Chemical and Biological Weapons of Mass Destruction - Term Paper Example

 Terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction Terrorism is a socially dangerous social occurrence that involves the premeditated but defined use of force or the threat of force focused on other persons always meant to trigger fear through the ideologies of the terrorist group that may be political or religious in nature.1 Terrorists would resort to weapons of mass destruction in order to spread their cause, gain the attention of the media or make a statement often a religious or a political one. For example, Osama bin Laden the late leader of Al-Qaeda asserted in the year 1998 that he felt that it was his religious duty to acquire weapons of mass destruction in order to achieve the intents and goals of his terrorist group.2 Several terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda have actively sought to acquire Weapons of Mass Destruction that may be nuclear, biological or chemical in nature and some of these groups have even grappled with experimentation of the said weapons. Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) usually refer to arms that can cause destruction to the highest scale or those that may be used to destroy many numbers of people at ease. They can be highly explosive, nuclear, biological, chemical or biological but do not include the mode that has been used to transport it as this is deemed as a separate and divisible part of the weapon. Weapons of Mass Destruction pose the greatest challenge or threat to the global security and stability as the proliferation of these advanced weapons and technologies threaten to provide States, which are rogue like Iran and North Korea to inflict damage and destruction to the world population.3 The al-Qaeda made efforts to acquire biological WMDs through a sophisticated anthrax project that would have produced weapon capable of destroying a large population of the world especially the United States while the use of chemical toxins and pathogens has been left to cells associated with al-Qaeda such as ricin and cyanide that has been used in attacks in Europe.4 These attacks using weapons of mass destruction have intensified especially after the September 11 attacks in the United States and the terrorist bombings in Oklahoma City in the year 1995.5 Although these threats remain less severe than the proportions that happened in the year 2001, they have become more complex and diverse putting a security nightmare to all nations involved in the fight against terror and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.6 The threat or the use of biological or chemical weapons is real in the current world and therefore there is need to try and locate the weapons and destroy them before they are used, and defend against as well as manage the consequences of these weapons of mass destruction if at all they are used. The use of chemical and/or biological weapons has gained ground due to the ease with which there is unrestricted availability of the necessary information, the relatively small resources needed to acquire or make them and easier methods of delivery. It is important to note from the onset that terrorists are less likely to use nuclear weapons as they are hard to manufacture, more expensive and difficult to deliver. However, chemical agents are easier to produce, but difficult to store or deliver also known as dispersing the weapon while biological weapons are easier to procure but difficult to store or disperse. This was evident when Al Qaeda failed in its mission to weaponize anthrax and other biological pathogens but it was difficult to control and bottle up. Therefore, terrorists are most likely to make use of chemical weapons of mass destruction over the biological means due to the inherent advantages and conveniences that the chemical weapons of mass destruction has on the terrorist. The technology used in the production of chemical weapons of mass destruction is much harder to identify as that which is used to make weapons as those that are used to produce nuclear materials. This is because many techniques of production of chemical weapons can be found in simple and easily available literature that can be deciphered from the simple and standard principles of chemical engineering. For example, the production of mustard gas that is a bad weapon of mass destruction is quite easier and simple and even chemical plants that manufacture organo-phosphorous pesticides can be converted in a matter of a short time to produce nerve agents that can be used as a weapon of mass destruction. Chemical Weapons of Mass destruction fall in several categories that may include those aimed at choking, those that cause blisters, those that enter and flow in the blood and the nerve agents. The choking agents cause the lung to fill with fluid while the blood agents enter the blood stream and prevent the blood from utilizing oxygen leading to death. The blister agents cause the eye, lung and skin to have blisters occasioning damage to these vital organs while the nerve agents paralyze the respiratory muscles of the victim. The nerve agents are yet again categorized into series such as the G-series nerve agents which comprise of Tabun, Sarin and others that can lead to death very fast while the more toxic ones in V-series generates long-term adulteration of people, their equipment and territory. The chemical agents are further divided into lethal or non-lethal agents, rapid acting or slow acting, persistent like sulfur mustard or non-persistent like Tabun, Sarin and Saman that are rapid-reacting resulting into instant casualties. Chemical warfare agents are readily available and simpler to produce as they are within the reach of most terrorist organizations and are easier to disseminate through conventional munitions like missiles, bombs, artillery shells, mortar rounds or in aerosol form. Biological warfare agents are also of great concern as they require