Terrorism Threat Analysis: The Al-Qaeda, Coursework Example

Contemporary terrorism threat assessment can be a key element contributing to attacks prevention. Thus, the continuous threat of terrorist attacks has pushed domestic preparedness obligations to the priority of law enforcement program. Today’s law enforcement executives tend to assess and manage risk factors of this particular issue. Terrorism has become a vital part of law enforcement operations, as well as criminal intelligence, and crime analysis and prevention. Therefore, insufficient management and assessment of theorist threats and risks can result in immeasurable consequences. One of the primary concerns in terms of contemporary terrorist threats would be an Al-Qaeda terrorist group. “While past and present terrors groups recruited from one single nationality and limited their campaigns to recover one single territory, Al-Qaeda is waging a global jihad with the United States of America and its allies and friends as its primary enemy.”(Smith, 2004) Therefore, Al-Qaeda still preserves the intention to conduct major attacks within the United States and against U.S. allies. Consequently, careful and thorough assessment of Al-Qaeda potential threat is an essential activity to realize the danger and consider further prevention methods.

Al-Qaeda was established by Osama bin Laden in 1988 in Afghanistan region. Consequently, Osama bin Laden and Abdullah Azzam, who was his ‘teacher’, organized a powerful volunteer network in order to resist Soviet Union invasion to Afghanistan. United States officials were aware of this fact, but did not make any sufficient efforts to stop the recruitment, thus considering it a positive contribution to the effort of expelling Soviet forces from Afghanistan. Furthermore, at the end of the Soviet occupation both leaders of the jihad movement began seeking for the ways to utilize the Islamist volunteer network. “U.S. intelligence estimates of the size of that network was about 10,000 – 20,000.”(Katzman, 2005) Thus United States con did not initially consider Osama bin Laden to be an enemy, but a valuable ally in their struggle with the Soviet Union. However, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 2, 1990 made things change, thus turning Osama bin Laden from a actual U.S. ally against the Soviet Union into one of the most committed opponents. Consequently, Bin Laden believed that forcing out the United States from the region would be the only way to bring Islamic regimes to power. By the year 2000, Ben Laden and his main strategist Zawahiri eventually transformed Al-Qaeda into a global threat to Unite States national security, which has reached its culmination during the September 11, 2001 events. Al-Qaeda has always remained a highly secret organization “the first reference to something called Al-Qaeda appeared in the CIA report compiled in 1996, which mentions that by 1985 bin Laden had organized an Islamic Salvation Front, or Al-Qaeda.”(Burke, 2004)

Conducting Al-Qaeda threat assessment, one has to consider the actual United States homeland security vulnerabilities that can attract the interests of terrorists, thus resulting in another possible series of attacks. First of all, one has to consider airports as possible primary targets, because of their international value and the amount of people that keep arriving and departing, thus never leaving it empty. The security procedures of certain freight forwarders and air carriers are considered to be the most vulnerable part, due to inadequate standards regarding screening procedures of contraband cargo. For example, it allows shippers who have created relative business histories with freight forwarders or air carriers to omit innovative more rigid security process. Another potential target could be U.S. sea ports, for more than 6 million cargo containers enter Unites States sea ports every year.(Frittelli, 2003) Chemical facilities may also attract terrorists, for damaging them may result in loss of life as well as economic damage. Radioactive and other radiological materials could also be potential targets, for they can make inevitable and irreversible damage to the whole country and not just certain areas. “The report’s findings identify the many vulnerabilities of radiological stockpiles: a complete tally of sources worldwide does not exist; thousands of sources have been lost… the United States does not adequately monitor the import and export of its own sources.”(Boureston & Mahaffey, 2003) Thus, Unites States must enhance its security system on radioactive objects in order to ensure the prevention of possible terrorist attacks. Apart from these factors, there are still multiple vulnerabilities within the Unites States infrastructure that could be possible targets of terrorist attacks, thus including hospitals, agriculture, water purification and power grids. The blackout which occurred in August 2003 evidently demonstrates the vulnerability of American energy supply, for it left over 50 million Americans without power illustrates.(Boureston & Mahaffey, 2003) Therefore, U.S. government must consider enhancing the country’s security system, thus paying more attention to these vulnerable objects of potential terrorist attack. Otherwise, the damage caused by any of these facilities attacked cannot be imagined.

