Weapons Of Terrorism Research Articles

Insects as Weapons of War, Terror, and Torture

For thousands of years insects have been incorporated into human conflict, with the goals of inflicting pain, destroying food, and transmitting pathogens. Early methods used insects as "found" weapons, functioning as tactical arms (e.g., hurled nests) or in strategic habitats (e.g., mosquito-infested swamps). In the twentieth century the relationship between insects and disease was exploited; vectors were mass-produced to efficiently deliver pathogens to an enemy. The two most sophisticated programs were those of the Japanese in World War II with plague-infected fleas and cholera-coated flies and of the Americans during the Cold War with yellow fever-infected mosquitoes. With continued advances, defenses in the form of insecticides and vaccines meant that insects were no longer considered as battlefield weapons. However, in recent times sociopolitical changes have put insects back into the realm of human conflict through asymmetrical conflicts pitting combatants from nonindustrialized regions against forces from militarily and economically superior nations.

The Nigerian Armed Forces and Sexual Violence in Ogoniland of the Niger Delta Nigeria, 1990–1999

Ogoniland in the Niger Delta was subjected to excessive militarization during Nigeria’s military dictatorships. Nigerian Armed Forces used acts of violence and repression, including various forms of sexual violence, as instruments to intimidate the people and ultimately contain the “Ogoni insurgency.” This article reconstructs the history of the military occupation of Ogoniland and the acts of sexual violence perpetrated by Nigerian Armed Forces—an area in which little research has previously been conducted. It examines the factors contributing to acts of violence in the Ogoni conflicts committed with the active complicity of the State in the context of a nationalized conflict. Data for the study were derived from both primary and secondary sources, including in-person and focus group interviews. An imbalance of power relations was identified as the ultimate cause of violent acts, which were used as demonstrations of power and weapons of State terrorism. The wider sociocultural meanings and implications of these violations are diverse, deep-rooted, and altogether utterly destructive to the social fabric of Nigeria. Finally, the unwillingness of the State to engage with this historical episode in Ogoniland could lead to repeated violence in Ogoniland and elsewhere.

Sulfur Mustard Exposure Presenting to a Community Emergency Department

We report dermal exposure to a chemical warfare agent, sulfur mustard, in a 28-year-old commercial fisherman. Chemical warfare agents such as sulfur mustard are considered potential terrorist weapons, and suspected exposure requires notification of federal authorities. We address potential pitfalls when alerting authorities and methods to avoid such obstacles, and we describe the clinical management of sulfur mustard toxicity.

Strategiczne dylematy Sojuszu Północnoatlantyckiego

In the aftermath of the Iraq crisis, the North Atlantic Alliance faced its most serious predicament since the ColdWar. Its mission in Afghanistan revealed growing discrepancies between the member states. The Georgian crisis of 2008, the missile defence project and the enlargement showed a lack of coherence. NATO has split up into two or more factions. A crucial question arose as to NATO’s ability to resolve the three main strategic dilemmas which have grown more pressing since the end of the ColdWar: (1) the choice between collective defence as the key role of NATO (Art. 5) and its out-of-area role of combating the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and international terrorism; (2) the choice between the transatlantic nature of NATO and its global partnerships; (3) the choice between the concept of the global military engagement of NATO and the so called comprehensive approach involving the cooperation of NATO with other security organizations such as the UN, the EU and the OSCE in reconstructing post-conflict regions. NATO’s performance in managing these challenges will bear critically on its future. The Strategic Concept from Lisbon 2010 has helped to clarify many controversial issues within the organization. NATO has managed to mitigate the risk of developing into a multi-tier organization. Relations between the factions have relaxed although interests appear to remain as diverse as they were before.

Fundamental UN Reform: A Non-starter or Not?

The major issues confronting world politics in the 21st century – climate change, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, pandemics, terrorism and economic meltdowns, among others – require that the United Nations reinvent itself as the multilateral forum for tackling the pressing challenges of today. The possibilities for significant reform are remote but not impossible. This article addresses four major roadblocks: sacrosanct state sovereignty; the emphasis on process over results in organizational culture; perennial and theatrical North–South confrontations; and the twin problems of turf battles and decentralization. At the same time, individuals and states can be as strong as the institutions they create. There are plenty of things wrong with the United Nations, but many can be fixed.

