01 Mar 2005: SADC and Terrorism. Where is the Regional Strategy?, Michael Rifer

SADC AND TERRORISM

Where is the regional strategy?

Michael Rifer
Recently conluded a Master’s Degree in International Relations from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University in the USA. He wrote this paper as an Intern on the Terrorism Programme at the ISS, Cape Town office.

Published in African Security Review Vol 14 No 1, 2005

 

On 8 August 1998, Khalfan Khamis Mohammed crossed into Mozambique from his native Tanzania. The previous day, two massive explosions had destroyed the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, killing more than 200 people – Mohammed had helped to prepare the attack in Tanzania. Little more than a week later, Mohammed would cross into South Africa with a visitor’s visa he had acquired in Dar es Salaam the day before the bombing. Before finally being detected and arrested in October 1999, Mohammed had lived and worked in Cape Town for more than a year, seeking asylum under a fictitious name.1

 

In the aftermath of what was, to that point, one of the worst terrorist attacks anywhere in the world – one-half of which occurred in a SADC (South African Development Community) country – one of the perpetrators traversed the borders of three SADC states, finally seeking asylum in one. Indeed, nearly every southern African country has been affected by this kind of violence, or the repercussions of such acts, in one way or another. The region has not been immune from local terrorism and has had – and may have – sinister links to international terror. South Africans have allegedly been linked both to al Qaeda and international nuclear -smuggling.2 Zambia was stung by a series of bomb attacks – one of which killed a police officer – during the bizarre ‘Black Maamba’ episode of 1996.3 Malawi was shaken when five foreigners there were spirited away under the accusation that they were fund-raising for al Qaeda.4 The mineral wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) allegedly has been exploited by the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah for its own financing.5 Mauritius has an offshore banking sector that is potentially vulnerable to exploitation by -terrorist financiers.6

 

To borrow from Mohabe Nyirabu, ‘[i]n discussing regionalism in southern Africa, it is important to underscore the fact that the region is characterised by acute imbalance and inequities’7; on one hand, South Africa is in many ways a developed nation, while Malawi and Mozambique are less so. On the other hand, the DRC, riven by conflict for a decade, is still struggling to emerge as a functioning state. Faced with different priorities, challenges, and capabilities, there are wide disparities in the willingness and ability of individual SADC states to confront the issue of terrorism. In a region with the world’s highest prevalence rates of HIV/AIDS, a region plagued by conflict, poverty, and underdevelopment, it is not hard to understand why. Still, while terrorism may not rise to the priority that it enjoys in the West, or even in other parts of Africa, its potential implications warrant that SADC states take the issue seriously. Indeed, prudent action now could prevent terrorism – and any perceived vulnerability to it – from becoming a greater issue in the future.

 

To date, SADC states have demonstrated varied commitments to addressing the issue. With Security Council Resolution 1373 (2001), all United Nation (UN) member states – -including all SADC countries – are bound to, among other things, take the necessary measures to cut off terrorist financing, criminalise passive and active terrorist assistance, and accede to the relevant international conventions on the issue.8 All states were to report to the newly created Counter Terrorism Committee on the implementation of Resolution 1373,9 a requirement which SADC states have met with varying degrees of proficiency; South Africa and Mauritius have each reported four times in the two-and-a-half years since states were to begin doing so, while five of SADC’s 14 states have done so only once. Malawi submitted its most recent report in March 2002.10

 

Terrorism has been both a threat to southern Africa and has become a pre-eminent concern of the international community. Yet, there persists a seeming disconnect between SADC members in confronting the issue. Indeed, there may be questions about the commitments of some states to address the issue. Given that terrorism is a threat that crosses borders with ease, these disparate responses beg the question: Can southern African countries fight terrorism on a regional level?

Why should this effort be the responsibility of SADC?

 

11 September 2001 forced a shift in global security paradigms; terrorism became an indisputable reality, and this demanded that security arrangements all over the world adjust for various reasons and in various ways. Indeed, conceptions of state security have changed – a state’s principal threat may no longer be another state, but rather shadowy sub-state – or even trans-state – networks of individuals, weapons and financing. At the same time, terrorism can threaten a region’s economic viability without a bomb ever having been detonated. This is a threat that has come to apply to southern Africa in some very real ways, yet the region’s security apparatuses have not made the necessary changes to deal with this issue.

