Terror in Bali and the Beltway

by John Thompson

October 21, 2002

Al-Qaeda is back in business, and it is making a killing.

Recent attacks on Western tourists on vacation in Bali, on US troops in Kuwait, on shoppers in the Philippines, and on a French tanker off Yemen show the Al-Qaeda terrorist network remains as dangerous as ever. Moreover, there are growing grounds for suspicion that the sniper killing people in the Washington area might not be just a serial killer.

The death toll from Bali is yet to be finalized, but will come in around 200 people. The bomb outside the nightclub was designed to first collapse the structure with a blast wave and then wash a rolling ball of flame across the debris and ignite it. While the concept behind the Bali attack was not as sophisticated as the planning for September 11^th, it still betrays Al-Qaeda’s characteristic desire to kill large numbers of people.

It is also worth remembering that the Bali attack does not reflect an intrinsic anti-Americanism. Rather, the targets were mostly Australian tourists and Balinese (who, being a laid-back Hindu minority in Indonesia, have no place in the Fundamentalists’ plans for a totally Islamic state either). The Indonesian Islamic Movement and Laskar Jihad, the local terrorist groups that have become Al-Qaeda subsidiaries, have also been behind attacks on Christian minorities throughout Indonesia in recent years.

Al-Qaeda’s leaders have considerable ambitions and see themselves as the masterminds behind a wide war against all enemies of Islam (both outside and within the faith). The September 11^th attacks did not just attack symbols as so many terrorists do, but reflected a desire to cause real intrinsic damage to all of Western society — and the substantial economic hit that resulted from the hijacking of four aircraft and the destruction in Manhattan did just that throughout the Western world.

With the destruction of a French oil tanker off Yemen, Al-Qaeda has just demonstrated that they can put a knife to another vital economic artery. In the narrow waters of the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, more tankers can be destroyed by bomb-vessels lurking amid the fishing boats and coastal traffic. This new threat will need the deployment of large numbers of naval assets (which themselves will offer more targets for future attacks), and of course, higher insurance oil prices. The price for this is going to come out of everyone’s pockets again.

The series of low-level attacks on US Forces in Kuwait over the past two weeks have been linked to Al-Qaeda as well. These attacks have killed one US marine and injured another (they were attacked while on a training exercise); two other attacks failed to have any real result. These are seemingly conducted with little planning and appear to make use of local talent who have little training — one wannabe Holy Warrior was only 17 years old. Yet intention counts as much as ability in making a threat assessment, and a new complication has been added to US planning for operations against Iraq.

While US and other Western forces in the Middle East have been targets for Al-Qaeda in the past, this sudden upsurge of activity in Kuwait makes an inference that the terrorist network is prepared to exert itself on behalf of Iraq. If this is the case, then it may well be that Iraq has provided support to the terrorist network. Indeed, Iraq remains the most likely source for Al-Qaeda’s capacity for chemical weapons.

The shooting deaths of nine people in the Washington area, and some additional failed attacks, have paralyzed the suburban communities around America’s Capital City. The immediate and natural inclination is to blame a serial killer who is acting on his own to gratify some personal urge. However, there are some grounds to believe that the shooter might not be a serial killer at all. He may have a driver acting as a partner, it has been hard to find a common pattern among the victims, and some investigators have pointed out that meticulous care is taken with the gunman’s exit, rather than with the act of murder itself. These irregularities suggest that the shooter might be acting from a political agenda instead of a psychotic one.

It is pure conjecture to suppose that the Washington gunman is an Al-Qaeda terrorist, but the possibility is real. Meanwhile, some 200 deaths in Bali, more bombs in the Philippines, the sinking of a 400,000 ton oil-tanker, and attacks on military personnel in the Persian Gulf demonstrate that Al-Qaeda remains a formidable threat.

John Thompson is President of the Mackenzie Institute which studies political instability and terrorism. He can be reached at: mackenzieinstitute@bellnet.ca