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Terror from the sky

By: Rohan Gunaratna

The unprecedented multiple attacks on high-prestige US targets on 11 September 2001 exposed the vulnerability of that state to the suicide terrorist threat. In ther Middle East and Asia, however, there have been about 240 land and maritime suicide attacks since the contemporary wave of terrorism began in 1968. As a result, countries affected by suicide terrorism have developed techniques and technologies to protect likely targets from land and sea-borne suicide threat.

Outside Israel and Sri Lanka - until recently the countries most affected by suicide terrorism - there has been little or no thinking on how to protect its human and infrastructure targets from airborne suicide attack. Nonetheless, the Western security intelligence community has been aware of terrorist consideration of the airborne suicide option for nearly three decades.

Not for the first time

The only previous attempt by a terrorist group to use a passenger airliner to mount an airborne suicide attack was in December 1994. To punish France for its assistance to the Algerian government and to draw international attention to the Algerian conflict, the Armed Islamic Group (Groupe Armée Islamique - GIA) hijacked Air France Airbus A-300 Flight 8969 in Algiers on 24 December 1994. Of the 227 passengers, 40 were French nationals. After the GIA had released some women and children, but murdered three passengers, the Algerian authorities permitted the aircraft to leave for France. The intention of the GIA cell, led by the 25-year-old Abdul Abdallah Yahia, alias Abou, was to crash a fully fuelled plane into the Eiffel Tower in the heart of Paris. The French consulate in Oran, meanwhile, had received an anonymous warning that the ultimate aim was to blow the aircraft up in mid-air over Paris. Further debriefing of the passengers released in Algiers revealed that the four GIA hijackers were carrying explosives on board, had requested and received a wristwatch from a passenger and had discussed 'martyrdom'.

Finally, an attack of this kind, which did not require the acquisition of explosives or those items commonly associated with improvised explosive devices, such as gas cylinders or certain chemicals, does not provide some of the warnings that other attacks can provide.

With the exception of the Air France case, terrorist groups in both the Middle East and Asia have been cautious about inflicting mass casualty attacks for fear of massive government retaliation.

The seeds of a tragedy

The concept of hijacking and employing passenger airliners in a suicide role can be traced back to the Middle East. The idea developed in two phases. In the first phase, the terrorists attempted to develop an air capability. Middle Eastern terrorist groups acquired and deployed light air vehicles in transport roles, primarily to gain access from Lebanon into Israel. Towards this goal, terrorists experimented, trained, rehearsed and deployed a variety of air vehicles ranging from weather balloons to microlights and remotely guided aircraft

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Several Palestinian terrorist groups based in Lebanon planned, prepared and launched air vehicles to gain access into Israel by air throughout the 1980s. Largely due to the alertness of the Israelis and the unreliability of light air vehicles, their cross-border operations were failures. However, throughout the 1990s, the technology of light air vehicles and the quality of training of the terrorist pilots improved.

Increasing sophistication, but tighter security Terrorist groups with access to resources from state sponsors continued to experiment with a new generation of air vehicles. Israeli intelligence reported that the Palestinian Liberation Front (PLF) procured about 100 light aircraft and gliders from Europe with Libyan financing. The aircraft were adapted to be able to carry two men and 180kg of explosives. The Libyan-trained pilots in Lebanon were expected to fly explosives-laden aircraft against targets in Israel.

Although the terrorist capability improved with experience, better technology and training, two factors disrupted the terrorists' airborne infiltration: tight Israeli security cordons and the lack of aerodynamic stability of the light aircraft. After realising that it was not a cost-effective tactic, both Lebanese Hizbullah and Palestinian groups abandoned the concept. However, other terrorist groups procured private aircraft for travel and experimented with light aircraft for offensive operations. For instance, the Al-Qaeda network led by Osama bin Laden purchased a military training aircraft (T-39) from the USA. After it was converted to a civilian aircraft, Bin Laden?s personal pilot, Essam al-Ridi, flew it through Canada and Europe to Sudan. Al-Ridi, a former flight instructor at the Ed Boardman School of Aviation in Texas, was also a procurement officer for Al-Qaeda. Al-Ridi crashed the aircraft at Khartoum International Airport less than a year after it was purchased.

At present, 12 Middle Eastern and Asian terrorist groups are capable of conducting suicide operations. Nonetheless, considering the targets selected and the modus operandi of the attack, only an experienced professional terrorist group like Al-Qaeda could have planned, prepared and co-ordinated an operation of the scale, precision and ruthlessness of the 11 September US attack.

By targeting the two US embassies in East Africa in 1998, Al-Qaeda demonstrated its intention and capability both to conduct mass casualty attacks and to co-ordinate simultaneous suicide strikes on separate targets in two countries. Furthermore, by ramming an explosives-laden suicide boat into the USS Cole in 1998, Al-Qaeda demonstrated that it could apply its land technology and techniques to the maritime environment. In conducting four airborne suicide attacks, Al-Qaeda has become the first group to perform land, sea and airborne suicide attacks.

The failure of the US national security establishment to infiltrate either the Al-Qaeda parent organisation in Afghanistan or its clandestine support, training and operational cells in the USA points to a flaw in US national security policy.

Since human intelligence - as opposed to technical intelligence - is the most effective weapon against terrorism, the USA will have to restructure and revamp its intelligence priorities in the years ahead.

Instead of relying fully on its foreign intelligence counterparts for information on terrorist groups, the US agencies will have no option but to recruit and run their own agents into foreign terrorist organisations that threaten US interests. As the Israelis, French and several other agencies have demonstrated, human intelligence is the most effective weapon against terrorism.

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Combating the threat

The contemporary wave of terrorism began on 22 July 1968 when the PFLP hijacked an Israeli El-Al plane flying from Rome to Tel Aviv and destroyed it with all on board. Thirty-three years after, with the introduction of suicide terrorism, the terrorist trajectory has become even more lethal.

Suicide operations are nearly impossible to prevent after the terrorists have commenced the operation. The only certain way of disrupting a suicide attack is thus at the planning and preparatory phases. Suicide-capable terrorist groups spend considerable time recruiting, indoctrinating, training, mounting reconnaissance, rehearsing (mission-training on scale models to gain speed, stealth and surprise), arranging logistics (safe houses, transport and preparation of false identification), and communicating between the parent organisation and the operational cell.

As the success of any suicide attack depends on the terrorists' investment in these two initial phases, the best chance any government has of disrupting a suicide operation is to detect and neutralise the threat before the attack is launched.

The threat of airborne suicide terrorism has been steadily developing in the Middle East and Asia over the past two decades. Until the attack on the USA, Middle Eastern and Asian terrorist groups have focused on hijacking passenger airliners or acquiring and employing one or two-seater microlights to train, rehearse, refit explosives and strike targets.

The use of passenger airliners in a suicide role demonstrates an escalation in the threat aimed at causing mass casualties. As the threshold has been crossed, it is very likely that several other terrorist groups will attempt similar operations in the immediate and foreseeable future.