Hand-held cow horn: Resurgence of an old arm or a potential terrorist weapon

:A 23 year old man presented with intestinal evisceration from stab injury to the left side of the abdomen with a hand-held cow horn at a local night party. He complained of severe abdominal pain and bleeding at the site of injury. He was hemodynamically stable. At emergency exploration, the eviscerated bowel was viable with no adjacent mesenteric tear. Other intra abdominal organs were normal. The eviscerated bowel was lavaged and reduced into the abdomen through the 7cm anterior abdominal wall laceration. The laceration was repaired and abdomen closed in layers. Post operative recovery was uneventful. The hand-held cow horn can easily be concealed and may pass through security checks undetected. It should be added to the ever increasing list of weapons of small scale terror.

Fireship: the terror weapon of the age of sail - By Peter Kirsch

International Journal of Nautical ArchaeologyVolume 40, Issue 1 p. 217-218 Fireship: the terror weapon of the age of sail – By Peter Kirsch RICHARD BARKER, RICHARD BARKER Borrowash, Derbyshire, EnglandSearch for more papers by this author RICHARD BARKER, RICHARD BARKER Borrowash, Derbyshire, EnglandSearch for more papers by this author First published: 02 February 2011 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1095-9270.2010.00300_11.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume40, Issue1March 2011Pages 217-218 RelatedInformation

Dual-Use Research and Technological Diffusion: Reconsidering the Bioterrorism Threat Spectrum

The global security community continues to view a potential bioterrorist event with concern. Kofi Annan, former Secretary General of the United Nations, stated “the most important under-addressed threat relating to terrorism…is that of terrorists using a biological weapon” [1]. The European Commission believes that biological weapons “may have particular attractions for terrorists” [2]. The United States Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism believes it is very likely that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack by the end of 2013, and that an attack with a biological weapon is more likely than one with a nuclear weapon [3].

Identification of Hylemonella gracilis as an Antagonist of Yersinia pestis Persistence

Yersinia pestis , the etiological agent of plague, has garnered great interest in the Biological Defense community as its intentional release or use as a terror weapon could cause considerable morbidity while incurring incalculable financial costs for restoration and remediation efforts. The plague bacterium is thought to only persist within a host such as a flea or small mammal reservoir. Following an event such as an intentional release however, the plague bacterium would be spread throughout a number of atypical environments such as soil or water ecosystems. Recently, a small number of studies have been published describing the plague bacterium’s persistence in some of these atypical environments. Here we show that Y. pestis can colonize sterilized water microcosms for over 3 years yet when introduced to filtered fresh water microcosms the bacterium Hylemonella gracilis became the dominant bacterium in the microcosm, apparently preventing long-term Y. pestis persistence. The conditioning and outgrowth of H. gracilis on rich media is directly attributable and proportional to the introduction and concentration of Y. pestis to the microcosm.

To disrupt and displace: placing domestic violence on the public health agenda

In 1996, in Geneva, the World Health Assembly declared the violence as a major and growing public health problem. Others have gone further in describing (sexual) violence against women as a weapon of terror. In the local community of Hamilton, Ontario Canada (population approximately 500,000), domestic violence represents 25% of the workload of the local police service. The literature has shown that violence in general, and domestic violence in particular, presents tremendous social and health impacts for individuals and communities. In this local community, however, an evaluation of a recently piloted cutting edge domestic violence response system highlights how difficult it is to place domestic violence on the policy and/or public health agendas. Qualitative interviews with 23 key stakeholders were undertaken to assess their views on the success of the program. While overall findings indicate that the success of this brief (11 month) pilot project was limited, important insights emerged around responding to the domestic violence issue, at the community level.

The Four Days' Battle of 1666: the greatest sea fight of the Age of Sail - By Frank Fox The Restoration Warship: the design, construction and career of a Third Rate of Charles II's navy - By Richard Endsor Fireship: the terror weapon of the Age of Sail -

The Four Days' Battle of 1666: the greatest sea fight of the Age of Sail - By Frank Fox The Restoration Warship: the design, construction and career of a Third Rate of Charles II's navy - By Richard Endsor Fireship: the terror weapon of the Age of Sail -

Ideology and inquisition: the world of the censors in early Mexico

This book is the first comprehensive treatment in English of the ideology and practice of the Inquisitional censors, focusing on the case of Mexico from the 1520s to the 1630s. Others have examined the effects of censorship, but Martin Nesvig employs a nontraditional approach that focuses on the inner logic of censorship in order to examine the collective mentality, ideological formation, and practical application of ideology of the censors themselves. Nesvig shows that censorship was not only about the regulation of books but about censorship in the broader sense as a means to regulate Catholic dogma and the content of religious thought. In Mexico, decisions regarding censorship involved considerable debate and disagreement among censors, thereby challenging the idea of the Inquisition as a monolithic institution. Once adapted to cultural circumstances in Mexico, the Inquisition and the Index produced not a weapon of intellectual terror but a flexible apparatus of control.

