Beyond ‘Dirty Bombs’
Amjed Jaaved

HYPER-SENSITIVE analysts have postulated that the stolen radio-active material could be used in making “dirty bombs”. Post-graduate students in foreign universities have been analyzing hypothetical implications of radio-active material falling into hands of so-called “terrorists”. A report by Henry Stimson Center, Washington (followed by several other reports) laments “...Nuclear and radiological terrorism remains a frightening possibility in India and Pakistan, and the source material for nuclear terrorism could come from illicit transactions of poorly protected materials originating outside the region, as well as material from within the region used for military or civilian purposes”.
The report even provides an “analysis of the effects of a nuclear accident and/or nuclear terrorism from a ‘dirty bomb’ attack on Indian and Pakistani cities. The Stimson Center warns that “depending on location and yield, a small nuclear explosion in either of the countries could cause more casualties than Hiroshima and Nagasaki”. The report, titled “Nuclear terrorism and nuclear accidents in South Asia”, also cautions that radioactive fallout from a dirty bomb in a major commercial center in either of the neighbors could have potentially disastrous economic, psychological and political ramifications”.This report was provided to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee to facilitate Cooperative Threat Reduction Program on nuclear proliferation in South Asia.
The report concludes that “although India and Pakistan ‘have established regulatory bodies to deal with the safety and security of their nuclear materials,’ these may not be sufficient to protect against every potential threat”. Another report, authored by Kishore Kuchibhotla, Ph.D (Biophysics) from Harvard, and Matthew McKinzie, a nuclear physicist serving as a staff scientist with USA’s Nuclear Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, argues that “...three other types of events could prompt unintended escalation in South Asia: a terrorist use of RODs (radiological dispersal devices); a terrorist detonation of a nuclear weapon; and the accidental explosion of nuclear arms -for example at military bases in either India or Pakistan... The report points out that while nuclear weapons themselves are closely guarded, all sorts of radioactive material could be found in research laboratories and hospitals that could provide the basic materials for the making of a dirty bomb Nearly 1 0,000 radioactive sources are used throughout India of which about 400 are particularly worrisome...” The report predicts that “. ..dirty bomb detonation in Karachi, New Delhi, Mumbai and Islamabad” could result in “casualties that at the very minimum would number in the tens of thousands”. It is eerie to note that The Time (Pentagon) correspondent Mark Thompson asserts in his article What Is A ‘Dirty Bomb, “It’s unlikely to kill 1 0,000 people”.)
It appears that the concern about the “dirty bombs” is overblown. History of terrorism reflects that “terrorists” are interested in symbolic targets (which could yield widespread publicity), not in mass killing (vide Verindre Grover’s Encyclopaedia of International Terrorism). A “dirty bomb” is not known to have been tested by any country or detonated by any “terrorist” anywhere in the world. So, its composition and scope of its destructive power is shrouded in mystery. However, it is generally believed to “consist of a bomb made of conventional explosives such as TNT, salted with radioactive material”. Contrary to the “dirty bombs”, fall-out of the tested A-bombs is well recorded. The major powers declared moratoriums on nuclear-bombs testing only in 1992. The pre-1992-period test scoreboard of the USA, former Soviet Union, France, and Britain is an explosion every 18 days, 21 days, 61 days, and 331 days (R Venkataraman Nuclear Explosion and its Aftermath).
It is much easier and cheaper to make a chemical or biological bomb than a “dirty bomb” (It is believed that the chemical bombs used by Saddam’s Iraq against Iran were made with Indian know-how). Though a “dirty bomb” has never been used by any “terrorist”, a bio/chemical bomb was actually used by Japan’s former doomsday-cult Guru Shoko Asahara. The Guru stands sentenced to death “for masterminding the deadly 1995 nerve/chemical gas (sarin) attack on the Tokyo subway and a string of other crimes that killed 27 people”. The cult’s quest for biological weapons was overshadowed by its chemical attack capability. The cult members were trying to develop botulinium toxin by utilising toxin of green Mamba snake and poisonous mushroom spores, Regarding use of chemical/biological weapons by “terrorists”, Professor Ramesh Chandra points out in his Global Terrorism (volume 1, page 27), “The US government indicates that these weapons are well within the reach of terrorists. According to the Central Intelligence Agency, ‘Terrorist interest in chemical and biological weapons is not surprising, given the relative ease with which some of these weapons can be produced in simple laboratories... Although popular fiction and national attention have focused on terrorist use of nuclear weapons, chemical and biological weapons are more likely choices for such groups’’’.
