Bojinka II or Something New?

Al-Qa’eda’s London plot now under intense investigation should come as a surprise to no one. It is not the first time and its failure may presage that it will not be the last. What may be the most impressive international terrorist the world had ever seen, Pakistan’s Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, has seen it all before. As he knows, the latest plot is nothing new.

Fresh from his terrorist debut as the mastermind of the New York World Trade Center’s first assault in February of 1993, Yousef had his eyes on something grand. Having earned his technical credentials at a small college in Wales and his terrorist bona fides training in Afghanistan, Yousef was a man to beat. Dispatched by his al-Qa’eda handlers to its burgeoning Abu Sayyaf affiliate born under the guise of Afghan-Soviet War alumnus Abdurajik Abubakr Janjalani,Yousef prepared his team for a wide array of terrorist activities. He wanted to assassinate President Bill Clinton, kidnap an American ambassador, and kill Pope John Paul II, but his ambitions did not end there. Yousef got together with a few other experienced terrorists like Adel Annon (likely his own brother using a nomme de guerre), Abdul Murad (old friend, WTC ’93 intellectual veteran), Mustafa Abu Zanaib (precise link unclear, but closely associated by way of various Da’awa activities), and Wali Khan Amin Shah (close friend who lost a few fingers in Afghan war) to hatch something grand.

11:43 AM, 11 December 1994. Sitting onboard Philippines Airline flight 434, a 24 year old Japanese engineer returning home to Tokyo from Cebu, was suddenly butterflied as a small but volatile nitroglycerine bomb hidden beneath his seat detonated. For Yousef, it was just a test for something broader, and it worked.

His team called it Project Bojinka, apparently Serbo-Croat for explosion. In a nutshell, it involved carrying onboard individual bottles disguised as contact lens solution filled with a stable form of nitroglycerine explosive –the active ingredient in TNT –wearing carefully rewired Casio wristwatches, a couple of 9-volt batteries, and a few cotton balls for stabilization. Once airborne, the pieces would be assembled in the plane lavatory and placed strategically onboard the plane. Targeted planes –some a dozen in number –would explode while flying over the high seas and populated U.S. cities. For Yousef, the key was to kill everyone onboard, all on American owned airlines, all in one day’s time, and with everyone watching

Meanwhile, buried in a modest mid-town Manila apartment, Yousef got to work. Unfortunately for him, in mixing some of the highly volatile chemicals, he made a mistake, igniting a small explosion. He ran, along with his closest associate, who was later arrested when he returned to retrieve Yousef’s forgotten laptop computer from which investigators learned of the plot.

Uncovering the plot sparked a massive worldwide effort to quickly and effectively search thousands of jumbo jets all over the world –no one knew if some of the bombs might have made their way to the target despite the bust. They checked underneath seats, in the luggage compartments, in bathrooms, everywhere. Luckily, it appears they had stopped it just in time. This history is important to al-Qa’eda. As we know, whether in New York or Pakistan, their operators often maintain a marked inclination to continue an operation until they get it right. It should come as no surprise that some would like to pick up on Yousef’s plans.

Despite this history though, some analysts have suggested that the present situation is born from the so-called “second wave” of self-starters, inspired by the milieu of bin Ladinism though divorced from its central activities. If true, this would be extremely significant. In the past, al-Qa’eda self-starters have resorted to much lower profile, far less sophisticated operations, born from training acquired through primitive do-it-yourself manuals and an ambition ignited by the general political, social, and religious environment they experience. This tendency toward simplistic operations has led many experts to conclude that the so-called “second wave” is less of a threat than the media would have the world believe. Not true if this most recent plot turns out to be self-starter.

But some indications suggest that this may not be self-starter at all. For one, the complexity of simultaneously attacking nine distinct targets is difficult to pull off. Those involved in the Madrid train bombings astonished the world when they became the very first terrorist group in the world to detonate ten bombs simultaneously before. And although they certainly remained more independent than most al-Qa’eda operators, they had help. The likelihood of a truly independent cell moving against so many targets, especially on Western airlines in the post-9/11 world with its enhanced security apparatus, seems low. Such an operation would require extensive patience and training. An estimated 3,000 British citizens have found their way into Afghan terrorist training facilities, where some limited explosives training may have been conducted, but al-Qa’eda’s traditional training pattern indicates a willingness to provide particularly specialized training only in the presence of an establish plot, thus making any such operation no longer self-starter in character. What’s more, were the fact that British authorities have apparently arrested some twenty-four individuals in connection with the scheme taken as an indication of its scope, it seems all the more unlikely that any internally ignited group of discontents would be capable of radicalizing such a large number of individuals without professional assistance. As with any joint venture, large operations tend to require professional operators.

Were Yousef’s Bojinka plot used by the present alleged terrorists as the model, his explosives were highly complex devices learned after pouring over a plethora of books he stole from various libraries around the world. Yousef’s men bought sulphuric acid, nitric acid, acetone, silver azide, and nitrobenzene to create an undetectable form of nitroglycerine –the explosive element in TNT.

Notably though, the trademark of Yousef’s device was converting Casio wristwatches into effective timers. He had no aspiration to die a martyr, shaheed. Presently though, authorities appear not to be concerned with watches. This seems to indicate the possibility that it may have been a martyrdom operation, rather than a Yousef-styled Bojinka II –who needs a timer when one plans to set it off himself?

The process of indoctrination for suicide terrorists is long, difficult, and traditionally rife with barriers. Many Palestinian cells are known to have their soon-to-be suiciders lay for hours in the graveyard, prepared to embrace their own death, faced with a devil’s advocate assigned to question the recruit’s inner commitment to the cause. Only the most committed become the chosen ones to die.

No doubt, martyrdom is a practice apparently embraced by some self-starters, but the number required to carry out an operation as significant as the one now uncovered is unlikely to have undergone the difficult psychological tribulations necessary, in the absence of careful indoctrination. Do-it-yourself manuals are unlikely to be enough.

Lacking the requisite technical sophistication and psychological indoctrination on its own, one must assume some role for the al-Qa’eda central authority; a truth which recalls the days of Bojinka and again reiterates the continued force of the group’s post-9/11 existence.