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TEL AVIV, May 23: International security agencies are concerned suicide bombings will spread to Europe and the United States much in the way airliner hijackings proliferated across the globe in the 1970s and 80s.
“Such attacks would not necessarily take the form of the carnage in New York on Sept 11, it would be something more like the attacks that have been seen in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and so on,” Paul Wilkinson, from the University of St Andrews in Scotland, said. “It’s a very serious threat.”
Earlier this week, U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation director Robert Mueller said it was “inevitable” that suicide attackers with bombs strapped to their bodies would hit U.S. targets in strikes echoing a recent wave of Palestinian suicide attacks in Israel.
At first, the Palestinian bombers were young men from squalid refugee camps. Today they come from all walks of life including women, middle-aged married men with children and teenagers.
No longer just the province of religious hardliners, Marxist and secular Palestinian factions have carried out recent attacks.
“I don’t think its confined to any one region in the world and not even one religion,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert from the Rand Corporation in Washington. Non-Muslim militant groups could conceivably adopt the tactic too, he said.
The threat is being taken seriously by the New York police department which sent five officers to Israel earlier this month for training with local police, who have had plenty of hands-on experience, to tune their technique against suicide bombers.
Israeli officials have been tight-lipped about the New York visit and one by a Scotland Yard task force which travelled to Israel and Sri Lanka, hit by hundreds of suicide bombings over the past two decades, to study anti-suicide bombing methods.
HUMAN BOMBS: Carrying out a suicide bombing is chillingly easy. The crude home-made bombs used by Palestinians, packed with bags filled with nails for deadly effect and detonated in a closed and crowded area, can kill and maim scores of people.
Strapped to the body, or sewn into an overcoat, the bomb is invisible to passersby. The devices are often fashioned from household items such as lamp switches converted into detonators.
“It’s cheap and you have terminal guidance. The delivery system for the bomb can regulate where it goes until the very point of impact,” said Jonathan Stevenson from the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.
“It’s like having a built-in smart bomb.”
Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers, Kurdish groups and Lebanese guerillas have carried out suicide bombings over the past 25 years. But the list of targeted countries has grown recently.
Last month, 21 people were killed, including 14 German tourists, in a suicide truck bombing of a synagogue on the Tunisian resort island of Djerba, and 11 French navy engineers were killed by a suicide bomber in Pakistan two weeks ago.
East Africa was hit in 1998 when two U.S. embassies were bombed by suspected members of the Al Qaeda network, killing 224 people and wounding 4,000.
Wilkinson said European security forces had thwarted several suicide attacks planned by militants including al Qaeda, suspected of masterminding the September 11 attacks.
“We know that a number of the movements or groups that are using this ghastly tactic of (suicide) terrorism have already infiltrated cells, sleeper preparative cells in Western countries including Western Europe,” Wilkinson said.
Recent foiled suicide attacks include suspected “shoe-bomber” Richard Reid who tried to detonate explosives-packed shoes on a transatlantic flight, and a planned bombing of the U.S. embassy in Paris which was pre-empted by security services.
Cross-fertilisation is common among guerilla groups, experts say, which is why airliner hijackings spread from the Middle East to many other countries in the latter part of the 20th century.
“Because of the copycat nature of terrorism, if an attack is successful the tendency is to copy it,” said Israeli counter-terrorism expert Yoram Schweitzer.
Counter-terrorism experts are not expecting Western countries to be struck by suicide bombings every week, as has happened in Israel over the past few months.
But they say the trend, especially since Sept 11, is that suicide attacks are spreading across the globe.
If bombers targeted European and American cities with any frequency, it couldrock their societies to the foundations, sparking xenophobia and political upheaval, Hoffman said.
“Suicide bombings tear the society apart and the public’s trust in their government. It really calls into question the governments ability to protect them.”—Reuters
