Without Jasper Schuringa, 289 lives may have been lost. Most of us, however, are proving far less vigilant. Daniel Flitton reports.
Just one person truly can make a difference in the world. Jasper Schuringa did. He was the Dutch passenger on Northwest Airlines flight 253 bound for the American city of Detroit on Christmas Day who bravely leapt on top of a man trying to set off a bomb.
The difference - had Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab succeeded with his improvised explosive - could have been 289 lives.
Schuringa was alert. ''When you hear a pop on the plane you're awake, trust me,'' he told CNN afterwards. ''So I just jumped, I didn't think, and I just went, went over there and tried to save the plane, I guess.''
But was the security system alert? Countless officials around the world have the job to stop terrorist attacks. How was a man intent on transforming himself into a bomb even allowed to board the plane?
This question is being asked at each of the multiple layers of checks designed to prevent terrorist attacks, from the guards standing by metal detectors at airports, to the intelligence agencies responsible for identifying suspects.
Abdulmutallab boarded a plane in the Nigerian capital, Lagos. He had a nine-hour stopover at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport on his way to Detroit. He reportedly went through a metal detector and his hand baggage was searched. Before any of this, his father, a former Nigerian government minister, had told US diplomats about his son's radical views and the history of his travel to Yemen.
Abdulmutallab's name was on a watch list for people with possible ties to terrorism. Intelligence agencies had warning of ''a Nigerian'' involved in a terrorist plot. "There was a mix of human and systemic failures that contributed to this potential catastrophic breach of security," the American President, Barack Obama, said. ''I consider that totally unacceptable.''
With all these points of possible interception, why was Abdulmutallab on that flight?
But there is a much broader question to confront. Has Western society, now more than eight years after the shock of the September 11 attacks, become too complacent about the terrorist threat? Debates on terrorism have been dominated in recent times by important questions of procedure - the line between interrogation and torture, the imprisonment and trials of suspects. What of the threat itself?
Reading the public mood is tough and, at best, opinion polls offer only a rough guide. A Roy Morgan survey in May found Australians had largely lost interest in terrorism. In 2005 the terrorist threat was ranked by 46 per cent of people as the most important problem facing the world. Four years on this had plunged to a bare 2 per cent.
The same poll reported that only 1 per cent of people regarded terrorism as the most important issue facing Australia. Yet the Federal Government spends more than $1 billion a year on the upkeep of security and intelligence agencies.
Security specialists know public opinion is rarely a good indicator of this type of threat. A few weeks after the Morgan poll, another survey by the Lowy Institute in Sydney found 68 per cent of Australians agreed that ''combating international terrorism'' was a critical challenge.
Why the huge disparity in the two findings? In July a suicide bomber walked into a restaurant at the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, part of a co-ordinated strike also targeting the nearby Ritz-Carton Hotel. Nine people died, including three Australians. As the Lowy report explained, ''the terrorist bombings in Jakarta occurred midway through our polling fieldwork''.
People were reacting to the news. By their nature, terrorists emerge from the shadows, attempting to catch us unaware. In the aftermath of an attack, successful or not, people's fears leap. But in the absence of attacks, concern about the threat begins to fade.
While the public might not be the best judge of the overall threat to a society, people are very confident about judging their individual risk. Most people see terrorism as a remote danger in their everyday lives. A US poll in the middle of the year asked how often people worry about being caught up in a terrorist attack. From almost two-thirds the response was ''never'' or ''rarely'', and only 10 per cent had concerns their family might fall victim to a terrorist.
People's habits are probably the best indicator how seriously they regard the terrorist threat. After the London bombings of July 2005 and a foiled plot a few weeks later, people kept going to shop in the high streets in the city.
But terrorists are proven to be persistent. Security officials are acutely aware they must prevent every plot; the terrorists need succeed only once. It comes down to a battle of imagination. Security measures are laid down to trip up anticipated plots. Terrorists dream up clever ways to evade them.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab strapped an explosive powder to his legs and smuggled a chemical trigger in a syringe sewn into his underwear. He apparently slipped into to the toilet to mix his deadly concoction, before returning to his seat, covering his head with a blanket, and trying to set off the bomb. The device failed to ignite, but the pop and fissile was enough to alert passengers to the danger.
As a result of the Christmas Day plot, thousands of airline travellers were initially asked to submit to a pat down before boarding a flight within America, or to it. Restrictions to stop people from moving around the cabin in the last hour of any trip were introduced - expanding across America a rule that had already been used for flights into Washington DC.
But such measures are reactive. They would not have saved Flight 253 had Abdulmutallab been successful.
A similar reflex - security agencies would describe it as learning - was evident in 2001 after Richard Reid sought to light explosives concealed in his shoes. Passengers were subsequently asked to strip off their footwear for additional screening. Likewise, in 2006, a group of men were accused of plotting to smuggle liquid explosives aboard trans-Atlantic flights from Britain to America. The upshot? Bottled drinks were banned on commercial air travel.
Despite these tightened security measures, the terrorists keep searching for that one success. Unable to penetrate the roadblocks and metal detectors guarding Jakarta's large hotels - measures enhanced after the JW Marriott was hit by a car bomb in 2003 - the terrorists changed tactics and booked rooms as guests. Over several days, they came and went, sneaking in the components of explosive devices before mounting their attack.
