thinking about security

I love the film Missing by Costa-Gavras.  I saw it for the first time when I was in Grade 12 in a great big awe-inspiring cinema in Toronto, when I was visiting my friend Karen for March break.  (It was either the Uptown or the University where I saw it - both now demolished, long since gone, and left only in memory.)  Missing caught me at an impressionable age and I attribute that film, in part, to shaping my political tendencies.  I rented it again last year after a 25 year break and despite the fact that Sissy Spacek is far, far younger than I remember and Jack Lemmon is still annoying, the movie holds up.  If you don't know the film, it is about the Pinochet-led military coup in Chile in 1973 and the trials and tribulations of a young American couple who are living there at the time.  I recommend it.

I was thinking about it today, when the news came through this afternoon that a Russian-made Grad missile had exploded in Aqaba, a city in the south of Jordan, and destroyed a warehouse.  No one was hurt. A second missile landed nearby in the Red Sea, doing no damage.   It is worth knowing that Aqaba is right next door to Eilat in Israel, and right across a narrow inlet of the Red Sea from Egypt.  Interesting border country.   The news reports explaining this have been changing every half hour since.  Explanations over the course of the afternoon have included:  The rockets were fired at Israel from the Sinai in Egypt ;  the rockets were fired at Jordan from the Sinai; the rockets were mis-fired from Jordan and were targeting Eilat in Israel.  Some reports say Hezbollah;  some say Al Qaeda.  Now the BBC has a quote saying "We are 100% sure that the rocket which hit a warehouse in Aqaba was not fired from Jordanian territory, but from beyond our borders."  Here's the BBC link where the news keeps changing: 


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8636796.stm


This is not that big a deal and people at work absorbed it with passing curiosity, focused more on our looming deadlines next week.  In fact, a couple of people in the office are heading off to Aqaba tonight to go scuba diving, and one colleague has a son in a basketball tournament there this weekend. They were mostly annoyed at the prospect of their travel being delayed by increased highway checkpoints.


What I find interesting is that this single incident has happened in a week full of equally interesting single incidents:  scud missiles allegedly crossing the Syrian border into Lebanon to arm Hezbollah; concerns from friends of friends who live in Lebanon that violence is imminent between Hezbollah and Israel; a week full of revenge killings and instability among east bank tribes here in Jordan that caused one of the cities where we work to shut down any access for 3 days.   These events may or may not be incidental - all leading to something bigger, or each completely random.  Evidence of instability or simply the episodic moments of life in this part of the world. 


And meanwhile, the biggest threat that I face in my daily existence is the possibility of being hit by a crazy car driver on my walk home from work and the likelihood of carpal tunnel syndrome from an improperly aligned office chair.   Which is why I have been thinking about Missing.  As an outsider, one has a daily life that is somehow removed from both the local and bigger geo-politics.   You are a part of it, but you are not.  So you think yourself immune.  Without access to the local arab-language media, you are reliant on colleagues to relay the latest news.  And in any case, some - lots - of the worrisome stuff never makes it into the printed word in any language.  So, there you are, living your daily life with your daily concerns until somehow you find yourself right there, where it is happening.  I am pretty sure nothing bad is happening here.  I am watching events with increasing awareness and acuity.  And mostly I am watching out for dangerous drivers when I cross the street! 


(This post, by the way, should be no disincentive to people planning to visit !!)