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Additionally,
while the 9/11 anniversary reminds us that some jihadist groups
have demonstrated a fixation on attacking aviation targets —
especially those militants influenced
by the operational philosophies of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM)
— the convictions in the 2006 plot highlight the fact that the
fixation on aviation targets lives on even after the 2003 arrest
of KSM.
In
response to this persistent threat, aviation security has changed
dramatically in the post-9/11 era, and great effort has been
undertaken at great expense to make attacks against passenger
aircraft more difficult. Airline attacks are harder to conduct now
than in the past, and while many militants have shifted their
focus onto easier targets like subways or hotels,
there are still some jihadists who remain fixated on the aviation
target, and we will undoubtedly see more attempts against
passenger aircraft in spite of the restrictions on the quantities
of liquids that can be taken aboard aircraft and the now mandatory
shoe inspections.
Quite
simply, militants will seek alternate ways to smuggle components
for IEDs aboard aircraft, and this is where another thread comes
in — that of the Aug. 28 assassination
attempt against Saudi Deputy Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin
Nayef. The tactical innovation employed in this attack
highlights the vulnerabilities that still exist in airline
security.
Shifts
The
airline security paradigm changed on 9/11. In spite of the recent
statement by al Qaeda leader Mustafa Abu al-Yazid that al Qaeda
retains the ability to conduct 9/11-style attacks, his boast
simply does not ring true. After the 9/11 attacks there is no way
a captain and crew (or a group of passengers for that matter) are
going to relinquish control of an aircraft to hijackers armed with
box cutters — or even a handgun or IED. A commercial airliner
will never again be commandeered from the cockpit and flown into a
building — especially in the United States.
Because
of the shift in mindset and improvements in airline security, the
militants have been forced to alter their operational framework.
In effect they have returned to the pre-9/11 operational concept
of taking down an aircraft with an IED rather than utilizing an
aircraft as human-guided missile. This return was first
demonstrated by the December 2001 attempt by Richard Reid to
destroy American Airlines Flight 63 over the Atlantic with a shoe
bomb and later by the thwarted 2006 liquid-explosives plot. The
operational concept in place now is clearly to destroy rather than
commandeer. Both the Reid plot and the 2006 liquid-bomb plot show
links back to the operational philosophy evidenced by Operation
Bojinka in the mid-1990s, which was a plot to destroy multiple
aircraft in flight over the Pacific Ocean.
The
return to Bojinka principles is significant because it represents
not only an IED attack against an aircraft but also a specific
method of attack: a camouflaged, modular IED that the bomber
smuggles onto an aircraft in pieces and then assembles once he or
she is aboard and well past security. The original Bojinka plot
used baby dolls to smuggle the main explosive charge of
nitrocellulose aboard the aircraft. Once on the plane, the main
charge was primed with an improvised detonator that was concealed
inside a carry-on bag and then hooked into a power source and a
timer (which was disguised as a wrist watch). The baby-doll device
was successfully smuggled past security in a test run in December
1994 and was detonated aboard Philippine Air Flight 434.
The
main charge in the baby-doll devices, however, proved insufficient
to bring down the aircraft, so the plan was amended to add a
supplemental charge of liquid triacetone triperoxide (or TATP,
aptly referred to as “Mother of Satan”), which was to be
concealed in a bottle of contact lens solution. The plot unraveled
when the bombmaker, Abdel
Basit (who is frequently referred to by one of his alias names,
Ramzi Yousef) accidentally started his apartment on fire while
brewing the TATP.
The
Twist
The
2006 liquid-bomb plot borrowed the elements of using liquid
explosives and disguised individual components and attacking
multiple aircraft at the same time from Bojinka. The 2006 plotters
sought to smuggle their liquid explosives aboard using drink
bottles instead of contact lens solution containers and planned to
use different types of initiators. The biggest difference between
Bojinka and more recent plots is that the Bojinka operatives were
to smuggle the components aboard the aircraft, assemble the IEDs
inside the lavatory and then leave the completed devices hidden
aboard multi-leg flights while the operatives got off the aircraft
at an intermediate stop. The more recent iterations of the
jihadist airplane-attack concept, including Richard Reid’s
attempted shoe bombing and the 2006 liquid-bomb plot, planned to
use suicide bombers to detonate the devices midflight. The
successful August 2004 twin
aircraft bombings in Russia by Chechen militants also utilized
suicide bombers.
The
shift to suicide operatives is not only a reaction to increased
security but also the result of an evolution in ideology —
suicide bombings have become more widely embraced by jihadist
militants than they were in the early 1990s. As a result, the
jihadist use of suicide bombers has increased dramatically in
recent years. The success and glorification of suicide operatives,
such as the 9/11 attackers, has been an important factor in this
ideological shift.
One
of the most recent suicide attacks was the Aug. 28 attempt by al
Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to assassinate Saudi Prince
Mohammed bin Nayef. In that attack, a suicide operative smuggled
an assembled IED containing approximately one pound of high
explosives from Yemen to Saudi Arabia concealed in his rectum.
While in a meeting with Mohammed, the bomber placed a telephone
call and the device hidden inside him detonated.
