In search of a better quality of life

DIPLOMATICALLY SPEAKING By DENNIS IGNATIUS
duta.thestar@gmail.com

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Most people in the developing world are generally unhappy with their lives. Some 79% of Malaysians considered themselves to be struggling!



The Gallup survey of 124 countries sought to categorise people into three groups — those who were thriving, struggling or suffering.

The survey found that majorities in only 19 out of 124 countries considered themselves thriving. Unsurprisingly, more people in the developed world felt that they were doing well compared to those from the developing world.

Income levels are, of course, a key determinant of wellness. Countries with higher per capita incomes invariably tend to have better healthcare, social safety nets and opportunities for advancement.

As well, developed countries tend to have a better overall environment for the pursuit of wellness. An independent judiciary, a responsible police force, less corruption, and equitable laws that level the playing field for all citizens facilitate wellness.

In short, political systems that are accountable to their citizenry and responsive to their needs generally provide for a better quality of life, and that is the key.

Denmark, Sweden, Canada, Australia and Finland were among the top five countries in the world where the majority of people felt good about their lives. In Denmark, 72% considered themselves as thriving.

And what of Malaysia? The survey revealed that Malaysians are an unhappy lot. Seventy-nine per cent of the population considered themselves to be struggling.

To put this in a wider context, Malay­sia fared worse than Lebanon or Russia but did better than Mon­golia, Uganda and Mali, if that is any con­solation.

In high-income Sin­ga­pore, 61% considered themselves as struggling, suggesting that the quality of life there is not as great as its leaders think it is. Perhaps the restrictive political environment in the island republic might have something to do with it.

The world wellness survey tends to correspond with the data contained in the World Bank’s Migration and Remittances Factbook 2011 (MRF2011) which came out in February. It must come as no surprise that people who are struggling or suffering usually vote with their feet and flee for greener pastures.



Torrents of people from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America are moving, legally or illegally, to the developed world. Third World nationalists, dictators and mullahs might inveigh against the West but many of their own people are risking life and limb to head West. Those that can’t make it to their preferred Western destinations end up in the relatively more prosperous developing countries like Malaysia.

Thousands of people from all over Asia and Africa now live in Malaysia, legally or otherwise. In fact, according to the MRF2011, Malaysia has become one of the top destinations for Asian migrants who already account for 8.4% of our population. The remittances from these migrants amounted to more than US$ 6.8bil (RM 20.3bil) in 2009.

And while poor unskilled migrants flood into Malaysia, skilled Malaysians are leaving in greater and greater numbers.

The MRF2011 data indicates that more than 1.4 million Malaysians, or 5.3% of our population, have already left. Included in this figure are 1,727 locally trained physicians.

The US, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Singapore were the main destinations.

The continuing outflow of skilled Malaysians, coupled with the rising inflow of unskilled migrants, cannot be good news for the long-term future of our nation.

Cheap labour might boost our industries in the short-term but will do nothing to help us in the critical areas of innovation, research and entrepreneurship that is vital for our future prosperity.

The other thing about unhappy people is that they tend to send their money abroad because they lack confidence in the future of their own countries.

Here again, Malaysia is one of the chart toppers with more than US$ 8bil (RM 23.8bil) going abroad last year. How long can we continue to bleed this way?

What all these say is that Malaysians are not happy with the way things are going and with the overall quality of life they now experience. It suggests, as well, that they have no confidence that things are going to improve anytime soon. It also means that our present efforts to persuade talented and skilled Malaysians to return home are unlikely to be successful.

Offering tax incentives and better remuneration alone are not going to cut it with people whose priority is a better quality of life for themselves and their families.

The message that the Gallup Wellness Survey sends to many Third World governments, including our own, is that they need to do a better job in improving the quality of life of their citizens.

For us, that means seriously tackling the growing racial and religious divide, significantly improving our education system, providing equal opportunities for all Malaysians to prosper, and being attentive to the plea for better governance.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak appears to be acutely aware of the challenges that Malaysia faces. Let us hope that the government’s plans to improve the wellness of all Malaysians bear fruit.

In the meantime, we will continue to hear that sucking sound of men and money moving abroad much to our detriment.

● Datuk Dennis Ignatius is a 36-year veteran of the Malaysian foreign service. He has served in London, Beijing and Washington and was ambassador to Chile and Argentina. He was twice Undersecretary for American Affairs. He retired as High Commissioner to Canada in July 2008.

Osama Bin Laden UNARMED When Killed; Phone call led US to Osama; Corpse Pics will be Malware!

