Traveler's backpacks a threat to world security

Traveler's backpacks a threat to world security

Jason Szep, Reuters/Boston

The common traveler's backpack carrying small bombs may now be
among the leading threats to world security, experts said on
Monday, drawing a link between this weekend's bombings in Bali to
those in London in July.

Militants from the United States to Europe and Southeast Asia
have used car and truck bombs and even planes to make dramatic
statements. But now small, easily made bombs like those used in
London appear to be the new trend.

The al-Qaeda-linked group at the heart of an Indonesian probe
into the three bombs that tore through restaurants packed with
Saturday evening diners and killed 22 people likely drew
inspiration from the London attack in July, the experts said.

"It shows a shift to small, London-style suicide bombers (like
those) in Indonesia from large truck bombs," said Zachary Abuza,
an expert on Islamic militancy in Southeast Asia at Boston's
Simmons College.

U.S. authorities warned people of threats posed by small,
home-made bombs after the July 7 attack in London's transit
system that killed 56 people, putting New York on its highest
level of alert since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

But much of that security has been rolled back. Police have
dismantled checkpoints, scaled back subway patrols and pulled
bomb-sniffing dogs off New York commuter trains.

Security experts such as Arnold Howitt of Harvard's Kennedy
School of Government said a Bali-style attack involving hard-to-
detect bombs would be remarkably easy in the United States. Bomb-
making materials are easy to find and security loopholes in
restaurants and trains are plentiful.

But he said one element appears missing: suicide bombers.

"The limiting factor in the United States is that the most
effective way of carrying out this kind of attack is through
suicide bombers and we don't seem to have a supply of indigenous
suicide bombers," he said.

Abuza said the simplicity of stuffing bombs into backpacks
likely influenced the Bali bombers. Chilling video footage
released in Bali late on Sunday showed a man entering a
restaurant, followed almost instantly by an explosion.

The attack contrasts with a truck bomb detonated in the
Indonesian capital Jakarta near Australia's embassy on Sept. 9,
2004, killing 10 people, and to a suicide car bomb outside the JW
Marriott Hotel in Jakarta in 2003 that killed 12.

"The shift from large truck bombs to people with a small five
kg bomb on their back is very significant. To me it says a lot
about the resources that they have or don't have. The truck bombs
were very expensive operations," said Abuza.

He said the simplicity made it easier to launch attacks. "I
think we're going to see a lot more of this," he added.

Initial investigations into Saturday's attack -- the second on
Bali since a series of blasts on Oct. 12, 2002, killed 202 people
-- are focused on Jamaah Islamiyah, a network linked to Osama bin
Laden's al-Qaeda, which has been blamed for past bombings in the
world's most populous Muslim nation.

Australian police involved in the probe said the style of
bombs and materials used appeared new to the region. An
Indonesian official said they included TNT and ball bearings.

"They are reverting to more simplified weapons usage because
they can't mount the big one but they want to stay in the game,"
said retired U.S. Brig. Gen. Russell Howard, a counter-terrorism
expert at Tufts University, who believes Jamaah Islamiyah's
resources are shrinking.

"It is an admission that they are not as strong as they were.
But the simpler form of warfare is easier to prosecute and more
difficult to detect," he said.