Prospect of Biological and Nuclear Terrorism in Central Asia and Russia. Musa Khan Jalalzai
his research paper (A Critical Analysis of Factors and Implications of ISIS Recruitments and Concept of Jihad-Bil-Nikah-26 June 2017) noted important aspects of the ISIS training bases, and activities of women brigade of the Daesh-including Jihad-Bil-Nikah:
“The recruitments for ISIS have been going on in Pakistan for the past more than 3 years, but the Foreign and the Interior Ministries of Pakistan have been constantly denying the presence and activities of ISIS in Pakistan. Law Enforcement agencies have very recently arrested many people from Lahore, Islamabad, Karachi and Sialkot who were associated with ISIS networks. Men have been recruited as jihadis or mujahids and women as jihadi wives to provide sexual needs of fighters who are fighting in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Many women, impressed and convinced through brainwashing with the concept of Jihad-Bil-Nikah, got divorce from their Pakistani husbands and went to marry a Mujahid of ISIS for a certain period, came back gave birth to the child of Mujahid, and remarried their former husband. Some decide to continue that marriage for rest of their lives. All of this is being done to obtain worldly wealth and later eternal life in Heaven because ISIS is paying something around RS. 50,000 to 60,000 per month to every warrior, which is a hefty amount for an unemployed youth suffering in unemployment, poverty and inflation here in Pakistan, which is ruled by the corrupt ruling elite for the past 68 years and masses only got poverty for being true Muslims and patriot Pakistanis. Most secret and law-enforcement agencies have behaved like a silent bystander to the activities of ISIS in the country. Is this an unofficial channel of providing soldiers to provide the Saudi demands for fighters to fight on behalf of Saudi armies in Yemen and Syria? A sort of high-level game is going on, on the political, foreign policy and law-enforcement levels regarding the presence of ISIS in Pakistan. The politicians, Foreign Ministry, Interior Ministry, and Law Enforcement Agencies are singing different tunes regarding the presence, recruitments and migration of jihadis or mujahids and jihadi wives from Pakistan to Syria to join the ISIS”.
There are several reasons for the relative increase of violent extremism and Takfiri Jihadism after the collapse of Soviet Union. In 2017, more than 8,000 Mujahideen from Central Asia joined the ISIS terrorist network. Violent extremism and Terrorism posed a threat to the security and integrity of nuclear, chemical, and biological facilities in Russia and Central Asia. Numerous separatist conflicts contribute to national instability. Illicit nuclear materials have been interdicted on numerous occasions in Russia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. For the last two decades, U.S. leaders have focused on the possibility of nuclear terrorism as a serious threat to the United States. In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, those fears grew even more acute. With the establishment of the ISIS by US army, the threat of chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN) terrorism exacerbated in Central Asia and Russia.
Recent events in Tajikistan and Russia have raised the prospect of extremist and jihadist groups using biological, radiological and chemical attacks against military installations and critical national infrastructure in both states. Russia is vulnerable to such attacks by these terrorist groups. The greatest threat to the national security of Russia stems from nuclear smuggling and terror groups operating in Central Asia. Before the rise of ISIS, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) was the main Central Asian extremist organization in the field. Its base of operations is in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Central Asian fighters linked to ISIS headquarters in Syria also participated in acts of terrorism in other countries. The ISIS has previously restrained from getting involved in attacks in Central Asia as the group’s leadership emphasised that attacking this region was not the highest priority. In July 2018, five Tajik men killed four foreign cyclists in a car-ramming attack, accompanied by an on-foot gun and knife assault in the Khatlon province of Tajikistan.