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Phone call by Kuwaiti courier led to bin Laden 
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - When one of Osama bin Laden's most trusted aides picked up the phone last year, he unknowingly led U.S. pursuers to the doorstep of his boss, the world's most wanted terrorist.

That monitored phone call, recounted Monday by a U.S. official, ended a years-long search for bin Laden's personal courier, the key break in a worldwide manhunt. The courier, in turn, led U.S. intelligence to a walled compound in northeast Pakistan, where a team of Navy SEALs shot bin Laden to death.

The violent final minutes were the culmination of years of intelligence work. Inside the CIA team hunting bin Laden, it always was clear that bin Laden's vulnerability was his couriers. He was too smart to let al-Qaida foot soldiers, or even his senior commanders, know his hideout. But if he wanted to get his messages out, somebody had to carry them, someone bin Laden trusted with his life.

Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, detainees in the CIA's secret prison network told interrogators about an important courier with the nom de guerre Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti who was close to bin Laden. After the CIA captured al-Qaida's No. 3 leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he confirmed knowing al-Kuwaiti but denied he had anything to do with al-Qaida.

Then in 2004, top al-Qaida operative Hassan Ghul was captured in Iraq. Ghul told the CIA that al-Kuwaiti was a courier, someone crucial to the terrorist organization. In particular, Ghul said, the courier was close to Faraj al-Libi, who replaced Mohammed as al-Qaida's operational commander. It was a key break in the hunt for in bin Laden's personal courier.

"Hassan Ghul was the linchpin," a U.S. official said.

Finally, in May 2005, al-Libi was captured. Under CIA interrogation, al-Libi admitted that when he was promoted to succeed Mohammed, he received the word through a courier. But he made up a name for the courier and denied knowing al-Kuwaiti, a denial that was so adamant and unbelievable that the CIA took it as confirmation that he and Mohammed were protecting the courier. It only reinforced the idea that al-Kuwaiti was very important to al-Qaida.

If they could find the man known as al-Kuwaiti, they'd find bin Laden.

The revelation that intelligence gleaned from the CIA's so-called black sites helped kill bin Laden was seen as vindication for many intelligence officials who have been repeatedly investigated and criticized for their involvement in a program that involved the harshest interrogation methods in U.S. history.

"We got beat up for it, but those efforts led to this great day," said Marty Martin, a retired CIA officer who for years led the hunt for bin Laden.

Mohammed did not discuss al-Kuwaiti while being subjected to the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, former officials said. He acknowledged knowing him many months later under standard interrogation, they said, leaving it once again up for debate as to whether the harsh technique was a valuable tool or an unnecessarily violent tactic.

It took years of work before the CIA identified the courier's real name: Sheikh Abu Ahmed, a Pakistani man born in Kuwait. When they did identify him, he was nowhere to be found. The CIA's sources didn't know where he was hiding. Bin Laden was famously insistent that no phones or computers be used near him, so the eavesdroppers at the National Security Agency kept coming up cold.

Ahmed was identified by detainees as a mid-level operative who helped al-Qaida members and their families find safe havens. But his whereabouts were such a mystery to U.S. intelligence that, according to Guantanamo Bay documents, one detainee said Ahmed was wounded while fleeing U.S. forces during the invasion of Afghanistan and later died in the arms of the detainee.

But in the middle of last year, Ahmed had a telephone conversation with someone being monitored by U.S. intelligence, according to an American official, who like others interviewed for this story spoke only on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive operation. Ahmed was located somewhere away from bin Laden's hideout when he had the discussion, but it was enough to help intelligence officials locate and watch Ahmed.

In August 2010, Ahmed unknowingly led authorities to a compound in the northeast Pakistani town of Abbottabad, where al-Libi had once lived. The walls surrounding the property were as high as 18 feet and topped with barbed wire. Intelligence officials had known about the house for years, but they always suspected that bin Laden would be surrounded by heavily armed security guards. Nobody patrolled the compound in Abbottabad.

In fact, nobody came or went. And no telephone or Internet lines ran from the compound. The CIA soon believed that bin Laden was hiding in plain sight, in a hideout especially built to go unnoticed. But since bin Laden never traveled and nobody could get onto the compound without passing through two security gates, there was no way to be sure.

Despite that uncertainty, intelligence officials.



Team Six headshot headshots unlikely to appear in email

By Lewis Page, The Register

This just in from the FBI's department of the bleedin' obvious: if someone emails you with pictures of Osama bin Laden's bullet-riddled corpse*, this is probably an attempt to compromise your computer rather than a public-spirited effort intended to confirm that he really is dead.