The Right to Life between Absolute and Proportional Protection

One of the puzzles of human and constitutional rights law is whether there are any rights which are absolute. The question is important not only for practical purposes but also for the theory of human and constitutional rights: an absolute right presents a departure from what is now the ‘default’ in constitutional and human rights law around the world, namely the proportionality approach according to which an interference with a right is justified if it serves a legitimate goal and is proportionate to that goal. This paper tries to shed some light on the issue by focussing on the right to life. It proceeds by first presenting an account of the leading case in this area, namely the judgment of the German Federal Constitutional Court in the Aviation Security Act case, where the Court held that shooting down an airplane which was likely to be used as a terrorist weapon was a violation of the right to life in conjunction with the human dignity of the innocent passengers aboard. It then offers a few thoughts on the Court’s reasoning, specifically with regard to what it has to say about the idea of absolute rights. Having concluded that the judgment offers little help in illuminating this problem, it presents some approaches to absolute rights from moral philosophy and applies them to human and constitutional rights law. The conclusion is that the right to life will under certain circumstances be absolute or near-absolute, but that these circumstances occur less frequently than is sometimes assumed.

Book Review: Fireship: Terror Weapon of the Age of Sail

Book Review: Fireship: Terror Weapon of the Age of Sail

Detection of Biological Agents Used for Terrorism: Are We Ready?

Countering the use of biological agents (biothreats) requires a complex network of intelligence, detectors, laboratories, and the personnel and facilities to treat exposed individuals. In October 2009, 8 years after the mailing of letters containing Bacillus anthracis , the causative agent of anthrax, the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism released an interim report asserting that the US is failing to address biological weapon proliferation and biological terrorism. The Commission Vice Chairman, Jim Talent, stated in that report that “It is only getting easier and cheaper to develop and use biological weapons—and our best defense is to mitigate the effects through faster, safer vaccines and therapeutics.” It is important to remember, however, that the decisions to administer vaccines and therapeutics require robust tools for the detection and identification of biological agents. The capabilities of current detection technology have been a limiting factor in creating a thorough process to deal with biological threats, and the matter is complicated even further by the almost infinite types of sample matrices and potential contaminants that confound analytical processes. Although technology and capabilities have improved since 2001, the majority of available devices are still based on chromatographic immunoassays, PCR, and ELISA. Newer, potentially faster and more sensitive technologies based on concepts such as nanowires, quantum dots, microcantilevers, and hand-held spectrometers are reported to be available or near availability, but most still require significant amounts of testing and validation under conditions replicating actual use. In this Q&A, 3 experts in the field of bioweapon detection answer questions about the current status of biothreat detection technology. Mark Hollis2 : Biothreat detection can happen in 2 ways: (1) people, animals, and/or plants fall ill in such a pattern that a biothreat can be suspected, and/or (2) the biothreat is identified via …

Slouching towards dystopia: the new military futurism

In recent years, the military establishments of the US and the UK have produced a series of reports that attempt to ‘think the unthinkable in imagining future threats to the security of the West. A new genre of military futurology has emerged which owes as much to apocalyptic Hollywood movies as it does to the cold war tradition of ‘scenario planning . Often outlandish and bizarre in its prophecies, and always dystopian, this new military futurism sees threats to the western way of life emanating not only from rogue states, weapons of mass destruction and terrorism but also from resurgent nationalism, conflicts over dwindling resources, migration, disease, organised crime, abrupt climate change and the emergence of‘failed cities where social disorder is rife. This article provides a survey of the genre, showing how the grim predictions of the military futurists provide a justification for endless global war against enemies that may never exist.

Rape with Extreme Violence: The New Pathology in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo

On any given night in eastern DRC, armed groups of men will overrun a village and divide into bands of three to five, forcing themselves into houses where they seize and serially rape women and young girls. Some mutilate female genitals with guns, pieces of glass, wood, or heated plastic. Some take their victims to the forest and torture them as sex slaves for days, months, or years. As Stephen Lewis, the former UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa has said ([1, p. 32]), “the capacity for brutality by so many perpetrators – and on the flip side, the capacity for indifference by so many witnesses – is the ugly apex of a trend gone unchecked.” This ugly apex has characterized the sexual violence landscape throughout history, across cultures, during times of conflict, and behind closed doors. It is in wartime, however, that rape becomes a coordinated, deliberate, en masse weapon of terror. Systematic rape is now understood as the defining tactic of modern conflicts [2]. The mass rape of hundreds of thousands of women have been reported in Europe and Nanking during the Second World War [3], Bangladesh [3], Rwanda [4], and the former Yugoslavia [4]. In both Rwanda and Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Tribunal has recognized rape as a means of ethnic cleansing and genocide [5],[6]. The ongoing violence in the eastern DRC is exemplary of the use of rape to not only terrorize, displace, and demoralize, but also to deliberately incur severe sexual trauma on a level that merits analysis in and of itself. This tactic has escalated over the past ten years in eastern DRC with impunity, garnering little international attention or response. The latest figures estimate 1,100 rapes per month as assessed between November 2008 to March 2009 [7]. One of us (DM) is a gynaecologist and obstetrician who has been treating sexual violence survivors in South Kivu for a decade and as such is a first-hand witness to the brutality and scale of this kind of rape. The purely destructive and sadistic behaviour perpetrated by different armed groups signals a new pathology in South Kivu that we classify as rape with extreme violence (REV). In this article, we document the medical consequences of REV through the lens of the Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, South Kivu, one of the few established medical centres that has the capacity to treat REV cases. In the ongoing conflict of the DRC, much remains unknown and undocumented; we draw heavily on a few reports by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and other observers about the use and impact of rape in the DRC, and on our own extensive experience in the field.

Prevention of Biothreats: A Look Ahead

On October 6, 2009, the Center for Biosecurity of UPMC organized a 1-day conference, ‘‘Prevention of Biothreats: A Look Ahead,’’ in Washington, DC. The conference was hosted in collaboration with the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, and it was funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The meeting was attended by more than 150 administration officials, policy analysts, scientists, health leaders, congressional staff members, and members of the media to discuss strategies for countering biological weapons threats. During the conference, participants discussed a wide range of U.S. government programs, international approaches, and nongovernment efforts aimed at preventing the development and use of biological weapons, including arms control and multilateral agreements; efforts to prevent the unlawful acquisition of materials, equipment, and information; deterrence, intelligence, and surveillance; and improving resilience to biological attacks as a means of dissuasion and prevention. Given the wide range of activities and professional groups engaged in biothreat prevention efforts, it is rare for the entire community to convene as a single group. This meeting accomplished that—the first step toward generating promising new ideas and directions for biothreat prevention and promoting greater coherence in the biopreparation community. This summary report was prepared by the staff of the Center for Biosecurity of UPMC to provide a brief synopsis of each day’s panel discussions and individual presentations. Videos of the day’s discussions, the conference agenda, speaker biographies, and background readings are available on the conference website: www.upmc-biosecurity. org=preventionconf.

An evolutionary algorithm for port-of-entry security optimization considering sensor thresholds

According to the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the number of offloaded ship cargo containers arriving at US seaports each year amounts to more than 11 million. The costs of locating an undetonated terrorist weapon at one US port, or even worst, the cost caused by a detonated weapon of mass destruction, would amount to billions of dollars. These costs do not yet account for the devastating consequences that it would cause in the ability to keep the supply chain operating and the sociological and psychological effects. As such, this paper is concerned with developing a container inspection strategy that minimizes the total cost of inspection while maintaining a user specified detection rate for “suspicious” containers. In this respect and based on a general decision-tree model, this paper presents a holistic evolutionary algorithm for finding the following: (1) optimal threshold values for every sensor and (2) the optimal configuration of the inspection strategy. The algorithm is under the assumption that different sensors with different reliability and cost characteristics can be used. Testing and experimentation show the proposed approach consistently finds high quality solutions in a reduced computational time.

White Paper Prepared for The Secretary of Defense Task Force on DoD Nuclear Weapons Management: Tradeoffs and Paradoxes: Terrorism, Deterrence and Nuclear Weapons

This article was written at the request of the Secretary of Defense Task Force on DoD Nuclear Weapons Management. While this analysis suggests that certain types of terrorists can be deterred from certain types of attacks, it is less optimistic about the use of nuclear weapons in a terrorist deterrent strategy. A broad approach to deterrence may be effective against certain types of terrorist groups and attacks, making it crucially important to disaggregate the terrorist threat when setting policy. The article goes on to address two types of terrorist groups with a “global reach” that pose a serious threat to the United States: non-state actors driven by doctrines permitting catastrophic attacks and state-sponsored groups capable of carrying out catastrophic attacks. The analysis reveals a number of previously unappreciated tradeoffs and paradoxes associated with the deterrence of terrorists.