war THE FOG OF
all its variants as the weapon of choice for insurgents, CBRN use – including widely available TICs (toxic industrial chemicals) - is still factored into military planning. Nonconventional forms of attack are a credible, if unpredictable and unquantifi able, threat to troops and civilians, particularly in unstable regions. Reports from Afghanistan in February 2012 indicated that the Taliban had poisoned food with chlorine bleach at Torkham Forward Operation Base near the Pakistan border in Nangarhar province, as retaliation for the earlier burning of copies of the Holy Quran by US personnel. NATO announced that fruit and coffee delivered for consumption by military personnel had shown traces of chlorine, and that the Taliban had claimed responsibility. No soldiers were reported to have been affected in this incident, but ingestion of bleach can be irritating at best and,
W
hile the 11-year campaign in Afghanistan and other confl icts has seen the IED in
if industrial bleach, very painful and injurious at worst. Attacks on civilians – most notably girls’ schools in early 2010 - and on Afghan troops and police have included the use of organophosphates, which is a precursor to nerve agent and produces similar symptoms. Serving military personnel have told the author about IEDs incorporating organophosphates and other widely available household chemicals such as Malathion and other organophosphate insecticides, and rat poison - and about food poisoning attacks through insurgent infi ltration into ISAF bases. In choosing chemical attacks, the
Taliban cause fear among the Afghan people and a prime intention is to lower the morale of the nascent, and thus far easily infi ltrated, Afghan National Army and Police. While military-grade CBRN may not currently be available to insurgents, they will use their inventiveness and supply chains to import and incorporate precursor and TICs into IEDs, as well as civilian-use radioisotopes
MILITARY OPERATIONS
Andy Oppenheimer looks at how insurgents will use their inventiveness and supply chains to launch improvised CBR attacks
into RDDs (radiological dispersal devices), or possibly fi ssile materials or depleted uranium. Also despite lack of visual and media impact, non-explosive forms of attack using common poisons and pathogens are cheap weapons of choice.
Middle East: losing control At the height of the Iraq insurgency several attacks involving chlorine were carried out from January to March 2007. Over 200 Iraqi civilians were infl icted with chemical injuries when tankers carrying chlorine were hijacked and blown up. Following Saddam Hussein’s massacre of Kurds at Halabja in the 1980s with true CW, the Iraqi insurgents could guarantee their attacks would cause maximum terror. Although successive UN inspection teams and occupying US forces have cleared much of Iraq of CW ordnance, the sheer number of abandoned chemical shells may provide the means for ICDs (improvised chemical devices) for ongoing sectarian violence in a very volatile country.
CHEMICAL, BIOLOGICAL & NUCLEAR WARFARE | 2012/02 | 39
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