Al-Qaeda still remains one of the most capable terroristic groups, even after its funds had been frozen and its operatives blocked or arrested. It preserves the capacity to adjust to different situations and to attack at almost any time and any place. Due to its ability to alter operational structures at will in response to the techniques required to approach and assault each new objective, Al-Qaeda used to successfully attack embassies with car bombs and create human-guided missiles from aircrafts. Every time Al-Qaeda plans to show aggression, it carefully studies and investigates a given target, optimizing its structure to suit the aim’s diverse environments. In essence, this group is using a variety of methods to cause damage and establish violence in the world. The known typical weapons possessed and utilized by Al-Qaeda range from simple suicide bombs to explosives set on boats and aircraft. Nonetheless, the group’s unconventional weapon capabilities still remain unidentified.  However, based on their previous efforts to acquire biological and chemical agents, it is quite easy to presume that the group’s leaders recognize the number of casualties and mass panic that the weapons in question might trigger. Given the fact that these categories of weapons are comparatively low-cost to manufacture and unproblematic to hide, the likelihood of al-Qaeda eventually using them in their terroristic ventures is high. “An analysis of past al-Qaeda attacks suggests that the group tends to favor high-profile, often simultaneous, suicide attacks on targets of significant symbolic value to the target country. With such a history, one might conclude that certain weapons, such as biological weapons, may be outside the group’s modus operandi” (Al-Qaeda and Mass Casualty Terrorism: Assessing the Threat, 2003). While the postponed effects of biological or chemical weapons may be insufficient to completely prevent their use by al-Qaeda, the group’s utilization of unconventional weapons would probably be bounded to nuclear or radiological arms.

Radiological dispersal devices, also called ‘dirty bombs’, present formidable threat, as far as they are within the easy reach of al-Qaeda’s resources. Such a device, when detonated, spreads radioactive substance over a broad region infecting it, consequently, which turns it into an essentially conventional weapon. This kind of weapon is perfectly suitable for terrorist actions for a number of reasons: the components required are effortlessly available, due to the fact that they are exploited in commercial ventures, medical services and facilities, and university labs; these widely accessible radiological materials are not as radioactive as the materials required for a gadget that can produce an explosive nuclear effect; they are rather easy to handle; creating an radiological dispersal device is less technologically challenging than building a usual nuclear explosive appliance. Moreover, it is hypothetically probable that al-Qaeda could build a nuclear explosive mechanism, provided it prevailed over a number of significant challenges. Firstly, the group has to acquire the fissile substance needed for the heart of the mechanism. Secondly, it must then obtain admission to the nuclear know-how required to generate a design compatible with the gained material. Finally, al-Qaeda would have to find a way to experiment the gadget to guarantee its success.

In conclusion, I would like to state that Al-Qaeda still remains a representation of a losing war on terrorism, which was commenced by the United States of America after the terrorist attack of 9/11. There is no doubt that the group has to be destroyed, the weapons that the group possesses confiscated and the people somehow connected to it arrested and trialed. In order to achieve these goals, Al-Qaeda has to be studied and analyzed, the threat has to be approximated and forecasted, and the antiterrorist groups ready to act at short notice.

References

Smith, P. J. (2004). Terrorism and violence in Southeast Asia: Transnational challenges to states and regional stability. M.E. Sharpe, 2004.

Katzman, K. (2005). Al-Qaeda: Profile and threat assessment. Retrieved March 20, 2009, from http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA444819/

Burke, J. (2004). Al-Qaeda: The true story of radical Islam. I.B.Tauris.

Frittelly, J. F. (2003). Port and maritime security: background and issues. Nova Publishers.

Al-Qaeda and Mass Casualty Terrorism: Assessing the Threat. (2003, October). Methods. Retrieved March 22, 2009, from http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/rsepResources/si/oct03/terrorism.pdf

“Al Qa’ida Chemical, Biological, Radiological, And Nuclear Threat And Basic Countermeasures,” National Infrastructure Protection Center, February 12, 2003. 13.”Transportation Security: Post-September 11th Initiatives and Long-Term Challenges,” GAO-03-616T, April 2003.

Gunaratna, R. (2003). Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror. Tandem Library