According to the FBI announcement, which seems to be pitched very much at the sort of people who would need such advice:

This content could be a virus that could damage your computer. This malicious software, or "malware", can embed itself in computers and spread to users’ contact lists, thereby infecting the systems of associates, friends, and family members. These viruses are often programmed to steal your personally identifiable information.

As of publication the US says it has photos of bin Laden's body, but describes them as "gruesome" – he was apparently shot in the head** – and none have been publicly released.

There are Geneva Convention prohibitions on exhibiting images of dead enemy service personnel; that is, uniformed national troops belonging to a an enemy nation which has also signed the Convention. Such prohibitions would not apply to bin Laden, but nonetheless there would doubtless be criticism for the US should pictures of his body be published. On the other hand, not publishing them appears to be stoking conspiracy theories to the effect that the al-Qaeda mastermind is not actually dead.

Practically speaking, bin Laden had been effectively dead for years: he was almost totally cut off from communication in order to evade US tracking (his villa had no phone or internet connections) and what limited control he could exert was confined to the remnant central al-Qaeda operation, a few scores of fighters lurking deep in the Afghan-Pakistan border mountains.

Nonetheless his death is a terrifically powerful event, both for Americans who have so long sought vengeance for 9/11 and for jihadis worldwide who saw bin Laden as a symbol if not as a useful operational commander. The latter seem about as likely to be convinced that their idol is really dead as diehard Elvis spotters, so the US would be unlikely to convince them by releasing pictures – and malware artists will no doubt continue to exploit the knowledge that such pictures exist.

In an effort to placate Muslim sentiment, the US forces – having recovered bin Laden's body to an aircraft carrier offshore, avoiding any chance that the Pakistanis might demand custody of it – buried it swiftly, as is required by Muslim custom: in this case at sea. This will probably draw more criticism and stoke conspiracy theories further, but (the US planners hope) will result in less anger than would have resulted from keeping the body unburied. ®

Bootnotes

*Just in case you have actually been in a cave since last Friday – as it turns out Mr bin Laden was, in fact, not – the United States finally caught up with the fugitive terrorist kingpin at his capacious villa outside Islamabad at the weekend. He was shot dead at the scene by elite "Tier One" special-forces operatives from the unit known officially as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU) or under its former name SEAL Team Six (it was renamed some time back following apparent irregularities with the unit accounts).

Team Six may have been chosen as it has been loosely assigned as the "Tier One" spec-ops cover for Afghanistan while the rival Delta Force (drawing its recruits mainly from the US Army Rangers, while Team Six recruits from the Navy SEAL teams) covers Iraq.

Alternatively Team Six may have been selected on the grounds that, if they are sent in, one can be fairly sure that the target of the operation will wind up dead even if nobody has specified that this should be the case – or indeed, sometimes even if the SEALs have been specifically told not to kill their primary target.

**Rumour suggests that in recent times spec-ops troops have modified their standard oldtime gunfighting tactic of the "double tap", which called for two shots to an enemy's "centre of mass" – ie the lower chest – to be repeated if necessary until the target goes down.

Nowadays, on some operations anyway, the initial central double-tap – which remains the fastest and surest way to incapacitate an enemy – is apparently followed by a headshot as a standard drill. This can be justified tactically as it allows an operative to then move on more swiftly to another target, being sure that his enemy is dead, as compared to continuing with body shots. The difficulty of actually hitting someone in the head – which would probably be too high in the case of an enemy still untouched, active and moving – is reduced to acceptable levels, at least in the case of an intensively trained specwar operative, by the initial double-tap, which incapacitates though it may not kill outright.

Such tactics are also thought to be in use by the British special forces on occasion, including the Special Boat Service (SBS), which left Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah dead in 2007 with two bullets through the body and one through the head in much the same fashion as Team Six seems to have despatched bin Laden.

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The root causes of terrorism; Osama's death just a 'bloody noise', Jihadists vow to carry on!

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Find the root cause of terrorism, says Anifah

KUALA LUMPUR: The international community must look into the root causes of terrorism, extremism and militancy and come up with a plan to tackle these issues.

Malaysia believes that terrorism could be dealt with effectively by addressing the conditions that bred it, said Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Anifah Aman in a press statement yesterday.

“To do so, it is important to emphasise on education in order to overcome ignorance, backwardness and illiteracy and also to provide the opportunity to escape poverty,” he said.