The investigation into the 3 April 2017 terrorist attack on the St Petersburg metro has focused on a man of Central Asian origin with possible ties to Syrian rebel groups. The attack raises concerns about the threat posed both by Daesh and extremists within Russia’s sizeable Central Asian community. Investigators identified Akhbarzhon Dzhalilov as the prime suspect in the 3 April attack on the St Petersburg metro that left 14 people dead and 49 injured. Dzhalilov is an ethnic Uzbek from the southern Kyrgyzstani city of Osh who obtained Russian citizenship in 2011. The rise of ISIS in Afghanistan poses serious security concerns for Russia, according to a September 2016 statement by Zamir Kabulov, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s director of the Second Asian Department in Afghanistan. Kabulov claimed that about 2,500 ISIS combatants are in Afghanistan and the organization is preparing to expand from Afghanistan into other Central Asian countries and Russia, giving Moscow reasons to worry. Nuclear terrorism in Central Asia and Russia has risen important questions about the US and NATO policy towards Russia that without using biological and nuclear weapons against the country, its dream of supreme power will vanish.
The current instability in the Middle East, particularly the conflict in Syria and the ongoing Sunni insurgency in Iraq, has energized the Salafi-jihadi groups and has emboldened their supporters to orchestrate large-scale casualty attacks. The likelihood of a successful bioterrorist attack is not very large, given the technical difficulties and constraints. However, even if the number of casualties is likely to be limited, the impact of a bioterrorist attack can still be high. Countering bioterrorism, from a responsive and policy-making point of view, usually focuses on measures to mitigate human casualties. With the presence of Jihadist Groups and the ISIS in Central Asia, the use of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons cannot be ruled out, the fact is that the ISIS found these weapons in Syria and Iraq. If they used these weapons, reaction of the Central Asia States and Russian would be violent, and they might attack the US and NATO installations inside Afghanistan. Radiological sources remain in Central Asia and, if stolen, could be used in unconventional attacks by terrorists. They have been less well addressed by cooperative threat-reduction efforts because they serve ongoing and important industrial and medical purposes.
The prospect of nuclear terrorism in Central Asia and might possibly in Russia, is crystal clear as the ISIS groups, and US army are making things worse. There are possibilities that terrorists can acquire nuclear material or a complete warhead to use it in Central Asia, or possibly in Russia. The risk of a complete nuclear device falling into the hands of terrorists will cause consternation in the region. Over the past several years, the prospect of a terrorist group armed with a nuclear weapon has frequently been cited as a genuine and overriding threat to the security of Central Asia and Russia.
If terrorist groups such as ISIS or Lashkar-e-Taiba determine to go nuclear, what will be the security preparations in Central Asia to intercept these groups? These and other Pakistan based groups can attempt to manufacture the fissile material needed to fuel a nuclear weapon—either highly enriched uranium or plutonium, and then use it. Moreover, there are possibilities that Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia based extremist and jihadist groups can purchase fissile material in black market or steal it from a military or civilian facility and then use that material to construct an improvised nuclear device. The US tensions with Russia receded and nuclear strategy came to seem like a relic of a bygone era. Yet today, with Russia rising again as a military power, the grim logic of nuclear statecraft is returning. In his nuclear risk analysis, Simon Saradzhyan (Russia Matters, Simon Saradzhyan, (August 06, 2019) argued that there isa possibility of nuclear war between Russia and the United States:
“Is the risk of a nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia now higher than at the height of the Cold War? Yes, it is, according to an article former U.S. Energy Secretary Ernie Moniz and former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn have penned for Foreign Affairs. “Not since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis has the risk of a U.S.-Russian confrontation involving the use of nuclear weapons been as high as it is today,” the co-chairs of the Nuclear Threat Initiative warn in their commentary published on Aug. 6, 2019. To back their claim, the two American statesmen describe an imaginary scenario in which Russian air defense systems shot down a NATO aircraft that has accidentally veered into Russian airspace during a wargame in Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave in 2020”.
On 25 March 2016, Daily Telegraph reported militants plan to attack the Brussels nuclear plant: “In the wake of claims the Brussels attackers had planned to set off a radioactive ‘dirty bomb’, Yukiya Amano, the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency said: “Terrorism is spreading and the possibility of using nuclear material cannot be excluded. The material can be found in small quantities in universities, hospitals