Dear friends and colleagues,
Please find the text of my presentation “Are we Nearer to a Major CBRN Terrorism Threat?” at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) 14th Asian Security Conference, Non-Traditional Security Challenges - Today and Tomorrow, New-Delhi, 13-15 February 2012.
Best regards,
Ely Karmon, Ph.D.
Senior Research Scholar
International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) and
The Institute for Policy and Strategy (IPS) at
The Interdisciplinary Center (IDC)
Herzlyia, Israel
Tel.: 972-9-9527277
Cell.: 972-52-2653306
Fax.: 972-9-9513073, 972-9-7716653
E-mail: ekarmon@idc.ac.il
Web: http://www.ict.org.il/
Non-Traditional Security Challenges - Today and Tomorrow
Are we Nearer to a Major CBRN Terrorism Threat?
Ely Karmon
Upon his nomination in 1995, former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen declared that Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) terrorism - such as chemical, biological and nuclear terrorism - would present the main strategic threat for the U.S. in the 21st century. President Bill Clinton read at the time The Cobra Event book about a bio-terrorism attack and was so alarmed that he ordered an intelligence analysis of the book, which affected White House policy regarding bioterrorism, and helped encourage the president to order intensified spending and preparations for a bioterror event.
Nevertheless, the Bush administration was surprised by the anthrax letter attacks in October, 2001 and declared that the greatest threat to the US was posed by ˜the nexus of terrorists and weapons of mass destruction.”
Fortunately, since the chemical attacks by the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo cult in 1994-1995, the anthrax attack in the United States in October 2001 and the chlorine attacks by al-Qaeda elements in Iraq in 2006-2007, there was no serious CBRN incident worldwide.
Although limited in their scope and lethal results, these attacks materialized, albeit tardy, the potential CBRN threat perceived since the early 1970s.
In a major research on the threat of CBRN terrorism just a year before 9/11, our institute, the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT), evaluated that the known terrorist organizations do not have the capability to build or acquire standard WMD. Even if they manage to produce and use simple, low-level non-conventional weapons, the number of victims would be limited: several dozens or hundreds, as was the case in the sarin attack by Aum Shinrikyo. This evaluation challenged other exaggerated assessments of terrorist capability with a more realistic perspective. It did not however address the case of a country’s providing chemical, biological or nuclear weapons to sponsored organizations.
Present events in the Greater Middle East and Pakistan have raised the specter of a far greater and present danger.
Prior to the outbreak of fighting in Libya, the Qaddafi regime was thought to possess some 9.5 metric tons of aging mustard blister agent and a larger quantity of chemical weapons precursor materials. Libya's chemical agents were held in a concrete bunker several hundred miles to the south of Tripoli, the capital city, guarded by military troops. After the fall of the Qaddafi regime it became known that he kept secret some of his chemical weapons arsenal, in spite of his international obligations.[1]
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) inspectors visited Libya in mid-January 2012. Among the chemical munitions they found were stocks of mustard agent. Libya's new rulers told the group about the previously unknown stocks stored at the Ruwagha depot, in the south-east of the country. Libya now has until 29 April 2012 to submit a detailed plan and a date by which the destruction of the materials would be completed.[2]
However, no one is sure such agents could not be disseminated to terrorist elements, as heavy weapons, ground to air and anti-tank missiles have found their way to jihadists in the Gaza Strip and possibly to Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) elements in the Sahara region.[3]
The same could happen with the chemical, biological and even radiological weapons and agents found in the hands of the beleaguered Assad regime in Syria. Already in May 2011, in a CNN interview, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned about the possibility that Hezbollah is armed with more missiles and rockets than most states, possibly armed with chemical or biological warheads.[4]
Israeli intelligence officials worry what will happen to Syria's WMD arsenals, which include a substantial stockpile of chemical arms that includes nerve and blister agents. Less is known about the nation's biological weapon capabilities. In the event of a power vacuum in Syria, there is the possibility of weapons proliferation to Hezbollah or other regional militant groups. Damascus has already provided in the past ballistic missiles to Hezbollah.[5]
According to a recent paper by Robert S. Litwak, a terrorist group could acquire a nuclear weapon either by the transfer of a weapon from a nuclear state or an unauthorized transfer or theft of a weapon from an inadequately secured site. Litwak sustains that though after 9/11 the deliberate transfer scenario focused on Iran and North Korea, “the more likely route by which terrorists might gain access to nuclear or other WMD capabilities would be through unintended leakage of dangerous materials and technologies from inadequately secured sites,” and he points to Russia and Pakistan as the main security concern. [6]
I do not completely agree with the Russia scenario, which was the main security worry in the early and middle of the 90s, after the fall of the communist regime.
However, Pakistan is seen lately by international officials and experts as the main threat in this field.
The US has implemented a $100 million program to secure Pakistan’s nuclear laboratories and weapons (for example, by separating warheads from missiles) while “US officials remain concerned about foreign-trained scientists who support radical Islamic causes infiltrating Pakistan’s nuclear establishment and, more broadly, about the remote (but not unthinkable) possibility of an acute regime-threatening political crisis during which nuclear security is breached and a warhead falls into the hands of Islamic extremists.”[7]
There is renewed and more serious talk in United States establishment and academic circles about the need to prepare for the neutralization of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal in case of a terrorist takeover of some of these facilities, with all the tremendous political and military implications involved.
