There may well be other forms of cooperation among the three parties. But transit privileges, travel documents, help in weapons procurement, logistical support, temporary residence, and specialized training have never been activities that earned a U.S. military response. Iran and Hizballah know that even if this kind of aid to bin Laden became public knowledge, the odds are hugely against a U.S. retaliatory strike against them.
Finally, there is a geopolitical factor at play in the refusal of Iran and Hizballah to formally ally themselves with al Qaeda. Neither has a long-term interest in helping to make the Sunni Osama bin Laden the world’s premier anti-American Muslim leader, an event that would ensure that the interests and ambitions of the Shias remain a small, hated, and heretical boil on the body politic of Islam, one that would be inevitably and lethally lanced by triumphant Sunnism. For Iran, and Hizballah, at this point, less is definitely more in terms of formal cooperation with al Qaeda.76
The Search for CBRN Weapons
After they returned to Afghanistan, bin Laden and his aides focused on acquiring CBRN weapons or components. Reports of bin Laden’s success in this area may or may not be exaggerated, but Mohammed Mabruk—the EIJ’s third senior leader and someone in a position to know—told an Egyptian court in spring 1999 that bin Laden’s World Front already controlled chemical and biological weapons.77 In June 1998 Stefan Leader essentially concurred with al-Najjar in Jane’s Intelligence Review. “There is a good chance,” Leader wrote, “that he [bin Laden] has acquired or fabricated a chemical agent or agents and may well be looking for a suitable opportunity to use such a weapon.”78
There has been little exaggeration in the reporting about the prolonged efforts bin Laden and his organization have made to acquire this capability; bin Laden’s own repeated public assertions in this regard validate this reporting. Bin Laden first charged his lieutenants to acquire these weapons while he was in Sudan from 1991 to 1996, and it is prudent to assume his involvement with the NIF’s Military Industrial Corporation was in part an effort to produce CBRN weapons. It is clear bin Laden believes Muslims can successfully defend themselves against the “Crusaders and Jews” only when they have such weapons, and he stressed after Pakistan’s nuclear tests that Muslim nations “should not be lax in possessing nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.”79 Soon after Pakistan’s tests, bin Laden said, “it is the duty of every Muslim to struggle for its [the United States’] annihilation,” a choice of words suggesting that catastrophic damage of one kind or another must be inflicted on the Americans.80 Then, in December 1998 bin Laden curtly dismissed the U.S. assertions that even an attempt to acquire CBRN weapons made terrorists of him and his followers. “This is not a charge to be leveled against anyone,” bin Laden said. “Our nation [the ummah] is facing aggression and it has the right to possess what is necessary to defend itself.”81
Early in 1999, bin Laden made the point more clearly when he was asked if his group possessed chemical and biological weapons. “Trying to obtain them is not a crime,” bin Laden explained. “It is even a religious duty and it would be a sin for any Muslim to give up because our enemies have some. Do we have any weapons? Do we know how to use them? That is our business.” There also is a hint of hurt pride in bin Laden’s statements about CBRN weapons, a sentiment that bristles over the fact that the West allows Islam’s foes to possess the weapons but works to keep them from Muslims simply because they are Muslims. “America insists on belittling the [Muslim] nation,” Zawahiri told the press, “while Israel every day expands and builds its nuclear arsenal.” As in so much of what bin Laden says, it is exceedingly difficult for Muslim regimes—even those bin Laden wants to destroy—to publicly condemn his position on CBRN weapons. On this issue, bin Laden and most Muslim governments are on the same side—as they are on such issues as Jerusalem, Western popular culture, sanctions on Iraq, and secularism—in that each sees a need for a Muslim capability matching Israel’s. “The existence of an Israeli nuclear arsenal,” argued the Saudi paper Al-Jazirah in early 2000, “makes the Arab states duty-bound to reconsider their position on acquiring weapons of mass destruction as long as Israel possesses many of these weapons.”82
The work of bin Laden and al Qaeda in the CBRN arena has included attempts to hire Muslim and non-Muslim scientists who can assemble weapons, adapt them, and fabricate means of delivery.83 There also have been attempts to buy components for CBRN weapons; to establish turnkey facilities in which the weapons can be developed, produced, and modified; and to purchase off-the-shelf weapons.84 The broad range of these endeavors suggests al Qaeda would settle for what it could get and has not been seeking the perfect CBRN weapon. What al Qaeda wants, simply, is a tool to kill as many non-Muslims—Americans, Britons, Catholics, Jews, Christians generally, Israelis, and others—as possible in one stroke. It does not require symmetrical mushroom clouds or sophisticated intercontinental delivery systems, although it would take either. What al Qaeda wants is a high body count as soon as possible, and it will use whatever CBRN materials it gets in ways that will ensure the most corpses. As an Italian journalist has written, bin Laden has sought “toxins for poisoning water mains. Lethal gases for use against human beings. ‘Fungi’ for destroying harvests. These are the aims of the ‘Jihad Front against Jews and Christians.’”85
Al Qaeda attempts to recruit scientists and technicians to help develop CBRN capability have focused on Muslims, but they also have included hiring non-Muslims in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (FSU)—another example of bin Laden dealing with the devil to defeat a greater evil. Using Arab Afghans as recruiters, bin Laden arranged, according to Milan’s Corriere della Sera, for seven Saudis and one Egyptian educated in pharmacy, medicine, and microbiology in Romania and Hungary to be trained in Afghanistan by “a number of Ukrainian experts (chemists and biologists)” in the areas of “poisons and toxins.”