much smaller and cheaper industrial infrastructure and the equipment often used in their production may be of other important use and easily available in the open market. Biological agents can be produced from naturally occurring pathogens like viruses and bacteria that can replicate themselves. When inflicted on a particular group of population, it can lead to cessation of breathing, the collapse of body tissues, trauma caused to the cell or pulmonary failure. Terrorists may produce and use several biological agents such as anthrax, botulinum toxin, and the plant toxin, ricin in sufficient quantities that have wide-ranging destructive effects. Anthrax can be grown aerobically and prepared for dissemination as spores while Botulinum is a bacteria found everywhere that may be occasioned by improper handling of food that may lead to poisoning. Toxin when crystallized is very lethal and easier to produce and disperse while recin can be extracted from castor beans and when inhaled caused death in hours. The most effective method of delivering or dissemination of these toxic agents is through aerosol clouds whose technology is obtainable from open or commercial sources, while equipment used to aerolize the biological agents are readily available from legitimate industrial or agricultural suppliers with an access to standard machine shop. Hence, it is easier to fabricate aerosol generators to use in the dispersal of microorganisms or toxins; therefore, standard biological agents for hidden harm or incapacitation would be relatively easy to produce and deliver using equipment or devices that are commercially available from suppliers and marketers. Although terrorism using weapons of mass destruction either chemical or biological remains a threat, the real prospect for terrorists to use the weapons has greatly reduced. This is because acquiring the said weapons is difficult and problematic for terrorists than it is acknowledged in research. This is not to say that the possibility of such attacks happening across the international scene that can cause numerous casualties is not possible and therefore terror through the WMDs is realistically possible in the near future. The United Nations Terrorism Prevention Branch states that the greatest challenge in evaluating the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction is differentiating the fear of its effect and the truth on whoever produces or manufactures them.7 The most important that states should consider when comparing terrorism and weapons of mass destruction is the issue of motive and capability. In as much as terrorist organizations may be very keen to acquire the weapons of mass destruction, the ability t do so may be lacking in terms of the resources and the expertise required procuring and disseminating them. The challenging nature of assessing the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction and terrorism is complex due to the proven fact that most of the times it is difficult to weaponize and at the same time deliver the said biological or chemical weapons at targets. Since the end of Cold War and the September 11 attacks, terrorism has become more lethal and imminent as terrorists increase their efforts to embrace the use of weapons of mass destruction. Chemical Weapons of Mass Destruction A chemical agent is a substance for use by the military or misused by terrorist groups to kill, injure or incapacitate human beings due to its physiological effects through irritation, burning, asphyxiation, creation of smoke screens or damaging of an opponent’s equipment through incendiary action.8 Mustard gas has been the most extensively used form or mode of chemical warfare and may be referred by several names in warfare such as, yellow cross, sulfur mustard, hun stoffe (HS), Distilled Hun (HD), senfgas, blister agent, Yperite, S-LOST or Kampfstoff LOST. It is disseminated as an aerosol, can be dissolved in lipids thereby making it easy to absorb in the skin of the victims, and can remain in the environment as it continues to cause more casualties. It is best known to have been applied in the Bari disaster that exposed thousands of civilians to chemical agents resulting into numerous casualties. 9 The first major use of chemical weapons was in the war between Italy and Ethiopia that showed the effectiveness of chemical weapons as employed to obliterate a wide population. The Italians dropped bombs and sprayed mustard gas from airplane tanks caused several deaths while at the same time incapacitating large portion of the population frightening Ethiopians into submission leading to the break-up of the war.10 Later, the most commonly used mode of chemical warfare became the organophosphorus compounds that may include nerve agents such as tabun, sarin, soman, cyclosarin and VX. Since the year 1975, there has been an increase in the use of chemicals and toxin agents in areas of Southern Asia and Afghanistan by the Soviet forces. More recently, Iraq under Saddam Hussein employed chemical weapons in the Persian Gulf War and the development of chemical weapons by the Libyan government that was a threat to a large mass of population in the world and regionally. The use of chemical weapons of mass destruction has not been used extensively since the First World War but the threat that they may be used again is imminent especially use by terrorists.11 More recently, there have been reports that the Syrian regime has employed the use of chemical agents in fighting the forces that are rebellious to the regime. Biological Weapons of Mass Destruction Since the advent of bacteriology in the nineteenth century, there has been increased activity in the procurement, manufacture and dissemination of biological weapons of mass destruction.12 Germany was the first country to start a state-sponsored biological weapons program around the period of the First World War through the use of glanders and anthrax that was mainly carried out through animals rather than