Standing Well Back

2000-2010

Black Widows

The double suicide bomb attack on the Moscow underground has once again brought out the media demon of the Chechen black widows. A significant proportion of attacks in Moscow and elsewhere over the past ten years or so have been committed by women suicide bombers and the Russian media (being the same as media everywhere) latch on to simple ideas that grab the imagination and pump the story in the usual and perhaps to a degree understandable frenzy. The latest stores spread a fear that there are a group of 21 other suicidal females all trained to carry out their mission. This keeps the media pot boiling… for all the usual positive and negative reasons and intentions. All I’d say is that previous attacks often resulted in the similar concept – that there are groups of trained and ruthless females out there, in every alley and dark corner willing to die for Allah in retaliation for the deaths of their husbands.

Some of you will have heard my analysis of the “black widow attack” that failed to kill the suicide bomber but killed bomb disposal expert Georgy Trofimov in 2004.

For what its worth, there were a few interesting aspects to this latest attack. The first I won’t talk about on the blog but happy to exchange on a one to one basis with trusted contacts – and that’s the position of the devices. Very significant and I don’t mean in relation to the FSB headquarters. Ping me if you want to discuss.

Secondly was the fact that after the first device went off it would appear that there was a conscious operational decision taken to keep the metro system running. And an hour later the second device exploded. Ouch. Most metro systems would have been shut down and evacuated at least for a time. We can’t second guess that decision without the facts ands circumstances known at the time by the Russian metro official who made the call… but maybe that’s interesting. It relates to the intent I perceive and which, in general, I agree with, to keep normal life functioning as long as possible – and it also relates to my third point that within a few hours the damaged train had been removed and the stations opened for normal commuter traffic. It’s the old principle, so often forgotten, of returning the situation to normality as soon as possible. The reason being is that a major part of the terrorist intent (which is the disruption) can be defeated in this way. Now that was remarkable -with passengers stood on station platforms looking across the rails to the shrapnel damaged wall on the far side within 3 or 4 hours. Bodies cleared, train towed, forensics gathered, platform swept, trains running , passengers on-board. I don’t know of any other country which would implement such a policy, and I think it’s the right one./

Too often the forensic investigation causes days or weeks of delays… Primacy is given to the scenes of crime investigator without the real authorities saying “Hang on a second,…. Does this make sense?” No-one more than me wants to gather forensic evidence to chase the perpetrators to ground…. So that needs a highly professional speedy response to gather as much as forensic data as possible then…. Someone has to have the cojones to say, “OK, enough” and get the trains running again and return the situation to normality – otherwise the terrorist continues to win. It’s a difficult decision but one I have personal experience of and one I feel strongly about. You can’t leave this decision to a forensic investigator – it should be a senior police commander or political decision and it needs a strategic view. Not everyone will agree with me, some see that the disruption is a price worth paying. I think there is a balance to be had and spending a week picking up the pieces, albeit a mass murder scene, is the wrong balance. Tough decision to make but I sense at the moment it’s a decision avoided rather than an involved strategic plan.

Uncategorised

Pants Analysis

Bruce Schneier writes about security, and is a “security technologist”. He writes here for CNN about aviation security post the pants bomber. Well, with respect to Mr Schneier, I’m a security technologist too, I suppose, and I think he’s just wrong. I was tempted to say “plane” wrong, but too many of those jokes get irritating quickly.

Mr Schneier suggests that the plot was half baked using “home brew” explosives. While true that the device failed to function as intended, its clear to me that the device could have worked. AbdulMutallab’s predecessor, who attempted to kill a Saudi Prince in August got his device through airport security and into the presence of his target and it functioned. Had either device been on an aircraft at altitude I think it could have brought it down. Playing down threats suggesting they are less of a threat because of home brew explosives doesn’t hold water – about 90% of all IEDs in Afghanistan are currently “home brew” explosives and they are doing the job they are intended to do. One lucky failure doesn’t take away the threat.

Mr Schneier makes some valid points about risk assessment and the the human  predisposition that makes danger difficult for us to assess. That’s fine but suggesting that consequently we shouldn’t bother scanning passengers simply doesn’t follow. Should we do away with the metal detectors and baggaae screening too? Of course not.

His parting remark that we as a society should be focusing on the “general risk of troubled teenagers” is a little farcical for a security technologist, is it not?

Bottom line One: The device such as found in the pants bomber poses a threat that is very real to the passengers on that plane with him. It also poses a threat to the aviation business generally. It perhaps doesn’t pose, in the big scheme of things, much of a threat statistically speaking to the hundreds of thousands of air passengers who fly on any given day. But the threat to the economy of the world if, lets say six or seven, airliners fall out of the sky is very real and worth spending some money on and applying some security technology to.

Bottom Line Two: The device can be detected by millimetric wave technology, and there is also technology that can do this without the privacy issues that seems to concern many. Integrate this with the already in-place metal detection arches and you have a quick easy, not too expensive solution.

I think it is time this subject was approached with some common sense. A lot of commentators are suggesting this sort of security technology is a step too far and intrudes on our rights and dignity. Its not, its only a step too far when such a big deal is made of it. As an individual, I prefer it that the people I fly with have been through effective security checks. Period. I’m very happy if the ninnies (and terrorists) who don’t like this don’t fly with me. More space on the plane for me.  Its true there are more ninnies than terrorists, but that’s fine with me too.