In a February 20, 2011 editorial, significantly titled “Pakistan’s Nuclear Folly”, The New York Times warned that Pakistan, which has between 95 and more than 110 deployed nuclear weapons, manufactured enough fuel for 40 to 100 additional weapons. “The ultimate nightmare is that the extremists will topple Pakistan’s government and get their hands on the nuclear weapons,” claimed NYT.
The more realistic scenario however, is the Islamist radical terrorists attack some nuclear facility and provoke a major nuclear incident or put their hands on some fissile material.
Although U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen, declared that “Pakistan appears to wield sufficient control over its nuclear arsenal to avert seizure by any extremist infiltrators in the army or intelligence sector,” on the background of the raid on Osama bin Laden's secret compound in Abbottabad a number of top Obama administration officials - including the president himself - suspect that bin Laden relied perhaps on Pakistani assistance at midlevels of the army or intelligence service.[8]
Eight people were killed in a 2007 suicide bombing at a nuclear missile holding site south of the Pakistani capital. Suicide bombers in 2008 attacked entry points at Pakistan's Kamra air base - a suspected nuclear weapons holding site - and a Wah Cantonment facility thought to be involved in putting nuclear weapons together. [9]
According to Gregory Shaun, director of the Pakistan Security Research Unit at the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom, two high-profile attacks by terrorists on highly secure military bases in Pakistan, the first on the General Headquarters of the Pakistan Army in Rawalpindi in October 2009 and the second on the naval aviation base at PNS Mehran near Karachi in May 2011 have renewed anxiety about the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Shaun noted that the 10 gunmen involved in the last strike had apparently been aware of the placement of surveillance cameras at the facility.[10] He evaluated that “the terrorists learned their tactics from the SSG (the Pakistan Army's elite commandos, the Special Service Group), which had trained earlier generations of Pakistani/Kashmiri militants in similar tactics for operations against India.”[11]
According to nuclear security specialist David Albright an attack on a Pakistani nuclear base would necessitate inside assistance to pass through base security but also getting inside an underground bunker. A more likely scenario might be that militants or their sympathizers are able to divert nuclear material during the weapon-production process without anyone else knowing, he said.[12]
In a September 2010 research paper for IDSA, Christopher Clary argued “that the risk to Pakistan’s arsenal has been exaggerated, [but] this conclusion should not lead to complacency. The risks to Pakistan’s arsenal are still unacceptably high, even if Pakistan has done much to combat them.”[13]
Times of India reported on December 15, 2011, that India prepares itself to cope with this Pakistani threat. Crisis management teams throughout India are to receive training in handling a disaster involving chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear materials. A training facility is to be set up in Nagpur and property has also been set aside in each Indian state for the construction of CBRN disaster response schools. The NDMA vice president said a drill would be carried out that would permit the CBRN response teams to practice maneuvers in a particular geography. "There is very little knowledge in the public domain on dealing with radiation exposure. We also do not have a proper incidence response system in place in the event of such a disaster," he said.
In light of the revolutionary events and the growing instability in much of the Greater Middle East and South Asia and the growing threat of failing states losing control on their chemical, biological and nuclear assets, an international effort to monitor, control and foil CBRN terrorist attacks is vital for the security of the international community.
[1] “Senior GOP Lawmaker Urges Obama to Secure Libyan Chemical Arms,” Global Security Newswire (GSN), September 7, 2011.
[3] “Libya Arms Threaten to Infiltrate Africa Conflicts,” Aviation Security News, October 22, 2011.
[4] Charley Keyes, “U.S. military needs flexibility due to poor predictions, Gates says”, CNN, May 24, 2011.
[5] “Israel Warns Syria Not to Transfer Chemical Arms into Lebanon,” Global Security Newswire, February 7, 2012.
[6] Robert S. Litwak, “Global Terrorism and Nuclear Proliferation after 9/11,” Analyses of the Elcano Royal Institute, Madrid, ARI 151/2011 - 21/11/2011.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Elaine M. Grossman, “Mullen: Pakistani Nuclear Controls Should Avert Any Insider Threat,” Global Security Newswire, July 8, 2011.
[9] “Terror Strikes Hint at Pakistani Nuke Security Gaps: Expert,” Global Security Newswire, June 14, 2011.
[10] Shaun Gregory, “Terrorist Tactics in Pakistan Threaten Nuclear Weapons Safety,” Sentinel, Combating Terrorism Center (CTC), June 1, 2011. See at http://www.ctc.usma.edu/posts/terrorist-tactics-in-pakistan-threaten-nuclear-weapons-safety.
[11] GSN, Terror Strikes Hint at Pakistani Nuke Security Gaps: Expert.
[12] Grossman, Mullen: Pakistani Nuclear Controls Should Avert Any Insider Threat.
[13] Christopher Clary, “Thinking about Pakistan’s Nuclear Security in Peacetime, Crisis and War,” Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, September 2010.
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