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Chronic anthrax
October 31, 2001
By Denis Solomon
The United States authorities admit they have no evidence of the source of the anthrax germs being disseminated in that country. They are nevertheless doing their best to avoid public panic by planting the idea of a local origin, for both the germs and their users.
In a way this is understandable. It is also not without precedent. During the Cuban missile crisis, it was impossible to follow, by reading the American newspapers, the progress of the Soviet missile-transporting ships as they steamed toward Cuba. (Freedom of the press is practically indigenous to the United States, but American newspapers co-operate very readily with the authorities in a time of national crisis.) The Warren Commission report on the Kennedy assassination is widely believed to be a cover-up, and the then Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, is on record as saying that the truth would never be revealed.
The "Unabomber" theory of the origin of the anthrax attacks may be correct.
It was correct in the case of the Oklahoma bombing by Timothy McVeigh. And although the humorists who laced supermarket packages of Tylenol with cyanide some years ago have never been caught, that was obviously not the work of an Osama or a Saddam.
But contemporary history and geopolitics, and the scientific facts, tell a different story. Although the press has stressed the easy availability of anthrax bacteria, it is clear that a considerable degree of technical sophistication is required to produce the "inhalation" variety. There is no lack of technically competent lunatics in the US. But the combination of knowledge, equipment and institutional support needed to produce "war-grade" anthrax is far above the level of the Unabomber's do-it-yourself workshop in the wilderness.
If the origin of the attacks is not in the United States, where is it to be found? Here two more factors come into play: the possibility of a link between the anthrax and the September 11th outrage, and the possibility that the man behind that outrage was not Osama bin Laden.
I don't think anybody seriously believes that the timing of the anthrax attacks was coincidence. There must be a link, even if only revenge for the Afghanistan operation by a local group of fanatics. But the sophistication argument weakens that theory.
If bin Laden wasn't behind the September 11th outrages, and/or the anthrax attacks, who else could have been? No prizes for guessing. Not only has there been official speculation about Iraq as the possible source of the bacteria, but the United States, and even more its allies in the uneasy coalition of "anti-terrorist" states, are worried about what to do if facts should come to light pointing to Saddam Hussein as the author, with or without bin Laden, of the World Trade Center massacre.
The obvious, and sensible, thing to do with such evidence would be to suppress it. Despite the warnings from the White House, the Pentagon and Downing Street that the Afghanistan operation would not be a short one, its lack of success so far, and the mounting civilian casualties, are putting severe strains on the coalition, particularly its Arab and Muslim components. The nasty signal the Taliban has sent by summarily hanging captured enemy leaders must also make the coalition governments think twice about openly committing ground troops.
So if Afghanistan is proving a harder nut to crack than expected, retaliation against Iraq is not even on the cards. Statements by American and British leaders about possible Iraqi involvement have once more emphasised the lack of evidence. But methinks they do protest too much.
There is, in any case, circumstantial evidence that points toward Iraq: not only the fact that Saddam has recently used biological weapons against his Kurdish compatriots, but the multiple visits to Afghanistan, before September 11th, by the former head of the Iraq secret service, now ambassador to Turkey. This has given rise to a theory that the September 11th attacks were masterminded by Saddam, though carried out by Al Qaeda.
The West must be desperately anxious to avoid being confronted with any harder evidence of Iraqi involvement. The pressure from American public opinion to retaliate would be intolerable. But the chance of building another coalition along the lines of Desert Storm are zero, and any attempt at invasion would guarantee the enmity of even the presently well-disposed Muslim countries for a long time.
The possibility of the involvement of Iraq, and the difficulty of doing anything about it, implies a serious long-term threat to the West. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union the chief threat to world security has been nuclear proliferation, and in particular the acquisition of nuclear weapons by what the West calls "rogue states". In the present situation, the most serious threat in that area is Iraq. But even that threat has diminished.
Although the United Nations arms inspectors have been expelled from Iraq, its chance of acquiring nuclear weapons capability are limited. The country is under a severe economic embargo. American satellites could hardly fail to spot nuclear installations in Iraq, and the Israelis would not hesitate to bomb them out of existence, as they have done once already. Biological weapons are much easier for a state to produce in secret.
Anthrax is not the most potent of them. Two other delightful possibilities are smallpox and plague. Diseases that attack livestock or crops could wreak economic havoc without killing a single human being.
It is perfectly possible that Saddam has changed the emphasis of his anti-US ambitions from the possibility of nuclear to the reality of chemical warfare. Who is to say that the anthrax attacks are not a trial run, and/or a warning by Saddam Hussein of the possibility of a large-scale biological attack if the United States does not mend its ways? What ways? Obviously, the habit of attacking Muslim countries under the guise of suppressing terrorism while supporting what those same countries decry as state terrorism by Israel. And if Saddam is really behind the anthrax attacks, they are likely to go on until there is a solution of the Middle East situation. That means not simply a resumption of talks, but the return of the Golan Heights, a final resolution of the status of Jerusalem, and the return of millions of Palestinian exiles in Jordan and elsewhere.
This will not happen. So biological terror may be on the agenda for a long time to come.
Copyright © 2004 Denis Solomon