1910-1920

A Train Of Thought

A bomb on a railway line in Russia yesterday, 27th November, causes me to bounce, in a mind map sort of way along a series of thoughts. Let me try and replicate this below with, excusing the pun, a progression of thoughts in a train. I’ll put a link or two at each “carriage” so you can dig detail if you wish. I’m limiting my thoughts to bombs under train tracks and not bombs on trains.

The explosion yesterday appears to have derailed the train, killing at least 26 people. Interestingly there was a second explosion some hours later a short distance away – details are not yet clear.

Devices placed on railway lines, detonated as the train passes aren’t new in Russia. One occurred in 2007. Two Chechen terrorists were charged with the crime.

Earlier in Russia’s history trains were attacked by IEDs by other terrorists. Tsar Alexander II was the target of an IED attack in 1879 when the Narodnaya Volya terrorist group attempted to attack his train by placing explosives under the railway Livadia to Moscow, but they missed the tsar’s train. The Narodnicks attacked the Tsar seven times, finally killing him in 1881.

One of history’s best train bombers, arguably, was Lawrence of Arabia, famous for attacks on the Turkish controlled railways in Arabia during the ”Arab revolt”. This excerpt from a letter to fellow officers from Lawrence.

In a letter to fellow officers describing one of his daring raids on a Turkish train, Lawrence vividly captures the excitement he felt fighting in the desert. The train, he wrote, “had two locomotives and we gutted one with an electric mine. This rather jumbled up the trucks , which were full of Turks shooting at us. We had a Lewis and flung bullets through the sides. So they hopped out and took cover behind the embankment and shot at us between the wheels at 50 yards.Then we tried a Stokes gun, and two beautiful shots dropped right in the middle of them. They could not stand that (12 died on the spot) and bolted away to the East across a 100-yard belt of open sand into some scrub. Unfortunately for them, the Lewis covered the open stretch.”

In other conflicts too, IED shave been used against trains. The diagram below is of an IED recently researched by a colleague in South Africa dating from the Boer war and was a Boer IED used to attack trains. The device uses the trigger of a rifle which is pressed when a train travels over it.

EXTRACT FROM PAGES 25 & 26 – TO THE BITTER END BY EMANOEL LEE

This incident highlights the Boers’ success in wrecking trains, which plagued Roberts and Kitchener throughout the war.  No train was safe.  At first they were derailed by setting off dynamite as the train passed.  The attackers had to lie next to the line to light the fuse.  This was highly dangerous, and the Boers subsequently developed a safer method of stopping trains without injuring passengers or damaging the supplies they needed.  Old Martini-Henry rifles (for which there was no ammunition) were prepared by sawing off the butt behind the breech and removing the barrel a few inches in front of it.  The trigger-guard was the removed and the breech opened.  They inserted a cartridge without a bullet in the breech and placed a dynamite cartridge in the shortened barrel.  Stones were then removed under the rail to make a hole, which was packed with dynamite.  The mutilated breech of the rifle was then placed upside-down on top of the dynamite with the trigger just touching the rail.  When a train passed, its weight made the rail sag and set off the trigger.’

 

Jumping back to modern times, and to demonstrate the potential vulnerability of rail systems, the terrorists responsible for the Madrid train bombings were believed to have planted a device under the tracks of a Madrid express train to carry out a subsequent attack but they all died when their safe house was discovered before this follow on attack could be launched.  The 12kg device was found on April 2 2004 on the Madrid to Seville express line. Other islamist/Al Qaeda plots focused on train tracks are numerous.

In France a few years ago there was a bizarre extortion plot threatening trains that soaked up thousands of hours of track searching by the police.

Elsewhere, a wide variety of groups around the world have attacked train tracks and the trains that run on them. Northern Ireland, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, etc etc,  Here’s a couple of reports  from India both in the last two weeks which demonstrate how commonplace such attacks are:

I think this ‘train of thought’ technique works quite well – please feel free to add your own carriages of related material – remember this thread is explosions of tracks to attack trains not bomb on trains.

Uncategorised

Hezbollah Explosion, more

Interesting video here, taken from an Israeli UAV launched shortly after the explosion.  It seems to show Hezbollah loading what appears to be an object at least 3 m long onto a flatbed pickup, taken from the scene of the explosion.  My best guess, given the size of the object, woudl be a Fajr3 or possibly a Fajr5 missile.

But the interesting thing is perhaps not what the missile is, but what was going on at the site.  Fajr missiles are effectively “off the shelf”, point in the right direction and away its goes…. so what’s going on here, in association with the missiles, that causes an accidental explosion?  Modification of the missile or its warhead?  Why, with what?  Or something else?

Then usual range of conflicting stories from Hez, Lebanese Armyand all the variants thereof obscure the matter… What’s fairly certain is that something is going on, and its probably connected with Hez reworking missiles or something connected witrh such activity.  I hold little hope for UNIFIL getting to the bottom of it.

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Pins and needles

Here’s some scary new terrorism…of sorts.   Gangs roaming the North western Chinese city of Urumqui have stabbed, allegedly, hundreds of ethnic Han Chinese with hypodermic needles.  Over 476 people have sought treatment. The attacks seem to be racially motivated, therefore I assume the gangs are ethnic Uighurs, continuing some sort of separatist activity. Xinjiang has a high rate of AIDS cases, although there is no specific suggestion as yet that the stabbings are an attempt to infect or inject material of some sort.  Fuller report here.   Tension is rising between the Han and the Uighur groups, with the Han venting their anger against the government in protest marches.

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