Jemaah Islamiyah and Aviation Security in Southeast Asia

By Zachary Abuza

Why are generals are always preparing to fight the last war? Several weeks ago in a security conference in Sydney, Australia, I was asked of he possibility of two jet liners near simultaneously crashing into the Sydney Harbor Bridge and the iconic Opera House. With Khalid Sheikh Mohammad recently in the news, attention has re-centered on the 9/11 attacks. The 9/11 attacks took years of planning a huge amount of money and an appallingly un-hostile environment in which they could plan. Reports of Middle Eastern men seeking pilot training (though expressing little interest in landings) would actually make it to the senior echelons of the FBI right now. A 9/11-style plot would be exceedingly difficult for even a resource rich and patient terrorist organization. Aviation will remain a key target of terrrorists, but not in the ways that most governments are thinking about. Low tech attacks can do every bit as much damage to an economy as spectacular plots to turn laden planes into guided missiles.

President Bush infamously hyped an operation out of Southeast Asia that intended to target the Library Tower in Los Angeles, California. His announcement, not coincidently, came immediately after the New York Times broke the story on the National Security Agency’s warrant-less wiretapping. What President Bush did not reveal was that although Khalid Sheikh Mohammed suggested a parallel attack to the American West Coast, Osama bin Laden rejected the operation and instructed him to remain focused on the east coast attacks; the California plot could come later. President Bush also ignored the fact that the one trained pilot recruited by Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), the regional Al Qaeda affiliate, figured out what he was being recruited for when the 9/11 attacks transpired and turned himself in to Malaysian authorities, ergo there were no pilots for the plot. It was a plot in the conception stage only, but hyped for political reasons, and sadly much of the American mass media reported it unquestioningly.

To be fair, two Singaporean members of JI, Mas Salamat Kastari and a Chinese convert to Islam, Johnny Wong aka Arifin bin Ali were plotting to hijack an Aeroflot jetliner from Bangkok and crash it into downtown Singapore to show solidarity with the Chechnyan separatists in 2002. Such an attack would have been a coffin nail for the Singaporean economy. Yet, like the Library Tower, this plot was not even, to my knowledge, in operational planning. Neither Kastari nor bin Ali was a trained pilot, nor is there public source proof that there were trained pilots in their cell. Kastari fled to Indonesia where he was arrested and later rendered to Singapore. Johnny Wong was arrested in Thailand and also rendered to Singapore.

To be sure, planes remain a very appealing target to terrorists, the world over. Yet, the hijacking of planes, and turning them into human bombs is really not the greatest threat to aviation security in Southeast Asia. For one thing, the cockpits have been hardened. And frankly even if terrorists could get knives or weapons on board, were a hijacking situation to occur, pilots would let the hijackers slit throats while they flew evasive actions and landed; they would not open cockpit doors.

The first post-traditional terrorist hijacking was of course Ramzi Yousef’s 1995 Bojinka Plot to bomb 11 US jetliners. In that plot, staged in a December 1994 dry run, small chemical bombs were hidden under seats of planes, detonated by small Casio watches. (The plane was close enough to an airport and the bomb was small enough though it killed the Japanese man whose seat it was under, for the plane to make an emergency landing). An accident during the manufacture of the bombs thwarted the attacks. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed outlined in his recent Guantanamo Bay hearing how the two smuggled components on to planes.

Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, with his triacetone triperoxide (TATP)-filled shoe and simple lit-fuse detonator in December 2001 illustrated terrorists’ pre-occupation with airlines. And with good reason: A successful attack on an airline would do more to hamper global economy than any other type of terrorist incident with resources and knowledge currently at their disposal. Last summer’s London plot reinforced the vulnerability of the airlines. Similar to Ramzi Yousef’s Bojinka plot, the 10 chemical bombs were of a slightly different composition, but in many ways far more ingenious. The plot involved hiding a chemical gel comprised of a peroxide-based explosives – either triacetone triperoxide (TATP) or hexamethylene triperoxide diamine (HMTD) – in the false bottom of a sports drink. The chemical gel was to have been died to match the color of the sports drink. The London plot also fundamentally differed from the Bojinka plot in that they entailed suicide bombers, Yousef’s plot did not.

