2. Presentation Agenda
I. Changing Strategies
I. Changing Strategies
II. Nature of the threat
II. Nature of the threat
III. Anticipated/Significant Events
III. Anticipated/Significant Events
IV. VBIEDS/Homicide-Suicide
IV. VBIEDS/Homicide-Suicide
V. WMD and Other Considerations
V. WMD and Other Considerations
3. Primary Overall Threat…
Threat…
• Transnational terrorism continues to be
one of the primary threats to the U.S.
and her allies…
A. Not necessarily Central Al-Qaeda
B. Dispersed, regional, and local
groups of like-minded terrorists
C. Smaller groups share ideology,
motivation and may share resources/
funding (further decentralization likely)
4. What is Changing in the GWOT?
• “The international terrorism landscape has changed dramatically
during the past three years. First, Al Qaeda has transformed from a
group into a movement; second, the epicenter of international
terrorism has shifted from Afghanistan to Iraq; third, terrorist target
selection include the Allies and the friends of the United States.
• The most profound of these three developments is the morphing of Al
Qaeda from a group into a movement. With the dispersal of Al Qaeda
members and associate members from Afghanistan to lawless zones
in the global south, three dozen Asian, African, Middle Eastern and
other local jihad groups are increasingly behaving like Al Qaeda.
About 20,000 members of these groups trained, armed, financed and
indoctrinated by Al Qaeda in Afghanistan from the Soviet withdrawal
in February 1989 until US intervention in October 2001 are beginning
to share Al Qaeda's vision and mission of a global jihad.”
-- Dr. Rohan Gunaratna, author of Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of
Terror and Head of the International Centre for Political Violence and
Terrorism Research at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies in
Singapore, April 22, 2005
5. Evidence of Increasing Threat…
• quot;Country Reports on Terrorism (2004).quot;
• Known as quot;Patterns of Global Terrorismquot;
in previous years, the State Department
report is now dubbed quot;Country Reports
on Terrorism.quot;
• The new report said quot;international
terrorism continued to pose a significant
threat to the United States and its
partners in 2004.quot;
• quot;The primary terrorist threat to the United
States in 2004 continued to be al Qaeda,
which remained intent on attacking the
U.S. homeland as well as U.S. interests
abroad,quot; the report said.
• Source:
http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/45313.pdf
6. Looking to the Future (Tactics)…
(Tactics)…
• Insurgents in Iraq have staged
increasingly sophisticated attacks
in recent weeks, according to US
military assessments, moving
beyond roadside bombings and
suicide attacks to mount large-
scale assaults against US and Iraqi
forces and civilians. These attacks
have included both suicide/
homicide bombers and terrorists Looking for the war…
using grenades, mortars, and
automatic weapons.
The greater coordination and larger scope of the attacks has
prompted some U.S. commanders to reexamine their belief that
the insurgency in Iraq was on the wane, even though the
number of daily attacks has fallen since the landmark Jan. 30
election, according to leading US military officials.
7. Coming High Visibility (Afghan) Attacks?
•
Al Qaeda planning high visibility attacks
Says US Commander:
Pakistan/Taliban: The Commander of the US
led coalition forces in the Afghanistan Lt.
General David Barno has said that remnants
of the Taliban militia and Al Qaeda terrorists
still pose a threat in Afghanistan despite the
fact that popular support for them had
decreased manifold, and that they were
reportedly planning to stage some high
visibility attacks in the next six to nine
months, according to the Dawn newspaper.
quot;There are continuing threats out there.
Terrorists are not going to go away and the
only way to combat them is to put pressure
on them and disrupt their operations. We
will continue to see attacks in Afghanistan.
The war is not over,quot; the paper quoted him
as saying.
8. Target? – Washington, DC
• If ERRI Image via Terra-Server
analysts
can access
imagery like White House
this… So can
the “bad
guys.”
They can be
Washington Memorial
expected to
Lincoln Memorial
use our
technology
against us.
That is the
essence of
asymmetric
warfare.
Image courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey
9. Some Other Potential CONUS Targets?
• New York City, NY
• Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade
Counties, Florida
• Chicago, IL
• Los Vegas, NV
• Los Angeles, CA
-- Nuclear reactor sites, chemical factories,
and/or military bases
10. Two Emerging (and Troubling) Insurgencies
The Asian
terrorism
problem
continues to
grow in both
size and
intensity…
• As previously indicated by ERRI
analysts, in reports from 2004, we
expect continually escalating
insurgencies in both Bangladesh and
Thailand.
11. The Attack on School #1
Beslan, North Ossetia, Russia
• With a new brutality, some
would say never seen
before, a hostage incident
in a Russian school on
September 1st claimed the
lives of 340, and wounded
another 700. The carnage
was caused by improvised
explosive devices,
grenades, and AK-47
assault rifles.