Australia's intelligence agencies warn there is a danger of terrorists exploiting any public complacency, creating a need for constant vigilance. ''Terrorism is expected to be a destabilising force for the foreseeable future and a persistent feature of the global threat environment,'' ASIO wrote in its annual report to Parliament in October.
''Terrorism remains a serious and immediate threat to Australia, Australian citizens and Australian interests globally.''
But attempting to keep constant watch can induce a kind of fatigue; like trying to keep muscles taut while holding a heavy weight. Australia's terrorism alert level has been set on ''medium'', the second of four tiers, since the system was revamped in 2003. But people stop paying attention when warnings never change. There is a risk of dampening sensitivity.
And people become understandably suspicious of claims about hidden threats used to justify huge government spending and restrictive laws. Since 2001 ASIO has more then trebled in size, alongside enormous growth in counter-terrorism branches of the Australian Federal Police. A parallel growth has taken place in private sector - the proliferation of ''terrorism experts'' to offer advice and public comment. Careers have been built on the back of the effort to confront terrorism, careers that would be themselves under threat if the problem diminishes.
ASIO described the most serious threat in Australia during the past year as the alleged plan by a Melbourne group of Islamic extremists to arm themselves and storm a NSW military base in a suicide assault. This apparently brazen plot was a departure from what has come to be the expected terrorist tactic of carrying out bombings. It followed the shock of terrorists roaming the streets of Mumbai in November 2008 armed with machine-guns and grenades, wantonly cutting down dozens of people.
A year later, a gun-toting military psychiatrist accused of holding radical views killed 13 US soldiers at a military base in Fort Hood, Texas.
Terrorists will continue adapting their measures as long as enough extremists remain committed to a course of violence. ASIO warns ''small numbers of Australians continue to look to conflict theatres overseas for inspiration and some aspire to participate in the violence or seek to learn from the tactics and techniques employed by extremists there''.
It was apparently in Yemen that the 23-year-old Abdulmutallab honed his radicalism. A statement, claiming to be from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, was posted on the internet to claim credit for his attempt. Yemen has teetered on the brink of anarchy for many years and is home to a large number of al-Qaeda followers.
In 2000 the USS Cole was rammed by an explosives-laden boat while at anchor in the main port of Aden. Seventeen American sailors died. The US embassy in Yemen has been targeted in several attacks and intelligence experts joke bitterly the country's prison system is essentially a revolving door for al-Qaeda fighters. Among 23 prisoners who tunnelled out of a high-security facility in 2006, 13 were al-Qaeda members locked up for the attack on the US navy destroyer. They fled into the country's desert badlands.
The New York Times reported this week the Pentagon plans to spend more than $70 million over the next 18 months using special forces teams to train and equip Yemeni military, more than doubling previous military aid. The US has long been fighting a covert war in the country, using unmanned attack drones to kill al-Qaeda suspects.
Yemen is on the same list as Afghanistan as a feared safe haven for al-Qaeda. But the list is long. Northern Nigeria is another area that now boasts its own local Taliban movement. After almost 20 years without a functioning government, Somalia is a nebulous zone exploited by Islamist terrorists. Al-Shabab, a Somali extremist group that shares a common outlook with al-Qaeda, is building its strength in the ruined country.
Australian authorities fear the potential for radicals to reach out to the Somali diaspora here.
Then there is Pakistan. The extremist threats there are immense and growing. Al-Qaeda's top leadership is thought to be hiding in the rugged terrain known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, an ironic name, given the writ of the central government barely extends there.
Other extremist groups roam the tribal areas, among them Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group responsible for the Mumbai attacks. The menace of the Pakistani Taliban is also growing and bombings occur on an almost daily basis. On Monday, in Pakistan's commercial capital, Karachi, a suicide attack reportedly killed 40 people. Arsonists then burned down 500 shops in the business district.
One person truly can make a difference in the world. Osama bin Laden did. He is the mastermind of al-Qaeda who has inspired a generation of fanatics to a cause of violence.
Bin Laden continues to evade capture. The US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, recently admitted no reliable intelligence on bin Laden's location had been gathered in years.
Americans are not generally optimistic the terrorist mastermind will be found, according to polls. Asked earlier to rate how likely it is that US forces will capture or kill bin Laden, a majority said it was ''not too likely'' or ''not at all likely''.
Only 11 per cent of people saw as ''very likely'' the prospect of bin Laden in chains or in a coffin at the hands of the US (3 per cent claim he is already dead).
Does it matter? Would killing bin Laden end the terrorist threat? Analysts doubt it. His mystique is already well entrenched and his influence on day-to-day planning minimal. Bin Laden's role is as a strategic guide to his followers.
This year he released a ''statement to the American people'' to coincide with the anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
''If you stop the war, then so be it. But otherwise, it is inevitable that we will continue our war of extermination against you on all possible fronts,'' he said.
''So, go ahead and prolong this war as long as you want, but you are engaged in a miserable losing war for the interests of others that seems to have no end in sight.''
