Al Qaeda’s tryst with terror technology reached a macabre peak, establishing fresh paradigms in mass destruction and warfare.  The “Dirty Bomb” is the new addition to the military vocabulary, as if the one dropped on Nagasaki or Hiroshima was of the clean variety. A dirty bomb contains a conventional explosive like the TNT and is “salted with radioactive material” in and around it. The radioactive material is speculated to be Cessium-137 with a half-life of 30 years; Cessium-137 is used to treat cancer and maintain accurate atomic clocks and the isotope emits gamma rays and ultra high electromagnetic energy. Being most reactive, it sticks to the ceiling material in a building.    

No one knows whether the omniscient Al Qaeda has one in the basement or it is a hoax that the US Attorney General, John Ashcroft, declared to boost the sagging morale of the CIA and the FBI. The BBC correspondent in Washington broke the story on 11 June 2002 about Ashcroft naming 31 year old Abdullah Al Muhajir of being the carrier. He was trained by al Qaeda in Pakistan, or more appropriate, by Pakistan in Pakistan.  The BBC also came out with a persuasive but more scary analysis of “Making a Dirty Bomb.”

Dirty Bomb is an omnium gathrum, which means a strange mixture. Nobody doubts that a dirty bomb is well within the capability of terrorists, but the moot question is where do they get the radioactive material and who are their mentors. An official statement that the US has lost track of nearly 1,500 pieces of equipment with radioactive parts since 1996 or that a large number of small atomic generators were simply abandoned in former Soviet territory is not enough. Humanity seeks an answer to the culpability of the two superpowers that have presided over our destiny for well over half a century. There are thousands of facilities like laboratories, medical centres, oil-drilling sites, and food irradiation plants in the US where radioactive materials are stored. Many of them are not adequately protected against theft. That would also be true of India, though the use and storage of radioactive materials is decidedly not that indiscriminate.

For use against us, the source of radioactive material could be through pilferage, or more likely, involvement or collusion of Pakistan. Even countries sympathetic to Musharraf do not believe that the Pakistan nuclear programme is in safe hands. What could be a reciprocity deal with North Korea could well be an Islamic duty to help bin Laden’s network. Our concerns are not limited to the possibility of nuclear waste being pilfered, but also the big business in finished products of weapons that are openly transacted in Peshawar and adjoining areas on either side of the Durand Line.

What would happen if this dirty bomb is targeted on a railway platform in Mumbai or a Ram Lila Pandal in Delhi? It would be catastrophically devastating, not only the physical explosion but also the fear and panic that it would generate. Akshardham could well be a trial run, while the looming threats may be more daring and cataclysmic. In the US, a Nuclear Energy Support Team covertly sweeps cities and vulnerable areas for any evidence of radioactive materials with gamma ray and neutron detectors. We have no such programmes. Even the possibility of anyone using a nuclear device, clean or dirty, mega or nano, is beyond our reckoning, seeped as we are in the culture of only reacting to events.

The experts say that the dirty bomb in not a true weapon of mass destruction, but that is hardly any consolation. It is the mass fear that leaves telling scars. Radiological attacks constitute a credible threat, though admittedly they would not cause the kind of fatalities a crude nuclear weapon could inflict. Determined terrorists could easily access materials. Further, the delivery system hardly poses a challenge. If a building, say the Parliament House, is contaminated the only practical solution for decontaminating it would be to destroy it. It is time we took this threat seriously.

The Federation of American Scientist have come out with a Public Interest Report, suggesting pre-emptive measures like strict control over access to radioactive materials, funding material recovery and storage programmes, review of licensing and security procedures for commercial use of radioactive material, research aimed at finding substitutes, improved radiation detection systems and their increased use, and effective disaster response. One earnestly wishes that there were provisions to file a Public Interest Litigation against countries that knowingly or negligently help terrorism. However, it would be prudent to pay heed to these suggestions, lest we have another Bhopal tragedy on our hands.