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