Ghana: A nation left open to terrorism and crime

George Sydney Abugri Opinion Jan - 13 - 2016 , 22:50

A fence is meant to keep something out of a place or keep something in. It is called security. A fence needs an opening or a door to regulate exit and entry whenever what has been fenced out needs to be allowed in and what has been fenced in needs to be let out.

Unfortunately, there is such a thing as door left so wide open that it makes rank nonsense of the fence and compromises the security it is supposed to provide.

In the mid-1980s, a group of US journalists reporting on smuggling along Ghana’s northern borders came under severe official criticism for describing the country’s borders in newspaper and radio reports as “porous.” We were told that such a report amounted to an invitation to potential external aggressors to invade or attack the country at will.

Today, true to our prediction years ago, Ghana is attracting hordes of criminals from West Africa the way a lump of sugar attracts ants. In recent years, Ghanaians have seen so many strange and outlandish types pouring into the country in ever-ballooning hordes.

The young males among them typically wear carbon black sunglasses the size of giant binoculars, “wicked” haircuts and weird hair styles, trouser belts as large as floor carpets and the countenances of pirates. The Arab world has also been one big explosion of volcanic fire, displacing and spilling large numbers of people across territorial fences including ours.

International Humanitarian Law places an obligation on all nations to open their territorial borders to people fleeing war, but it makes sense to be prudent in deciding who may need to be kept out of our territorial borders for reasons of security.

The queries
The case of former Guantanamo Bay detainees Mahmud Umar Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalid Muhammad Salih Al-Dhuby is a case in point: Bin Atef and Al-Dhuby are both in their mid-30s. They are from Yemen but grew up in Saudi Arabia where they were recruited and subsequently sent to train and fight for armed groups in Afghanistan.

Bin Atef and Al-Dhuby, who are now at an undisclosed location in Ghana, were captured by U.S. troops in Afghanistan and held at the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for nearly 14 years without charge.

US president Barack Obama is seeking to drastically reduce the population of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay as part of a plan to close the detention centre down and move the remaining prisoners to the U.S.

The two men were cleared for release from the Guantanamo Bay as far back as 2009 but could not be sent to their native Yemen because of instability there. The US decided to look for a country willing to accept them and Ghana is.

Public responses to the decision of the government to allow the al-Qaeda terrorism asylum in Ghana have, however, been many, varied and far from approving across various media platforms: “This is insane”, “Is this a kind of April fool’s joke?” “Was parliament consulted?”

“What if they take advantage of their presence here to sow the seed for the development of a terrorist cell?”

“If the US finds it unsafe to keep them, why are they foisting them on us?” “Why Ghana anyway?” “Are Ghanaians safe with such high-calibre militants in the country?” “Are the two militants themselves safe, since not everyone is willing to welcome them?”

Opinions
Not long ago, Fox News, quoting US government sources, reported that 30 per cent of former detainees released from Guantanamo Bay had “already gone back into the fight”.

The Office of the US Director of National Intelligence regularly releases unclassified summary reports on former Guantanamo detainees. In its 2014 report, it said that as of

January 2014, a total of 104 out of the 614 detainees (17 per cent) released from Guantanamo Bay had “engaged in terrorist activities," while another 74 (12 per cent) were suspected of having been involved in terrorist acts.

Unfortunately, it has been impossible to assess the validity of the U.S. government's intelligence-based claim that nearly 30 per cent of detainees released from Guantanamo

Bay are confirmed or suspected to be engaged in terrorist activity because the government has not publicly released the names of any of those former detainees.

Another source of information about the activities of former detainees of Guantanamo Bay who have been released is the New America Foundation (NAF). NAF has analysed

Pentagon reports, news stories and other publicly available documents to create a list of former detainees who have in the words of the foundation, “returned to the battlefield."

NAF has, however, documented a much smaller number of former detainees allegedly engaged in or suspected to be engaged in terrorist activities than the number documented by the U.S. government. The foundation is reported to list only a third of the number the U.S. government estimates have “returned to battle.”

Risks
Be that as it may, the thrust of the argument remains the same: There is always the danger of former Guantanamo and other released detainees engaging in acts of terrorism wherever they may be against whatever target they may choose.

In the wake of the case of the al-Qaeda militants, I have sought opinions about the state of public safety and national security in Ghana today and many people appear to think there has been a less than resolute official commitment and sensitivity to public safety and internal security in Ghana in the past 20 years.

The journey from Accra through Kumasi, Techiman, Bamboi, Bole, Sawla and Tuna to Wa, the Upper West Regional capital, can be for the first time traveller on the route, a nightmarishly long and tortuous one, some of it through forbidding bushes and desolate Savannah woodlands.
It is the same with the journey from Accra through Kumasi, Techiman, Kintampo, Yapei, Tamale and Walewale to Bolgatanga, the Upper East Regional capital.

As late as 1990, travellers along both routes went to sleep soundly in the bushes along the highways, their lives and luggage as safe as the proverbial houses. If this sounds a bit weird or incomprehensible, let me explain: Thanks to the terrible riding quality of both highways at the time, passenger buses belonging to the State Transport Corporation and other transport companies sometimes broke down late at night, right in the middle of the bush.

Then an amazing scene right out of a road travel adventure movie would unfold: Men, women and children, many of them total strangers, who may only have struck up acquaintances on the bus, would spread jackets, cloths, blankets etc. on the gravel of the unasphalted road and go to sleep till daybreak.

Less than three decades later, scarcely a day passes without armed bandits attacking convoys of long-distance buses on those routes, robbing and sometimes raping and killing travellers. Armed robbery and other violent crimes are expected to increase progressively at the rate of 20 per cent a year and that estimate I gather, is a conservative one!

Internal crisis
On the basis of these projections and given the increasing sophistication in the activities of armed robbers, you might expect that the contrast between public safety even in these days of endemic violent criminal activity and public safety in the next 20 years will be even sharper than the contrast between public safety in the days of our experiences with disabled vehicles on the north-bound highways in the early 1990s, and public safety today.

Ordinary citizens, Ministers of State, Members of Parliament, leading political figures, leading Clergymen, diplomats, medical doctors, businessmen, celebrities, students etc. have all been victims of armed robberies.

Banks, shops, homes, supermarkets, petroleum dispensing stations, boutiques, forex bureaux etc. have been under attack by robbers.

Having touted Ghana internationally as one of the safest countries in the world, the authorities are unable to admit that there is indeed a phenomenal internal security crisis in

Ghana and that most people live in constant fear for their lives. That would scare away investors and trade partners.

The authorities are reluctant to admit that while there is armed robbery in many countries, what is happening in Ghana is a case of terrorism requiring very drastic action which transcends normal law enforcement.