Rather than planes as guided missiles, there is much more likelihood of a small bomb detonating mid flight and depressurizing the cabin. There is still the threat of such devices in Southeast Asia, where airport security is more lax. One could enter a rural airport with a device and continue on to larger airports, never to have your luggage screened again. While aviation authorities engage in rigorous screening of personnel, there are a lot of caterers, support personnel, cleaners who come from the lower echelons of society. Not every parcel and provision entering the secured tarmac area can be checked.

In early 2005 Philippine police raided an Abu Sayyaf safe-house in a Manila suburb and found plastic explosives melted down and injected into toothpaste tubes and shampoo bottles. The only thing that Philippine security authorities though that the 12 devices could be used for was for uses on airplanes. The bombs, in test runs, made it through all Philippine airport security. One should not forget that Ramzi Yousef was operating in the Abu Sayyaf’s name in 1994-95.

Yet the greatest threat comes from MANPADS and even smaller small arms. One should not forget that before the 9/11 attacks, the most lethal and costly terrorist attack in 2001 was committed by the Tamil Tigers on Sri Lanka’s international airport. A highly trained and heavily armed 14-man squad penetrated the 800-acre high security complex in the night of 24 July 2001, and destroyed or damaged 26 commercial and military aircraft. Three Airbus jetliners- half the commercial fleet of Airlanka – was destroyed: $350 million in losses. We should note that Cathay Pacific today announced that it had canceled flights in and out of Columbo, Sri Lanka, owing to the Tamil Tigers’ first air attack (a small light aircraft dropped two bombs) on the Air Force’s base, adjacent to the international airport, yesterday.

More widely reported, in November 2002, terrorists launched two shoulder-fired SA-7 missiles at an Israeli charter flight taking off from Mombasa, Kenya, with 271 passengers on board, though they missed. Hambali, JI’s chief of operations, was actively searching MANPADS out for use in Thailand in 2002-03. MANPADS are of varying size and capability and their success is not guaranteed. And there are counter-measures available- but they are exorbidently expensive, estimated to be $1 million per plane.

But short of MANPADS against planes moving at several hundreds of miles an hour, militants could simply used RPG-2s or heavy machine guns (.50 caliber) against planes on the tarmac or taxiways. Frankly it is shocking that this sort of attack hasn’t transpired. It is simplicity in its element. There are roads and easy access, usually lightly patrolled, along most runways and taxiways. British investigators have found cells that were in the planning and weapons procurement stages of such an attack on Heathrow. And sadly small arms are readily available across the region.

Yet from a vain terrorist’s point of view, and they are often very vain, it is not a spectacular event, with meticulous planning and vast resources. Yet it is exceptionally cost-effective, easily within their means and capabilities. If someone is willing to be blown up on a plane, why not in a volley of gunfire from responding police as they take aim at the planes stuck in the bedlam on the tarmac? Instead of invasive photo imaging that is being experimented now in American airports to find box cutters hidden in underwear, governments, airport authorities and security personnel should do more to police and monitor areas in which terrorists can attack with readily available small arms.

The new screening devices are very high tech – and the Americans in particular always believe they can defeat an enemy through technology. But what about against low tech threats such as RPG-2s manufactured in crude metal fabrication shops? The MILF makes such weapons in central Mindanao. Crude and with mixed reliability to be sure, but terrorists only need to be lucky once in Gerry Adams’ familiar phrase. I’m sure the corporations who make the expensive equipment are important campaign donors, but we are talking about the global economy, not the next campaign. And it is unlikely that the newest generation technologies could be employed anywhere in Southeast Asia, other than Singapore, owing to the cost.

Terrorists learn, including from their mistakes or plots that were thwarted by increasingly adept security forces. And they have very limited resources. Sometimes that calls for a back to basics approach. If their goal is to cripple global commerce and travel, they need not drive farther than the nearest international airport with small money, little training and a lot of bravado.

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