"People are worried. They see it (federal spying) as a witchhunt," said Hamad

CHICAGO, November 24 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The surveillance, the informants, the official visits: Professor Ayad Al-Qazzaz has seen it all before, and not in his native Iraq.

During the 1990/91 Gulf War, Al-Qazzaz got a friendly visit from some FBI agents who wanted to make sure he wasn't being harassed, recalls the sociology professor at California State University in Sacramento.

"They were very nice, very polite, but the hidden message was: 'We are watching you,'" the 61-year-old energetic anti-war activist told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

So the news reported earlier this month in the New York Times, that U.S. authorities are stepping up surveillance of Iraqi-Americans, and even looking for informants among their ranks, does not surprise him.

Al-Qazzaz is skeptical of the official line that the snooping is aimed at flushing out sympathizers of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

He sees its as psychological warfare, a carefully placed leak designed to intimidate critics of the war with Iraq into silence.

"It won't stop me opposing the war in my own peaceful way," said the professor, who has participated in half a dozen public debates around the country in recent months, "but I'm concerned that it will intimidate others."

"People feel threatened. They're worried that they might already be on some kind of blacklist," said Irfan

Whatever the program's objective, there seems to be little doubt in the minds of Arab and Muslim leaders that closer scrutiny of Iraqi-Americans, coming on top of a massive post-September 11 security clampdown on their communities, has increased the tension on the ground.

When Kareem Irfan, a Muslim leader in the Chicago area, went looking for someone to denounce what he sees as the latest infringement of Arab civil liberties, he came up empty-handed.

"I couldn't find anyone willing to talk on the record," said Irfan, who heads up the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago.

"People feel threatened. They're worried that they might already be on some kind of blacklist.

"There's an alarmist tendency in our community right now."

In Detroit, Michigan, home to the largest community of Arabs and Muslims in the United States, the report prompted dozens of calls to the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC).

"People are worried. They see it as a witchhunt," said Imad Hamad, director of the ADC's office in Dearborn, a heavily Arab suburb of Detroit.

And it's not just the Iraqis, who together with the Lebanese and Yemenis make up the largest ethnic groups in the Motor City, who are cowed.

"Today, it's the Iraqis, but tomorrow it could be the Lebanese, the Palestinians, the Jordanians," said Hamad.

The people in Detroit's Arab-American community are panicky and on edge, he relates. Rumors make the rounds very quickly.

Last week, a number of people called the ADC's offices in Dearborn reporting that U.S Border Patrol agents had arrested 30 people at three checkpoints in Dearborn, a predominantly Arab suburb of Detroit.

In fact, Border Patrol agents set up two checkpoints outside of Detroit in Port Huron and Trenton and made one arrest, officials later told Hamad.

The callers were right about one thing: the activity was unusual, but the agency, backed by increased federal funding, has stepped up stop-and-search missions aimed at preventing illegal aliens from making their way across the U.S.-Canadian border near Detroit.

With local newspapers reporting undercover agents infiltrating Arab and Muslim communities, and street informants feeding information to investigators, and tax agents poring over Muslim charity and business records, (the Detroit Free Press: November 12), people are nervous at any brushes with U.S. authority.

Reports that the Federal Bureau of Investigation will soon resume its voluntary interviews of young Arab and Muslim American in the Detroit area has triggered a flood of anxious phone calls to the ADC, according to Hamad.

FBI officials in the capitol, who began their own series of interviews this week, tried to reassure community leaders there, saying the exercise was purely an "information-gathering," one in a meeting Wednesday, November 20.

But callers in Detroit "want to know what kind of questions they're going to be asked. They want to know what their rights are," recounted Hamad.

"The interviews are voluntary but most of them think that if they decline, they will be subject to retaliation," he said.

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