Political Manipulation and Weapons of Mass Destruction

Terrorism, Influence and Persuasion

Ben Cole

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781786722645
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Concerns about CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radioactive, Nuclear) weapons have featured prominently in both political debates and media reporting about the ongoing threat from al Qaeda since 9/11. This book provides a chronological account of al Qaeda's efforts to acquire a CBRN weapon capability, and the evolution of the al Qaeda leadership's approach to actually using CBRN weapons, set against the context of the politicisation of the threat of CBRN terrorism in US security debates. Ben Cole explores how the inherently political nature of terrorist CBRN threats has helped to shape al Qaeda's approach to CBRN weapons, and shows how the heightened political sensitivities surrounding the threat have enabled some governments to manipulate it in order to generate domestic and international support for controversial policies, particularly the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He assesses the relative success of the al Qaeda leadership's political approach to CBRN weapons, together with the relative success of efforts by the US, UK and Russian governments to exploit the al Qaeda CBRN threat for their wider political purposes.
Shedding new light on al Qaeda's tactics and strategy, this book will be essential reading for scholars of terrorism and extremism studies.

CHAPTER 1

OPPORTUNISM, 1994–6

Al Qaeda’s decades-long hunt for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) weapons began with a number of random opportunities that presented themselves during the early years of its existence. In 1992, it had moved its base of operations from Afghanistan to Sudan. This brought it physically closer to the Middle East,x giving it a better opportunity to influence events in the region,¹ and also brought it closer to the radical Sudanese regime of President Hassan al-Turabi.² Initially at least, al Qaeda displayed no interest in CBRN weapons. It was still a small and relatively new organisation, and was little more than a marginal player in the wider jihadi movement. Bin Laden was ambitious though, and set about building a network with the other jihadi and terrorist groups that were operating in Sudan at that time. The precise nature of these contacts varied from group to group, but that did not matter to bin Laden because he was not trying to build a monolithic organisation. Instead, he set up al Qaeda as a facilitator, providing funding and support for other jihadi groups. Among the groups with which it established a particularly strong working relationship was Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ).³

The foundations of al Qaeda’s interest in CBRN weapons were set in the ideological and strategic debates that took place in the al Qaeda shura (leadership council), in the mid-1990s. During those early years in Sudan there were fundamental differences of opinion within the shura over whether to focus on overthrowing what they defined as ‘un-Islamic’ and despotic regimes in Muslim states (i.e., the ‘near enemy’), or attacking the US (i.e., the ‘far enemy’).

One faction, led by the leader of EIJ Ayman al-Zawahiri, wanted to focus on the ‘near enemy’. Its primary goal was to overthrow the Mubarak regime in Egypt and replace it with an Islamist regime. In contrast, bin Laden was beginning to set his sights on the ‘far enemy’. He had initially conceived of jihad in the traditional sense of liberating Muslim lands from foreign occupation. But the continued presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia following the 1991 Gulf War had led him to believe that the focus of the jihad should be on the ‘far enemy’. He viewed regional Muslim leaders as being pawns of the US, reliant on US political and military support to remain in power. Bin Laden therefore believed that removing US influence from the Muslim world was the only way of bringing about the establishment of true Islamist regimes in the Middle East and the creation of a transnational Muslim umma.⁴

In 1992 al Qaeda’s attention was drawn to the neighbouring country of Somalia, where UN forces under US command were attempting to safeguard the delivery of humanitarian aid to the famine and conflict stricken country. To bin Laden, the presence of US troops in Somalia confirmed his belief that the US had a secret grand strategy to conquer Muslim lands.⁵ Following discussions with senior EIJ leaders, al Qaeda operatives became actively involved in Somalia, and were reputed to have been involved in the infamous ‘Black Hawk down’ incident in Mogadishu in 1993, in which 18 US servicemen were killed, which proved to be one of the catalysts to the US withdrawal from Somalia in 1994.⁶

The US withdrawal from Somalia marked the beginning of a shift in al Qaeda’s ideological focus on the ‘far enemy’. But whilst al Qaeda leaders were debating ideology, they made little effort to think strategically and tactically. Their models for action were the guerrilla war against the Soviet army in Afghanistan between 1980 and 1988, the 1983 Beirut truck bombings and latterly the urban guerrilla war on US forces on Somalia. Each of these models had proved to be successful against more powerful enemies, so there was no real incentive to think about acquiring powerful new capabilities such as CBRN weapons.

