HOMELAND SECURITY: AN ANALYSIS (BY: LT COL MOHD RADZI BIN ABD HAMID)

INTRODUCTION

The traditional security understanding is all about military. It has influenced nation states in various angle of preparation towards the security. However, in the post-cold war era, the world security environment has changed from traditional security towards non-traditional security. The non-traditional security involves military security, environmental security, economic security, societal security and political security. With various incidents recently, it has threatened the nation states to rethink on their current threat either traditional or non traditional. After second Gulf War, there is no more war between states. The purchased of defence equipments was just to fulfill the concept of deterrent or to be prepared, but not to use it. The non-traditional security threat such as terrorist attack, natural disaster, gas attack, earth quake and volcano have become the main threats to the peoples. The military has been employed to war again those threats by using defence base equipments. The most significant example is the attack on New York Center. Since then, United States has made great changes toward their security.

 

The paper will analyse the homeland security issues by comparing United States Homeland Security perspective with Malaysia’s approach towards homeland security. The focus of the analysis mainly about the problems, issues and dilemmas in implementing homeland security. There are five areas which have been seen as most problematic in implementing homeland security. They are the definition of homeland security, approach towards implementing homeland security - Malaysian ways, interstates and interagency complexities, operational issues and military roles in homeland security.

DISCUSSION: ANALYSIS

Definition of Homeland Security

Security always related to the threat. Therefore homeland security is related to the threat which could occur and damage the life or the country. At this moment the understanding on this subject is based on United States perspectives. They become the first country which introduce the term of ‘Homeland Security’ after civil defence (Newmann, 2002). Then, the other states especially developing countries have followed accordingly. According to U.S Office of Homeland Security (2002), homeland security can be defined as “…concerted national effort to prevent terrorist attack within the US, reduce vulnerability to terrorism and minimize the damage and recover from attack that does occur…” . United States definition is totally focused on terrorism attack because it was developed after the 9/11 incident.

 

Malaysia did not form any homeland security department. Malaysia’s Homeland Security focuses more towards internal security (NSC,1997). We do understand that the sources of threat to the homeland are come from various angles. It is involved with a disaster such as flood, typhoons, dry season, and tsunami and terrorist is one of them. To combat terrorism, Malaysia is relying on existing organization and mechanism. It will be taking care by the police force. The police has the military special force to ask for help on the serious and critical situation. Malaysia’s success in combating terrorism was achieved by adopting a multifaceted approach at various levels such as addressing the underlying factors, undertaking strict enforcement measures, adopting and implementing legislative measures, enhancing the capacity of law enforcement agencies and enhancing inter-agency cooperation.

How Malaysian Handling the Homeland Security

The issues of homeland security in Malaysia are managed and coordinated by the National Security Council (NSC). It is an executive body headed by Prime Minister. The main aim of NSC is to mobilize and organize the homeland from any elements threatening the racial, political and the economic well being of Malaysia (NSC, 1997). It is the only authority that possesses the power in any matters regarding security and its directive prevail over any other organization. In any security situations, NSC had identified the organization which most qualified to lead. For example to handle natural disaster such as land slide, NSC has tabled the mechanism in the NSC - Directive No. 20. It was divided according to the responsibilities such as district level, state level and national level. If the natural disaster occurs in a small scale which can be handled by district level, the district officer will become the director for the disaster management organization. Within the state control, the crisis management body will be headed by the Chief Minister and Chief State police. For the last two crisises at Bukit Antarabangsa (land slide) and Lukut (Pandemics-JE), it has shown glaring gaps in coordinated action by federal, state and local agencies and effective joint mobilization to deal with the consequences crisis. Land Slide at Bukit Antarabangsa is the most crucial example to picture the difficulties in coordinating between federal government and state with under opposition parties. Even in the NSC Directive No.20 has clearly stated that the Chief State Minister will lead the crisis management team but the federal government is avoiding the opposition chief state minister from leading the crisis management team. We have come to understand that meeting the challenges of internal security will require significant changes in the way governments are organized operate and behave.

In term of terrorist threat, the possibilities of become more unorganized is unavoidable. This is because of the security body was just not designed with the terrorist threat in mind. The facts are the war on terrorism ultimately involves every agencies and level of the government, not only focused on military and police forces. The bigger problems facing by Malaysian are the assets and organizations that now exist to face the threat either disaster or terrorism which are scattered across more than thirty departments and agencies and all thirteen states.

Interstates and interagency Complexities and Dilemmas

The first dilemma posed is the encompassing nature of the homeland security mission and the sheer number of agencies involved at all levels of government and in the private sector. The issue of reorganizing the various types of agencies is exacerbated by the issue of organizing each level of government to accomplish the homeland security. Sauter and Carafano (2005) in his research find that the lack of coordination and overlapping jurisdiction have resulted in fragmentation and often in redundancies within the system. During the land slide at Bukit Antarabangsa, federal government, state government and local agencies have reported being confused and unable to identify or to agree on the entities should in charge. Some of the agencies failed to be at the location when needed. An additional issue is for state and local agencies to be able to discern and anticipate which function at the federal level is to take priority in given situation. For example, during the JE outbreak in Negeri Sembilan, were state and local enforcement and health officials to take their primary guidance from the experts such as overseas disease centers. This was not clear at the beginning. The military involvement without the proper equipment will expose them to the disease. It shows that Malaysia has facing a problem to coordinate either within state and federal or interagency. In homeland security, responding organizations are almost without limit.

 

Another degree of complexity is dealing with the need for coordination and assistance on a regional basis. Individual jurisdiction, whether federal government or states level, are unlikely to have all the resources needed to deal with every type of homeland security issues. The arrangement for resources sharing and joint action are highly desirable. Federal action need to be able to anticipate such arrangement and incorporate them into a national strategy. One way to provide for such arrangement is through mutual aid agreement to provide for resources sharing, joint planning, and joint exercise. The terms of mutual aid agreements vary from different services and localities. Federal effort to assist affected state and local governments must be coordinated with regional capabilities and efforts (Randal, 2008). It should be clear at this point that any national strategy has to take into account the mission, capacity, and interest of the various entities involved at different levels of government.

 

In the case of terrorism, the states government or other civil agencies have not held the responsibility for national defense against terrorism. It only the federal government, police force and military have the equipments, resources, skills and the knowledge necessary to combat threats involving weapons of mass destruction or large scale operations such as threat from ‘Jemaah Islamiah’. According to Michael and Polllard (2002), to combat terrorist; is the job of police force and the military. But for the disaster management, states, local agencies and federal government have ...

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