The training program includes the preparation of more sophisticated explosive devices and kits with toxins and chemical agents (such as sarin). There will be special courses on establishing “lethal biological cultures” using substances readily available on the commercial market or in university laboratories. Once they have completed their training, the millionaire terrorist [bin Laden] intends to send the militiamen back to their native countries or infiltrate them into Europe.86
For turnkey factories, CBRN components, and ready-to-use weapons, bin Laden and al Qaeda again turned first, but not exclusively, to Eastern Europe and the FSU. Corriere della Sera has reported bin Laden’s representatives “bought three chemical and biological agent production laboratories in the former Yugoslavia in early May [1998].”87 One lab is unaccounted for and another is in Kandahar Province. Al-Watan Al-Arabi reported bin Laden has “expressed his hope that Iraqi experts would assist this laboratory, like they did in Sudan,” and John Miller wrote in Esquire that by late 1998 “12 Iraqi experts in chemical weapons” arrived to work in bin Laden’s Afghan laboratories.88 The third laboratory is reported to be in Zenica, Bosnia, a “village that the Muslim volunteers made their base during the war. A humanitarian organization connected with Osama’s network has bought an old farm there and turned it into a ‘research cluster.’”89 In addition, the Italian magazine Sette claims bin Laden established “a well-equipped laboratory in Kandahar that produces poison and various lethal gases, which he bought as a complete unit from the Ukraine.”90 Other laboratory and production facilities available to bin Laden are reported in the Khowst and Jalalabad areas, and in the Khartoum suburb of Kubar. The latter facility is said to be a “new chemical and bacteriological factory” cooperatively built by Sudan, bin Laden, and Iraq, and may be one of several in Sudan. In January 1999, Al-Watan Al-Arabi reported that by late 1998, “Iraq, Sudan, and bin Laden were cooperating and coordinating in the field of chemical weapons. The reports say that several chemical factories were built in Sudan. They were financed by bin Laden and supervised by Iraqi experts.”91
Bin Laden also made a broad
er international effort to acquire CBRN components and off-the-shelf weapons. Ukraine appears to be a place where bin Laden had luck in both areas, perhaps because al Qaeda had a presence there; senior Ukrainian security officials have said that “Members of foreign terrorist and illegal paramilitary organizations have been staying in our country permanently and quite legally.” Al-Hayah’s also said, “Bin Laden has established a network of contacts with influential figures in the [FSU] republics, especially Ukraine.”92 In addition to the labs bought in Ukraine, bin Laden’s representatives are reported to have purchased and shipped to Afghanistan anthrax and plague viruses; insecticides; chemical weapons; and radioactive materials from Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and North Korea.93
The EIJ fighters captured in 1998 in the Balkans and Caucasus also have testified in Egypt that bin Laden’s organization has obtained “germ and biological weapons by post at a cheap price.” According to the fighters’ published testimony, factories in Europe have provided E. coli and salmonella and factories in Southeast Asia have supplied “anthrax gas” and “other toxic gases.” A Czech firm also agreed to sell “samples of the lethal butolinum germ at $7,500 a sample.” According to Al-Sharq Al-Arabi, “it is possible to use a microscopic quantity of these viruses to kill hundreds of people by inhaling it or eating contaminated food.”94 Quoting “a prominent fundamentalist residing outside Egypt,” Al-Hayah has reported bin Laden and Zawahiri plan “to distribute quantities of these [chemical and biological] weapons to the World Front in several states for use when necessary against U.S. and Israeli targets in the event of the failure to carry out operations against these targets through the use of explosives and conventional weapons.”95
