Prospect of Biological and Nuclear Terrorism in Central Asia and Russia. Musa Khan Jalalzai
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 presence of Daesh in Iraq and Afghanistan, and participation of Central Asian jihadists in it prompted consternation in the region. In Syria, the radical Islamic militants from Central Asia established terrorist organisations of their own. These terrorists have Salafi-Wahhabi inclinations and are among the backers of alQaeda, al-Nusra Front, and Daesh group. In his Diplomat analysis (20 September 2016), Uran Botobekov, documented videos and extrajudicial killing in Iraq and Syria:
“Recently, Central Asians saw on YouTube a terrible video of a teenager, Babur Israilov from Jalal-Abad in southern Kyrgyzstan, on his way to becoming a suicide bomber. In the video, Babur cries before being sent to his death in an armoured car laden with explosives in Fua, Syria. One of the fighters gathered around encourages him, saying in Uzbek that Satan intervenes at crucial moments to confuse a Muslim’s mind, so he should think only of Allah. Further in the video sentimental Arabic music plays, the armoured personnel carrier moves, and, at the fatal moment, the bomb explodes. According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Babur Israilov was a member of an extremist group of Uzbeks– Imam Bukhari Jamaat–which fights alongside Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria. Just like the father of the British boy JoJo, resident of Suzak district in the Jalal-Abad region of Kyrgyzstan Tahir Rahitov saw his son Babur via video. According to Tahir, his wife died in 1995 and the boy was raised by his grandmother. In November 2013 Babur left for Russia in search of work. In March 2014 he arrived in Syria via Turkey, joined Imam Bukhari Jamaat, and fought alongside Jabhat al-Nusra against the government of Bashar al-Assad”.3
On 06 November 2019, Masked Daesh militants attacked a border post on the Tajik-Uzbek border overnight, triggering a gun battle that killed 15 of the militants, a guard and a policeman, Tajik authorities said.4 There was no immediate announcement from the militant group, which has claimed responsibility for a series of assaults in Tajikistan. Five of the gunmen were captured after the attack on the Tajik side of the border, 50 km (30 miles) southwest of the capital Dushanbe, Tajikistan’s National Security Committee said.
The investigation into the 03 April 2017 terrorist attack on the St. Petersburg metro station 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 03 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. Eight more people, mostly from Kyrgyzstan, were detained in St Petersburg and Moscow on suspicion of assisting Dzhalilov.5 While Tajikistan remains vulnerable to jihadist extremism due to its proximity to jihadist hotbeds, preexisting networks and difficult socio-economic conditions, it appears that the central radicalization issue is the diaspora abroad, led by Tajiks living in Russia.
Since the beginning of 2017, a string of jihadist terrorist attacks involved Central Asian citizens, mainly of Uzbek and Kirgiz origin. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) detained near Moscow Abrar Azimov from former Soviet Central Asia, born in 1990. He was accused as one of the organizers of the attack, and the one who had trained Jalilov. However, Azimov refused to admit his guilt in court during the hearing. By the end of April, the FSB arrested 12 people of Central Asian descent in the Kaliningrad region suspected of involvement with the Jihad-Jamaat Mujahideen extremist group. The alleged leader of the cell was placed by Uzbekistan on a wanted list for extremist crimes.
The rise of ISIS in Afghanistan poses serious security concerns according to a September 2016 statement of 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. Authors Christopher Mclntosh and Ian Storey (20 November 2019) in their well-writter analysis have elucidated the real motive of US and NATO hegemonic design:
“While terrorist organizations vary widely in their internal organization and structure, almost all are highly sensitive to benefits and costs, both external and internal. By examining these, it will become clear that terrorists might have more to lose than gain by proceeding directly to an attack. Doing so might alienate their supporters, cause dissent among the ranks, and give away a bargaining chip without getting anything in return. While there is any number of far more likely scenarios for nuclear terrorism broadly understood, we focus only on groups with a working nuclear device, not a radiological dispersal device or the ability to attack a nuclear reactor. The threat posed by an operational device is fundamentally different, not least because possession would radically change the nature of the organization as a strategic, warfighting group. A large body of work in terrorism studies teaches us that terrorist groups do behave strategically. Communications within Al Qaeda, Princeton Near Eastern Studies expert Michael Doran has written, have shown that the group behaves “almost exclusively according to the principle of realpolitik,” and is “virtually compel[led]” to do so by the “central doctrines of Islamic extremism” itself. While it may not appear so based on terrorist’s tactics, most groups have all the hallmarks of strategic decision-making, command and control, and sensitivity to costs. This is all the more true for the hypothetical that concerns us: Only a large, well-organized, and heavily funded group would be able to attain operational nuclear capability. Regardless of what one thinks about the debates regarding terrorist organizations and their ability to acquire these weapons—either by theft or gift— acquisition and maintenance is going to be resource-intensive and difficult”.6
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 the black market or steal it from a military or civilian facility and then use that material to construct an improvised nuclear device. 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 warned 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”.7 All but, 15 years ago, Graham Allison (September/October 2004) noted the possibility of nuclear terrorism in Russia by Chechen terrorists. Chechen have had a long-standing interest in acquiring nuclear weapons and material to use in their campaign against Russia. He is of the opinion that Chechen had access to nuclear materials, and their experts were able to make nuclear explosive devices:
“To date, the only confirmed case of attempted nuclear terrorism occurred in Russia on November 23, 1995, when Chechen separatists put a crude bomb containing 70 pounds of a mixture of cesium-137 and dynamite in Moscow’s Ismailovsky Park. The rebels decided not to detonate this “dirty bomb,” but instead informed a national television station to its location. This demonstration of the Chechen insurgents’ capability to commit ruthless terror underscored their long-standing interest in all things nuclear. As early as 1992, Chechnya’s first rebel president, Dzhokhar Dudayev, began planning for nuclear terrorism, including