The accessibility of nuclear material to terrorist organizations however continues to be of active concern to the international community, and therefore measures are being adopted to stem the nuclear proliferation market. It is owing to fears of new nuclear weapons states arming terror groups that regional tensions are growing in the Middle East in particular. Iran and Syria are prime examples of such fears in contemporary times. It is owing to the covert nature of the Iranian nuclear program and its documented links to terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah that the United States and Israel have raised concerns. In Syria for example, the Israeli Air Force last year bombed a suspected nuclear plant in a repeat of a similar attack in Iraq in 1981 (New York Times, 14 October 2007). Coincidentally, the nuclear program in the Middle East can be traced back to the A.Q Khan network (Rediff, 27 February 2005).
The threat of state backed nuclear attacks is a prime concern for the west and this can be witnessed in how the U.S. has been dealing with Libya. Libya in late 2003 voluntarily disclosed it’s nuclear and WMD program and announced its intention to dismantle the same. The decision was lauded by the International community and resulted in major American sanctions being overturned, eventually including the tag of being a state sponsor of terrorism (State Department, 20 September 2004). Reports indicate that the United States is moving towards removing North Korea from the State Department list of terror sponsoring nations subject to greater cooperation on its nuclear program as well (Times of India, 24 June 2008).
Even states which are not patronizing terrorists are viewed with concern, especially those having large stockpiles of nuclear paraphernalia. Howard Baker, the Republican leader of the senate had once testified “It really boggles my mind that there could be 40,000 nuclear weapons, or maybe 80,000 in the former Soviet Union, poorly controlled and poorly stored, and that the world is not in a near-state of hysteria about the danger” (Foreign Affairs, February 2004).
Ironically, the United States, a country which is perceived to have the highest threat level for nuclear terrorism has not been able to keep its own nuclear stockpile under strict scrutiny. According to a Pentagon report, the U.S. military has been unable to locate hundreds of sensitive nuclear missile components (Financial Times, 19 June 2008). While it is not believed that these missing parts would be easily available to terrorist groups, it raises serious questions. Particularly when considering that the U.S. President George W. Bush considers the threat of nuclear terrorism to be real. Bush in a statement had said “He [Osama Bin Laden] announced that this was his intention and I believe we need to take him seriously” (The Guardian, 7 November 2001).
Nuclear terrorism as a threat level remains a serious and very real concern of security officials. The September 11 attacks reflected a change in the mindset of how a war is waged. According to scholar Collin McInnes, the world was moving away from the mass causality inflicting total wars to a more humane form of warfare which condemned civilian casualties. Al-
Qaeda’s use of civilian means of transport as weapons against civilian targets was a deviation from the “new wars” and reflected a total war perspective (Review of International Studies, 2003). It is feared that this degradation to total warfare would allow Al-Qaeda the rationale to use nuclear weaponry with the sole intention of using it as an offensive weapon as opposed to the deterrent capability which nuclear weapons have come to symbolize in the modern environment. It is particularly feared that states with nuclear material would choose to transfer such technology to protégé terror groups to advance regional hegemony through proxy means.
Terrorist groups do not have the resources and technological know how to undertake a large scale nuclear attack and despites its resources even Al-Qaeda would find it difficult to detonate a nuclear device with the mass casualty associated with it. The blueprint of the A.Q Khan nuclear network is the best illustration of how terror groups can build their nuclear arsenal. Therefore, the best method for prevention of such an attack is to secure the existing stockpile around the world and strengthen cooperation among nation states in order to consolidate the non-proliferation regime.
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