Kitty Felde

The JihadJane effect

By Kitty Felde | March 11, 2010

They almost didn't let me in the country.

Usually, passport control at foreign airports is a routine stop. Though once in Rwanda, I remember the officer insisting the woman with the 1980's permed hair in the passport picture wasn't the one with the short bob standing in front of him. But that was post-genocide Africa. This was England.

The woman from immigration never smiled. She examined my passport over and over. And she kept asking whether I was traveling alone. I was. She asked again. She flipped more pages. She did not look happy. Other passengers standing behind me in line were getting antsy. She questioned me at length about the purpose of my visit (a production of my war crimes play) and why I was going on to Holland afterwards (to see friends I'd met at the war crimes tribunal.) And yes, I was indeed traveling alone. I was starting to think I was going to be sent back to the US. Or detained in some nameless prison.

Finally, she let me in, not smiling the entire encounter.

In Holland, I started to learn what had set her off. The Dutch passport control officer asked about my lovely Lebanese visa. It's quite colorful, with the famous cedar trees taking up half the page. Four years ago, I had planned to visit a journalist friend in Beirut. Unfortunately, I never got to use that visa; the Israelis bombed the airport three days before I was supposed to arrive. But it's there, apparently a red flag. The Dutch official was quite friendly, but we chatted at length about that visa and my cancelled trip.

Later, I concluded that the recent story about British passports being used by Massad agents to assassinate a Hamas leader in Dubai made the British official think twice about me. After all, Massad had been active in Lebanon as well.

But now, I think perhaps JihadJane was in the back of her mind - a blah-looking blonde woman from America recruiting terrorists. And here was another blah-looking blonde woman with some sort of connection to Lebanon who'd even traveled to Kenya, the site of a terrible embassy bombing not so many years ago. Another JihadJane?

It's likely many more of us will fit the profile of potential terrorist as days go by.

Tomorrow, a few thoughts about security alerts in Britain vs. Washington DC.