In
an environment where militant operational planning has shifted
toward concealed
IED components, this concept of smuggling components such as
explosive mixtures inside of an operative poses a daunting
challenge to security personnel — especially if the components
are non-metallic. It is one thing to find a quantity of C-4
explosives hidden inside a laptop that is sent through an X-ray
machine; it is quite another to find that same piece of C-4 hidden
inside someone’s body. Even advanced body-imaging systems like
the newer backscatter and millimeter wave systems being used to
screen travelers for weapons are not capable of picking up
explosives hidden inside a person’s body. Depending on the
explosive compounds used and the care taken in handling them, this
method of concealment can also present serious challenges to
explosive residue detectors and canine explosive detection teams.
Of course, this vulnerability has always existed, but it is now
highlighted by the new tactical reality. Agencies charged with
airline security are going to be forced to address it just as they
were previously forced to address shoe bombs and liquid
explosives.
Actors
Currently
there are three
different actors in the jihadist realm. The first is the core
al Qaeda group headed by bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. The core
al Qaeda organization has been hit hard over the past several
years, and its operational ability has been greatly diminished. It
has been several years since the core group has conducted a
spectacular terror attack, and it has focused much of its effort
on waging
the ideological battle as opposed to the physical battle.
The
second group of actors in the jihadist realm is the regional al
Qaeda franchise groups or allies, such as al Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula, Jemaah Islamiyah and Lashkar-e-Taiba. These regional
jihadist groups have conducted many of the most spectacular
terrorist attacks in recent years, such as the November 2008 Mumbai
attacks and the July 2009 Jakarta
bombings.
The
third group of actors is the grassroots jihadist militants, who
are essentially do-it-yourself terrorist operatives. Grassroots
jihadists have been involved
in several plots in recent years, including suicide bomb plots
in the United States and Europe.
In
terms of terrorist
tradecraft such as operational planning and bombmaking, the
core al Qaeda operatives are the most advanced, followed by the
operatives of the franchise groups. The grassroots operatives are
generally far less advanced in terms of their tradecraft. However,
any of these three actors are capable of constructing a device to
conduct an attack against an airliner. The components required for
such a device are incredibly simple — especially so in a suicide
attack where no timer or remote detonator is required. The only
components required for such a simple device are a main explosive
charge, a detonator (improvised or otherwise) and a simple
initiator such as a battery in the case of an electric detonator
or a match or lighter in the case of a non-electric detonator.
The
October 2005 incident in which a University
of Oklahoma student was killed by a suicide device he was
carrying demonstrates how it is possible for an untrained person
to construct a functional IED. However, as we have seen in cases
like the July 2005 attempted
attacks against the London Underground and the July 2007 attempted
attacks against nightclubs in London and the airport in Glasgow,
grassroots operatives can also botch things due to a lack of
technical bombmaking ability. Nevertheless, the fact remains that
constructing IEDs is actually easier than effectively planning an
attack and successfully executing it.
Getting
a completed device or its components by security and onto the
aircraft is a significant challenge, but as we have discussed, it
is possible to devise ways to overcome that challenge. This means
that the most significant weakness of any suicide-attack plan is
the operative assigned to conduct the attack. Even in a plot to
attack 10 or 12 aircraft, a group would need to manufacture only
about 12 pounds of high explosives — about what is required for
a single, small suicide device and far less than is required for a
vehicle-borne explosive device. Because of this, the operatives
are more of a limiting factor than the explosives themselves, as
it is far more difficult to find and train 10 or 12 suicide
bombers.
A
successful attack requires operatives not only to be dedicated
enough to initiate a suicide device without getting cold feet;
they must also possess the nerve to calmly proceed through airport
security checkpoints without alerting officers that they are up to
something sinister. This set of tradecraft skills is referred to
as demeanor, and while remaining calm under pressure and behaving
normal may sound simple in theory, practicing good demeanor under
the extreme pressure of a suicide operation is very difficult.
Demeanor has proven to be the Achilles’ heel of several terror
plots, and it is not something that militant groups have spent a
great deal of time teaching their operatives. Because of this, it
is frequently easier to spot demeanor mistakes than it is to find
well-hidden explosives.
In
the end, it is impossible to keep all contraband off aircraft.
Even in prison systems, where there is a far lower volume of
people to screen and searches are far more invasive, corrections
officials have not been able to prevent contraband from being
smuggled into the system. Narcotics, cell phones and weapons do
make their way through prison screening points. Like the prison
example, efforts to smuggle contraband aboard aircraft can be
aided by placing people inside the airline or airport staff or via
bribery. These techniques are frequently used to smuggle narcotics
on board aircraft.
Obviously,
efforts to improve technical methods to locate IED components must
not be abandoned, but the existing vulnerabilities in airport
screening systems demonstrate that emphasis also needs to be
placed on finding the bomber and not merely on finding the bomb.
Finding the bomber will require placing a greater reliance on
other methods such as checking names, conducting interviews and
assigning trained security officers to watch for abnormal behavior
and suspicious demeanor. It also means that the often overlooked
human elements of airport security, including situational
awareness, observation and intuition, need to be emphasized now
more than ever.
[Source:
Stratfor
Global Intelligence]
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