The recent arrest of Saudi national Abdullah Azzam Saleh Misfar al-Qahtani in Iraq followed by this week’s denial by al-Qaeda that it planned attacks on the World Cup in South Africa appears to have heightened tensions between the United States and local security agencies.
Al-Qahtani is alleged to have plotted to target the Dutch and Danish teams during the tournament. But the alleged plot, dismissed as a “bluff” by Fifa general secretary Jérôme Valcke after an Interpol investigation, has not helped South Africa-US security agency relationships.
A police source close to the security planning for the tournament questioned the nature of al-Qahtani’s arrest and subsequent televised interview with an international news agency: “Usually, this is not how terror suspects are treated — being paraded around like that to the media. There is a feeling [among the South Africans] that this has been stage-managed by the Americans to apply pressure on us to further increase our World Cup security around them.”
The source also noted that neither the US nor Iraq had contacted South African security agencies at the time of going to press about al-Qahtani’s arrest almost two weeks ago.
A security sector source said that there were “frustrations” between the US and South Africa with regard to sharing information around World Cup security, but that “it worked both ways”.
The US state department refused to comment on the alleged uneasy relationship between South African and American security agencies, saying that there is “close cooperation between our two governments”.
State department spokesperson Sharon Hudson-Dean said: “Our law-enforcement representatives meet frequently to discuss a variety of security-related topics, including US national team-specific security, safety and security for American visitors, and general national and regional security issues.”
Anton du Plessis, head of the Institute for Security Studies’ International Crime in Africa programme, said it was “difficult to assume the levels of cooperation between national security agencies as these usually occurred on an ad-hoc basis between individuals”.
“Intelligence and intelligence sharing usually happens with national self-interest uppermost,” said Du Plessis.
Threat of a terror attack — especially by Islamic jihadists — has loomed over the build-up to the World Cup, with the American and England teams, in particular, considered “high-risk” nations.
Earlier this year, alleged al-Qaeda threats to bomb the match between the USA and England — which will be watched by US Vice-President Joe Biden — on June 12 at Rustenburg’s Royal Bafokeng stadium were posted on the Al Mushtaquh Illa Al-Jannah (Those Yearning for Heaven) website.
In a report presented to the US Congress on Wednesday, non-governmental research organisation Nine Eleven Finding Answers Foundation (Nefa) stated that “it is assessed by us that right now the [al-Qaeda-linked] reconnaissance, logistic attack cells are in [South Africa] and well established, integrated an[d] laying low preparing for attacks”.
The report, compiled by Nefa analysis and research director Ronald Sandee, painted a scenario in which the Rustenburg match would be targeted through a car-bomb attack on one of the team buses, followed by a second attack “on the scene to create havoc and create more panic”. Nefa’s scenario includes other simultaneously coordinated attacks on fans and in “Europe in a pub”. Nefa has also claimed that there are al-Qaeda-linked cells operating in Mozambique.
But in the murky world of intelligence-gathering and political interest it is sometimes difficult to discern paranoia from authentic research.
A report by international CIA-linked intelligence-gathering company StratFor, released last week, for example, downplayed the possibility of a jihadist terror attack during the World Cup.
The report, titled Security and Africa’s World Cup, noted that “despite thinly veiled threats from regional jihadists, none of the major groups (either global or regional) possesses the capability or the strategic intention to carry out a spectacular attack against a World Cup venue”.
The report found that al-Qaeda’s core in Afghanistan and Pakistan had “not demonstrated an ability to strike outside South Asia for years”. But it did warn of a possible terror cell linked to the Somali al-Shabaab organisation on the Cape Flats.
High-risk participating countries, such as England and the Netherlands, have confirmed to the Mail & Guardian that extra measures have been put in place of late – especially after the arrest of al-Qahtani.
The British government confirmed that rapid-response “resilience teams” had been set up in countries surrounding South Africa to “ensure the safety of its citizens” in the event of any catastrophe, including natural disasters and terror attacks.
According to the source, the teams have been set up in all South Africa’s neighbours, including Mozambique, Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe.
Judith Sluiter of the Netherlands’ National Coordinator for Counterterrorism said that country’s intelligence reports had confirmed there were constant “behind-the-scenes discussions” between the Dutch government, football associations and intelligence agencies that had intensified following al-Qahtani’s arrest, but she refused to divulge details.
The US government has contributed $300 000 (R2,3-million) towards training and providing explosives-detection equipment for local police as part of the US state department’s Anti-Terrorism Assistance Programme. Sixty South African police officers have been trained in explosive, nuclear, chemical, radiological and biological weapons detection and defusion.