agency, tells me that high- and mid-level security agents went through
a one-day anti-terrorism training module this past Friday, December 3,
in the plush Binza neighborhood of Kin.
The training module was given by American agents, though my source
couldn't tell which American agency was involved. The agent who gave
the PowerPoint presentation was one Julie.
The module topic was WMD identification and detection. The source
tells me that a suitcase detector device was given to the Congolese
by their American counterparts. My source also adds that the device is
worth $3,000--but I suspect that such a detector would cost ten times
more. (Is this a detector of dirty bomb or of radioactive materials,
Congo having vast quantities of uranium?)
Parts of Julie's PowerPoint presentation comprised gory pictures of
terrorist acts worldwide and statistical data evincing the fact that
though US interests and citizens are primarily targeted by terrorists,
the bulk of terror victims are however non-US citizens. Therefore,
anti-terrorism shouldn't be viewed as an American obsession but as
everyone's rational concern. This is no doubt a way of raising a sense
of local ownership of US anti-terrorism drive.
There seems to be a resumption of collaboration between Congolese and
US intelligence communities, which has cooled off since the waning
days of the Mobutu regime, with more and more high-level Congolese
intelligence officials going to the US on short training and
conference missions. And last week training would be a most welcome
trickling down of training to operatives on the ground.
During the Cold War, Kin was one of the hubs of US intelligence
activities in Africa. There was a huge NSA listening post a short
distance past N'Djili Airport, whose disused grid of
antennas is still visible from the road and still interdicted to the
public.
One hopes that this renewed intelligence cooperation with the US would
at least help: 1) in improving security at N'Djili Airport, highly
vulnerable due to its proverbial laxity and corruption; and 2) in
refocusing ANR, lately accused by opposition MPs of reverting to its
political police practices under Mobutu, on its proper intelligence
and counterintelligence purview.
0 comments:
Post a Comment