Bin Laden seems to have turned to off-the-shelf nuclear weaponry after failing to buy weapons-grade uranium because of scams or missed opportunities. He tried and failed to purchase uranium while living in Sudan and, by the time he returned to Afghanistan, appears have concluded it was too hard and expensive to build a bomb. He decided, therefore, to try to buy a complete tactical nuclear weapon, and, at the same time, to acquire sub-weapons-grade uranium. The latter, according to Milan’s Panorama, to “poison the waters of some pro-U.S. state or, alternatively, to build a radioactive bomb.”96 In this regard, at least two troubling incidents have occurred. In November 1998, a Taliban-like group in Albania called Sefelizmn—perhaps a corruption of the Arabic term Salifiya, a twentieth-century Muslim reform movement urging a return to the principles of Muhammad and his immediate successors—was reported to be trying to buy radioactive waste from Albania’s nuclear power plants. The group was said to have received funds from the Islamic nongovernmental organization Muwaffaq, which has been linked to bin Laden since he was in Sudan. Then, in March 2000, Uzbek customs officials on the border with Kazakhstan seized “10 lead-lined containers … filled with enough radio active material to make dozens of crude weapons, each capable of contaminating a large area for many years.” The shipment contained strontium 90 and carried official Kazakh documents certifying it was not radioactive. The cargo was addressed to a firm in Quetta, Pakistan, which is a haven for Afghan narcotraffickers, heavily influenced by the Taliban, and, as Robert Kaplan wrote, “has increasingly become an Afghan city inside Pakistan.” A former U.S. official said the contraband is “an ideal terror weapon, used in a city, and especially places like subways, to cause maximum harm. There is therefore a high possibility that [the seized consignment] was going to terrorist groups in Pakistan and that it might well have been for bin Laden.”97
In pursuing tactical nuclear weapons, bin Laden has focused on the FSU states and has sought and received help from Iraq. While there is, and should be, doubt about whether bin Laden has acquired such weapons, there should be no doubt in any mind that he has been trying to acquire one and that al Qaeda would use it if the organization had it. Indeed, the reporting available on this aspect of bin Laden’s activities has become more compelling over time. In October 1998, for example, Al-Hayah reported he had “acquired nuclear weapons from the Islamic republics of Central Asia set up after the collapse of the Soviet Union.” The daily credited the information to “informed diplomatic sources in Asia,” but the claim was sensational and not convincing. Al-Watan Al-Arabi ran a similar but even less specific story soon thereafter.98
In November 1998, the bin Laden-CBRN-weapons story started becoming more complex, detailed, and, to an extent, plausible. Al-Watan Al-Arabi published a long article in November 1998 claiming bin Laden had, in September 1998, “purchased nuclear warheads [that were] smuggled out of the former Soviet Union.” Al-Watan Al-Arabi had reported in spring 1997 that bin Laden and Zawahiri were working with the Russian Mafia to “transfer [CBRN] weapons to Dubayy [sic],” and followed that article with another that included a warning from a leading French counterterrorism expert. This expert said the West must pay closer attention to “the cooperation between Islamic extremist movements and the Russian Mafia, which will in the future supply the latter [sic— former?] with biological and chemical weapons.”99 Now, in autumn 1998, the Paris-based Arabic daily reported this cooperation had secured for bin Laden not chemical and biological weapons, but rather twenty tactical nuclear warheads.100
The trail to the warheads, not surprisingly, began in Afghanistan. After the Soviet defeat, some Arab Afghans went to Chechnya to help Muslims there prepare to fight to evict Russian forces from the country. As the fighting evolved in Chechnya, Al-Watan Al-Arabi says, bin Laden “financed the ‘jihad’ against the Russians” and “sent groups of his supporters to fight alongside the Chechens.” Over time, bin Laden’s fighters built “wide ranging relations with some former [Chechen] officials and current rebels.” Among the contacts, apparently, were members of the Chechen Mafia, an organization that “is highly placed among the most important Russian Mafia groups led by former senior officers in the KGB and Red Army.” A September 1998 meeting near Grozny put “the final touches on ‘the nuclear warheads deal.’”101
