Terrorism

Although most terrorist attacks in the future will probably involve conventional firearms and explosives, Al-Qaeda has invested significant thinking and resources into acquiring, developing, and using chemical, biological, and radiological weapons (see Chemical and Biological Warfare). When based in Sudan, Osama Bin Laden paid US$1.5 million to purchase a uranium canister from South Africa. He also ordered his personal pilot, Essam Al Ridi, an Egyptian-American, to learn crop dusting. Jose Perdilla, a US convert to Islam detained by the US authorities, was planning to conduct a terrorist attack using a radiological dispersal device. At the time of the US intervention in Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban had enlisted the services of a few Pakistani scientists to develop its unconventional warfare programme. Before he was arrested in Kuala Lumpur, Yazid Zufaat, a US-trained Malaysian biochemist, headed Al-Qaeda’s anthrax programme. Similarly, an Algerian cell trained in the Pankishi Gorge, Georgia, bordering Chechnya, manufactured ricin in North London.

As it has become increasingly difficult to smuggle weapons to target zones, Al-Qaeda members have expressed an interest in using dual technologies—civilian technologies with military application that could be procured off-the-shelf. They include: commercial fertilizer acquired from agricultural farms; chemicals from chemist stores and pharmacies; radioactive material from hospitals, laboratories, and industries; and liquid petroleum and nitrogen gas containers. However, the conventional terrorist technologies—guns and bombs—will most likely remain the common weapons of terrorism in the immediate future.