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March 1995 CW attack on the Tokyo subway by
Aum Shinrikyo (detailed in
Chapter 2) was a "wake-up call" that drew the attention of policymakers
and the general public to the emerging threat of chemical weapons
terrorism. Adding to concern over this threat is evidence that
Al Qa'ida,
the group responsible for the September 11 terrorist attacks, has
experimented with chemical warfare agents. In August 2002, the Cable
News Network (CNN) broadcast a videotape of Al Qa'ida members exposing
dogs to hydrogen cyanide gas at a crude laboratory in Afghanistan. In
November 2002, British security officials arrested three men who were
reportedly planning a cyanide attack on the London subway, and on
January 5, 2003, British authorities arrested six men in a north London
apartment who were suspected of preparing to produce ricin, a natural
poison derived from castor beans. (However, the ricin was never found
and the case was ultimately dismissed.) In June 2006, a spokesperson for
the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an armed wing of the Palestinian Fatah
movement claimed that the group had fired a rocket tipped with a
chemical warhead into southern Israel, although this report has not been
verified.. Given these incidents, the threat of a terrorist attack with
a toxic chemical remains a serious concern..
Background
Whereas chemical warfare involves the
delivery of hundreds of tons of toxic agents on the battlefield,
terrorists would be more likely to conduct isolated attacks against
unprotected civilians with small amounts of military or industrial
chemicals. Historically, the use of chemicals by terrorists has been
rare. Most terrorist groups have apparently been unwilling to invest the
money and effort required to acquire chemical weapons, particularly when
ordinary explosives are so readily accessible.
Nearly all incidents of chemical
terrorism to date have been crude and amateurish, and have inflicted
relatively few casualties. For example, a few Palestinian suicide
bombers have incorporated rat poison and other toxic materials into
their explosive belts. Another small-scale incident took place in
Dushanbe, the capital of the former Soviet republic of Tajikistan, on
December 31, 1994. Six Russian peacekeeping soldiers, three civilians,
and the wife of a Russian embassy worker died after drinking champagne
that had been laced with
cyanide. The locally
produced champagne had been sold at a small store near the Russian
military compound, and it is not known how many bottles were poisoned.
The case of Aum Shinrikyo suggests
that some terrorist groups are intensely interested in chemical weapons
and may go to considerable lengths and expense to acquire them. Although
a mass-casualty chemical attack would be a “low-probability, high-conseqeuence”
scenario, incidents involving the use of small quantities of a toxic
industrial chemical or a military CW agent would have more limited
consequences but are considerably more likely. Even if casualties are
low, the psychological impact of such an attack would be
disproportionately great because of the natural human fear of poisons.
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