Visa security is critical to preventing terrorist attacks

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's failed attempt to bomb Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day is another reminder that a visa is priceless to a terrorist. It is the golden key that allows easy passage to the United States. If the intelligence on Abdulmutallab had been properly analyzed, his visa would have been quickly revoked and he would have been denied access to Flight 253. We must go back to basics and strengthen the role of the Homeland Security Department in visa issuance, review and security.

Certainly, we must continue to improve methods and technologies for screening and detecting explosives carried by airline passengers, but our highest priority is to remember the lesson of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the attempted Christmas Day bombing: Our first line of defense against terrorism is intelligence and visa security. Yes, visa security. It's not an easy, 30-second sound bite and it takes a little more explaining, but it might be our best defense. Without a valid visa, America's enemies will not be able to lawfully enter the United States at all.

This does not mean we should in any way diminish America's role as a gateway to visitors from around the world. Common-sense security measures and an open and welcoming culture are not mutually exclusive. Revoking Abdulmutallab's visa would have done nothing to interfere with the travel plans of any other passenger boarding a flight to America. The DHS inspector general has found that the successful vetting of visas requires a hands-on presence at the embassy. On the ground, visa security agents can better connect local intelligence (such as that given by Abdulmutallab's father to the U.S. embassy in Nigeria). They also can re-interview applicants if necessary, applying trained law enforcement and security perspectives the State Department simply does not offer.

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Iran proclaims new success in uranium enrichment

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed Thursday that Iran has produced its first batch of uranium enriched to a higher level, saying his country will not be bullied by the West into curtailing its nuclear program a day after the U.S. imposed new sanctions. Ahmadinejad reiterated to hundreds of thousands of cheering Iranians on the anniversary of the 1979 foundation of the Islamic republic that the country was now a "nuclear state," an announcement he's made before. He insisted that Iran had no intention of building nuclear weapons. It was not clear how much enriched material had actually been produced just two days after the process was announced to have started.

David Albright of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security said that any 20-percent enriched uranium produced just a few days after the start of the process would be "a tiny amount." The United States and some of its allies accuse Tehran of using its civilian nuclear program as a cover to build nuclear weapons but Tehran denies the charge, saying the program is just geared toward generating electricity."I want to announce with a loud voice here that the first package of 20 percent fuel was produced and provided to the scientists," he said. Enriching uranium produces fuel for a nuclear power plants but can also be used to create material for atomic weapons if enriched further to 90 percent or more.

• "The Sanctions on Iran are Working", Foreign Policy, 2/10/10.
  
• "Iran’s Enrichment for the Tehran Research Reactor: Update", Institute for Science and International Security, 2/9/10.
  
• "Uranium Enrichment" US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, website.
• "Enrichment Process", URENCO, website.
  
• "Gas Centrifuge Uranium Enrichment", Global Security, website.
  

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Opium production in Afghanistan may fall in 2010, UN reports

Productivity could stay stable or fall, continuing a trend since 2007 which has seen a one-third drop in production, according to a new UNODC study. The report is based on farmers' intentions at the start of the planting season and gives an early picture of the 2010 crop. The cultivation of opium – raw material for the world's deadliest drug, heroin – in Afghanistan could drop this year, the head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said today, as bad weather is forecast during the country's current growing season.

It also found a correlation between insurgency and high cultivation, with nearly 80 per cent of villages with very poor security conditions growing poppies but in only 7 per cent of villages untouched by violence. The UNODC report pointed out that in parts of Afghanistan where the Government is more able to enforce the law, nearly two thirds of farmers said they did not grow opium because it is banned, whereas in the southeast, where authorities' reach is weaker, just under 40 per cent of farmers cited the ban as a reason for not cultivating poppies.

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Hotel bombing suspect goes on trial

Noordin Mohammad Top would have been pleased to have died a martyr in a hail of gunfire but his Jemaah Islamiah terrorism network was now seriously degraded, according to his driver. Amir Abdillah made the remarks to reporters yesterday as he stood trial for his role in protecting Noordin and securing explosives used in the Jakarta hotel bombings last year that killed nine people, including three Australians.

He has also been charged for taking part in a plot to assassinate the Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, in a car bomb attack which was to have taken place a month after the hotel bombings. Abdillah scoured Java for safe houses for Noordin and ran errands for him, including buying materials for explosives. Asked about Noordin's demise after seven years of eluding a massive manhunt, Abdillah said: ''That's what he wanted. He wanted to be a martyr.''

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Pakistani Taliban leader is dead

Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud is dead, three Taliban sources and a government official said Tuesday. There were conflicting reports about where Mehsud died. The government official told CNN Mehsud died as a result of the January 14 attack in North Waziristan. He was seriously injured, and was moved to the Orakzai region, where he died and was buried more than a week ago, the official said, citing information from local pro-government militias. Other sources said Mehsud died near the city of Multan in central Pakistan while on his way to a treatment center in Karachi. Authorities have been looking into reports that Mehsud died after being wounded last month in a drone attack. Word of his death contradicts a statement by a Taliban spokesman last week that Mehsud was alive and in hiding.

