A View From Canberra: An end of an era | ADM June 2011

A Special Correspondent | Canberra

The death of Bin Laden has raised some interesting questions about the nature of the relationship between the US and Pakistan. And how our own security framework performs.

With hindsight, one of the better jokes of the evening of mirth in which US President Obama mercilessly lampooned Republican hopeful Donald trump was his offhand remark that he had better things to do with his time than respond at length to silly claims about his place of birth. That very same weekend it transpired that he sure did have better things to do – overseeing the mission to nab Osama Bin Laden.

In the immediate aftermath of this stunning operation, the most sought after man on earth was not Bin Laden’s deputy, Ay-man Al Zawahiri, but the head of Pakistan’s military to explain how the world’s most wanted terrorist managed to set up house within an easy walk of the Pakistan Military Academy, the equivalent of Australia’s Royal Military College (RMC).

As it turned out, General Khalid Wynne, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee of the Pakistan military, was in Canberra when the raid went down and for most of the following week undertaking top level security and defence cooperation talks.

General Wynne did no media during his stay. So, was he asked by anyone in the Australian government to respond to widespread claims that Bin Laden couldn’t possibly have settled where he did without either high-level collusion or ineptitude?

US intelligence group Stratfor noted that Bin Laden’s compound had certainly been on the intelligence radar – it was raided in 2003 by Pakistani intelligence in the hunt for a senior al-Qaeda figure trying to assassinate then-President Pervez Musharraf.

The ADF wasn’t about to say whether any of this sort of uncomfortable stuff was raised in talks with General Wynne, responding to media queries along the lines that it didn’t blab about the private content of government to government discourse.

However, it had no problem issuing a 469-word statement disclosing broad details of the talks and acknowledging that the Bin Laden operation had certainly been mentioned.

“Both sides welcomed the recent US operation that resulted in the death of Osama Bin Laden. Air Chief Marshal Houston noted that this highlighted the continuing importance of close counter-terrorism cooperation between Pakistan and the United States and the international community,” Defence said.

it would be nice to think that Australia played some modest role in Bin Laden’s demise but this seems unlikely, despite curious attempts by Fairfax newspapers to suggest that longstanding links between the world’s top tier counter-terrorist operators just possibly meant some Aussie involvement.

As the news of Bin Laden’s final moments echoed around the world, there was immediate speculation of how the jihadists would seek revenge, as they surely would. From a movement well versed and seemingly obsessed with launching high profile mass casualty attacks, al-Qaeda’s core capabilities has eroded in the face of relentless pressure.

Only of late did al-Qaeda prime realise where its core advantage now lay – with all those individuals and small groups of estranged Muslims living in western countries, swayed by the jihadist message and sufficiently motivated to want to do something about it.

That’s been increasingly apparent in al-Qaeda communications through its media arm as Sahab. For example in March last year, al-Qaeda’s spokesman Adam Gadahn extolled the example set by Nidal Hasan, a Jordanian-born US Army psychiatrist who shot dead 13 US soldiers in a rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, shortly before he would have deployed to Afghanistan.

Gadahn, a US-born Christian turned Jihadi used by al-Qaeda to address a western audience, praised Hasan as a Mujahid brother who other Muslims should emulate. US investigators concluded Hasan was the archetypal “lone wolf”, not associated with any group and who told no-one before acting.

Worryingly, Gadahn counselled other budding “lone wolfs” to go for it but to first think carefully about their proposed tar- get and choose something familiar which epitomizes western decadence. That’s the counterpoint to those grassroots jihadis who aspire to some grandiose act to rival the World trade Centre and often end up attracting the attention of security services.

In that regard Australia has been especially fortunate for every plot has attracted the attention of ASIO well before it approached fruition. But the most recent involving five Melbourne men worried the defence enough to provoke a serious review of security.

The five, outraged that Australian troops were in Afghanistan oppressing innocent Muslims, planned to break into the Holsworthy army base outside Sydney and shoot dead as many soldiers as possible before they were themselves killed.

The experience of a lot of places, Australia included, is that determined men with guns can wreak carnage especially when no-one is shooting back. Contrary to popular perception, soldiers don’t routinely wander around army bases carrying loaded weapons, if they’re carrying weapons at all.

Likely, the first armed response to such an incursion would have been the local police. On the plus side, firearms aren’t as readily available as in the US, although they are by no means unobtainable.

When this plot came to light in 2009, defence conducted a detailed review of base security and undertook a wide range of measures.

Earlier this year, parliament passed legislation which does a number of things, most prominently clarifying the laws allowing soldiers to respond with deadly force to any terrorist incursion, to shoot to kill if need be.