 

SADC is no stranger to regional security. It boasts an organ on policy, defence, and security cooperation. It has adopted protocols on trans-national threats such as small arms and drug trafficking. It has a protocol for mutual legal assistance. SADC even has a protocol ensuring ‘cooperation in wildlife law enforcement’.11 And yet, nowhere does SADC specifically address comparable cooperation on terrorism, an issue that has emerged as one of the pre-eminent security threats of the day.

 

With Resolution 1373, the UN has effectively decided that combating terrorism demands the participation of all states and, because Resolution 1373 came from the Security Council, under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, the failure of any state to adhere to a minimum standard of vigilance and enforcement constitutes a threat to international peace and security. Not only do SADC states have a legal obligation to follow through with the implementation of Resolution 1373, but failing to do so puts both the regional and international communities in jeopardy. An insecure region, a ‘dark spot’ in vigilance or enforcement, could have dramatic consequences for people and states a world away; Afghanistan was a case in point. It cannot be in the interests of southern Africa’s states to be perceived as a security gap or liability.

 

The Security Council clearly put some of the burden of implementation upon interstate relationships and the regions themselves. Resolution 1373 recognises that terrorism is an inherently trans-national problem by encouraging states to re-evaluate their border controls and refugee and asylum protocols. And it explicitly encourages countries to find ways of intensifying and accelerating the exchange of operational information; exchange information in accordance with international and domestic law and cooperate on administrative and judicial matters to prevent the commission of terrorist acts; and cooperate, particularly through bilateral and multilateral arrangements and agreements, to prevent and suppress terrorist attacks and take action against perpetrators of such acts.12 The UN Security Council is affirming that terrorism is a regional security issue.

 

By adopting Resolution 1373, the Council clearly establishes that terrorism is a threat to international peace and security, which seems to be the litmus test for the SADC Protocol for Policy, Defence, and Security Cooperation. The preamble to the protocol recalls ‘that Chapter VIII of the UN Charter recognizes the role of regional arrangements in dealing with such matters relating to the maintenance of international peace and security as are appropriate for regional action’.13 But beyond having a clear UN mandate to undertake anti-terrorist actions, the protocol would itself seem to charge the organ with confronting evolving security threats, like international terrorism.

• Article 2.2.a charges the organ to ‘protect the people and safeguard the development of the Region against instability arising from the breakdown of law and order, intra-state conflict, inter-state conflict and aggression’. Although terrorism isn’t specifically mentioned, it certainly represents a breakdown of law and order, is an act of aggression, and is something against which ‘the people’ deserve protection.

  
  

• Article 2.2.i obliges the organ to ‘develop close co-operation between the police and state security services of State Parties in order to address: (i) cross border crime; and (ii) promote a community-based approach to domestic security’. This point clearly should apply to terrorism given its nature; it being a trans-national threat and a law-enforcement issue as much, or more, than it is a military issue.
  
  

• Articles 11.2.a.iii and 11.2.b.iv give the organ jurisdiction over ‘conflict which threatens peace and security in the Region or in the territory of another State Party’. Although it is difficult to define terrorism as a conflict per se, the adoption of Resolution 1373 declares it to be a threat to global peace and security, and therefore a threat to peace and security both in the region and within any member state. Article 11.2.c gives the organ authority to act in concert with the UN Security Council.
  
  

• Article 11.1.d instructs the organ to ‘seek to ensure that the State Parties adhere to and enforce all sanctions and arms embargoes imposed on any party by the United Nations Security Council’. Security Council Resolution 1373 effectively declares an embargo on all terrorist-related financing and support, and taken in this context, SADC – and specifically the security organ – is obliged to ensure that all member states take the appropriate measures to that end.

At present, southern Africa lacks a coordinated regime to combat shadowy and hard-to-track money flows. The closest thing that southern Africa has to a strategy in the struggle against terrorist financing is the Eastern and southern African Anti-Money Laundering Group’s (ESAAMLG) nine recommendations on terrorist financing. While the recommendations are all good ones, they are neither specific nor compulsory; they are merely suggestions and do little to standardise approaches to this issue across the region. ESAAMLG itself recognises the need for ‘[m]ore comprehensive and uniform legislation … in the region’.14 In fact, commitments and capabilities for fighting terrorist financing vary greatly across the region; on one hand, a country like South Africa is a party to all major conventions on the issue and has developed a financial intelligence centre, while, at the same time, one of its neighbours, Namibia, has yet to criminalise terrorist financing and is not a party to the UN’s International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism.15

 

The SADC region is well behind global consensus on this issue. From the DRC to South Africa, the evidence would seem to contradict the perception that terrorism is not an issue in southern Africa. The states of the SADC have been victimised by attacks, have been embroiled over links to terrorist financing and fundraising, have had their borders sullied by perpetrators, and, however small they may seem in the grander context of international terrorism, have their own tradition of small, domestic extremist groups.