According to reliable sources, the deal cost $30 million in cash from bin Laden’s treasury and a “grant” of two tons of Afghan heroin that were donated by the Taliban. The heroin has been estimated to be worth $70 million. Some quarters say that bin Laden was ready to pay “any price” not for nuclear technology, but [for] nuclear warheads ready for use and experts specialized in assembly, usage, and “conversion” if the need arises. Bin Laden underscored his interest in tactical nuclear weapons that can be carried in small suitcases. The Russians have hundreds of these weapons and bombs…. Al-Watan al-Arabi information confirms that these warheads—estimated at more than twenty in number in various sizes and strengths—have come from several republics and different arsenals in different areas, such as Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and even Russia. The information adds that five Muslim Turkmen nuclear experts later arrived near Khost [sic] where the warheads were stored in tunnels several hundred meters deep…. The information says that in the days of the former Soviet Union, the leader of this nuclear team worked on the center of the Iraqi Tammaz reactor before it was bombed in the 1980s. This nuclear expert is now in charge of preparing a nuclear laboratory in that secret base [in Afghanistan].102
The story has the ring of plausibility, perhaps even echoes of truth. We know for certain that bin Laden was seeking CBRN weapons; that his procurement agents have been unsuccessful and his chief procurer, Abu Hajer, is now in jail in Manhattan awaiting trial; that bin Laden, Zawahiri, and the Taliban have been supporting the Chechen Islamists against the Russians; that bin Laden has had large amounts of money of his own and from wealthy, dependable donors; that two tons of heroin is a tiny fraction of the tonnage that was produced in the Taliban’s domain; that the international media are full of stories about the Russians and its allied mafias having access to nuclear weapons; that Russian general Aleksandr Lebed told the U.S. Congress and 60 Minutes that Russia had lost “100 small nuclear bombs [that] could be put inside ordinary suitcases”; that during the Afghan war, bin Laden built
a well-protected, sophisticated tunnel complex at Khowst, and perhaps at Jaji; and that Iraq and Sudan have been cooperating with bin Laden on CBRN weapon acquisition and development. On the last point, Milan’s Corriere della Sera reported in late 1998 that Iraq’s ambassador to Turkey and former intelligence chief, Faruk Hidjazi, met bin Laden in Kandahar on 21 December 1998.103 The daily said Hidjazi offered bin Laden sanctuary in Iraq, stressing that Baghdad would not forget bin Laden’s protests against U.S.-U.K. air attacks on Iraq.104 Whether Hidjazi discussed CBRN issues with bin Laden is unknown, but it is interesting to note that Al-Watan Al-Arabi reported that in October 1998 the Iraqis “suggested to bin Laden to involve [in his search for CBRN weapons] elements from the Russian Mafia who were above suspicion. It was learned that these trusted elements were Red Army officers who established ties of friendship and trust with officers in the Iraqi army in the past when Iraqi army and intelligence officers used to go to the Soviet Union for training courses and Moscow sent its military specialists to Baghdad.”105
In summer 1999, two U.S. news services reported U.S. government experts had concluded that bin Laden’s effort to militarily strengthen al Qaeda after returning to Afghanistan had been successful. On 16 June 1999, ABC journalist John McWethy said, “Intelligence sources say there is mounting evidence [that] bin Laden’s network has acquired ingredients for chemical or biological weapons through the countries that were once part of the Soviet Union.” Then, on 6 August 1999, CBS reported, “U.S. intelligence sources say they have made a fundamental shift in their assessment of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. Once confident that bin Laden only had enough resources to strike targets overseas, like the East Africa embassies that are still under repair, they now believe he has the money and people to strike in the continental United States as well.” The same senior U.S. counterterrorism official who told 60 Minutes in October 2000 that a CBRN attack is “100 percent” certain in the decade ahead, said matter-of-factly that when such an attack occurs “most of the people in the immediate zone [of the attack] will die.”106 These conclusions were given added gravity when it was discovered in late 2001 that several Pakistani nuclear scientists had worked with al Qaeda. In March 2002, the Washington Post reported that when one of these scientists, Bashiruddin Mahmood, met bin Laden, the latter hinted that the Uzbeck Islamists already had supplied al Qaeda with fissile material from the FSU. Bin Laden then asked Mahmood—who has a reputation as a strict and committed Islamist—“to help find other Pakistani scientists more versed in the mechanics of bomb-building.”
Through Our Enemies' Eyes Page 30
