I have great respect for Tony Cordesman as a military analyst. His four-volume "Lessons of Modern War" series are solid, informative sources for anyone interested in a serious study of the Arab-Israeli conflicts, Iran-Iraq war, Falklands conflict, or the first Gulf War. Each one of them has some amount of detailed discussions of CB warfare (yes, even the Falklands), which is why I have the complete series on my bookshelf. That is why it pains me to see this level of trash with his name on the cover.
To call "Terrorism and WMD: The Link with the War in Afghanistan" either informative or timely would be an utter falsehood. This report puts together a weak collection of information about NBC weapon systems and radiological hazards with vague statements about terrorist intent to develop a WMD capability, resulting in a warmed over powerpoint-type presentation that I would not expect a graduate student to turn in as a solid academic effort. This is amateur hour. This is the level of discourse that it presents:
This study addresses the critical linkage between the increase in the attacks initiated by the Taliban insurgency against the coalition forces and the size of the coalition forces, whether increasing or decreasing, with the probability that al-Qaida and other terrorist groups will re-establish training camps and a central command structure in Afghanistan, and start launching terrorist attacks against the U.S. and Europe using WMD.
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The threat of terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), is a real one that represents a very serious threat to the U.S. and other nations that are potential targets of sub-national terrorist groups or networks. Transnational terrorism and the potential acquisition by terrorists of weapons of mass destruction are part of the ‘asymmetric’ dynamics of the new threats that have emerged and have thrust the international community into a new era of warfare.
As far as is presently known, terrorist groups do not have in their possession nuclear weapons. However they could have the capability sometime soon given that knowledge about these kinds of weapons are available worldwide. Recent terrorist attacks have shown a rise in the tendency towards the use of mass-causality weapons for which WMD could be very well suited.
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The likelihood of terrorist groups acquiring WMDs is probably low in the short run but could be high in the long run. There is no way to demonstrate that terrorists will acquire and use such weapons, but, conversely, there is no way to demonstrate that they will not do so.
Okay, first of all, if you have to keep telling your readers that "the threat is real," then there's a strong likelihood that no one believes you and there's a good reason for that. For being such a "real" threat, we have not seen, since Aum Shinrikyo's use of nerve agent in 1995, a transnational terrorist group use CBRN materials with the result being a mass casualty event. That's not a real threat. Second, to make a statement that terrorists "could have the capability" to obtain and use a nuclear weapon "sometime soon" is just irresponsible and ridiculous (see Jenkins, 2008). Third, this loose assessment that the probability of terrorist WMD attacks are "probably low in the short run but could be high in the long run" is something that my dog could have told me. Honestly, there are no facts supporting these statements.
If you flip through the report, you get a strange collection of facts. Cordesman and his co-author have the usual threat information about NBC warfare agents but use nation-state delivery systems to make their point (FROG and SCUD missiles and a BM-21 launcher - really? Are these basic terrorist systems now?). In a table used to compare the effects of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, the report uses these releases - 300 kg of sarin nerve agent, 30 kg of anthrax spores, a 12.5 kT nuclear weapon, and a 1 MT hydrogen bomb. Yep, reminds me of the Tokyo subway incident and the Amerithrax cases exactly.
The report doesn't discuss how terrorists would employ these agents or why they would switch from highly-successful IEDs and RPG attacks. The report features a series of slides and charts on the Afghan conflict, as if to say, hey, the fight's going on, it's continuing, so given the steady advance of technology and availability of material, added to the fact that the Afghans dislike us, there's no doubt that the Taliban and AQ are going to nuke NYC or London any time now. Wow.
Cordesman should have never put his name on this report. He should stick to analysing nation-state military capabilities, which is what he does best. This is a disgrace to his previous good work and to the CSIS think tank.
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