 

This ignominious history notwithstanding, the greatest threat to southern Africa may not come in the form of terrorist attacks per se. Rather, the absence of a coordinated anti-terror regime makes southern Africa appear ‘vulnerable’. One need look no further than Kenya to see what kind of implications that kind of risk assessment can have on an African state. Tourism accounts for roughly 12% of Kenya’s gross national product (GNP), bringing in roughly US$500 million per year, but in the aftermath of two terrorist attacks in 1998 and 2002, the sector was devastated. Some estimated that by 2003 – saddled with a travel warning from the US State Department and a ban on flights from the UK – Kenya was losing at least US$1 million a day.16

 

Even as Kenya’s situation is beginning to improve – tourist receipts accounted for around US$300 million in 200417 – American travellers are still cautioned by the State Department.18 The lessons should be clear to southern African countries: in the post-9/11 world, if states are perceived to be vulnerable to terrorism, they will suffer. Indeed, as tourism becomes an increasingly important investment earner for SADC states – some of which profited from Kenya’s malaise19 – it becomes equally prudent to allay the uncertainties of global risk assessors by demonstrating a commitment to fighting terrorism. As SADC states invest in their -tourist infrastructures, and with World Cup 2010 looming, having a similar caution levied against southern Africa would surely have a devastating impact on its viability as a safe and secure destination in the years to come. While that scenario may not be likely, with new allegations of an al Qaeda presence in southern Africa, it is not impossible, and that risk should not be taken lightly.

 

An anti-terrorist effort should not simply be the domain of individual states. As a threat, terrorism knows no borders. At the same time, individual, often poor, southern African states may not have the resources – either financial or human – to assess and address the threats in their respective countries. For these reasons – to confront threats which are trans-border in their nature, as well as sharing resources and intelligence and expertise – southern African states should look to their regional security body to coordinate a terrorism response. Terrorism is a collective security issue, too.

 

Just as the region needs to be – and is – able to coordinate its militaries in preparation for an (unlikely) external attack, so too should it prepare to coordinate its law enforcement capabilities, border controls, and judicial systems to ward off – or respond to – terrorist action. Similarly, it is in SADC’s interest to take whatever steps will help it to avoid being seen as ‘vulnerable’ to terrorism and militate against whatever economic shocks such a label would surely bear. This is what the global security situation demands at the moment. Indeed, from a need to get in line with the international community to improving security domestically, as well as across the region, SADC nations should create a collective approach to anti-terrorism.

What are other regions around the world doing?

 

Southern Africa certainly would not be alone in seeking to confront terrorism as a region. In fact, in the aftermath of 11 September, regional organisations across the globe have reconstituted themselves to confront this new regional security threat. SADC could learn from these contemporaries and build from the models and experiences that are already being employed elsewhere around the world.

 

These regional efforts tend to put an emphasis on coordination, cooperation and harmonisation among members. In the western hemisphere, the Organisation of American States (OAS) had actually created an inter-American committee against terrorism (known by its Spanish-language acronym, CICTE) a few years prior to 11 September. However, that event, an attack upon a member state, sprang the OAS into action, leading to the signing of the Inter-American Convention Against Terrorism and the strengthening of CICTE.20 The convention itself – perhaps notably for southern Africa, given the Mohammed experience – seeks specifically to improve cooperation and coordination between states by closing several loopholes that have previously hindered concerted action. For example, suspects can be denied both asylum and refugee status if there is sufficient suspicion that the individual has perpetrated terrorist actions.21

 

The CICTE is charged with facilitating information exchange between member states’ ‘competent national authorities’, creating proposals for strengthening anti-terrorism legislation, assisting members in ascension to, and compliance with, all relevant international conventions and treaties, and facilitating capacity-building and training exercises for members.22 Its focus is principally on identifying vulnerabilities and assisting governments in addressing them.

