THE WAR GOES ON

Washington has proclaimed the beginning of a new phase in the global war on international terrorism. This conclusion follows from recent statements and decisions by US President Barack Obama who has assumed full responsibility for the security of his people.

"The system failed - it's my responsibility"

The restructuring of the national security system in the United States began soon after an attempted terrorist attack by a 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farooq Abdulmutallab on the Amsterdam-Detroit transatlantic flight on 25 December last year. Responsibility for organizing the failed explosion on the airliner that carried 278 passengers and 11 crew members was claimed by al-Qaeda, which posted a message on an Islamist website, saying that "our Nigerian brother" managed to overcome all US security measures, thus shattering the "great myth" about the omnipotence of the US intelligence service.

 At a White House meeting with heads of security agencies, President Obama admitted that on 25 December the American security system made a "potentially disastrous screw-up" that could have claimed several hundred lives. "The bottom line is this - the US government had sufficient information to have uncovered this plot and potentially disrupt the Christmas Day attack, but our intelligence community failed to connect those dots," said Obama.

Nevertheless, the US president assumed full responsibility for what happened. "The system failed - it's my responsibility," he said. But the most important thing is that for the first time since the beginning of his presidency, Barack Obama made a statement in the spirit of those repeatedly voiced by his predecessor George Bush. "We are at war with al-Qaeda, a widely ramified network that spreads violence and hatred, attacked us on 11 September and is preparing new attacks. And we will do everything possible to win," Obama said.

The US president announced changes to the system of American security forces, which will be primarily aimed at preventing terrorism in its early stages, interagency efforts to develop next-generation technologies for passenger screening at airports and strengthening international partnership in the war on terror. In accordance with such directives, the United States has tightened rules for screening air passengers travelling to this country. It is, above all, a particularly thorough examination of those who fly from the states that are regarded as so-called "sponsors of terrorism", particularly Iran, Sudan, Syria and Cuba. These passengers will have to undergo a body search and to present their luggage for screening. At the same, similar rules will also apply to passengers from Nigeria, Yemen and Pakistan. The most important security measure will be the introduction of modern technologies for screening at airports where state-of-the-art photo scanners will be installed.

In addition, the US president instructed the State Department to tighten the rules of issuing entry clearances to the United States and cancelling visas due to the increased terrorist threat. The introduction of this measure gives reason to believe that the tightening of security measures by Washington will affect not only the citizens of the aforesaid countries. The revision of visa regulations is likely to affect a vast majority of countries, including members of the US-led international antiterrorist coalition and Washington's strategic partners. It is possible that because of the heightened vigilance of American intelligence officials, many citizens of the allied states who do not pose any threat will be denied entry into the US.

However, the main thrust of Obama's message to the American people is that, despite all the efforts of the United States in the sphere of security, al-Qaeda still retains the ability to strike them. One can also assume that by the next US presidential elections to be held in late 2012, Obama is going to achieve real results in eliminating or neutralizing "the terrorist number one" - al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Yemen is the next step

The reorganization of the American security system is meant to ensure the success of the new phase in the war on terror. But its main platform appears to be Yemen, as the investigation established that it was the Yemen cell of Al-Qaeda which trained and sent the young Nigerian to commit the Detroit terrorist attack. Meanwhile, the Nigerian himself admitted that two dozen young people studied the "art" of blowing up aircraft together with him in Yemen. According to the Nigerian, his "classmates" possess the skills and techniques which he himself tried to use on board the aircraft over Detroit.

Also, keep in mind that Yemen is the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden (although he was born in Saudi Arabia), and, apparently, this factor played an important role in turning the impoverished country in the southern part of the Arabian peninsula into one of the bastions of modern terrorism. One of Yemeni terrorists is the radical preacher, Anwar al-Awlaki, an imam from the United States, who once instructed the perpetrators of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and moved to his historic homeland in 2002. Recently, the Yemeni authorities triumphantly announced that Al-Awlaki had been killed, but his relatives and acquaintances claim that he is alive and well. Al-Awlaki's disciple is also the American military psychiatrist Nidal Hasan, who organized a bloody massacre at the Fort Hood army base in Texas in early November last year. Now it has been reported that Al-Awlaki could be connected to the would-be terrorist Abdulmutallab. In any case, American officials have indicated that they have evidence linking the Nigerian terrorist to the "dead man" from Yemen.

In a televised address on the failed terrorist attack, Barack Obama called Yemen "a country grappling with crushing poverty and deadly insurgencies." "So, as president, I've made it a priority to strengthen our partnership with the Yemeni government - training and equipping their security forces, sharing intelligence and working with them to strike al-Qaeda terrorists," he said. In turn, the United Kingdom, the main ally of the US, announced its willingness to host an international summit on terrorism in Yemen in London on 28 January.

Washington, meanwhile, began active measures to plan and implement a special operation against al-Qaeda militants in Yemen. Actually, as a result of the first successes of this operation, the US embassy in Sana'a resumed its work. The US diplomatic mission in the Yemeni capital was closed in early January due to threats received from members of the local branch of a terrorist organization who called on "all Muslims concerned about their religion" to attack foreigners. On 2 January, Sana'a was visited by the head of the Central Command of the US Armed Forces, David Petraeus. At a meeting with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, he discussed the possibility of taking joint anti-terrorism measures. Following this, Washington and Sana'a began a special operation whose results allowed the US embassy and the diplomatic missions of several other Western countries to resume their work. Yemen, apparently, has finally acquired the status of the third bridgehead for the international anti-terror coalition after Afghanistan and Iraq. However, the White House seems to realize that what negative consequences a repeat of the Afghan and Iraqi "experiments" may have both for the anti-terrorist mission and entire global security, as the same al-Qaeda, which became a bugbear for many countries and peoples of the East and the West in the late twentieth century, has yet to be defeated.