Not only sarin, but also several other chemical agents like mustard, tabun, soman and VX are capable of dual use as pesticiges and as a chemical weapon. Chandra (op. Cit., page 30) points out, “chemical warfare agents ‘can quite literally be manufactured in a kitchen or basement in quantities for sufficient for mass-casualty attacks”. Experts agree that it is more difficult to manufacture Sarin gas, used by the “terrorists” in Japan, than mustard, tabun, soman, et al. To some experts, an effective bio-terrorism facility could be built at $ 200,000 to 2 million. Biological weapons, too, are easier to manufacture than “dirty bombs”. Viruses could cause smallpox, Venezuelan equine encephalitis and hemorrhagic fevers like Ebola. The threat of biological weapons is obvious from the fact that: (1) The charges for anthrax, Q fever (Coxiella burnetti) and Venezuelian equine encephalomyeletus cultures from a leading US culture collection are about $ 45, $ 80, and $81 respectively. Besides, nature abounds with microscopic killers. Bacillus anthracis resides in hides and carcasses of wild or domesticated animals and plagues in prairie dogs, chipmunks, black rats, deer mouse and coyotes. Chandra (op cit) states that “The cost estimates for a bioterrorism facility vary quite widely from $ 200,000 to $ 2 million...lnstructions for how to mass produce, purify, and concentrate microbes can be found in textbooks and scientific journals”.
It appears that disproportionate emphasis on mythical “dirty bombs” vis-avis chemical / bio- bombs is meant to press and exploit non-major or nuclearthreshold states. “Dirty” or clean bomb attacks by “terrorists” need to be understood and explained within broader frame of “terrorism”. There being no universally-acceptable definition of “terrorism”, any state, individual or group could be dubbed a “terrorist”. Not to speak of social sciences, divergence of perceptions marred understanding even in pure-science concepts like negative numbers in mathematics. Example: Anoine Arnauld argued in mid1600 that the proposition -1: 1 = 1: -1 must be non-sense: ‘How can a smaller be to a greater as a greater is to a smaller’. In year 1712, over hundred years ahead, Leibnitz agreed that Arnauld had a cogent point. To control “terrorism”, it is necessary that no strong state should try to exploit a weak state, using “aiding abetting terrorism” as a subterfuge. In historical context, efforts to distinguish “terrorism” from civil disobedience, revolutions, crime, banditry, freedom movement, etc have foundered.
The best approach to control “terrorism”, including the so-called nuclear terrorism, appears to be the one presented by Dr Ihekwoaba D. Onwudiwe (University of Maryland) in his The Globalization of Terrorism. He used World Systems Theory (dividing countries into dominant/core and dependent/peripheral groups) to identify the “terrorism” problem. To him, “core development” in the now developed countries “occurred because it ‘sucked’ the economic resources of the periphery resulting in income inequalities and divergent cultures which some authors have falsely labeled ‘dual societies’...The relationship of inequality still exists... This situation is mostly accomplished when the periphery is at its weakest point in history”.
Onwudiwe does not classify “terrorists” as criminals or freedom fighters (like those in Kashmir). He points out “today’s terrorist is tomorrow’s freedom fighter”. He looks at terrorism as “consequence of how the world is ordered”, and postulates, “There are dominant nations that control world resources and manufacturing practices, and which possess the ability to translate their economic resources into political and military strength used to maintain a world order that continues to benefit their best interests.. .They have the military might to enforce their will when challenged.. . Patterns of terrorism are strongly influenced by nature of the capitalist world economic system. .. .Terrorism is a response to the structure of the world system, a response to the global inequality that exists between nations, the only solution that will have any significant impact on the reduction and control of terrorism are those that restructure the world; that is policies that eliminate cross-national inequality and existing patterns of exploitation that extend from the core to the peripheral nations of the world. Military interventions, attempts at ‘target hardening’, or other forms of social control such as economic sanctions, may work in the short run to contain terrorism, but only temporarily. In the long run, however, these policies have been and will continue to be ineffective since they do nothing to remedy the conditions that set the state for terrorism: namely global inequality”. The US authorities have recorded over 175 cases worldwide of nuclear materials (not bombs) being smuggled out of former Soviet Union territories and other countries. The Federation of American Scientists, nevertheless, admits that “radiological attacks could result in some deaths but not hundreds of thousands of casualties that could be caused by a crude nuclear weapon”.
