Volume II, Issue 2 Perspectives on Terrorism - 13 Years since Tokyo: Re-Visiting the 'Superterrorism' Debate By Adam Dolnik Introduction [1] On 20 March 1995, members of the Aum Shirikyo cult used sharpened umbrella tips to pierce plastic bags filled with sarin nerve agent onboard five trains converging at Tokyo's Kasumigaseki station. Twelve people died and 1,039 were injured in what remains the largest nonconventional terrorist attack in history. Then, only a month later, an explosives laden truck detonated in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and injuring over 800 others in what at the time was the most lethal terrorist attack on United States soil. These two events, while unrelated, served as the catalyst for the overwhelming perception that it is no longer a question of "if" a mass casualty terrorist attack using chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) weapons will occur, but rather the question of "when" it will happen. In 2008, 13 years since these two tragic events, we are still waiting for these gory predictions of CBRN "superterrorism" to materialize. This article will revisit some of the core questions in the "superterrorism" debate, particularly in relation to recent trends, such as the apparent decentralization and de-territorialisation of the phenomenon.
The debate Even in 1995, the concerns about the threat of "superterrorism" were not new. As far back as 1975, Brian Michael Jenkins had already asked the most important questions.[2] Many other contributions into this largely theoretical debate followed, especially in light of the heightened sense of uncertainty and vulnerability to non-state actors as the end of the Cold War neared. Originally, the discussion concentrated primarily on capabilities, where the alleged ease of acquisition of CBRN materials following the breakup of the Soviet Union, as well as the arguably more widespread availability of expertise needed for the production and weaponization of such agents. Through the acknowledgment of technical hurdles associated with the successful delivery of CBRN agents, as well as the possible motivational constraints involved in the decision of terrorist groups to use such weapons; the debate became less theoretical. Another shift in the debate was represented by the claim that the rise of a phenomenon known as the "new terrorism" had eroded these constraints. In other words, the experts now believe the "new terrorists" typically defined primarily by the religious nature of their ideology -- were not constrained by the political considerations that had traditionally led secular terrorist organizations to place limits on their violent activities. [3] The events of 1995 seemed to confirm this dire prediction. Even more importantly, 9-11 seemed to have once and for all resolved the perpetual question of whether terrorist groups would or would not be interested in causing mass casualties. Nevertheless, one question remains: why have we not witnessed another Tokyo? Lessons from the past and their implications for the future To answer the above question, it is useful to draw lessons from the history of CBRN terrorism. One of the first incidents of chemical terrorism in the post World War II environment was the 1946 poisoning of bread designated for a U.S. POW camp near Nuremburg by a group of Jewish terrorists known as Avenging Israel's Blood (DIN). The attacks, in which arsenic mixed with glue was smeared onto the bottom of 2,500-3,000 loafs of bread, succeeded in hospitalizing 207 former SS officers, but failed to kill a single person. Another noteworthy attempt was the unsuccessful 1986 plot by the apocalyptic white Christian supremacist -Covenant, Sword, and Arm of the Lord (CSA)- to poison the water supply of several large U.S. cities using a mere 30 gallons of cyanide. In June 1990, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) became the first group to use chemical agents in a guerilla campaign, when they attacked a Sri Lankan Army encampment in eastern Kiran with canisters filled with chlorine. [4] Then on 27 June 1994, the first modern act of chemical terrorism took place in Japan, when six members of Aum Shinrikyo released sarin out of a van parked in a residential neighborhood of Matsumoto, killing seven people and seriously injuring 144 others. [5] The first notable biological incident was an unsuccessful 1972 plot by a tiny environmentalist cult calling itself R.I.S.E.. This group attempted to culture large quantities of salmonella typhi and then contaminate the water supply of several large cities.