God forbid if you came under the American radar as a ‘person of interest!’ While you won’t be dragged off to jail, you’d certainly have the CIA and FBI watch your every move. One slip and you could be in prison. And God forbid if the Americans declared your country a “country of interest”.
Well, it has finally happened. Pakistan, as of last week has been accorded the ignominious title. And all because of just this terrorist from Nigeria called Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Last Sunday I arrived at Newark airport from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The pilot had warned us that we would have a rough landing. It was not the snow but gusty winds that would jolt the jet like a loose leaf. So, we were ready for a good shake down. It was bad. When we touched down, the passengers clapped as is the custom on domestic flights in the US.
The captain of the plane responded by saying “It was horrible!” and everyone burst into laughter. The flight crew and the passengers had bonded during the two-and-a-half hour flight and despite turbulence, we were continually reassured by the chirpy captain that we were in safe hands and he’d get us into Newark, no matter what.
At the airport there was a big commotion. It was put on security alert. Flights out of Newark were delayed. There was a sea of travellers straddling all over. No one would tell us what was going on. The next day we read in the papers that a mystery man of Asian descent sauntered into the restricted area around 5:20 pm bringing the whole airport to a close and delaying hundred of flights causing back-ups.
So who was the fellow? Was he ever caught? No! A high level inquiry has been set in motion but no one knows the identity of the chap and more importantly why was he in a “sterile” area as the Americans call it.
To top it, thanks to Abdulmutallab who boarded a flight from Amsterdam with a device attached to his body, air travellers will freak out in future. What if they have an “Abdulmutallab” on their flight? According to reports as his flight approached Detroit, he set off the device, which resulted in a fire and what appears to have been an explosion. With the help of the passengers and the crew, the terrorist was subdued.
This happened on Christmas day, the busiest for air travel in the US. The chap had managed to sneak in a high explosive chemical PETN and had attempted to detonate the device exactly the way the “shoe bomber” Richard Reid had done eight years ago during the Paris-to-Miami flight. “FBI agents recovered what appear to be the remnants of the syringe from the vicinity of Abdulmutallab’s seat, believed to have been part of the device,” said a newspaper report.
Carrying fluids is a ‘No, No’ as hand carry baggage. Women particularly have to make sure that their beautifying lotions fit in the small ‘ziplock’ bag allowed by the airport security. I was carrying a bottle of hand sanitiser which one has to use often given the swine flu scare. The woman at the security in Newark opened my bag, took out the bottle and asked what it was. I told her. She then put it through a little machine to check its chemical contents and within minutes returned it with a smile “Sure you can take this along in the plane” she said.
Earlier all of us took off our shoes and sweaters, laptops and other electronic gadgets to be x-rayed. Nobody minded it. It has become a routine and the security staff dealing with the passengers are all very polite and cheery people.
But now things will change. The New Year has ushered a new and more vigilant era. All because of this chap from Nigeria. Now I expect to be singled out, marked, watched, scrutinised and searched. And I don’t blame the Americans for being picky. They can’t afford to have crazy people from across the globe come in and try to bomb them. There’ll be more “canine bomb-detection teams” on domestic flights in the US.
We may be asked to open up our carry-on bags for further scrutiny. Our behaviour will be watched while we wait to board the plane by detection officials looking for any signs that might offer a hint of a plot. So get ready to be grilled. Citizens of 14 nations, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, coming to America will be “subjected indefinitely to the intense screening at airports worldwide,” reports the New York Times.
It’s only folks flying out of these 14 countries who should expect intensive interrogation. Cubans, Iranians, Sudanese and Syrians are considered as coming from “state sponsors of terrorism,” while Afghans, Algerians, Lebanese, Libyans, Iraqi, Nigerians, Pakistani, Saudi Arabians, Somalians and Yemenis have been branded as citizens belonging to a ‘country of interest.’
So what will happen to Pakistanis coming to the US? They will be for the first time “patted down automatically before boarding any flight to the US,” says the Times. I don’t think we should take this personally. No one wants a suicide bomber sitting next to you in the plane even if he were a Pakistani.
Mohammed Abbasi 