The US scientist conclude, “Significant quantities of radioactive material have been lost or stolen from US facilities during the past few years. Radiological materials, is stored in thousands of facilities around the US, many of which may not be adequately protected against theft by determined terrorists”. Materials like Iridium-192, Cobalt 60 (Gamma emitter), Cessium-137 (Gamma emitter), Americium (Alpha emitter) and even plutonium could still be stolen from over 21,000 laboratories, food irradiation plants, oil drilling facilities and medical centres in the USA. But, it is not an easy job to make an effective “dirty bomb”. Solution to nuclear and other forms of terrorism lies in a less exploitative world order. Studies have shown that “global economic dependency may have a direct impact (determined by income inequality and lower standard of living) on the resurgence of terrorism and or political violence (Robinson and London, 1991). It appears that “dirty bomb” is a hoax to exploit nouveau-nuclear or nuclear-threshold nations. It could be a weapon of mass disruption, but not a weapon of mass destruction. Real threat emanates from chemical or bioweapons.

Nameless graves
Aimen Malik

KILLING Innocent civilians, after dubbing them as “Pakistani militants”, is a known phenomenon in Indian-Held Kashmir. The people killed incommunicado in army custody are secretly Several Indian and international human-rights organisation has documented mysterious disappearance of Kashmiri people. These organisations include Amnesty International, Human-rights Watch, besides the National Human Rights Commission of India (NHRC). The last-mentioned body is sponsored and funded by the Indian government itself under India’s Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993. Articles 32 and 33 of the Act make provisions for central and state governments’ grants to the commission. However, the Commission is debarred from inquiring into brutal acts of the armed forces., notwithstanding jurisdictional fetters to its feet, the Commission has been very active in chasing violations of human rights not only by saffronised civilians but also army and security forces.
The families of the `disappeared persons’ have been struggling in vain to find clues about whereabouts of their kith and kin. They staged demonstrations to draw attention of the puppet government to their plight, but in vain. Widespread protests broke out when some army men, clad as policemen, were caught secretly burying, at mid-night, two dead bodies in the Rikkipora (Kupwara) graveyard. Rikkipora is a small graveyard with 252 graves. The `policemen’ were caught as they were in great hurry. They forgot that the villagers normally buried their relatives by day, not by night. Besides, the convention was that even dead body of an un-identified person was not immediately buried. It was kept for identification by villagers in the Kupwara police station for a day.
To appease popular wrath, some members of the puppet legislative assembly promised that they would talk to authorities to divulge the identities of the buried persons. They knew that it was difficult to trace the people who disappeared in distant past. So, they concentrated on cases of persons who had disappeared in near past _ Farooq Ahmed Sheikh, son of Abdul Ahad, resident of Kukroosa; Bashir Ahmed Lone, son of Ghulam Muhammad of Shaharkoot; Abdul Rashid Khan, son of Ghulam Rasool Khan of Kukroosa; Farooq Baig, son of Rahamatullah of Sirajpora; Bashir Ahmed Mir, son of Ghulam Hassan of Panjwa; Farooq Ahmed Shah, son of Abdul Satter of Kawari; and Mudassar Shaheen of Bahawalpora. After enquiring from army and security agencies, an MLA told the families that it would be futile to pursue the cases of the disappeared persons. The army says that they were “militants killed in action.
Under pressure of popular protests, some dead bodies were exhumed. The DNA tests confirmed that the “militants” were, in fact, innocent Kashmiris. Recently, the association of parents of the disappeared persons (APDP) has published a report to bring into limelight the plight of the bereaved families. The association’s report “Facts Under Ground” pointed out that in Varmul district area (Uri), alone, there were over 940 nameless graves. The report says, “The APDP believes the nameless graves are of thousands of Kashmiris who were subjected to custodial disappearance during past 18 years,” the report mentions. We (APDP) have been able to find 940 to 1000 graves in many villages of Uri district during the two-year long survey. And according to the locals most of the buried persons labeled as foreign militants by troops and policemen were later found to be the Kashmiris”. The APDP pinpointed the number of graves discovered along with their location. The areas include Zandfaran, Kichama, Budmulla, Fatehgarh Chehal, Bimyar, Peerniyan, Kreeri, Pattan, Sopur, Tangmarg, Gulmarg, Boniyar and Uri.