Whilst al Qaeda was making its first tentative steps in its fight against the US in Somalia, other elements in the wider jihadi networks were preparing to take the jihad right into the heart of the ‘far enemy’. In 1993, an Islamist terrorist cell led by Ramzi Youssef, and directed by his uncle, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), was operating in New York. The pair were not members of any formal group but rather freelancers who would come together with other jihadi groups and operatives to conduct specific operations. The cell’s spiritual mentor was the blind Egyptian cleric, Omar Abdel Rahman, who had had been the spiritual guide to the Egyptian Islamic Group during the 1980s, and was at that time working as an Imam in a New York mosque.⁷

Youssef believed that the US had only managed to bring World War II to an end by dropping atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing 250,000 civilians. This led him to the conclusion that it was necessary to inflict a similar level of casualties on the US, in order to achieve his objectives.⁸ The cell developed a plan to destroy the World Trade Center in New York by detonating a massive truck bomb in the basement of one of the towers. Youssef considered augmenting the explosion with chemical agents, and even acquired a small quantity of cyanide,⁹ but did not have enough money to procure the larger quantities of cyanide that he would need.¹⁰ Instead, he hoped that the explosion would topple one of the towers into the other, bringing both down. The cell succeeded in detonating a massive truck bomb in the basement of the north tower, but it failed to collapse, and casualties were minimal. Immediately afterwards, the cell sent a letter to the New York Times threatening that if their demands were not met, there would be more attacks, including strikes on ‘some potential nuclear targets’.¹¹ However, they were given no chance to follow through on this threat as most members of the cell were quickly rounded up by the police, and Youssef fled to Pakistan.

The 1993 World Trade Center bombing presented al Qaeda with a different strategic model – an act of mass destruction on the land of the ‘far enemy’. But the attack had been a failure, the traditional truck bomb had proved ineffective for executing this particular strategy. For the jihadis, the main lesson of the bombing was that new weapons and tactics would be required.

Opportunities to Acquire CBRN Weapons

This recognition that new weapons and tactics were required coincided with a period of unparalleled opportunity for terrorist groups to acquire CBRN weapons, particularly nuclear weapons. The break-up of the Soviet Union into a number of fledgling successor states in 1991 had created significant new opportunities for terrorist groups to acquire CBRN materials, expertise or even complete weapons. This was most apparent in respect of nuclear and radiological weapons.

Developing nuclear weapons is an extremely difficult proposition, even for states. The single most difficult element is acquiring the necessary nuclear material, otherwise known as fissile material, to form its explosive core. The optimum materials are either plutonium-239 (Pu-239), or uranium that has been enriched so that it comprises at least 94 per cent uranium-235, otherwise known as highly enriched uranium (HEU), although plutonium-240 (Pu-240) and uranium of lower enrichment levels can also potentially be used. The amounts required for a basic 20-kiloton (Kt) bomb are somewhere in the order of about 6 kg of Pu-239, or 25 kg of HEU, as a minimum.¹² More sophisticated designs would require less fissile material but would probably be beyond the limited technical capabilities of terrorist groups such as al Qaeda.¹³

It is extremely difficult to manufacture fissile material because it needs significant industrial facilities and technical expertise. Therefore, the most realistic way for terrorists to acquire the necessary material is to either steal it or buy it on the black market. From 1991, both of these options suddenly became much more realistic as the Soviet successor states experienced a major economic crisis and the Soviet-era system of state controls began to erode. Between January 1993 and August 1994 some 300 employees of the Russian nuclear industry were reportedly arrested for illegally possessing, stealing or transporting radioactive waste. From the mid-1990s, police forces in a number of European states began seizing small quantities of fissile material from smugglers.¹⁴ This included a case in 1992, when 3.7 lb of HEU were stolen from a scientific institute, and another case in 1993 when 10 lb of HEU was stolen from the Murmansk naval base.¹⁵ There were only ever a few such seizures and the amounts of material involved were significantly less than would be required to build a nuclear weapon, but given that the extent and magnitude of the trafficking remained unknown¹⁶ it posed serious questions about whether other larger quantities might also be available for sale.

It was not just fissile material that posed a risk: there was a much greater number of smuggling incidents involving other radioactive materials, such as Casesium-137 and Strontium-90, which are suitable for use in radiological weapons. These are considerably easier to build than nuclear weapons and work by spreading radioactive contamination rather than causing casualties through blast effects. There are several ways of dispersing radioactive material as a contaminant, the crudest of which is to pack the material around a conventional explosive and let the explosion disperse it. Constructing such a device requires no specialist skills apart from knowledge of how to protect oneself from the radioactivity whilst building it. Other, more sophisticated dispersal methods, which require a higher level of technical skill, could involve radioactive isotopes that can be dissolved, sprayed, vapourised or burned.¹⁷ These isotopes could potentially be introduced into the ventilation systems of buildings, or dispersed through spraying devices, or else simply dumped into the water supplies of buildings.¹⁸

But it was not just from the states of the former Soviet Union that terrorists could potentially acquire these materials. Radiological isotopes are used throughout the world, in a wide range of civil commercial applications, such as X-ray machines and industrial measuring devices. It was equally possible for terrorists to either steal or clandestinely purchase such equipment, in order to remove the radiological isotopes for use in a weapon. With illicit markets, the majority of the traffic remains hidden from the authorities. If the same was true in respect of the trafficking in nuclear materials, there could have been even greater quantities of material available than was evident from the limited seizures that were made. For al Qaeda, the challenge was how to access this chaotic and shadowy market.