Defence personnel already possessed a common law right to self-defence, as does everyone. But the new law provides explicit authority for authorised personnel, presumably a designated ready response group, to protect themselves or others in the event of an actual or imminent attack.

The legislation makes clear that police retain the primary responsibility and to that end, Stephen Merchant, deputy secretary for intelligence and security told a parliamentary committee recently more and more bases would feature an armed police presence. That’s presumably the major bases such as Holsworthy.

Merchant said much of the security updating was commonsense stuff such as requiring an up to date security response plan for each and every base, comms systems allowing receipt and dissemination of threat information, emergency alert systems and a rehearsed system of base lockdown procedures.

All fair enough. In this age of high technology surveillance systems, armed response teams and that sort of stuff, it’s often easy to overlook the reality that the basic simple stuff can provide high level protection.

Many a long year ago, your correspondent was reminded of that by an article in a security industry magazine, graphically illustrated by a photo of a padlock on a warehouse door which had survived an especially brutal attack by a gang of burglars armed with sledgehammers. An item worth perhaps $50 prevented theft of millions of dollars worth of goods.

However, defence is doing much more than shelling out for new padlocks and the total investment in base security runs to $330 million, which does include plenty of high tech including closed circuit TV. So far, around $24 million has been spent to beef up security at Holsworthy, the Garden Island naval base in Sydney as well as at defence headquarters at Russell and the RMC in Canberra. The remaining bulk of that spending will go towards infrastructure upgrades at major bases with details to be outlined later in the year, maybe even in the budget. The defence headquarters at Russell, Canberra, will see more of that, as will ADFA and RMC. By global standards, these facilities are remarkably accessible and that may not continue.

Merchant conceded that putting big fences around these facilities isn’t on the cards but there will be some extra protective measures, particularly for what’s called R1, the main Russell office building which houses the CDF, secretary, service chiefs and many more.

As is the nature of risk assessment, all this is a judgement about what could reasonably happen and what measures would moderate the residual risk down to moderate or low level.

Curiously, the parliamentary committee at which Merchant gave evidence canvassed an issue reasonably assumed to be long concluded. That was the issue of military versus civilian guards at defence bases. Queensland Liberal Senator Ian MacDonald queried how it could be that the defence forces guards the nation but civilians are hired to guard their bases.

The reality is, in event of a terrorist attack, trained soldiers are just the people you need. But rest of the time civilian security guards are a far more cost-effective option for standing at the front gate checking cars and visitors on and off the facility.

So just what are the risks defence faces at its many bases around the nation? Terrorism expert Professor Clive Williams, a former director of defence security intelligence in the period straddling 9/11, canvassed this very issue in a submission to yet another parliamentary inquiry.

He said there were a variety of security threats to defence bases, equipment and personnel with theft heading the list. That’s for the blindingly obvious reason that defence has lots of desirable and valuable equipment which isn’t readily available and which is coveted by a variety of people. That includes weapons, ammunition, explosives and restricted high-tech gear such as night vision equipment, plus the usual sort of items stolen daily throughout the nation, especially computers.

Some weapons and ordnance do go missing but probably much less than some of the lurid media reporting suggests. If big quantities of weaponry are going walkabout, defence isn’t admitting it and the stuff isn’t turning up regularly in the hands of the usual suspects, bikie and drug gangs.

The worst case in recent years, the theft of eight or more M-72 rockets by an army officer in 2007, prompted a review of ordnance security which fixed the more glaring shortcomings. However, the missing rockets haven’t surfaced and are thought to be in the hands of Sydney criminal gangs and maybe extremists.

Professor Williams said there was concern about organised attempts to steal weapons and explosives from some bases, particularly where ordnance is stored in remote bunkers.

He cites cyber attack on defence systems as a growth area of concern. Good old nation-state espionage didn’t vanish with the Cold War and China has enthusiastically exploited its diaspora to gain access to restricted material, especially in the US.

On the terrorism front, at least three of the recent Islamist terrorism cases involved planned attacks on defence facilities. On the basis of keeping it simple, the best protection against unauthorised access by terrorists or anyone else is a stout wire fence but that’s not practical on some of the larger bases.

So what deterred people, whether terrorist suspect, peace protester or aspiring thief, from wandering around the less secure facilities? It certainly wasn’t the maximum penalty for trespass – the extremely reasonable sum of $40. But not any more. Legislation allowing defence personnel to shoot terrorists (only in self defence of course) also lifts the maximum penalty for trespass to $5,500.