[6] The first successful bioterrorist attack occurred in 1984 when the Rajneeshee cult used a causative agent, salmonella, to contaminate salad bars in a small Oregon town in an effort to influence a local election. The cult, which chose an incapacitating rather than lethal agent, succeeded in making 751 people ill, but no one died. Then in 1994 and 1995, four Minnesota men, all members of an extremist antigovernment group called the Minnesota Patriots Council (MPC), became the first people ever convicted of possession of a biological agent for use as a weapon under the 1989 US Biological Weapons Antiterrorism Act. The men acquired the protein toxin ricin, which is derived from castor beans, possibly to use against local law enforcement and federal officials. Although the MPC's never carried out its plan, the group was heavily influenced by rightwing extremist Christian Identity ideology, similar to the ideology that motivated the Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh. During the early 1990s, the Aum Shinrikyo carried out over a dozen large scale attacks with biological agents in Japan. Between 1990 and 1995 the group had spread botulinum toxin, the world's most toxic substance, and bacillus anthracis, the causative agent for anthrax, out of street cleaning trucks, automatic suitcases, and from the roof of its own compound near Mt. Fuji. However, the attacks went completely unnoticed, failing to produce a single casualty because the cult used a nonvirulent strain of botulinum toxin and only a harmless veterinary vaccine strain of bacillus anthracis. The 1990s also witnessed two cases of loners with ties to American militia and Christian identity movements. Larry Wayne Harris, who in 1995 ordered plague bacteria from a Maryland culture collection was arrested three years later in possession of bacillus anthracis, while Thomas Lewis Lavy was detained in December 1995 for possession of 130 grams of ricin. Finally, the 2001 attacks that utilized letters filled with Bacillus anthracis spores which resulted in 5 deaths were also probably carried out by an individual that fit a similar profile. Nuclear and radiological terrorism have a less extensive record. We have yet to see a single incident of nuclear terrorism, and the only example of a radiological dispersal devices (RDD) has been the November 1995 discovery of a 32 kg parcel containing 10-50 mCi of cesium-137 at the Ismailovsky Park in Moscow. [7] An NTV television crew found the package after following instructions provided by Chechen terrorist Shamil Basayev, who simultaneously threatened that many such containers were placed around Moscow and could be detonated at any time to cause several "mini-Chernobyls." The package did not actually contain an explosive device. [8] All of these past plots carry several important lessons. First, it is interesting to note that historically chemical and biological terrorism cases have all been geographically confined to developed countries -- specifically the U.S. and Japan. This possibly suggests that the perpetrators' frequent exposure to modern technologies could be associated with a greater likelihood of their incorporation into terrorist operations. This, of course, has significant implications for the future given the increasing transnationalization of terrorist organizations and the rise of rise of jihadi networks in Western countries. Due to their exposure to advanced technologies and the increasingly prevalent involvement of well-educated individuals, the home-grown cells may theoretically be in an increasingly suitable position to exploit CBRN for attack purposes. In addition, the rapid evolution of fields such as microbiology and their proliferation to developing countries may gradually spread this effect on a global scale. The second lesson states that the vast majority of the historical incidents are crudely delivered, low-level attacks that have utilized primitive agents such as potassium cyanide, arsenic, salmonella, cesium 137, various pesticides, rat poisons and other dual use items. Such attacks have been comparatively ineffective in creating a large number of casualties, although they have succeeded in achieving a disproportional psychological impact. Nevertheless, more potent unconventional agents have been used by terrorists only scarcely, and only two groups -- Aum Shinrikyo and the unknown anthrax letter mailer(s) -- have ever killed anyone by using an actual warfare agent. Given the fact the perpetrators that in both of these instances had at their disposal a large and comparatively expensive weapons program --which in today's security environment would arguably be such chemical are much more difficult to access. Therefore, it seems reasonable to expect that future CBRN plots are likely to uphold the general trend of rudimentary delivery of low-end agents. The third important lesson lies in the fact that despite our common tendency to use the term CBRN as synonymous with "weapons of mass destruction," in most cases it was not the desire to produce mass casualties that had led the respective perpetrators to adopting CBR agents as their weapon of choice. In most cases, the respective groups utilize unconventional agents because of their covert and difficult-to-detect nature (i.e. MPC, Rajneeshees), due to their capacity to trigger disproportionate fear (i.e. Chechens, anthrax letter mailer, Lavy) or simply as an inferior substitute for a temporarily degraded conventional capability (i.e. LTTE). [9] In some cases, of course, the perpetrators did seek to maximize their killing potential (i.e. Aum, RISE, CSA, DIN), but the lesson to emphasize here is that the commonly assumed link between CBRN and mass casualties remains an exception rather than a rule. Finally, the historical record suggests that past perpetrators of CBRN terrorism seemed to share certain distinct characteristics that set them aside from other more "conventional" terrorist organizations. This suggests that