 

By contrast, the Commonwealth of Independent States – a regional club consisting of former Soviet states – prefers to deal more directly with threats. Its anti-terrorism centre (ATC) houses a database of terrorists, terrorist organisations, and terrorist financing structures23 and is to coordinate anti-terrorist operations.24 Focusing somewhat more on military responses to terrorism, the ATC is charged with cooperating with – and coordinating – the CIS’s Interior Ministers Council, Defence Ministers Council, and Commanders of Border Troops Council.25 The ATC was created at the CIS’s 30 November – 1 December 2000 Council of Heads of State and Government.

 

Another model is that of the Southeastern European Cooperative Initiative (SECI). SECI is unique among regional organisations because, as a body, its predominant purpose had already been cross-border crime fighting. Its raison d’être is the coordination and harmonisation of national law enforcement agencies on a variety of issues – drug trafficking, human trafficking, etc. It is not a political club, but rather an operational partnership between states involving each member’s ‘competent national authorities’.26 Therefore SECI’s very infrastructure is built upon domestic law enforcement partnerships, and the organisation itself is actually tied to both the World Customs Organisation and Interpol; considered ‘permanent advisors’, both organisations are important players in the SECI decisional process. This made it relatively easy for the organisation to begin dealing with terrorism as well. The events of 11 September essentially meant that trans-national terror issues only had to be overlaid upon the effective existing institutional framework.

 

It did so when member states adopted the Bucharest Declaration on the Suppression of Terrorism. That resolution provided for the creation of a working group to be charged with coordinating the region’s response to 11 September, as well as facilitating terrorist-related information exchange between SECI countries and the development of a regional anti-terrorist strategy.27 That working group became SECI’s Anti-Terrorism Task Force (ATTF). The ATTF incorporates three sub-groups, focusing on the trans-national issues of anti-terrorism, small arms and light weapons, and weapons of mass destruction.28

 

In June 2003, the ATTF held its first meeting in Ankara, bringing together experts from member countries, observer countries, and representatives of international law enforcement, including Interpol and Europol, in an effort to examine how the ATTF could best contribute to the region’s anti-terrorism efforts. Like CICTE and the ATC, the ATTF is to evaluate member states’ anti-terrorism legislation and recommend reforms.29

 

Several themes emerge from this cursory analysis of other regional anti-terrorist efforts. One, obviously, is the recognition that terrorism is a regional security issue. Additionally, each is related to a state-level political agreement, ensuring the full participation of member governments. Each is to serve as its respective regions’ central clearinghouse of terrorist and anti-terrorist data. Each is to assist members in capacity-building and training programmes. Each is to assist in the legislative strengthening and harmonisation of the region. And each has an actual physical centre, staffed by real people and charged with a real mission – the creation of a cooperative, coordinated and comprehensive regional anti-terrorist strategy. Building on the themes and strategies that have evolved around the world, there are lessons that SADC can take from its contemporaries to avoid having to create something out of thin air.

What capacity does SADC have at present?

 

SADC already has a significant capacity for law enforcement cooperation. This is perhaps the most critical step in the creation of a meaningful anti-terrorism partnership. In an issue obviously related to terrorism, SADC has adopted a protocol on the control of firearms, ammunitions, and other related materials. Identifying small arms as another trans-border threat, ‘State Parties undertake to improve the capacity of police, customs, border guards, the military, the judiciary and other relevant agencies to fulfil their roles in the implementation of this Protocol’.30 It also provides for cooperation between law enforcement agencies and mutual legal assistance. This indicates that SADC members have – or are at least working towards – the capacity to address this type of trans-national threat, and are building functional relationships between their respective agencies.

 

The importance of those relationships is highlighted by another, non-SADC, forum for law enforcement cooperation. The Southern African Regional Police Chiefs Co-operation Organisation (SARPCCO), ‘is the primary operational mechanism in southern Africa for the prevention and fighting of cross-border crime, including the trafficking of weapons’.31 Having designated the Interpol sub-regional bureau in Harare as its secretariat, SARPCCO is essentially a part of that international crime-fighting body.32 This gives southern African police chiefs direct access to Interpol’s resources and expertise, and therefore a unique capacity for combating crime across borders and throughout the region. SARPCCO is able to disseminate relevant intelligence and information to the appropriate bodies across the region and coordinate joint-enforcement strategies to combat trans-national crime.

