Counterterrorism Blog

Last week’s triple chlorine-gas suicide attacks that hit Falluja and Ramadi sent shockwaves around Iraq, while raising the specter of more widespread use of chemical weapons by terrorist groups in Iraq and beyond. The bombings followed a series of earlier chlorine gas attacks, although no chlorine gas attacks were recorded prior to January 2007.

Suicide attacks have inherent tactical benefits when compared with non-suicidal attacks. They are cheap, precise, highly lethal, and they create a sense of fear among the target population that usually exceeds that of ordinary terrorist attacks. When coupled with chemical or other non-conventional weapons, these inherent tactical benefits of suicide bombings are multiplied. In fact, delivering a non-conventional device in the course of a terrorist attack is far more likely to succeed if the carrier of the device is willing to sacrifice himself in the process. Because the suicide bomber is willing to die, he is undeterred by the possible exposure to toxins or radiation that may result from the handling of chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) devices. Moreover, a bomber carrying a CBRN device is not burdened by the need to wear protective gear while delivering the device to the target area. His willingness to die not only obviates the need to wear gas masks and other protective equipment, but also reduces the chance of his early detection.

Combining the tactic of suicide operations with weapons of mass destruction also carries distinctive advantages for the group. All terrorism is designed to create terror, but there is probably no better way for a terrorist to maximize this intense fear among the target audience than by combining two modes of attack that are so difficult to defend against, while presenting the government as ineffective and law enforcement and first responders as helpless. In addition, for the group at large, the combination of CBRN and suicide attacks offers a unique possibility to demonstrate its determination to prevail in its mission.

Chlorine gas was among the first chemical weapons to be used as a weapon in modern warfare. In World War I, both the German and the British army employed chlorine, releasing the gas from large cylinders in a favorable wind. The use of chlorine in terrorist attacks, however, is relatively rare. In 1997, a serial bomber detonated several chemical bombs containing chlorine across Sidney’s eastern suburbs that injured some three dozen people. In Japan, on the third anniversary of the Sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway system, a chlorine-like gas was found in three beer cans in the Kasumigaseki subway stations. Other than that, reports of the use of chlorine in terrorist attack are sparse.

While the use of chlorine gas in suicide attacks is entirely novel, many groups, especially in the Israeli-Palestinian arena, have attempted to combine suicide attacks with crude chemical and biological components for some time. According to Israeli intelligence officials quoted by the Times of London, Hamas had first added pesticides and other poisonous chemicals to homemade bombs in 1997. The Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot reported on December 9, 2001, that a bomb exploding in Jerusalem during the previous week contained nails and bolts that had been dipped into rat poison, most of which, however, burned in the explosion. At least two Palestinian suicide bombers, Mahmoud Ahmed Marmash and Saeed Hotari, who detonated themselves at a Netanya shopping mall and a discotheque in Tel Aviv in May and June 2001, had Hepatitis B. Although Israeli authorities were not sure whether the perpetrators were accidental carriers or had been purposely injected with the disease, the Israeli Health Ministry decided in August 2001 that henceforth, all victims of suicide attacks would be vaccinated against Hepatitis B. On April 13, 2004, Yediot Ahronot reported that a Fatah cell from Kalkiliya had plotted to insert AIDS-infected blood among the explosives for an attack timed to be executed during the Jewish Passover holiday.

Furthermore, indictments against Palestinian terrorist operatives revealed that both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) attempted to use cyanide for terrorist attacks against Israelis on several occasions. According to an indictment against Abbas Sayyid, who headed Hamas’ military arm in Tulkarm, Sayyid planned to use cyanide in the attacks on the Sharon shopping mall and the Park Hotel in Netanya in May 2001 and March 2002, respectively. An indictment filed in May 2004 against Anas Hatnawi, a member of PIJ in Jennin, revealed similar plans to use cyanide in suicide attacks against Israelis.

Weapons of mass destruction seem to be a particular fitting choice for Salafi-Jihadist groups such as Al Qaeda in Iraq, which is blamed for Friday’s chlorine-gas attack. Given the ideological worldview of Salafi-Jihadists, who divide the world into good versus evil and subscribe to a notion of permanent jihad, the real question is not why Iraq-based groups, the most violent of whom are Salafi-Jihadist in nature, have decided to employ chemical weapons as part of their arsenal of tactics, but rather why they have not done so sooner.