Indian Defence Review

Prevention and Preparedness

While it may not be possible to completely rule out and prevent a terrorist engineered nuclear biological or chemical attack, the damage caused can be reduced considerably, by such actions as:-

• Developing surveillance mechanisms for detection and identification.
• Providing physical protection through pre and post exposure counter measures.
• Providing state of the art decontamination services.
• Developing and manufacturing of medical counter measure for pre and post exposure protection.
• International surveillance on money laundering. To illustrate some figures are revealing:-

1. US $ 10 mn         –    assets of Al-Qaeda frozen globally
2. US $ 250 mn       –    Estimated personal wealth of Osama Bin Laden
3. Rs 2 mn              –    Bribe paid to Indian Custom officials to smuggle in RDX for 1993 Mumbai blasts.
4. US $ 400,000       –   Cost of Al-Qaeda to stage 9/11 attack.

Role of Armed Forces. Armed Forces by their inherent organisation, infrastructure, training, leadership, communication, etc are ideally suited as “First Responders” is any national calamity or disaster. Response to a nuclear, biological or chemical disaster in a war like situation would be very different from a response in a terrorist engineered incident. In a terrorist created disaster the situation would be peculiar and even though the responsibility of managing such a situation would be that of the civil administration, the Armed Forces world get sucked into it as “first responders”. The peculiarities of such a situation must be identified and suitably catered for.

Terrorist oriented NBC disaster would be more towards the management of providing immediate medical assistance. The nodal agency to co-ordinate and provide assistance as “First Responders” would be orchestrated by the Director General Armed Forces Medical Services (DGAFMS), who should include certain additional points, in the existing SOP’s for providing aid to civil authorities. These would be in the form of earmarking command wise response, relating to assigned areas of responsibilities. Basically the following need to be included:-

• Training of earmarked personnel in management of casualties occurring on accounts of biological, chemical or nuclear attack, which would be different in nature than war casualties or casualties on account of any other disaster.
• Earmarking of command wise “First Responders” from all medical resources of Army, Navy and the Air Force.
• Immunize the first responders with necessary vaccines, such as for example anthrax vaccine, in the event of an anthrax attack.
• Create adequate stockpile of necessary vaccines and their turnover suitably, under various commands.
• Conduct periodic exercises to ensure efficacy of response plans.

Conclusion. As conventional wars become less and less likely and use of weapons of mass destruction more difficult to use due to international pressures, NBC related terrorism emerges as weapons of future terrorists. Sophistication in methods of terrorist attacks have seen a quantum jump since 9/11. Religious fundamentalism has become the mainstay of educated motivated and well trained “jihads”. The most recent attempted bomb attacks in Glasgow and London are spine chilling as they were master minded by trained medical doctors. Instead of a bomb, a balloon filled with Anthrax can cause a major disaster. Keeping a step ahead is only possible by better intelligence management, including human-intelligence by professionally penetrating such terrorist organisations. By investing in intelligence, the US, Canada, Europe and Australia have prevented over 100 terrorist attacks since 9/11. With 16 intelligence agencies with a budget of over US $ 50 billions, they maintain an edge over electronic and signal espionage. A plot to bomb a train in Manhattan was foiled by monitoring a jihadi website.

A video footage on DVD tipped off security agencies of an attack on a military base. A police informant prevented blowing up of a fuel tank at JFK airport. Tight control on money laundering is another area which can deter terrorist incidents.Armed Forces and other security agencies such as Para Military Forces must undertake suitable training programmes, which must include immunization of “first responders”, against such attacks.