12. Russian Terror Events
• In fact, Russia has suffered
badly at the hands of
terrorists during the last
couple weeks of August and
the first week of September,
2004. All allegedly at the
hands of rebels from
Chechnya and probably
allied “Afghan Arabs.”
13. The Evolution of the School Beslan Attack
• Tactics we
have seen
elsewhere
could be
“coming to
America”
• Schools,
hospitals, or
other heavily
populated (and
normally non-
combatant)
targets may be
engaged in
CONUS.
14. Continuing Threat: Bombs of All Kinds
• Car/Truck Bombs
[Vehicle-Borne Improvised
Explosive Devices (VBIEDS)]
• Homicide/Suicide
Bombers
Australian Embassy – Jakarta, Indonesia
[Male/Female, Old/Young,
Caucasian appearance]
• The terrorists continue to
Crater from
evolve and adapt. Expect
Beirut, Lebanon
Bomb That initiation of improvised
Killed former
explosive devices by cell
Lebanese
phones and other more
PM Rafik Hariri
sophisticated methods
15. Assassinations…
• Increasingly, we are
seeing assassination
attacks designed to kill
political and military
leaders…and intimidate
nation-states. Numerous
examples of this tactic
have been seen in Iraq,
Police Examine Shot-up
Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Car After Assassination
Ambush
Philippines. We continue
to believe that targeted
assassinations are part of
Al-Qaeda plans for 2005…
16. Threats to Aviation…
• SAMs/Manpads
Man-portable,
surface-to-air
missiles continue to
be of major concern
to ERRI analysts in
the coming year.
They are an efficient
and low cost way to
bring down a multi-
million dollar plane,
kill hundreds of
people, and damage
the Western
economies and
freedom of
movement…
17. Leading Proponents of Economic Warfare
Against the West
• Our enemies have apparently
recognized the dependence of
Western countries on the oil
producing countries in the
Mid-East (i.e. Saudi Arabia,
etc.) makes our economies
strategically vulnerable to
manipulation via the use of
Both Zawahiri (L) and terrorism. High priority must
Zarqawi (R), senior
be given by the USG the
operatives associated with
development of alternative
Al-Qaeda, have advocated
using economic and sources of energy that reduce
political methods to
these dependencies at the
damage the Western
earliest opportunity…
Economies…
18. Recent CIA Assessment:
• “The terrorist threat has changed over the last
12 months away from a movement centrally
directed by al Qaeda leadership to like-minded
Sunni Islamic groups who share resources and
goals,” Jacoby said. All of the groups, Jacoby
added, quot;remain interested in chemical,
biological, radiological and nuclear weapons,
and have a stated intention to conduct an attack
exceeding the destruction of 9/11.quot;
-- Defense Intelligence Agency Director Navy Vice Adm.
Lowell Jacoby, March 17, 2005, before the Senate
Armed Services Committee
20. Nuclear Material Trafficking
• As a terror
weapon, a “dirty
bomb” or
improvised nuclear
device (IND) would
have great value
to terrorists. ERRI
analysts expect
the “tangos” to
attempt to use one
in the foreseeable
future. And the
nuclear material In the opinion of ERRI analysts, counter-
needed to produce proliferation efforts require additional
an RDD is all too emphasis, personnel and funding.
available…
21. Analysis of the Radiological Bomb…
Bomb…
• The problem with a dirty bomb
is generally not the large
number of casualties that it
would cause. Instead, an RDD
could become an “area denial
weapon.” By contaminating a
significant area, the terrorists
could prompt a costly clean-up
or even make it uninhabitable
for a long period of time.
22. Dirty Bomb Dispersal in DC
• The map above shows a typical dispersal pattern
(plume) and an explanation of possible numbers of
increased deaths due to exposure to
contamination by a “dirty bomb” device…
23. Other Anticipated Threats...CW
• Attacking or Sabotaging a
Chemical Facility:
A form of chemical terrorism, that
ERRI analysts would anticipate in
the future, is an attack against or
the sabotage of a commercial
chemical facility that produces,
processes, or stores a highly toxic
chemical, resulting in its deliberate
release into the atmosphere.
Prevailing winds could then carry
the released chemicals over a
populated area.
24. Information Operations
• Terrorists continue to try to
amplify their message via the
internet, by providing stories to
sympathetic journalists, and using
psychological operations directed
at the general citizenry…both in
the United States and in those
states directly involved in
conflicts.
• Increasingly, the terrorists are
hoping to accomplish the same
outcome as was achieved in Viet
Nam…by a similar means…turning
the American public against the
War in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Consequently, the terrorists are
being assisted by anti-war groups
and others with viewpoints
opposing the war or America’s
rising power in the world.