A rchive Date
[ 17-02-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Terrorism ]
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[http://www.cbc.ca/news/indepth/targetterrorism/backgrounders/beyond_afghanistan.html
Terror beyond Afghanistan
CBC NEWS ONLINE BACKGROUNDER | October 2001
Martin O'Malley
It has been said repeatedly that the U.S.-led coalition at war against terrorism is in for a long campaign, more likely years than months. It has also been said repeatedly that Afghanistan is not the only country believed to be harbouring terrorists of the ilk that brought down the World Trade Center on September 11.
What is not being said repeatedly – for reasons of diplomacy, tactics, ignorance – is that other countries that are spiritual allies of Afghanistan, its Taliban government, and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network harbour terrorists and have stockpiled chemical and biological weapons to assist the terrorist cause.
There is as yet no established link between the anthrax cases in the U.S. and organized terrorism, whether state sanctioned or the work of highly mobile, independent units. Some of the scares are doubtless loathsome hoaxes perpetrated by underachievers who think it's fun to mix baby powder and New Blue Cheer and mail it to high-profile targets the way bored kids play Nicky-Nicky-Nine-Doors.
But the anthrax spores delivered to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's office looked like the real thing – pure, finely milled, which suggests sophisticated equipment.
"This wasn't the stuff that some amateur cooked up in a fermenter in his bathroom," said Richard Butler, the Australian who headed UNSCOM, the United Nation's inspection agency whose task was to find and destroy Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons after the 1991 Gulf War. "This is a person who had pretty sophisticated equipment at his disposal, or I think more likely, a foreign country."
But what foreign country? Or countries? Several countries have done research into weapons-grade biological weapons, including anthrax (one of the least effective biological weapons of mass destruction if compared to agents such as smallpox and botulism). The United States itself has experimented with weapons-grade anthrax and other biological weapons, as have China, Libya, North Korea, Israel, Iran and Iraq.
In light of the current situation, the most suspicious country is Iraq, which not only has produced and stockpiled weapons-grade biological weapons, but has used them against humans, including its own citizens. Iraq has been stockpiling these weapons since the end of the Gulf War – largely because the work of Butler's UNSCOM team was thwarted.
When Butler was head of UNSCOM, he said his weapons inspectors had to resort to "intrusive" techniques to obtain information of weapons of mass destruction – nuclear, chemical and biological – because Iraq regularly made false declarations about these weapons and concealed them from the UN inspectors, intentionally obstructing their work.
One of Butler's weapons inspectors was Scott Ritter, a former U.S. Marine intelligence officer. He resigned in disgust in 1998, because he believed the UN and the U.S. were not tough enough on Iraq. What frustrated Ritter most of all was that, with the help of Israeli intelligence, he had managed to break an Iraqi code that governed concealing weapons from UN inspectors, just as the UN weapons inspection program was abruptly halted.
Still, Ritter issued a report that listed Iraq's weaponry by category:
- Nuclear: As long as Iraq does not have a fissionable core, it does not have a nuclear bomb. Iraq has three implosion-type nuclear devices, which could become nuclear bombs with a fissionable core.
- Chemical: An UNSCOM inspection found a document that showed Iraq "overdeclared" the number of bombs dropped and the tonnage of chemical agent used during the Iran-Iraq war, which meant Iraq still had hundreds of tonnes of chemical agent.
- Biological: There is evidence that Iraq tested biological weapons on live humans in 1995.
Butler wrote a book on his experiences in which he says Iraqi President Saddam Hussein continues his efforts to make nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, with nothing being done to stop him. "The whole mechanism the international community has set up to control these terrible weapons has broken down," Butler says.
CBC TV ran a chilling documentary in the 1990s titled Red Lies, detailing work done on a massive program of biological weapons in the former Soviet Union. The biological weaponry included finely milled, genetically altered anthrax that could resist antibiotics, which is weapons-grade anthrax of the highest order.
In April 1979, many in the city of Sverdlovsk, Russia died of an accident involving biological weaponry, including anthrax, smallpox and botulism. Thousands of scientists had worked on the program over 20 years. The accident happened at a secret military base called Compound 19 when weapons-grade anthrax was released in the ventilation system, then blew over a working-class neighbourhood. About 70 civilians died, and there were also military casualties that have never been disclosed.
The Soviets explained that the anthrax came from farm animals (which it often does, and has in northern Alberta and other parts of Canada). Anthrax conveyed from animal meat or skin contact is usually not fatal, but if anthrax spores are inhaled in large amounts it can often lead to death.
Red Lies, which appeared on The National, said in the years after the Sverdlovsk accident, research teams continued to work on biological weapons. This included refining ways of making anthrax more deadly by milling it to a fine powder, then coating the particles in plastic and resin, which kept them airborne four times longer. They also experimented with enclosing the anthrax spores in cantaloupe-sized balls that could be packed inside the warheads of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Richard Preston, author of books and articles on biological warfare, said the Soviets had enough "biowarhead" material to knock out 100 cities in the United States.
"It appears that the Soviet government had developed intercontinental missile systems that were targeted on North America," Preston said. "They were loaded with such things as smallpox, black death, anthrax and the Marburg virus, which is a close cousin of ebola, and causes this massive hemorrhagic bleeding in human victims."
There was enough concern over Iraq's biological weaponry that Canadian military personnel serving in the Gulf War were all vaccinated against anthrax. "If Russia has in fact developed a new anthrax strain capable of defeating the vaccine," a passage in the script of Red Lies says, "how long before Saddam buys either the formula or the scientists necessary to make it a weapon?"
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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