Opportunistic Attempts to Acquire Nuclear Material

From its earliest days, al Qaeda operated as a facilitator, inviting individual jihadis and cells to present their plans to the senior members of the organisation for approval and funding. The leadership would then decide whether or not to support a particular plan. This approach promoted innovation within the organisation, and would naturally generate a diverse range of proposals for consideration. It was only natural that plans involving CBRN weapons would eventually feature among the proposals that were put forward for approval.

In 1993, al Qaeda business associates received word through intermediaries that a quantity of smuggled HEU was available for sale. If the offer was genuine, it presented a golden opportunity to overcome the single most significant problem in nuclear weapon development. Al Qaeda did not have any nuclear physicists or engineers within its ranks at that time, but this was still too good an opportunity to pass up. The subject was discussed among the leadership, one of whom commented that ‘it’s easy to kill more people with uranium’.¹⁹ The most influential figure in the discussion was Mohammed Atef, a member of EIJ and al Qaeda’s Deputy Military Commander. Perhaps influenced by the failure of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Atef believed that al Qaeda needed to acquire new capabilities, including CBRN weapons.²⁰ His arguments won the day, and it was agreed to instruct Abu Rida al-Suri, another founder member of al Qaeda and one of its key strategists, to oversee the purchase of the material.

Al-Suri ordered Abu Fadhl al Makkee, a member of the al Qaeda Finance Committee and shura, to evaluate the offer. In turn, al Makkee telephoned Jamal al-Fadl, a Sudanese member of al Qaeda, instructing him to make contact with the intermediary. When al-Fadl met the intermediary, Abu Abd Allah al-Yemeni (who was also known as Abu Dijana), he was given the name of yet another contact. That person was Moqadem Salah Abd al-Mobruk, a Sudanese army officer and former Cabinet minister in the government that al-Turabi had overthrown in 1989.

After conferring with associates, al-Fadl met al-Mobruk, who referred him to yet another man called Basheer. When the two met at an office on Jambouria Street in Khartoum, al-Fadl told Basheer that al Qaeda was primarily concerned about the quality of the material and its country of origin, and they agreed a price of $1.5 million plus additional commissions for Basheer and al-Mobruk. At that point, the main issue was how to test the uranium to determine whether it was genuine. Al-Fadl knew nothing about nuclear materials, but nor was there anyone else in al Qaeda with the necessary technical knowledge.

Al-Fadl reported back to al-Makkee and al-Suri, who told him that they had an ‘electric machine’ that was capable of testing uranium. Al-Fadl then arranged another meeting with Basheer for himself and al-Suri. In a small house in the town of Bait al-Mal, north of Khartoum, al-Fadl and al-Suri were shown a cylinder and given a note which had the words ‘South Africa’ and a serial number written on it. However, they clearly must have had some lingering doubts because they were still not prepared to commit to buying the cylinder at that meeting. It was only after further consideration that al-Fadl and al-Suri met with Basheer again and agreed to buy the cylinder. Al-Suri then negotiated directly with al-Mobruk, and arranged for the cylinder to be tested at a location in the Hilat Koko district of Khartoum. It passed the test, and al-Suri handed over $1.5 million. Subsequent analysis, however, showed that the cylinder contained low-grade reactor fuel, comprising uranium enriched to about 20 per cent uranium-235, which could not be used to make a nuclear weapon.²¹

This incident highlights the inherent problems faced by al Qaeda in trying to buy nuclear material on the black market when it did not have anyone among its ranks who knew anything about nuclear materials. But despite this setback, Atef did not give up. Together with another founder member of the shura, an Egyptian called Abu Obeida Albanshiri, they also acquired a manual, written in English, about how to produce a radiological ‘dirty bomb’, and continued to try and obtain nuclear materials.²²

Another potential opportunity to acquire nuclear materials presented itself in 1995, when Muhammad Shah, a Pakistan-based facilitator with links to al Qaeda and other jihadi groups, was approached by individuals offering to sell a quantity of uranium and red mercury. Shah reportedly approached Atef, as well as a jihadi group called the Khalifa Group in Pakistan, and representatives of the Iraqi government, to ascertain whether any of them wanted to purchase the material.²³

Atef refused the offer because he had doubts about whether the material was genuine. References to red mercury had first begun to appear in the Russian and Western media in the ear...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Opportunism, 1994–6
• 2. The US and the Politics of CBRN Terrorism, 1996–8
• 3. Antecedents: Afghanistan, 1996–8
• 4. Project Al Zabadi and the Pursuit of Nuclear Weapons
• 5. Al Qaeda’s Strategy Begins to Emerge, 1988–2001
• 6. Opting for Deterrence, 1999–2001
• 7. The End of Project Al Zabadi
• 8. Re-Establishing a CBRN Weapon Capability, 2002–3
• 9. Al Qaeda Announces its Strategy, 2002–3
• 10. Constraining the Threat, 2002–3
• 11. The Politics of CBRN Terrorism and the Invasion of Iraq
• 12. Western Uncertainty About the Threat, 2004–7
• 13. Losing Control of the Threat, 2004–8
• 14. Breakdown in Control, 2007–9
• 15. Influencing the New President, 2008–10
• 16. A New Threat Emerges, 2010–15
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Back Cover