 

Like the protocol on firearms, SARPCCO demonstrates that there is both the capacity and the will in southern Africa to coordinate law enforcement and to combat cross-border crime. However, SARPCCO cannot entirely be a proxy for a regional anti-terrorism programme. For one, the DRC is not a member of SARPCCO, though an important member of SADC.33 Beyond that, combating terrorism in southern Africa goes beyond merely law enforcement. Financial instruments, national defence and national security agencies, and national legislatures will all be required to play important roles.

 

Still, there are already important instruments in place that can be built upon in the creation of a regional anti-terrorism strategy. The mandates of SADC, the expertise and relationships of SARPCCO, and even the recommendations of ESAAMLG should not go to waste by trying to create something brand new. Rather, they should all be integrated into a comprehensive and coordinated regional anti-terrorism body.

Where does SADC go from here?

 

While it may be as much a preventative measure as it is a response to an immediate threat, the need for SADC to embrace a regional anti-terrorism body should be clear. Perhaps less clear is how to create such a body, and what form it will take. The region will have to find unique ways to amalgamate existing arrangements with international structures and best practices.

 

Perhaps the first place to start is to demonstrate the will and commitment of all member governments with the adoption of a SADC protocol on terrorism. That SADC would have protocols for issues like wildlife law enforcement but not one for terrorism belies the global security realities of today. While terrorism as an issue may have been placed at the -international forefront by the United States (US) and -others, it is not without implications for southern Africa. The absence of an anti-terrorism protocol is a glaring omission to a collection of protocols which otherwise ’cover the entire spectrum of human security’.34 Taking that measure would be an important first step in bringing southern Africa into compliance with UN Security Resolution 1373 and in line with the efforts of regions and sub-regions around the world.

 

Again, SADC need not build an agreement from scratch; it has done much of the work already. It simply needs to apply some of the framework from other, disparate, protocols and draw them together in relation to this new issue. For instance, many components in its protocol on firearms, ammunition, and other related materials could apply equally well to a hypothetical SADC protocol on terrorism:

• Article 4 encourages states ‘to consider becoming parties to international instruments relating to the prevention, combating and eradication of illicit manufacturing of, excessive and destabilising accumulation of, trafficking in, possession and use of firearms, ammunition and other related materials and to implement such instruments within their jurisdictions’. Surely an important aspect of a coordinated response to terrorism is ensuring that all members are parties to the same international conventions. The OAS’s Inter-American Convention Against Terrorism includes a similar provision making each signatory’s ascension to such documents compulsory.
  
  

• A rticle 5.1 states that ‘State Parties shall enact the necessary legislation and take other measures to establish as criminal offences under their national law to prevent, combat and eradicate, the illicit manufacturing of firearms, ammunition and other related materials, and their excessive and destabilising accumulation, trafficking, possession and use’. Considering that some SADC states have not yet specifically criminalised terrorism or terrorist financing, this kind of pledge for legislative harmonisation would be important for both cross-border law enforcement and judicial action.
  
  

• Article 6 calls upon members to ’undertake to improve the capacity of police, customs, border guards, the military, the judiciary and other relevant agencies to fulfil their roles in the implementation of this Protocol …’ and goes on to demand better coordination, better databases of information, better intra-national communication, and joint training. These would all be vital components of an anti-terrorism strategy.
  
  

• Article 15 obliges signatories to ‘establish appropriate mechanisms for co-operation among law enforcement agencies of the State Parties to promote effective implementation of this Protocol …’ including improved direct communication across the region, better-equipped border facilities, cooperation with international authorities, and effective extradition agreements. Combating any trans-national threat demands the establishment and improvement of the infrastructure – both tangible and intangible – that enable each agency from each country to most effectively do their jobs. In the case of terrorism, the region should have a similar authority to ‘establish appropriate mechanisms’ to ensure the best information, intelligence, and coordination.

The protocol component is important. For one, it gets all signatory governments on board – it would be difficult to combat an issue like terrorism, which demands things like revised legislation and national militaries, without the full commitment of all member states. While the bulwark of a region’s anti-terrorism efforts will occur below the state, the state needs to still be involved because it still has an important role to play. Regional anti-terrorism efforts in southern Africa, as elsewhere in the world, demand both a top-down and bottom-up approach to implementation. Beyond that, signing a protocol or resolution would give SADC the legal authority to create a regional anti-terrorism body.

 

Article 15 is perhaps the most important component of the model offered by the firearms protocol, because it would seemingly give SADC that authority: to create a body specifically tasked with combating terrorism – like the CIS, SECI, and OAS. Given the disparate nature of the region – geographically, but also in terms of the relative capabilities of its members – having a central anti-terrorism authority could be an important boon to the collective efforts of SADC on this issue.

