Juzi Ijumaa nilisema hivi, iwapo taifa kubwa lenye mikwara na nyenzo, watu, na mbinu mbalimbali za kujilinda dhidi ya ugaidi linashindwa na vijana wawili wadogo waliotumia mabomu ya kutengeneza kwa masufuria nyumbani, hivi itakuwaje kwa mataifa mengine madogo (bila kulitaja hili la kwetu)? Hebu ona kilichotupata Arusha sasa?! Inauma sana!
Aya ya kwanza:
To a large extent, speaking of resources, determination, and planned operations, the United States is the most protected nation on earth. Apart from having several branches of the armed forces, thousands of police forces, and civilian security firms, the US has an intelligence community consisting of 16 agencies, all of them working to keep America safe.
Aya ya mwisho:
Now, if the US, considered the most guarded nation on earth, can fail to detect such an attack, how safe are other nations? That's the challenge of protecting a nation against terrorism.
Kilichotokea Arusha ni ugaidi tu, labda kama itathibitika kwamba aliyerusha hilo bomu ni mwendawazimu na wala hakujua hata kama amerusha kitu. Bila kujali ni nani aliyefanya hivyo, huu ni ugaidi tu!
Kwa huzuni, makala ya Ijumaa hiyo hapo chini.
Matinyi.
| The challenge of fighting terrorism  The Boston Marathon bombings on April 15, 2013. (Credit: Commons/Wikimedia) Mobhare Matinyi, Washington DC. The Citizen, Tanzania. Friday, 03 May 2013 10:15. To a large extent, speaking of resources, determination, and planned operations, the United States is the most protected nation on earth. Apart from having several branches of the armed forces, thousands of police forces, and civilian security firms, the US has an intelligence community consisting of 16 agencies, all of them working to keep America safe.Yet, on April 15, two unknown brothers, the now deceased Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, were able to explode home-made bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The attacks and their related incidents claimed three lives and injured close to 300, including 50 who were seriously injured. How did it happen? Look at this: the US armed forces consist of the Army (land force), Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force. On top of that there is the Coast Guard to protect the nation's waters, and the reserve force drawn from civilian volunteers called the National Guard. In numbers, the US has about 1.5 million active duty soldiers and 850,000 reserves. Yes, they do not chase terrorists on the streets, but they share one huge responsibility: protecting the nation. Since the US has no national police, each state and all overseas territories have their own police forces, and that makes more than 50 police forces. Furthermore, in each state there are counties, in total 3,140 in the whole nation with each one running its own police force. Additionally, under each county there are small cities and towns, most of them with their own police forces, separate from small independent police forces attached to some universities and the huge police departments of big cities like New York. Moreover, the US Congress has its own police, and so do the president and other VIPs who are protected by the US Secret Service, which of course has its uniformed division as well. No wonder that the Boston bombing suspects were cornered by police forces from the state of Massachusetts, the city of Boston and the Watertown suburb; and agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Then the intelligence community has one independent foreign intelligence organization known as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), while for military intelligence there is the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), but again there is an intelligence wing in each of the four main branches of the armed forces. The military also controls the National Security Agency (NSA) for signal and communication intelligence, the National Geospatial-Intelligence (NGA) for imagery and geospatial intelligence, and finally, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) that takes care of satellites. In Washington DC, the CIA, DIA, NSA, NGA and NRO are known as the big five of the intelligence community. Furthermore, five departments (ministries), watch over seven intelligence organizations as well. The Department of Homeland Security runs two of them, its own Office of Intelligence and Analysis, and the Coast Guard Intelligence; the Department of Energy operates its own Office of Intelligence and Counter-intelligence as well; the Department of State handles the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the Treasury supervises the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, and the Department of Justice oversees the Office of National Security Intelligence for the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the FBI. Noticeably, the FBI is not a domestic intelligence agency per se like Israel's Shin Bet or the Britain's MI5, but rather this is the equivalent of Britain's Scotland Yard or India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), simply a criminal investigative agency like Tanzania's Criminal Investigation Department (CID), the reason it represents the US in the International Police (Interpol). However, because of its role in counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism, outside America the FBI is seen as an "intelligence organization". The post-9/11 intelligence reforms under President George Bush created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to coordinate the intelligence community, which often finds itself in confusion, competition and duplication of work to the detriment of the whole purpose. Still, according to the Washington Post there are 1,271 government entities and 1,931 private firms in the US that work on programs related to counter-terrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the country. Can you imagine the human and financial resources being employed to support the whole game that in the end failed to stop the Boston bombers even after a tip from Russian intelligence? In fact, after the Russian alerted the Americans in 2011, the FBI spoke to Tamerlan and placed him on immigration alert, yet he managed to travel to the Russian republic of Dagestan in 2012 and returned six months later unnoticed simply because an airline staffer misspelled his name. Soon the alert expired and the next story was the marathon bombing, just imagine! Now, if the US, considered the most guarded nation on earth, can fail to detect such an attack, how safe are other nations? That's the challenge of protecting a nation against terrorism. |
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