while any discussion about the uncertainty of terrorist organizations' interest (or lack thereof) in CBRN in the post 9-11 world is likely to be dismissed as obsolete, there is still some value in going through this exercise in order to narrow down the "profile" of most likely perpetrators for the future. Beyond "motivation" Many of today's threat assessments of CBRN terrorism tend to focus simply on the general nature of the respective group's ideology (specifically along the "religious" vs. "secular" divide), in combination with specific statements of interest in mass-casualties or "weapons of mass destruction." For instance, most analyses of al-Qaeda's potential to use CBRN quickly establish intent by simply citing the following statements made by important al-Qaeda figures: * "Acquiring weapons for the defense of Muslims is a religious duty. If I have indeed acquired these weapons [of mass destruction], then I thank God for enabling me to do so." - Usama bin Laden interviewed in Time Magazine (December 1998) * "We have the right to kill 4 million Americans, two million of them children." -Abu Ghaith in "Why We Fight America" (June 2002) * "If a bomb was dropped on them that would annihilate 10 million and burn their lands this is permissible." -Sheikh Nasir bin Hamid al-Fahd in "A Treatise on the Legal Status of Using Weapons of Mass Destruction Against Infidels" (May 2003) While these statements are a serious cause for concern and should certainly not be taken lightly, it is important to emphasize that a comprehensive threat assessment of "intent" in the CBRN terrorism context needs to go further than the common focus on a group's declaration of "interest." A meaningful analysis needs to focus on the question of how far is the given group willing to go in order to actually achieve a significant capability? While it may be reasonable to assume that groups like al Qaida would use a chemical weapon if they stumbled across one, the question we must ask is: "how far is the respective group really willing to go to obtain it?" What level of material and human resources is the leadership willing to sacrifice, and how much is it willing to risk in terms of operational security in order to achieve a CBRN capability? If the organization is attracted to this option simply because of its desire to kill as many people as possible, why not just attack more often, at more locations, and on a greater scale with weapons that are already available and have already proven to be effective? Why invest a massive amount of precious resources into a new technology that only few if any know how to use and that could potentially end up killing the perpetrators themselvesall without any guarantee of success? Why risk a negative public reaction and a possibly devastating retaliation likely to be associated with the use of CBRN weapons? As we can see from the complexity of these questions, there is clearly an additional element besides the desire to kill on a large scale that plays a decisive role in a terrorist group's decision to launch a biological or nuclear weapons program, one so strong that it is able to offsets the currently unfavorable cost-benefit calculation [10] in favor of chemical or biological weapons over other conventional options. Empirically speaking, organizations that have in the past gone beyond merely expressing interest in chemical and biological agents have been groups for whom these weapons have had a strong expressive or emotional value, such as the desire to kill without shedding blood or the interpretation of poisons and plagues as God's tools. An example of this is the frequent reference to biblical plagues commonly used by various radical Christian groups, or the strange fascination of Aum Shinrikyo's leader Shoko Asahara who wrote poems about sarin. Alternatively, environmentalist cults have interpreted diseases as "natural" tools used by Mother Nature to eliminate the human race that has through technological advances and an inconsiderate use of natural resources caused a natural imbalance, which according to the group could only be restored by an elimination of the world's most destructive species. [11] Alternatively, more ideologically "conventional" groups that place great emphasis on the principle of unconditional reciprocity may under some conditions resort to CBRN violence, especially in the case of repeated claims of having been subjected to the same treatment by the enemy - in this case the use of poisons against the population the group claims to represent. An example of this is the attraction to poisons by the aforementioned Avengers (DIN), who argued that because six million Jews were poisoned in concentration camps, six million German civilians also had to be killed in the same manner for justice to be served. [12] On a similar note, an attraction to chemical weapons can be expected from Chechen and Kurdish groups based on their claims that their constituencies have also been targeted with such weapons. We can also expect an attraction to radiological terrorism on behalf of groups in countries such as Iraq, Bosnia or Kosovo, where much resentment has been raised by the American use of depleted uranium (DU) munitions. It is this specific expressive component that will play a key role in