The report mentions, “The dead were claimed to be militants by army but later found to be locals, Ashfaq Ahmad of Chandoosa, Muhammad Sidiq of Boniyar, Muhammad Rafiq of Chattabal here and Feroz Ahmad Bhat of Basant Bagh, Srinaga, et al” . From the report, we come to know that sometimes those killed are not even buried. They are thrown into a pit later filled with earth. The report states, “In brigade headquarter, Rampur, there is a well where a number of bodies of Kashmiris have been disposed off”. According to Parveez Imroz, a patron of the APDP, “The APDP team found 1000 nameless graves in Uri, the situation could be worse in other districts like Kupwara and Handwara and other heavily militarized areas in Kashmir”. Accoriding to the Hindustan Times, relatives of the people missing in Kashmir urged international intervention to stop Indian army from their continued reign of terror in Kashmir.






McCain’s Islamic demagoguery
Jonathan Power

FIRST it was Mitt Romney who wrote in Foreign Affairs that “radical Islam’s threat is just as real as that posed before by the Nazis and the Soviet Union” And now, last week, it was John McCain saying the US needed a leadership “to confront the transcendent challenge of our time: the threat of radical Islamic terrorism”. To realise what poisonous nonsense this is you only have to turn back a page to the time of the Palestinian liberation movement, whose daring terrorism at the Munich Olympics and constant plane hijackings kept the world as jittery as it is now with Al Qaeda. The IRA managed, together with its Protestant opposite numbers, to hold hostage to violence a whole province of the United Kingdom, beside murdering the queen’s uncle and nearly succeeding in murdering the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. These were very disturbing events, and if the terrorists had had just a tiny bit more success, with a lucky hit like 9/11 — and it wasn’t for lack of trying — they really would have rocked Western societies. But to my recollection no one, neither politician nor commentator, said this was “the transcendent challenge of our time” or likened these minority movements to the threat of the biggest military powers of the 1940s and 50s.
If anyone had it would have been considered over the top, clearly non comparable to the threat of Nazi conquest or, later, world wide atheistic communism whose creed was permanent revolution. Likewise, it was non comparable to the economic angst of the 1980s or to the oppression in southern Africa or to the maliciousness of dictatorship in South America. Hold on, wait a moment will say my critics. Romney and McCain said “radical Islam”. They were not tarring the whole of the Muslim religion. But context is everything. Those in the Islamic world who follow the Western debate know their texts and how it all began. First with the academic scholarship of Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington. Huntington’s words in his world-famous book, “The Clash of Civilisations” still chill the bone: “The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism, IT IS ISLAM, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power”.
If McCain wants to continue like this in the campaign to come I would ask him first to reflect on the recent remarks of Zbigniew Brzezinski who observed in response to Romney’s statement, “A candidate who says that kind of stuff either thinks, probably correctly, that the American people are not well informed — in which case he’s demagoguing — or he’s stupid enough to believe it himself. In either case it offers a compelling argument as to why such a candidate should not be president.” This in a nutshell is what is wrong with McCain’s talk. The recent election in Pakistan should give him pause. One good reason given by the anti-Musharraf voices for having an open election was that with the parties competing in the Western border areas, where the Taleban are active and the Al Qaeda leadership may be hiding, was that it would make it more difficult for the Islamic fundamentalist parties, then in power, to win another election. The Americans and the British refused to buy this argument, preferring Musharraf to kill off the militants. But this indeed is what happened. The militant religious parties were roundly defeated in the North-West Frontier Province by a moderate regional party, the Awami National Party. Although Pathan-based they want to end the violence not by military might but by sustained dialogue and reviving the neglected economic development of the province. The conclusion is obvious. Even in the most desperate of situations if the Islamic masses are given the vote and open choice they will often enough vote for moderates who shun violence. In recent years they have they done so consistently in Indonesia and Turkey, Islam’s two most populous states . So have they done in Malaysia and Nigeria.

—Khaleej Times