their ends in Spain and the US each year than have been killed by all the terrorist attacks in the last ten years. I'm not sure what is the significance of this statistic, apart from providing a little perspective.
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