the matrix of useful intelligence indicators that can be used to identify potential perpetrators beforehand. Other such indicators include high level of paranoia, an apocalyptic vision, presence of an undisputed charismatic leader displaying signs of psychological idiosyncrasies and an attraction to truly extreme violence, high level of operational and physical risk taking, membership base including members with scientific backgrounds, the group's expressive emphasis to innovation and extremely high ambitions in the operational realm. [13] At the same time, while these predictive indicators can provide us with a useful tool, we must be aware of the fact that the vast majority of previous CBW plots have not involved prominent terrorist organizations, but rather previously unknown individuals and groups that emerged seemingly out of nowhere. This means that a meaningful threat assessment needs to expand past existing terrorist organizations to include unknown actors, and that new assessment tools need to be designed to provide timely and accurate intelligence on the activities of such actors. This is especially the case given the increasing transformation of terrorist organizational structures from the hierarchical, political party-like formations into more loosely knit networks of cells operating without any real central command. [14] The characteristics of the worldwide network we know as al Qaida, or the concept of "leaderless resistance" embraced by the North American Christian Identity and animal rights movements, provide good examples of this phenomenon, which in many ways represents one of the downsides of globalization. Today's terrorists can easily communicate via e-mail, using commercial encryption programs and coded messages posted on various Web sites and chat rooms, a fact that has resulted in an unprecedented international reach of terrorist networks and the proliferation of operational know-how among groups through knowledge sharing. More importantly, the proliferation of the Internet has also contributed to the rise of the so-called "home-grown terrorism", or the emergence of active jihadi terrorist networks in the West. Members of these small networks identify themselves with al Qaida's global ideology, but essentially operate autonomously and frequently without any direct link to the central command. This dynamic significantly influences our capability to accurately assess the threat, given the fact that the potential intent of these homegrown-cells to acquire and use CBRN will rarely be identifiable beforehand. Today, one can theoretically become a "member" of a terrorist group simply by embracing its ideology, gaining operational knowledge through manuals accessed from the Internet, and carrying out attacks in the group's name via its signature modus operandi and general targeting guidelines. The unpredictability of such independent actors is especially worrying because terrorist organizations may recruit volunteers that have never gone through structured training or formal organizational acceptance, has contributed to the erosion of motivational constraints to engage in acts of catastrophic terrorism. Because members of such ad hoc groups operate without any moderating influences from the more politically and strategically conscious central leadership, this decentralization of decision making has also contributed to the deterioration of restraint that traditionally played a role in the initiation and planning of spectacular attacks. This might especially be the case with respect to CBRN. For instance, al Qaida's pre 9-11 doctrine called for the acquisition of CBRN mainly as a deterrent and counterbalance against Israeli and American non-conventional arsenals (as opposed to a first strike option) creating a setting in which any use of such technology would be carefully weighted by the leadership. [15] In this light, the continuing fragmentation of the group and the emergence of a global movement of independent and self-radicalized cells subscribing to al Qaida's global ideology has arguably created a situation, in which the decision to use CBRN would theoretically be in the hands of only several individuals acting in a one-time capacity with no real concern for the consequences. In such a setting, the motivational, strategic, and political obstacles to using CBRN have become even less relevant today. This is especially true given the increased aggressiveness of the new "al Qaida" doctrine with regards to CBRN, which now incorporates not only religious sanction, but even strategic preference for using such means. [16] For an independent cell seeking guidance on jihadi websites and forums about the permissibility of employing CBRN technology to attack the enemy, the answer would be an overwhelming "yes". That being said, in order for a CBRN attack to actually take place, this intent would also need to be matched by the capability to acquire and effectively weaponization of a CBRN agent. http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php?option=com_rokzine&view=ar\ ticle&id=26 <http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php?option=com_rokzine&view=a\ rticle&id=26> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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