Terrorist attacks: Preparing for the unimaginable

Terrorist attacks: Preparing for the unimaginable

Michael Richardson, Singapore

Barely 24 hours before suicide bombers struck in Bali early
this month killing and injuring dozens of Indonesians and
foreigners, Australian and Singaporean military specialists ended
an exercise designed to cope with an even more terrifying
prospect -- a terrorist attack using chemical, biological,
radiological or nuclear weapons.

The week-long exercise in Sydney by members of the Australian
Defense Force's Incident Response Regiment and its Singaporean
counterpart focused on preventing terrorists from using a mass
casualty weapon, or if they did, responding to the crisis. The
exercise paid particular attention to the two threats considered
most likely to occur: use of radiological or chemical bombs. In
both, conventional explosives would disperse radioactive or
chemical poison.

Mid-way through the exercise, Prime Minister John Howard
announced after a meeting with state and territory leaders that
as part of new counter-terrorism measures, the federal government
would spend US$17.3 million over the next five years to establish
and Australian Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear
Data Centre located within the Australian Federal Police
organization.

Concerns that such horrific weapons could be used against
civilian populations may sound like the stuff of science fiction.
Yet many Western and Asian officials and arms control experts
believe that a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear
(CBRN) terrorist attack somewhere in the world in the next decade
is highly probable as these deadly materials and the technology
to make them become more widely available through trafficking,
dispersal of scientific and industrial knowledge via the
internet, and the spread of nuclear weapons beyond the nine
states (the U.S., Russia, China, France, Britain, Israel, India,
Pakistan and North Korea) known or thought to have them.

Singapore's Defense Minister Rear Admiral Teo Chee Hean warned
last year that the nightmare scenario of terrorists getting their
hands on CBR (correct) weapons, or collaborating with rogue
regimes in the use of these weapons, was no longer unthinkable.
"The illicit trade in weapons of mass destruction is intricate
and sophisticated," he said. "The counter-proliferation effort
has to be as sophisticated and comprehensive."

Earlier this year, Richard Lugar, chairman of the U.S. Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, commissioned a survey of 85 arms
control and national security experts to assess the danger. The
results were published last June. Asked to rate the possibility
of a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear attack on any
nation, the respondents put the likelihood of one of the four
happening at 50 percent over five years and 70 percent over 10
years.

An attack with a radiological or "dirty" bomb, combining a
conventional explosive such as dynamite or ammonium nitrate with
cancer-causing radioactive material, was seen by the experts
taking part in the survey as the most likely form of attack, with
a risk of 40 percent over the next decade.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations'
nuclear watchdog that has just been awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize, has outlined several possible terrorist scenarios
involving nuclear weapons or radioactive materials.

The first, theft of a nuclear bomb, is considered highly
unlikely because arsenals are closely guarded. But should it
happen, the consequences would be potentially devastating.
Experts have estimated that between 500,000 and two million
people could be killed if a one megaton nuclear bomb exploded in
a major city.

The second possibility is for terrorists to acquire sufficient
amounts of plutonium or highly-enriched uranium, along with the
sophisticated equipment and expertise needed to build and
detonate a crude nuclear explosive device. This, too, would be
very difficult, though not impossible, for an extremist group
without state support and protection to accomplish.

The third threat that concerns the IAEA is a terrorist attack
on, or sabotage of, reactors or other nuclear facilities to
contaminate surrounding areas with radioactivity. The targets
could be nuclear power plants used to generate electricity;
facilities for making nuclear fuel; nuclear research reactors
that can produce radioactive isotopes; or hospitals, medical
centers and industries that use these radioactive elements for X-
rays, radiation treatment of cancer patients, disinfecting food,
and for many other important health or economic services.

The nuclear plants and fuel facilities are generally
considered to be tightly secured. But the same cannot be said for
over 270 research reactors which the IAEA says are currently in
operation in at least 56 countries, many of them developing
nations.

The IAEA reported last month that illicit trafficking of
nuclear and other radioactive substances was on the rise, raising
the prospect of terrorists acquiring widely used isotopes like
Cesium-137, Americium-241 or Cobalt-60 to put into a "dirty"
bomb. Member states reported 121 trafficking incidents to the
IAEA in 2004, about half of them involving criminal activity. It
was the first time the annual tally has risen since 2000.

The IAEA report follows a region-wide check in the past year
by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization. It
found unsecured cobalt in two unidentified Asia-Pacific countries
after radiation therapy centers closed. A team of 10 ANSTO
experts is training officials from 11 Southeast Asian and Pacific
island nations under a three-year program to help them find and
secure radioactive waste that could otherwise fall into the hands
of terrorist bomb makers.

A radiological dispersion device may not be a real weapon of
mass destruction, when compared to a nuclear explosion or the
weaponised release of a deadly biological agent such as anthrax.
But a "dirty" bomb would certainly be a weapon of mass disruption
in any city. There would be public panic over radioactivity,
decontamination of affected areas would take a long time and the
economic cost could be huge.

The writer is a visiting senior research fellow at the
Institute of South East Asian Studies in Singapore. He is the
author of A Time Bomb for Global Trade: Maritime-related
Terrorism in an Age of Weapons of Mass Destruction. published by
ISEAS. He can be reached at mriht@pacific.net.sg