[War] Japan: "In Response to Terror"

[Ian Martell]

"In Response to Terror"
Prime Minister Shunichi Sato
Japan
April 3rd 2013

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“Good evening,” the Prime Minister said as he joined the Cabinet along with the Commissioner-General of the National Police Agency and the Directors of both Naicho and Koancho as well as Hideyoshi Mura Sato’s Chief of Staff.

The men and woman gathered around the room mumbled back their welcomes, they were still in shock. Sato could hardly blame them, the only reason why he wasn’t still reeling from it was that he had been briefed along with the Justice Minister on the intelligence the Chinese had sent.

“Alright, we have a lot to discuss tonight, Justice Minister Mochida, are you ready to give your report?”

The Minister nodded. “Yes Mr. Prime Minister.”

“Please begin,” Sato said.

“At 7pm local time Koancho was contacted by the Chinese Ministry of Security and Intelligence and given intelligence regarding a planned terrorist attack by Muslim extremists on the Tokyo Subway System. The Director of Koancho in turn contacted me and the Prime Minister and I were briefed along with the Director of Naicho and the Commissioner-General of the National Police Agency. On the recommendation of the Director of Koancho, we believed the intelligence to be genuine and immediately closed and evacuated the Tokyo subway system and begun a search for explosive devices with the help of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Force and were successful in locating the device inside the Shinjuku Subway Station.”

There were concerned looks. Shinjuku was of course Japan’s most busy station, a hub between the Tokyo Subway system and the national rail service an explosive device set off there would have killed hundreds.

“The device was unsophisticated in its design but contained 100 kilos of high grade TNT, it was disarmed immediately and the device once rendered safe, was taken to a secure location for analysis. Following up on how the bomb was placed we were able to find a suspect,” he paused to pull a picture out of his folder. “Toshio Izuma a maintenance worker employed by the Tokyo Metro Company.”

There were some surprised and concerned looks going around the Cabinet table, mostly those who had been called in from meetings who had not had a chance to learn more than what was on the NHK.

The Minister of Transport, was one of those people. “He was Japanese?” he asked incredulously. “The news said this was Muslim extremists.”

The Minister’s comment aptly reflected the ignorance in the room, ignorance Sato had shared until he had been briefed.

He nodded to the Minister. “Yes, he was.”

There was a sudden look of understanding that crossed the Minister’s face which quickly gave way to shame. “My apologies.”

“It’s nothing,” Sato said and turned to the Minister of Justice. “Please continue Mochida-san.”

The Minister of Justice nodded and continued. “We were able to locate Mr. Izuma at the home of a friend and arrested him and the five others at the home which contained bomb making supplies and Islamic literature calling for an Islamic government in Japan. It appears they were a members of a group calling themselves The Rising Sun of Islam, which has at least some ideological connection with the Ansar Al Islam group behind the attack on the Chinese vessel in Indonesian waters.”

“How is that possible?” asked the Minister of Finance. “Is the Justice Ministry saying that terrorists have crossed through Japanese immigration and established cells in our country and corrupted our citizens?”

“Minister,” Sato said in a warning tone.

The Finance Minister turned his hawkish gaze at the Prime Minister a moment and held it before very slowly turning away. “Apologies Mochida-san,” he said to the Justice Minister.

“The suspects detained at the house are in the custody of the National Police Agency and are undergoing interrogation by Police officers and members of the Public Security arm of Koancho,” Mochida said and then nodded to the Prime Minister to let him know he was finished.

Sato turned to the Director of Koancho who was standing behind the Minister of Justice.

“Director I believe you had something to add?”

He nodded. “Yes Prime Minister,” he said. “We believe that the Rising Sun of Islam is a relatively new group made of up of young Muslims of Japanese and foreign ancestry. However the explosive device they used contained military grade explosives…”

“Taken from our supplies?” asked the Defence Minister.

Director Yoshida shook his head. “No, while we haven’t made a complete analysis of the explosive we do know it is not a type we use in the JSDF.”

The Defence Minister nodded.

“It does however lend credence to the fact that this attack was in part implemented from beyond our borders and as Minister Mochida has already mentioned likely with the support of Ansar Al Islam.”

“What is the prospect of future attacks?” asked the Minister of Education.

“At this moment it is too early to say, but if our assumptions are correct about the size and relative experience of this group, not very high.”

That seemed to placate the Cabinet a little and they relaxed a little. 

Sato nodded to Yoshida in thanks and then turned back to the assembled Ministers.

“Now quickly, Minister Inukai, the Indonesian attack on the pirate base?”

The Defence Minister nodded. “We provided them with satellite Intel per the anti-piracy agreement and one of our UAVs in the region was on hand to provide tactical visual intelligence.”

Sato nodded. “Thank you,” he said. “That is our current situation. I would like to put forward my proposed plan of action which is to say, the plan of action this body has discussed before with both myself and Prime Minister Sakai before now. In order to best deal with the problem of terrorism both at home and abroad our objectives must be two fold. First, we need the support of the countries and communities that these criminals live in and we need to focus not on combating the individual terrorist but the sources of their arms and support.

“As for how we will accomplish this strategy, I will touch on the domestic side first. My staff is currently contacting the leaders of the Muslim community in this country and asking them to a meeting here tomorrow where we will discuss their cooperation with the investigation of the Rising Sun of Islam and establish a relationship of trust between their community and the government and assure them that we have no intention of curtailing their rights in response to the actions of a few criminals who happen to come from within their midst.”

The Minister of Justice spoke up adding a point. “We’ve already contacted them about giving their places of worship police protection against vandalism.”