He added that the death of Osama bin Laden served as a lesson that violence was not the right way to achieve one’s aims.

“It is our hope that the world would be a more peaceful, safer and just place following the demise of Osama.”

Anifah said Malaysia had always maintained that measures against international terrorism should not infringe upon the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states.

“Terrorism should also not be associated with any race, culture or religion as this will only heighten the possibility of a world being polarised along religious or ethnic lines, which in turn would propagate further unrest and violence,” he said.

He added that the Malaysian government was against all forms of extremist acts as they were against Islamic principles, while killing of civilians was strictly denounced under the Islamic faith.

“Muslims should use their intelligence, practise wasatiyyah (moderation) and reject violence,” he said. — Bernama

S. E. Asian jihadis vow to fight without bin Laden

AFP/File – File photo shows a woman during a protest outside the US embassy in Manila. Southeast Asia jihadist movements …

by Stephen Coates – Mon May 2, 10:06 pm ET

JAKARTA (AFP) – Southeast Asian terror networks appear to believe the killing of Osama bin Laden by US special forces in Pakistan is the equivalent of a bloody nose, rather than a body blow, to their jihadist cause.

"If the news is true, we should all be happy," read the reaction to the news on an Indonesian website run by a convicted terrorist accomplice known as the "Prince of Jihad".

"It was his dream to die as a martyr in the way of Allah," it continued. "Muslims need not worry. With or without Sheikh Osama, jihad will continue and God-willing, other Sheikh Osamas will emerge to replace him."

Southeast Asia jihadist movements such as Indonesia-based Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines have cooperated with and been inspired by Al-Qaeda, but their aims and means are independent, experts said.

Said Aqil Siradj, chairman of Indonesia's largest Muslim organisation, the moderate Nahdlatul Ulama, which claims 60 million members, said bin Laden's demise "won't automatically eradicate radicalism from the earth".

"We have to be continuously vigilant as radicalism has existed for a long time and it will always remain. Our consistent commitment to act against radicalism must not fade," he said.

The region's best-known Al-Qaeda-linked groups, Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) and Abu Sayyaf, have murdered hundreds of people across Southeast Asia since well before the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

In the worst atrocity, more than 200 people, mainly Westerners, were killed in 2002 when JI bombers set off their homemade devices at packed tourist nightspots on the Indonesian resort island of Bali.

Classified US documents recently released by the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks reveal that Indonesian JI militant Hambali, now in Guantanamo Bay, "facilitated money, personnel and supplies to Al-Qaeda and JI terrorist operations".

They said he spent three days with bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1996, was involved in Al-Qaeda?s anthrax programme and facilitated plots and attacks in Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, and Cambodia.

Another top Indonesian JI militant accused of masterminding the Bali bombings, Umar Patek, was arrested last month in Abbottabad, the same Pakistani town where bin Laden was found hiding in a massive walled compound.

But while some of Al-Qaeda's links to Southeast Asia were deep and long-lasting, analysts say bin Laden's global network never controlled regional outfits and his death would not hamper their operations.

"I think there are limited implications for Indonesia because Al-Qaeda has lost its foothold in Southeast Asia," regional security analyst Adam Dolnik, of the University of Wollongong in Australia, told AFP.
"Bin Laden himself hasn't played much of a role for a number of years. Al-Qaeda has separated from Jemaah Islamiyah which has separated from the actual people who go about the terrorist attacks on the ground.

"There are so many degrees of separation."

An April report by the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, said the terror threat facing Indonesia was no longer in the form of large, Al-Qaeda-linked networks such as JI but small, independent groups.

A suicide attack at a mosque in an Indonesian police station last month fits a pattern of "individual jihad" aimed at local targets by small groups of extremists, it said.

A trend was emerging that favoured targeted killings -- particularly police and religious minorities -- over indiscriminate bombings, local over foreign targets and small group action over more hierarchical organisations.

"Information about these groups is only available because their members were caught. This raises the question of how many similar small groups... exist across Indonesia," the report said.

University of Indonesia security analyst Andi Widjajanto said bin Laden's death might even galvanise Southeast Asian militants into action.

"Osama's death doesn't mean their struggle will end because Al-Qaeda's power is not centralised on its leader but on its jihadist ideology," he said.

Another University of Indonesia analyst, Sri Yunanto, said Southeast Asian militants did not even need Al-Qaeda as an ideological inspiration.

"In terms of ideology, there are many other independent extremist movements which existed here well before bin Laden," he said.

"Terrorism and religious extremism will continue to thrive here."