IN TODAY’S WORLD of terrorist activity, this week’s scare on board an Air Canada aircraft travelling from Toronto to Bridgetown paled in comparison with last year’s attacks in Paris or this week’s mass killing in Orlando, Florida.
Insignificant though it has turned out to be, the fact that it pushed Barbados into the spotlight in North America and the region, and for reasons other than the sea, sand, sun and peace and tranquillity we so often loudly trumpet, cannot be ignored.
For a few hours we were quite vividly reminded that while we are thinking peace, others with sinister and deadly intentions may be thinking “opportunity”.
Exactly what occurred on board that Air Canada flight is still being pieced together by investigators and whether or not the individual at the centre of it will be charged with criminal conduct has not yet been determined, but by now we should be fully conscious of our vulnerability as a region.
We cannot take our security for granted without exposing ourselves to potentially devastating consequences. Neither can we lull ourselves into believing that a terrorist is someone with a particular skin colour or mode of dress, speaking a foreign language and believing in a particular religion. In fact, these days we cannot even take comfort in believing that a terrorist will be of a specific gender.
If this is hard to accept, then it might help if we just shift our gaze slightly south to the republic of Trinidad and Tobago where just a few months ago authorities confirmed that 89 Trinidadians had travelled to the Middle East to join ISIS.
And that country’s then Minister of National Security Gary Griffith warned further: “It is no longer the case where 20 years ago what we saw as a terrorist . . . was just someone with explosives around his waist and you pull a pin. The concept of terrorism has now moved to different elements. It is just not the actual terrorist, but it also involves persons who may become sleeper cells . . . Then there will be others who will be sympathisers to terrorist activity, then there will be others who will be training persons to be involved in terrorist activity.”
And in case anyone is tempted to retort, “That’s Trinidad; this is Barbados,” the reality of regional air travel should have a sobering effect. Air links through Port of Spain to Bridgetown or through Bridgetown to Port of Spain are as entranced as the calypso-inspired rivalry between callaloo and cou cou.
The recent national outcry over the decision of the Barbados Government to mandate the fingerprinting of all people entering and leaving the country through the Grantley Adams International Airport, or the Bridgetown Port, was enough to force authorities to shelve its implementation, but it ought not to blind us to the reality of today’s often cruel world.
Whether or not we eventually decide to fingerprint everyone travelling or only select travellers, we cannot get away from the absolute need to heighten national security.
The Air Canada experience ended well for the passengers, and consequently the country, but had the outcome been otherwise, the consequences for a country that is dependent on tourism for much of its national income would have been catastrophic. We cannot afford a single act of terrorism on our shores – not today.
The world today is vastly different from what existed on October 6, 1976, when Cubana Airlines Flight 455 was felled by a terrorist bomb just minutes after taking off from Grantley Adams International Airport. These are the days of the Internet and social media, where graphic publication is often not regulated by traditional values, and a majority of airline travel is booked personally by the traveller, who can as easily cancel or change without the intervention of any third party.
A failure by us to recognise this new reality and therefore the need to keep security at the forefront of the management of our affairs could eventually have dire consequences for us and perhaps generations that follow.