 

This is the point at which political entities – states – really become a region. An ‘Article 15’ forces governments to step aside and -facilitate the construction of functional relationships between sub-state actors, like law enforcement agencies and financial institutions; it is at the sub-state level where members ‘act’ together to militate against their individual and collective vulnerabilities.

 

A SADC protocol on terrorism should include an ‘Article 15’, and under authority of that article, the region should establish a Southern African Anti-terrorist Committee (SAATC). Not only would the creation of a terrorism body bring SADC in line with its international contemporaries, but it would operationalise a truly regional response to the issue. Having many state bodies – no matter how well organised and concerted their efforts – is no substitute for having a single regional body. If such an endeavour were to, like SECI, integrate Interpol – by making SARPCCO a permanent advisor to the group – it would serve as an important and accessible resource to all member states and their sub-state agencies.

 

A transnational SAATC could integrate and coordinate the actions of state bodies in a more effective and efficient way. And a regional body would be the perfect forum through which to conduct capacity-building of members, by hosting joint exercises and sharing the expertise of the best that the region has to offer. Finally, being responsible for the region’s implementation of Resolution 1373 and the creation of a regional anti-terrorism strategy, a SAATC would be the best-qualified actor to recommend appropriate anti-terrorist legislation to member parliaments in the name of regional harmonisation. As confidence and coordination are built between members, a regional anti-terrorism centre could even conceivably become a forum for intelligence-sharing and cooperative anti-terrorist policing. Building on SADC’s existing capabilities and integrating international models, such a body would build unprecedented linkages between member states’ respective law enforcement, defence, and financial communities, contributing to the overall deepening of regional ties and, as Naison Ngoma says, “a better functioning sub-regional body capable of delivering the economic, social, political and security goals of the sub-region”.35

 

Terrorism and the global efforts to combat it have the potential to affect southern Africa in some significant ways. As a sub-region, it has already begun the processes of coordinating its law enforcement and judicial structures for other issues; this effort need only be expanded to include terrorism. It has the demonstrated ability to meet trans-national threats. It has a body of international experience to draw from. It has the support of – perhaps the expectations of – the UN. It has the expertise and coordinative capability of SARPCCO and Interpol. While SADC has the capability to address terrorism as a region, the question will ultimately become: should it?

 

It is not an irrelevant question. Given the imbalanced nature of SADC, South Africa must buy into the effort. Anthoni Van Nieuwkerk explains that “the way in which South African elites define their (and their country’s role) towards the region … becomes important in trying to understand South Africa’s national (and security) interests”.36 This is significant because South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki has established himself as perhaps the world’s pre-eminent critic of the War on Terrorism’s position as a global priority. In his 2004 address to the UN General Assembly, he criticised the US and others, saying that “the powerful will also make the additional determination that terrorism and war constitute the central and principal threat and challenge that human civilisation faces … What they will decide will translate into a set of obligatory injunctions, issued by this Organisation, which all member nations will have to accept and implement.”37

 

If South African leadership perceives a regional anti-terrorism strategy to be pandering to the US and others, or to counter to its own global agenda, then SADC will have no choice but to accept that determination. It simply cannot go forward without South Africa’s resources, expertise, or participation. Perhaps the allegations that South Africa has terrorism-related concerns of its own38 will prompt its leadership to reconcile the need for a strong anti-terrorism strategy and lead SADC forward in expanding regional security to prevent the evolution of a more imminent threat. Indeed, the recent news that South Africa is creating its own anti-terrorism centre may be an indication that Pretoria is ready to embrace that role.39

 

SADC nations will have to deliberate where terrorism stands in their collective list of priorities. Certainly, in a region where disease, malnutrition, and crime kill far more individuals than do terrorist bombs, there is legitimate reason for pause before making terrorism a concern above all others. At the same time however, terrorism is the cause du jour for the West, and is the lens through which nations like the US will, at least for the foreseeable future, view the rest of the world. Whether or not it is right, therefore, terrorism will ultimately become an issue upon which – explicitly or implicitly – -conditionalities will be placed.