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Mexico arrests 2 reputed leaders of Tijuana gang

Mexican federal police arrested two suspected gang leaders Monday, delivering another big blow to a brutal drug cartel that terrorized the border city of Tijuana for several years. The capture of Raydel Lopez Uriarte and Manuel Garcia Simental apparently wipes out the existing leadership of the cartel headed by Teodoro Garcia Simental, who was captured last month. Teodoro and Manuel Garcia are brothers.

Lopez, known as "El Muletas," and Garcia, known as "El Chiquilin," were arrested Monday in La Paz, a city in the southern end of the Baja California peninsula, said Amy Roderick, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. The gang was known for its brutality, having executed, beheaded and mutilated hundreds of rivals in Tijuana, which is across the U.S. border from San Diego. Gang members pinned notes to corpses and dissolved bodies in caustic soda.

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Pakistanis Claim To Foil Plot To Target Americans

Authorities arrested six suspected Taliban militants with a suicide vest and hand grenades allegedly on their way Monday to attack a five-star hotel and kill Americans in Lahore, Pakistan's cultural capital, police said. The eastern city of Lahore has suffered a spate of bombings at markets and security installations in recent years as the Taliban have expanded attacks beyond their main sanctuary in the northwest. Militants have also targeted hotels and restaurants in other parts of Pakistan popular with Westerners.

The militants arrested Monday on the outskirts of Lahore included a 14-year old boy and a prayer leader from Pakistan's Khyber tribal area near the Afghan border, said police official Zulfikar Hameed. The prayer leader was wearing a vest packed with explosives. They told police they were targeting Americans at the Pearl Continental hotel, he said. "We think they were on their way to launch the attack," said Hameed. "They told us that Americans are responsible for the death of every innocent Muslim in the so-called war on terror." Police seized 26 hand grenades and five detonators from the militants, who were traveling by car and motorcycle, said Hameed. Despite their intentions, the men didn't know for certain whether any Americans were staying at the hotel

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INLA confirms decommissioning move

A republican paramilitary group which killed more than 100 people during the Troubles in the North announced today that it has decommissioned its weapons. The Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) confirmed it has disposed of its illegal arsenal in recent weeks through the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD). The splinter group was responsible for some of the most infamous attacks of the Troubles, including the killing of Conservative MP Airey Neave in 1979.

Four months ago the INLA used a graveside oration outside Dublin to confirm its "armed struggle is over" and it vowed to end its 35-year campaign of violence in the North. A spokesman for the group, Martin McMonagle, told a Belfast press conference the INLA had disarmed. "We make no apology for our part in the conflict," he said. But he added: "We believe that conditions have now changed in such a way that other options are open to revolutionaries in order to pursue and ultimately achieve our objectives."

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China Heralds Bust of Major Hacker Ring

China heralded a major bust of computer hackers to underscore its pledge to help enhance global online security, with state media saying officials had shut what they called the country's largest distributor of tools used in malicious Internet attacks. Three people were arrested on suspicion of making hacking tools available online, the state-run Xinhua news agency said on Monday. Their business, known as Black Hawk Safety Net, operated through the now-shuttered Web site 3800cc.com and generated around $1 million in income from its over 12,000 subscribers, the report said. The arrests took place in late November as part of a police investigation that spanned three Chinese provinces and resulted in part from Black Hawk's role in domestic cyberattacks, according to Xinhua.

The delay in announcing the case wasn't explained. China in recent weeks has waged an aggressive public-relations campaign on the issue of hacking, apparently at least in part aimed at discrediting allegations from Google Inc. and others last month that China was the source of sophisticated cyberattacks against the Internet search giant and a number of other foreign companies. After U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also raised concerns about hacking from China, Chinese state media said her comments were hypocritical and said Google had become a pawn in an American "ideology war."

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23 dead as Pakistan hospital, bus bombed

A hospital in Pakistan's commercial capital Karachi treating victims of an earlier bus bombing that killed 12 people was itself rocked by an explosion that killed 11 more people, local officials said. Two suicide bombers on motorcycles struck the bus and hospital, targeting Shiite Muslims in Karachi for the second time in six weeks, killing 23 people and wounding 75 others. Women and children were among 12 people killed when a bomber rammed a motorcycle bomb into a bus of Shiites on one of Karachi's busiest roads, gutting the bus and sending glass flying, officials and witnesses said. A second bomber killed 11 people, damaging ambulances and the entrance to the casualty department at Jinnah Hospital where the bus bomb victims were being treated and anxious relatives were gathering.

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