Zamboanga City: 2010’s Daallo Airlines Moment?

17 Aug 2010

On 13th November 2009, the world paid scant attention to the arrest of a 35-year old Somali man, Abdi Hassan Abdi, who was the last passenger in line wishing to board a Daallo Airlines flight from Mogadishu to the northern Somali city of Hargeisa, with onward connections to Djibouti and Dubai. In his possession was a syringe with a green liquid inside, a plastic bag containing 600 grams of ammonium nitrate and half a litre of concentrated sulfuric acid in a plastic bottle; allegedly, when they were discovered at security screening (a notably impressive find in my view), the passenger then attempted to pay a bribe in order to be able to continue on his way.  Although the African nation’s authorities recognised that this was innovative, yet potentially effective way, of infiltrating an explosive device onto an aircraft, most of the rest of the world were either oblivious to the occurrence or readily dismissed it as being of little relevance to the global aviation industry.

Some six weeks later, the newswires were burning in the aftermath of Abdulmutallab’s attempt to destroy a Northwest flight en route from Amsterdam to Detroit using a similar device. This was now a significant incident as it impacted a flight operating between The Netherlands and the United States. Underpants were headline news, body scanners the order of the day…

We ignore incidents such as that perpetrated by Abdi Hassan Abdi at our peril. Not only is it offensive to the developing world to downplay incidents that take place in such regions, it is also short-sighted. Indeed, these are the very incidents that we ought to be focussing our attention on as they are the test sites, selected as they do not appear on our radar screens and specifically because we fail to appreciate their consequences. There is a lack of clarity as to whether the Somali attack is actually linked to that of Christmas Day, but it matters little – copycat or coordinated, co-trained or lone wolves, the creative way of concealing IEDs was being demonstrably appreciated by those we are supposed to guard ourselves from…MORE ONLINE

Leave a Reply