AUSTRALIA: Olympics Terror Threat a Bogy – Experts

By Stephen de Tarczynski Reprint | | Print |

Stephen de Tarczynski

MELBOURNE, Jun 12 2008 (IPS) - With less than two months to go before the Beijing Olympics begin, analysts have rejected claims that terrorism is a major threat to the Games, despite recent reports from China of militant activity.

Last month, Australian security expert Neil Fergus –- former director of intelligence at the Sydney 2000 Games, Fergus has also worked as a consultant at the Salt Lake City and Athens Games, as well as in China for this year’s Olympics – warned that the main threat faced by the Olympics comes from the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM).

"There are over 100 members of ETIM that were trained by al Qaeda in Afghanistan prior to the invasion of Afghanistan, so there is no question about the links. The links are very strong," said Fergus.

ETIM, a militant Islamist organisation, is one of many Uyghur groups advocating independence for what it calls East Turkestan – officially the Xinjiang Autonomous Region – in China’s far west.

According to the 2000 census, Uyghurs are still the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang. However, the percentage of ethnic Han Chinese has expanded since 1949, when China occupied and subsequently annexed the region.

The assessment by Fergus – who spent 21 years with Australia’s national intelligence agency, ASIO, and established a security consulting firm, Intelligent Risks, in 2001 – of the dangers facing Beijing during August’s Olympics is supported by China as well as by international police.

At the International Conference on Security Cooperation for the Olympic Games held in the Chinese capital in April, Jianzhu Meng, state councillor and Minister of Public Security, said that while the general security situation for the Games remained stable, threats remain, especially in the form of terrorism.

"There is no doubt that the biggest threat facing the Olympics is terrorism," warned Meng.

"We need to meet the challenges from the terrorist groups, separatist groups and extremist groups," he said.

Also in attendance at the conference was Interpol secretary general, Ronald Noble, who said that "we must be prepared for the possibility that al-Qaeda or some other terrorist group will attempt to launch a deadly terrorist attack at these Olympics."

And China continues to make preparations to counter such an attack. The United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been training officials about what to do in the event of a radiological attack and Chinese troops have had their counter-terrorism training stepped-up.

But according to Prof. Clive Williams, from Macquarie University’s Centre for Policing, Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism, the threat of such an attack at the Games is not as great as what is being propagated.

"I think that China is a very difficult operating environment and terrorists will generally choose an area where it’s less difficult to operate," Williams told IPS.

He argues that an al Qaeda attack is "very unlikely."

"Al Qaeda has changed from the days when they actually did operations to [now] being more reliant on local groups doing things which are consistent with what al- Qaeda would like," says Williams.

But he also dismisses claims that ETIM – which Williams regards as having a low capability, especially outside Xinjiang – has strong links with the group purportedly headed by Osama bin Laden, arguing that the Xinjiang-based militants have only made intermittent contact with other groups, such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, "because it is being pursued by China".

Williams suggests that claims of a strong connection between ETIM and al Qaeda can advantage the Chinese government. "If you claim that a problematic element within your society has got links to al Qaeda, of course, it does give you a tick in the box and get a bit more sympathy internationally for you," he says.

China officially identified ETIM as a terrorist organisation when it first listed terror groups in 2003, while the UN lists it as a group associated with al Qaeda.

Speaking to an analyst who preferred to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of the issue, IPS was told that while there were terrorist and militant organisations operating in Xinjiang in the early 1990s – which had links with other groups in countries such as Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan – these groups no longer possess the same capability.

"With the formation of the Shanghai Five [a security group formed in 1996 by China, Russia, and central Asian states, now called the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation] and the ousting of the Taliban from Afghanistan, these places were no longer viable bases for Uyghur militants, and my belief is that any organised Uyghur armed movement ended then," says the analyst.

However, there continues to be several reports emanating from China of ETIM-related activities. In Jan. 2007, 18 people were reported killed in a police raid on a training camp run by ETIM, while a year later two militants were killed and 15 arrested in a raid on a group in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi.

According to a Chinese official, the group had been planning an attack on the Olympics.

More recently, China announced the foiling of an apparent hijacking attempt in March by Uyghur separatists on a flight from Urumqi to Beijing.

While these events appear to indicate that the Olympics may indeed be a terror target, commentators continue to have doubts regarding the plausibility of such reports. The announcement of the hijacking, in particular, raised doubts regarding the actual nature of the event.

The analyst interviewed by IPS says that reliable news and information coming out of Xinjiang is difficult to obtain. "Journalists and academics working there are placed under tight scrutiny and Uyghurs in Xinjiang place themselves at significant risk by talking politics to foreigners."

But the analyst argues that China’s government and media are keen to demonstrate that Uyghur terrorism poses a threat to the nation, thereby enabling the justification of cracking down on dissent in Xinjiang and elsewhere.

"Convincing the outside world that China faced a real terrorist threat was a credible defence for pursuing harsh policies against Uyghur and Tibetan nationalism," says the analyst.