 

As southern Africa deepens its internal ties socially, culturally, politically and economically, the reputation of the whole region will inevitably become increasingly staked to that of each member. If a single SADC state were to suffer a significant terrorist attack, or even to have the US or United Kingdom (UK) caution its citizens about travelling there, the region at large would be affected. It is in the interest of every SADC state and the region as a whole to ensure that the proper precautions be in place to militate against that kind of development, to demonstrate to the world that it is serious about the issue, and to explore the creation of a regional anti-terrorism strategy.

Notes

1. From a paper entitled ‘Extradition in the Khalfan Khamis Mohammed Case’ presented by Anton Katz at the ISS Regional Seminar on Terrorism, Pretoria, 18-19 September 2003.
   
   

2. S Africa discounts reports of plans for terror attacks, Washington Post, 5 August 2004.
   
   

3. University of Zambia, The People vs Senior Chief InyamboYeta, .
   
   

4. Malawi deports five suspected al Qaeda members, Associated Press, 23 June 2003.
   
   

5. Douglas Farah, Digging up Congo’s dirty gems: officials say diamond trade funds radical Islamic groups, WashingtonPost, 30 December 2001, p A01.
   
   

6. US Department of State, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, 2003, Country Reports: N-Z and G-M, (March 2004).
   
   

7. Mohabe Nyirabu, Appraising regional integration in southern Africa, African Security Review 13(1) 2004, p 23.
   
   

8. UN Counter-Terrorism Committee, What does the CTC ask of member states? .
   
   

9. UN Counter Terrorism Committee, States’ reports, .
   
   

10. UN Counter Terrorism Committee, Submitted reports, .
    
    

11. SADC, Protocol on Wildlife Conservation and Law Enforcement, .
    
    

12. UN Counter-Terrorism Committee, Resolutions, .
    
    

13. SADC, Protocol on Politics, Defence, and Security Cooperation, .
    
    

14. The World Bank, Anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism, Key issues raised in the dialogue: issues raised by other speakers, p 17, .
    
    

15. US Department of State, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, 2003, Country Reports: N-Z, (March 2004).
    
    

16. National Geographic News, Terrorism taking a toll on Kenya’s tourist industry, (17 June 2003).
    
    

17. CNN.com, Kenya receives travel boost, (9 September 2004).
    
    

18. US Department of State, Consular Affairs, Kenya – travel warning, (21 May 2004).
    
    

19. Neil Ford, The price of terror in Africa, African Business 295, Fall 2004, pp 46-47.
    
    

20. Inter-American Committee Against Terrorism, CICTE history, .
    
    

21. Steven Monblatt, executive secretary, Inter-American Committee Against Terrorism, OAS initiatives against terrorism: the role of CICTE, 34th regular session of the Inter-American Drug Abuse Commission, Montreal, November 2003.
    
    

22. Inter-American Committee Against Terrorism, CICTE mission, .
    
    

23. OSCE, Follow-up conference to the United Nations Counter Terrorism Committee special meeting, Day 1 – Non-banking conduits: CIS ATC presentation, (11 March 2004).
    
    

24. Moscow’s concessions: save CIS, Belarus & Business, (31 December 2000).
    
    

25. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, The Antiterrorist Center of the CIS Member States, Factsheet, Information and Press Department, 1 December 2000.
    
    

26. SECI Agreement on Cooperation to Prevent and Combat Trans-Border Crime.
    
    

27. SECI Istanbul Business Center, Projects, .
    
    

28. Ibid.
    
    

29. SECI Center Press Release, Anti-Terrorism Task Force meeting in Ankara, 9 June 2003.
    
    

30. SADC, Protocol on Firearms, Ammunitions, and other Related Materials, .
    
    

31. Jackie Cilliers, Building security in southern Africa: an update on the evolving architecture. ISS Monograph Series, No 43, Institute for Security Studies, Pretoria, November 1999.
    
    

32. Interpol, SARPCCO, .
    
    

33. Ibid.
    
    

34. Naison Ngoma, SADC: towards a security community? African Security Review 12(3), 2003, p 22.
    
    

35. Ngoma, op cit, p 23.
    
    

36. Anthoni van Nieuwkerk, South Africa’s national interest, African Security Review 13(2), 2004, p 90.
    
    

37. South African Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Address of the President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, at the 59th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, (22 September 2004).
    
    

38. Al-Qaeda leaders in SA, says CIA, Sunday Independent (South Africa), 3 October 2004, p 1.
    
    

39. SA spooks gear up for the role on terror, Sunday Independent (South Africa), (24 October 2004).