humans. Due to these acts and the perception by other nations such as the United Kingdom that biological weapons would be used during the Second World War, many nations stored vaccines that would be used to counter any threat of biological weapons of mass destruction. Great Britain manufactured cattle cakes that contained B athracis spores that would cause epidemics of anthrax among livestock leading to famine as well as the designing of aerosolize that would disperse the anthrax toxins. The United States government equally recognized the potential of biological agents as weapons of mass destruction culminating in its first production of such weapons in 1951 and later the Brucella suis in 1954.13 The most threatening evidence of the use of biological warfare that the United States have faced was the Operations Desert Shield Storm whereby intelligence reports showed that Iraq operated a biological weapons program.14 The Iraqi program involved the use of B athracis, rotavirus, camelpox virus, aflatoxin, botulinum toxins, mytoxins and wheat cover rust that could be delivered through aerial spray tanks, drone aircrafts and missile warheads that were deployed but not used during the war. The weapons were not used because of the ineffectiveness of the dissemination systems that had not been tested and the fact that there was limited training of the military forces. Biological terrorism is the use of biological agents by terror groups to achieve political or ideological objectives that peaked in 1998 and 2001 through anthrax mailings. Earlier in the year 1984, biological agents were used by a cult by the name Rajneeshee in the form of Salmonella typhimurium that caused illnesses and hospitalization of quite a number. On 20 March 1995, Aum Shinrikyo a Japanese religious cult used the agent Sarin to engineer attacks in Tokyo after acquiring information and technical means to plan, produce and use the agents for its own terrorist activities. The impact of this terror attack was huge considering the high number of casualties involved in the attack that included 12 deaths, the affecting of 5100 persons of which 40 were severely affected and the injuring of about 500 rescue and emergency workers. Later in October of 2001, there were a series of anthrax attacks through inhalation and skin infection in the United States in Florida, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Connecticut that was mainly transmitted through letters. These attacks resulted into respiratory and skin problems on those affected as well as five deaths that occurred due to inhalation of the anthrax. The threat of bioterrorism continues unabated as Al-Qaeda has initiated biological weapons of mass destruction program especially in Afghanistan that can supply microbiology equipment but they cannot deploy the weapon. Similarly, American forces operating in Iraq made seizures of instruction and equipment for the production of ricin extraction amongst other biological attempts to destroy masses in the United States and other countries. It is important to note that there is little information on biological attacks by nations apart from the trials made by Germany and Japan during the two world wars and due to the fact that there is little microbiological and epidemiological information concerning the same.15 Therefore, with the ease of acquisition and use of chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction makes them more preferable as compared to nuclear weapons. This could be because they require small quantities of agents to make making them thus less costly and the advantage of reduced complexity of production, and this leads to the elimination of set-ups, workforces and the facilitation of security through detection. The chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction are also undetectable from the agencies involved in antiterrorism thus making them a preferred mode of manufacture and dissemination of WMDs. The threat posed by terrorists who threaten to use weapons of mass destruction is real and the key to defeating these acts is through timely and accurate intelligence that will help in detection, characterization and countering of the threat. Though there have been reports of improvement in these fields, emphasis should be placed on intelligence by human beings, sharing of intelligence between the agencies concerned in the control of terrorist activities and improvement in the equipment used for detection. This calls for all states in the international community to put efforts together in order to curb the threat posed by terrorists who may want to use weapons of mass destruction to cause injuries or casualties to innocent civilians. Bibliography Bergen, Peter, Hoffman, Bruce, and Tiedemann, Katherine. 2011. "Assessing the Jihadist Terrorist Threat to America and American Interests". Studies in Conflict & Terrorism. 34, no. 2: 65-101. Clinton, William J. A National Security Strategy for a New Century. The White House.Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1998. Corey, Hilma S, J., Jeffery, Smart, K., and Benjamin, Hill, A, History of Chemical Warfare. “In Medical Aspects of Chemical Warfare”. 9-76 . Government Printing Office, 2008. Das Dilip and Peter Kratcoski. Meeting the Challenges of Global Terrorism : Prevention, Control, and Recovery. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2002. James, Martin, W., George, Christopher, W. and Eitzen, Edward M., History of Biological Weapons: From Poisoned Darts to Intentional Epidemics. “in Dembek, Z. Medical Aspects of Biological Warfare.”. 1-20. Government Printing Office, 2007. Martin, SB. ‘The Role of Biological Weapons in International Politics: The Real Military Revolution’, The Journal of Strategic Studies, 25, 1: (2002). 63–98. Mowatt-Larssen, Rolf. Al Qaeda Weapons of Mass Destruction Threat Hype or Reality? Cambridge, MA: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, 2010. 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