Page 20 - Flathead Beacon // 9.9.15

NEWS
COVER
Late last summer, a British citi- zen was intent on entering the United States unnoticed.
He had been temporarily living in the country before his Visa expired and forced him out. Want- ing to return, he researched ways to sneak back in. He identified an area along the U.S.-Canadian border that seemed vulnerable: the mountainous section
through Glacier National Park.
He started in Waterton Lakes National
Park, a scenic refuge in the southwest corner of Alberta that partners with Gla- cier Park to form the world’s first Inter- national Peace Park.
The 195-square-mile Canadian park meets with the 1,583-square-mile Gla- cier Park to create a pastoral wilderness larger than Rhode Island and defined by soaring mountains and dense forest.
Waterton Lakes regularly attracts over 400,000 visitors annually. A popu- lar activity for those hoping to see Glacier is riding one of the daily ferries in sum- mer that travel across the transboundary Waterton Lake to Goat Haunt, an official Port of Entry with a U.S. Customs and Border Protection Station about 1 mile south of the border. Only U.S. and Cana- dian visitors with proper identification are allowed to cross at Goat Haunt.
Instead of riding one of the ferries into the U.S., the man from England avoided customs agents by hiking roughly 4 miles along the trail system near the lake.
Arriving at the border, his scheme likely seemed well informed. It’s a rather unassuming landmark. Along the entire perimeter, trees and brush are cut to ground level, creating a single-lane forest divide that is solely marked every few hun- dred yards by 5-foot-tall steel monuments identifying the two countries’ sides.
He simply walked into the U.S.
Using radar technology and other means that the federal government will not specifically disclose, the U.S. Bor- der Patrol identified the illegal activity and agents were deployed from the local stations.
Within a day, a team of Whitefish agents on horseback caught the man hik- ing through the rugged mountains of Gla- cier Park.
LAST SUMMER’S APPREHENSION,
like almost all others, went down rather quietly, away from public or polit- ical attention.
Compared to the heavily guarded and scrutinized southern border, the border between the U.S. and Canada exists in relative obscurity.
Besides sharing the world’s longest international boundary, Canada and the U.S. have long shared the largest trade relationship. Historically, the actual border between the two has been largely overlooked in the realm of discourse beyond commerce.
But that is changing.
Richard K. Stratton is the Department of Homeland Security’s patrol agent in charge of the Border Patrol station in Whitefish. GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
Canadian authorities are increas- ingly concerned about the spread of reli- gious extremism tied to the Islamic State, or ISIS, a radical Islamist militant group that formed in recent years and has vio- lently seized territory in eastern Syria and Iraq.
As of last year, at least 130 Canadi- ans were involved in extremist activi- ties abroad, including in Syria, according to the Canadian government. Another 80 individuals who engaged in terrorist activities returned to Canada in 2014. Canadian members of ISIS have appeared in Internet videos vowing to return to their home country to murder citizens, according to a speech delivered by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in early August.
The nation’s fear spiked after the 2014 shooting at Parliament Hill in Ottawa, when a 32-year-old Montreal man killed a Canadian soldier and shot three others. The event took place only two days after another man used his car to run over two Canadian soldiers in Quebec, killing one. The Canadian government characterized both incidents as terrorist acts inspired by ISIS.
In 2013, two suspects, a Tunisian citizen and a Palestinian citizen, were arrested in Toronto for plotting to derail a passenger train. According to FBI agents, one of the men, Chiheb Esseghaier, origi- nally sought to transport explosives into Montana and attempt to detonate the supervolcano in Yellowstone National Park. After being radicalized by sup- porters of Al Qaeda, the Montreal PhD student allegedly studied the possibility of triggering a catastrophic natural disas- ter by igniting the reservoir of magma
underneath the park. The volcano, which straddles Montana and Wyoming, last erupted 640,000 years ago. Esseghaier eventually determined the plan was not feasible and turned his attention to derailing a passenger train traveling between New York City and Toronto, according to the FBI.
He and the other suspect were both found guilty and are awaiting sentencing in Toronto.
In the wake of these developments, the Canadian government has proposed new counter-terrorism measures in the name of homeland security. The Harper admin- istration is seeking new travel restric- tions aimed at stopping the flow of radi- calized foreign fighters. The government proposed prohibiting Canadians from traveling to designated areas in foreign countries where terrorist groups such as ISIS are engaged in hostile activities and recruiting and training followers. The government has also proposed “making it illegal to promote terrorism; and giving authorities additional powers to disrupt planned attacks on Canadian soil.”
“Foreign fighters pose a direct threat to Canada, both through their terrorist actions overseas and especially if they seek to travel to Canada to carry out attacks here at home,” Harper stated last month. “The creation of a category of banned foreign travel zones will pro- vide Canadian law enforcement with further tools to better protect Canadi- ans from individuals who have travelled to these dangerous areas and who intend to return to Canada to commit terrorist acts.”
Heightened attention has specifically
centered on Calgary, Alberta, where five young men connected to a local mosque joined ISIS overseas.
Salman Ashrafi, a former student leader at the University of Lethbridge who was married and worked in Cal- gary’s energy sector, drove a car filled with explosives into an Iraqi army base north of Baghdad last November, killing 46 people with another suicide bomber.
In January, Damian Clairmont, a 22-year-old Calgary man, joined ISIS and became the first Canadian casualty in the terrorist group’s attempt at establishing an Islamic caliphate in the Middle East.
These incidents have led Cana- dian media to label Calgary a hotbed of extremism.
Religious leaders have decried the actions of radicalized extremists fighting in the name of Islam. In April, a group of Muslim imams in Calgary and other cities in Canada issued a religious edict against ISIS jihadists, condemning the group for violating Islamic tenets “in the most hor- rific and inhumane way,” according to a quote published in several Calgary news outlets. The imams urged Muslim youth to avoid the terrorist group’s propaganda that is widely prevalent on the Internet and is considered the primary tool of radicalization.
Fear and paranoia tied to the small group of identified extremists is overshad- owing a larger population of an estimated 120,000 Muslims living in Calgary, the city that elected the first Muslim mayor in a major North American city. The popula- tion of Muslims in all of Canada is one of the fastest growing in the world, accord- ing to the Pew Research Center.
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SEPTEMBER 9, 2015 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM