Terrorism and Beyond (RLE: Terrorism & Insurgency)

The 21st Century

Bruce Hoffman, Anders Strindberg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317448990
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The papers in this special issue of Studies in Conflict and Terrorism accompanied the conference in Oklahoma in April 2000, whose purpose was to assess developments in terrorism over the preceeding two decades, map its likely future direction and propose policy recommendations and other remedial steps to counter the menace.

The conference and papers address themes such as:

Continuity and changes in terrorist motivations, strategies & capabilities; policy and research concerns in coping with terrorism; evaluations of the effectiveness of both international and American counterterrorism policies and capabilities.

Comparing Motives and Outcomes of Mass Casualty Terrorism Involving Conventional and Unconventional Weapons

DOI: 10.4324/9781315697154-6

JOHN V. PARACHINI

Executive Director, Washington Office

Monterey Institute of International Studies' Center for Nonproliferation Studies

Washington, DC, USA

In the 1990s, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Tokyo subway, and the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City seemed to signal the emergence of a new trend in terrorism—mass casualty attacks. Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamin, two former U.S. National Security Council officials, recently argued that the new trend is waged by religious militants “who want a lot of people watching and a lot of people dead,” which is a variation on Brian Jenkins’ frequently quoted observation that terrorists want a lot of people watching, but only a few people dead.¹ They argue, furthermore, that given the “motivations of groups seeking to produce mass casualties and the lowering of technological and engineering barriers to CBRN [chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons] manufacture and use over time, there is a strong possibility that such attacks will be attempted.”² This new breed of terrorists will be drawn to use weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or CBRN (hereafter referred to as unconventional weapons) because in their quest to maximize casualties such weapons “provide a premium on their investment.”³ This view of the new terrorism has led to a significant shift in U.S. counter-terrorism policy with an increasing focus on the prospect of terrorist use of unconventional weapons.

Part of the challenge in comparing mass casualty attacks and the motivations of the perpetrators involves sorting out the different incidents and the different perpetrators. The mixing of incidents involving these two different types of weapons material has created an inchoate sense of fear and a policy maelstrom. As a result, American counter-terrorism policy may mistakenly focus too much on unconventional weapons attacks rather than mass casualty attacks regardless of the weapons material. Extrapolating from the consequences of incidents involving high explosives to potential incidents involving unconventional weapons leads to an exaggerated sense of the likelihood and consequences of a perceived newly emerging terrorist threat.

Received 2 March 2001; accepted 18 April 2001.

Address correspondence to John V. Parachini, MIIS-Center for Nonproliferation Studies. 11 Dupont Circle, NW, 9th Floor, Washington. De 20036. E-mail: [email protected]

Spending billions of dollars to manage the consequences of terrorist attacks with unconventional weapons may inordinately focus on what is found to be most difficult to handle, not necessarily on what is most likely. While government has a responsibility to protect its citizens from even low probability events that may present catastrophic consequences, a critical part of the task for policymakers is to find the right balance of effort between high and low probability attacks. Given the consequences of mass casualty terrorism, this is a difficult, but important challenge to meet as effectively as possible.

Three Mass Casualty Incidents Involving Unconventional Weapons

Over the course of the last 25 years, there have been only three terrorist mass casualty attacks involving unconventional weapons material. The first of these attacks occurred in 1984 when the Rajneeshee religious cult located in Oregon sought to fraudulently influence a local election in its favor by poisoning local residents with Salmonella typhimurium.⁴ The group planned to sicken local people to keep them from voting in a local election, while at the same time seeking to increase the totals for their preferred candidate by importing homeless people who they would instruct on how to vote. Using Salmonella bacteria acquired from the Oregon State Health Department, the Rajneeshees conducted a trial poisoning a few months before the actual election. They spread the bacteria over ten salad bars. Sheela, one of the main perpetrators in this experimental poisoning, tried to interest the group leader in approving the use of Salmonella typhi, which might have caused fatalities. Interestingly, the group leader, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, indicated that while a few deaths might be unavoidable, the intent of the effort should be to not hurt too many people, but to decrease voter turnout. Seven-hundred fifty-one people became sick, but fortunately no fatalities occurred. Importantly, the disease outbreak was not recognized as an intentional attack for more than a year. The intent of the attack was merely to incapacitate people, and it resulted in a large-scale and indiscriminate outbreak of disease.

After considering a variety of ways to influence a local election (such as voter fraud), the Rajneeshees settled on incapacitating people they viewed as their political opponents. Critical to their choosing incapacitating people with disease was an individual in the group who may have been a serial poisoner. Ma Anand Puja, who was closely aligned with Sheela, one of the Bhagwan’s key lieutenants, worked as a nurse in the group’s health clinic. Sheela and Ma Anand Puja investigated several different agents to use for their poisoning effort. Some group members believed that Ma Anand Puja may have poisoned other members of the group, but the primary leadership of the group was not particularly fascinated with poisoning.⁵ Shortly after conducting their initial set of experimental attacks, the Rajneeshees discontinued their poisoning effort and instead focused on importing homeless people to increase their vote total. Given how readily the group discontinued the poisoning effort, the fascination with poisoning harbored by Ma Anand Puja was not a characteristic common to the group as a whole. The interest in poison was clearly not a particular fascination of the Bhagwan. Yet, Ma Anand Puja’s extensive work cultivating the appropriate Salmonella strain and investigating other agents suggests that she had a special fascination with poison and disease. Her role in the organization was not so powerful that her poisoning tendencies defined the group beyond the initial set of salad bar poisonings.

The second case of a subnational group using unconventional weapons material occurred in Sri Lanka when the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) struck a comparatively isolated Sri Lankan Armed Forces (SLAF) facility with chlorine.⁶ This attack marked the beginning of a major offensive and may have been designed as a strategic blow. The LTTE released chlorine fumes as part of a general assault on the facility. There is no confirmation that fatalities resulted from the chlorine release, although more than 60 soldiers were hospitalized for gas exposure. The LTTE eventually captured the fort even though the wind shifted and fumes blew back on them. The LTTE may have resorted to using chlorine because at the time they lacked conventional weapons. Seizing on the ready availability of chlorine at a nearby paper plant owned by an ethnic Tamil, the group improvised with what they could easily acquire. There is no evidence that they have ever again employed chemical agents in what continues to be a bloody ethnic separatist conflict.

Unlike the two previous incidents of unconventional weapons use by subnational groups, which remain comparatively obscure, the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway by the Aum Supreme Truth (hereafter “Aum”) succeeded in capturing the attention of the world.⁷ In the years preceding the subway attack, group members used poison to kill people investigating them and sect members who sought to escape the organization. After a number of failed attempts to test or to use biological agents, Aum concentrated its efforts on producing sarin as the agent of choice to inflict mass casualties.⁸ The Aum did what many believed terrorist groups would be reluctant to do: use unconventional weapons to inflict mass and indiscriminate casualties. The result of their attack was 13 dead, 200 injured, and more than 4,000 people who believed they had been exposed. The main leaders of the group and the principal perpetrators of the attack were arrested, indicted, and most have or are serving time in prison.

Mass Casualty Attacks with Conventional Weapons

The most significant conventional attacks that produced mass casualties and mass destruction in the 1990s range in sophistication, but all, unfortunately, demonstrated the ease with which terrorists can procure the necessary materials, fashion them into powerful weapons, and deliver them to targets.

Ramzi Yousef and the World Trade Center Bombing

The World Trade Center bombing is a revealing case where the mastermind of the attack considered using poison gas, but in the end opted for high explosives instead. Ramzi Yousef told U.S. officials who accompanied him on the plane back to the United States to stand trial that he considered crafting a weapon with sodium cyanide that might have generated a deadly gas that could have killed thousands.⁹ Yousef said that while he would have if he could, he did not because it was too difficult, too expensive, and he thought about using sodium cyanide for another attack. Yousef and his co-conspirators resorted to conventional explosives, which proved potent enough for their purposes. They had manuals for building conventional bombs, not unconventional weapons. Nothing in the manual entered as an exhibit in the court record provides any guidance on how to make a chemical weapon. They succeeded in building a 1,500-pound urea nitrate bomb that required considerable expertise and ingredients that were not easy to obtain.¹⁰

For Ramzi Yousef, no single motive can explain his action. In an interview with Al-Haya and during his statement before the court prior to sentencing, Yousefs motives for his attack seem to have been a combination of visceral hatred, revenge, retribution, and an act to affirm his understanding of himself as a “genius” and “bomb expert;”¹¹ Conspicuous by its absence from all of Yousef’s comments is any direct or distinctive religious o...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Foreword
• Terrorism and Beyond: a 21st Century Perspective
• Counterterrorism Policy and the Political Process
• Struggling with the Challenges of Right-Wing Extremism and Terrorism within Democratic Boundaries: A Comparative Analysis
• Cults, Violence and Religious Terrorism: An International Perspective
• Transnational Organized Crime: A European Perspective
• Comparing Motives and Outcomes of Mass Casualty Terrorism Involving Conventional and Unconventional Weapons
• Terrorism and Counterterrorism: An International Perspective
• Change and Continuity in Terrorism