Sato nodded. “Internationally, we will be moving forward with our plans for Southeast Asia and be proposing to our partners in the Anti-Piracy plan a more formal military alliance with a primary aim of combating terrorism. Minister Inukai?” he asked looking for the Minister of Defence to fill in the details.

“Basically the plan would follow the same format as our Anti-Piracy Task Force a joint command that would share training and intelligence with one another and coordinate responses to multi-national threats in the region. Our primary goal would be to gather intelligence on the threat organizations and whenever possible use civilian agencies, such as police forces to make arrests, however the intensity level of any operation will be left to the country in which it would take place.”

The Education Minister spoke up. “What would our role be?”

“Primarily our role will be to supply high technology, currently out of the reach of our allies economically to the problems of combating terrorism in the region.”

The Education Minister wasn’t satisfied. “Will we be taking part in combat operations?” she asked.

“Yes, but as I said, only in a support capacity. However if we do find targets in international waters we will be within our rights to take action ourselves.”

“And apprehend them?” asked the Education Minister.

Inukai nodded. “As part of this plan we will be asking for access to more military bases in the region as well, as we will be bringing a larger force into the region to assist with this broader alliance. In particular, an AWACS plane, several UAVs, and a protection detail for same.”

The Ministers nodded.

The Prime Minister looked to Jonouchi, the Foreign Minister. 

“Along with this alliance there will be the offer of an arms treaty, which will allow Japanese manufacturers to our allied nations, this is in part to open the door to developing a foreign market for our arms, and secondly it will reduce the costs of future expansion to the JSDF. And on top of that there is an ODA package on the table aimed specifically at Indonesia and Malaysia which is earmarked for infrastructure projects, to open up some of the more isolated regions of those countries.”

“For the military?” asked the Finance Minister.

“For everyone, we believe that terrorism is directly linked to opportunity and standard of living, if we can improve those factors in threat countries, we reduce the number of potential volunteers these criminal organizations can recruit.”

“It didn’t stop them here,” commented the Minister of the Interior.

“There will always be those who feel disenfranchised,” Jonouchi said. “That is where law enforcement comes in to deal with those who have decided to turn their despair into criminal action.”

“Speaking of law enforcement,” the Minister of Finance said. “What are we doing in that regard?”

The Minister of Justice took that question. “Our intelligence services are compiling a list of foreign nationals involved with terrorist groups and we will be turning this over to the Department of Immigration and putting forward a bill that would require all airlines and sea lines serving this country report their passenger manifests to the Department of Immigration.

“Why not prohibit these people passage?”

“We believe that is a detrimental policy, and it will be more effective to allow them to come into the country where we can either detain them or put them under surveillance with the effect of gathering intelligence.”

The Cabinet seemed satisfied with that and the Minister pushed on.

“In addition we are putting forward a budget proposal for more police officers to oversee all points of entry to the country.”

Sato kept his face neutral, he was against that part of the plan, but it was what the people expected the government to do.  He drummed his fingers on the cabinet table as the Minister continued.

“As well we will be launching a more thorough investigation into the funding of terror, and if we find any organizations are using Japanese institutions to hold their funds we will take appropriate action.”

“Which is?” asked the Minister of Finance.

“That will depend on the situation,” the Minister replied. “If we feel there is something to be learned by watching the accounts we will, if not, we will order the assets frozen and a formal investigation of the source of the funds will be launched.”

The Minister closed his folder and looked to Sato who sat up slightly and adjusted his tie. He was anxious to be done with the formalities of informing the rest of the cabinet of what they had decided in the hours before the meeting. “I believe that is everything,” he said. 

There were a few more questions and a bit of back and forth but eventually it was decided that the Cabinet Secretary would give a formal statement from the Cabinet tonight, that thanked, but did not name the allies who had helped defeat this threat to Japan, inform the people of what the police were doing in the subway system and that the government hoped that they would be done by morning, however if it should take longer than expected, to plan other means of getting to work. He would confirm the fact that there had been arrests and the threat of further attacks was low. 
In the morning it was agreed the Prime Minister would issue a statement, once they knew more details.

Everyone stood and Sato turned to the Ministers of Justice, Defence and Foreign Affairs and beckoned them to follow him, along with the Directors of Naicho and Koancho. There were a few more things to get under way.

Actions:

1>	The Tokyo Metropolitan Police and the National Police Agency will continue to search for more explosive devices in the Tokyo Subway system.
2>	The suspects arrested as part of the Rising Sun of Islam group will be interrogated as criminals under Japanese law, though that does allow up to 28 days of confinement before arraignment and some very liberal views of acceptable interrogation procedures.
3>	Hold a meeting between the Prime Minister, and the leaders of Japan’s approximately 70,000 strong Muslim community with the intent of calming fears of painting all Muslims with the terrorist brush, and asking for their cooperation in the investigation of this plot, and in exposing any future plots.
4>	Offer mosques protection from attack and vandalism. 
5>	The Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Foreign Affairs will contact the governments involved in the Anti-Piracy Task Force (Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore) about expanding the agreement to include terrorism in its purview. The countries would share intelligence and training and coordinate in removing international threats. Japan’s participation would be primarily technical offering Japanese technology (advanced UAVs, satellite intel, AWACs aircraft) and the support of the Anti-Piracy task force ships, in the fight against terrorism in the region. In return Japan requests the use of military bases in the region with the approval of the governments in question.
6>	Open discussions of an infrastructure aid package targeting Malaysia and Indonesia’s poorest and most isolated areas.
7>	Offer the Anti-Piracy nations an arms treaty allowing Japan to sell arms to the participating countries. 
8>	Propose two bills in the Diet, the first would require that the manifests of all planes and ships landing in Japan be turned over to the Ministry of Justice. The second is appropriations bill to increase the National Police Agency by 1000 officers in order to better protect Japan’s ports and airports.

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