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Shoulder-fired terror: A significant
escalation
By B Raman
The
Saudi Press Agency reported on June 18, 2002, the
arrests of 11 Saudis, an Iraqi and a Sudanese. All of
them were described as belonging to al-Qaeda. The
Sudanese was reported to have told the authorities that
he had fired a surface-to-air missile at a US military
plane taking off from a Saudi air base. The agency said
that the arrested persons were targeting a number of
"vital" installations and were planning to use
explosives and surface-to-air missiles.
In
Washington DC, an unnamed US official identified the
Sudanese man as Abu Huzifa, who was suspected as an
al-Qaeda cell leader and who reportedly acknowledged
shooting a shoulder-fired SA-7 surface-to-air missile at
a US warplane taking off from the Prince Sultan air
base. A simultaneous announcement by the Sudanese
government stated that it had transferred the man to
Saudi Arabia after he admitted firing a missile at a
plane at the air base.
In May 2002, Saudi
security guards were reported to have found a
missile-launcher tube about two miles from a runway at
the desert base, south of the Saudi capital of Riyadh.
Agence France-Presse, quoting a Saudi dissident, said
that dozens, if not hundreds, of Saudis linked to
al-Qaeda were in detention in the kingdom and that in
one of the cases, "between six and 15 people", all
Saudis, were arrested four months ago on suspicion of
smuggling shoulder-held missiles from Yemen.
Subsequently, a Western news agency reported on
November 7 that two Pakistanis and an Indian-born
American Muslim, who allegedly used Hong Kong as a venue
to negotiate the purchase of four Stinger missiles for
al-Qaeda, had been arrested in Hong Kong following a
sting operation by agents of the US Federal Bureau of
Investigation.
In the wake of these reports has
come the abortive attempt by some terrorists, as yet
unidentified but suspected to be from either Osama bin
Laden's al-Qaeda or one of the components of his
International Islamic Front (IIF), to bring down, with
the help of two missiles fired from the ground, an
Israeli chartered plane carrying Israeli tourists as it
was taking off from the Mombasa airport in Kenya on
November 28. The plane and its passengers had a lucky
escape. An abandoned shoulder-fired missile-launcher has
been recovered by the Kenyan police from a nearby field.
It was apparently not a heat-seeking missile as,
otherwise, the plane might not have escaped.
In
the past, there have been instances of insurgent groups,
particularly in Vietnam and Myanmar, damaging or
bringing down aircraft or helicopters with fire directed
from the ground. Conventional anti-aircraft weapons and
even rifles can be effective against low-flying
aircraft. During the Afghan war of the 1980s, the Afghan
mujahideen used with devastating effect US-supplied
Stinger missiles against Soviet aircraft and gunship
helicopters.
The Stinger is a shoulder-fired
heat-seeking missile. All that is required is to keep
the launcher on the shoulder, turn it in the direction
of the aircraft and fire. The missile chases the heat
exhaust of the plane and brings it down. After suffering
many losses, the Soviets found an effective evasive
technique by firing a number of flares while taking off
and landing and on sighting a missile-firing while in
flight. The idea was that the missile would chase one of
the flares, thereby enabling the plane to escape.
After the withdrawal of Soviet troops from
Afghanistan in 1988, the US Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) mounted a special drive to buy back from the
mujahideen the unused Stingers to prevent the
possibility of them being used for committing acts of
terrorism and for their sale to US adversaries, such as
Iran and Iraq. Despite large amounts offered by the CIA,
the mujahideen were not prepared to sell them back to
the US. The drive was, therefore, a flop.
The US
authorities reassured countries, including India, that
were worried about the possibility of these missiles
getting into the hands of Pakistan-based terrorist
groups, that once the life-period of the batteries of
the launchers expired within two years, the holders of
these missiles would find it difficult to get
replacement batteries, without which the launchers could
not be used.
After the fall of the Najibullah
government in Kabul in April 1992, Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) rushed a team of
officers to Kabul to take possession of all the unused
missiles in the custody of the Afghan army, including
the Stinger missiles seized by the army from the
mujahideen. It is not known how many missiles and their
launchers were recovered by the ISI, and what happened
to them.
Among terrorist separatist
organizations, the Chechens of Russia and the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) of Sri Lanka have
demonstrated the capability to bring down aircraft or
helicopters. In the case of the Chechens, Russian
authorities claimed that the terrorists had used
missiles. It was not known where the missiles came from.
In the case of the LTTE, there was speculation in Sri
Lanka that a shoulder-fired missile had ben used. In
1995, the LTTE was reported to have helped the
Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM) of Pakistan, which is now one
of the members of bin Laden's IIF, in smuggling by sea a
consignment of arms and ammunition, including
anti-aircraft weapons and shoulder-fired missiles, to
the Abu Sayyaf of the southern Philippines. In return,
the HuM was reported to have given the LTTE some
missiles and their launchers.
The fear of such
missiles being used for attacking aircraft carrying
important persons has been a matter of great concern to
the intelligence and security agencies of many
countries, including India, which have laid down evasive
techniques.
In the past, terrorists having an
anti-aircraft capability had used that capability mainly
against military aircraft and had refrained from using
it against civil aircraft. The attempted use of
shoulder-fired missiles against the Israeli civil
aircraft at Mombasa on November 28 shows the
ruthlessness of al-Qaeda and its allies in the IIF as
terrorist organizations. The Bali explosion of October
in Indonesia against foreign tourists frequenting night
clubs and the terrorist strikes of Mombasa have to be
seen in the context of bin Laden's threat in his
broadcast (through Al Jazeera) message of November 12 to
damage Western economies.
These strikes were not
directed at the economies of Indonesia or Kenya. They
were directed at the global economy. By targeting
foreign travellers and civil aircraft, bin Laden's
organizations, whether al-Qaeda or the IIF, are trying
to create a fear of travel and feelings of insecurity in
the emerging markets of the world, which have been the
destination of the increased flow of foreign investments
since the 1990s. Nothing deters a businessman or an
investor more than fears of physical insecurity. By
creating such fears, he has been seeking to damage the
business links of these countries with the West,
particularly the US, in the hope that this would
ultimately damage the economies of the West.
Without modern means of rapid travel and
communications, there would have been and there would be
no globalization. The organizations inspired by bin
Laden have already targeted the travel industry and the
means of transport. It is only a question of time before
they target the means of communications, such as the
Internet. To achieve their objective, they are prepared
to kill any number of innocent civilians, even if they
be innocent Muslims.
While Bali could have been
the result of an independent initiative of the
indigenous terrorist elements inspired by bin Laden
without any central direction from outside, the Mombasa
strikes indicate the possibility of central thinking,
direction and coordination. It is difficult to accept
that they were the outcome of local initiative,
undirected from a central command and control.
How is the international community going to deal
with this ruthless terrorism, the like of which the
world has not seen before? This terrorism threatens
India, Israel and the US more than any other country.
India and Israel have accumulated years of experience in
dealing with terrorism. The US has the material and
technical resources.The three should join hands for the
elimination of these terrorists with total ruthlessness.
No other group of countries can do it as effectively as
these three can, if only they cooperate silently,
intelligently and with cool determination.
B Raman is Additional Secretary (ret),
Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, and presently
director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai; member
of the National Security Advisory Board of the
Government of India. He was also head of the
counter-terrorism division of the Research &
Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency,
from 1988 to August, 1994.
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