When the United States invaded Iraq back in March 2003, one of its primary objectives was to track down and destroy weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) reportedly stockpiled by the regime of President Saddam Hussein.

By its own definition – and by U.N. standards – the United States was frantically searching for WMDs constituting three of the world’s most lethal armaments: nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) weapons."Comparing the weapons used in the Boston bombings with nuclear weapons in particular is ludicrous." -- Dr. Natalie J. Goldring of Georgetown University

The search, apparently based on faulty U.S. intelligence, proved futile. But the acronym “WMD” became an integral part of military jargon worldwide as characterising NBCs.

Since last April’s bombings in Boston, Massachusetts, however, both the administration of President Barack Obama and the mainstream news media have offered a new definition of WMDs: shrapnel-packed, homemade pressure cooker bombs that killed three and wounded more than 250 during a marathon in that U.S. city.

That bomb has repeatedly been described as a “weapon of mass destruction”.

Dr. Natalie J. Goldring, a senior fellow with the Security Studies Programme in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, told IPS the weapons used in the Boston bombings were improvised explosive devices (IEDs), not weapons of mass destruction.

Chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons are commonly grouped together as weapons of mass destruction, she said. Combining these weapons in a single category makes it seem as though all three types of weapons are equivalent to one another. They’re not, said Goldring.

WMD hazard symbols, arranged vertically. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

“Nuclear weapons are by far more destructive than existing chemical or biological weapons. Even so, all three types of weapons have the capability to be massively more damaging than the weapons used in Boston,” she said.

“Comparing the weapons used in the Boston bombings with nuclear weapons in particular is ludicrous,” said Goldring, who also represents the Acronym Institute at the United Nations on conventional weapons and arms trade issues.

According to some military experts, the IEDs used in the Boston bombings are no different from the IEDs widely used against U.S. armed forces by insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Jody Williams, the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and chair of the Nobel Women’s Initiative, told IPS, “If you want to confuse people, you blur the lines of distinction between things and also situations.”

She said an improvised explosive device as a “weapon of mass destruction” is just such an example, as is the broad use of “terrorist” and “terrorism” in the aftermath of Sep. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

“We also have the ‘good guys’ and the ‘bad guys’ – a tad broad, to say the least,” said Williams, who led a highly successful global campaign that resulted in a worldwide ban on anti-personnel landmines.

She said it is easier for the U.S. government to continue to prosecute its borderless “war on terror” if people don’t quite understand or see distinctions. It’s all “too confusing” and best left in the hands of the “experts” in Washington, she added.

Siemon Wezeman, senior researcher at the Arms Transfers Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told IPS the use of the term WMD to describe the Boston bombs has been perceived as “weird”.

He said most people would think WMDs are the serious mass killer weapons – nuclear, biological, chemical, and potentially radiological. However, said Wezeman, the term WMD has been used loosely from the time it was probably first coined in 1937 to describe more or less every weapon.

There seem to be in the U.S. official terminology some 50 different definitions, he said.

“Considering the U.S. official terminology, WMD would more or less cover every type of slightly larger explosive weapon – IEDs, hand grenades, artillery shells, small cannon – as used daily by ‘terrorists’ as well as armed forces,” he added.

“Of course for most people and for normal usage, WMD remains just the nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological (CBRN) weapons,” Wezeman said.

Goldring told IPS, “As horrific as the Boston bombings were, the number of casualties caused by those bombings was a tiny fraction of the likely casualties if one or more nuclear weapons were exploded in a city.”

She pointed out that scientists estimate that if even a relatively small (10 kilotonne) nuclear weapon were exploded in a city, the entire area out about a mile in every direction would be largely destroyed.

“Calling the Boston bombs weapons of mass destruction is a political statement. It makes no sense from a substantive perspective,” she said.

If the Boston bombs are weapons of mass destruction, Goldring asked, “Does that mean all of the improvised explosive devices used in Afghanistan and Iraq are also defined as weapons of mass destruction?”

That simply makes no sense, she said, adding, “IEDs have caused enormous damage to military personnel and civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq, but they are not weapons of mass destruction.”

The surviving Boston Marathon bomber reportedly told authorities the U.S. “war on Islam” drove him and his brother to commit their terrorist act. Their linking the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with a perceived global war on Islam is at the heart of the Jihadist message Bin Ladin and Al-Qaeda issued to the Muslim world almost two decades ago.

The message, which continues to lure some vulnerable Muslim youth across the globe, is powerful, simplistic, repetitive, deceptive and violent. It appeals to alienated and angry youth because they see in it a reaffirmation of their self-articulated religious narrative even though such a narrative has very little basis in objective religious teachings.

Of course, the tipping point of moving a young man from anger into killing innocent people varies from case to case. Once he accepts the universality of Bin Ladin’s message, he proceeds with plotting to terrorise regardless of place and cause.

When I was in government, I frequently briefed senior officials on the long-term danger of Bin Ladin’s message because it charted a path for individual radicalisers and radicalised alike without traceable connections to international terror organisations.

We also briefed them that more and more “lone wolf” potential terrorists who would be receptive to the Bin Ladin message live in Western societies and are usually “under the radar”. Part of my responsibility at CIA was to analyse all Bin Ladin’s messages for senior policymakers.

Bin Ladin’s simple articulation of Jihad, which continues to be propagated in the blogosphere by Al-Qaeda and its franchise groups, includes four key themes. First, the Islamic faith and territory are under attack, as exemplified by the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Western-led wars on individual Muslim countries, he told potential recruits, are part of a global “Christian-Zionist” war against Islam.

Second, Bin Ladin asserted that U.S., Western, and “Zionist” policies are anti-Islamic, as evidenced by what’s happening in Palestine, Chechnya, Kashmir, the Philippines, Sub-Saharan Africa, and elsewhere.

Third, in response to these attacks, he argued all Muslims are duty bound to engage in Jihad against the “near” enemy (Muslim regimes) and the “far” enemy (the U.S., European states, and Israel). In addressing his followers through so-called fatwas and media messages, Bin Ladin claimed such “jihad” is an existential fight for the survival of the global Muslim community or umma. His successor, Ayman Zawahiri, has repeated the same message.

Fourth, the war between Islam and the “infidels” and the “apostates” will last until the “final days” when the “enemies of Islam” will be defeated. Islam will emerge victorious awaiting the coming of the “Mahdi”.

For Bin Ladin and Al-Qaeda, infidels and apostates included, in addition to non-Muslims, Islamic majorities who disagreed with this radical ideology and terrorist methods.

The four-pronged message is theology at its most simplistic level. Many grade school graduates, high school dropouts, and other youth with limited knowledge of their faith tend to accept it blindly as immutable truth. Many mainstream Muslims, including clerics and scholars, have had difficulty refuting Al-Qaeda’s calls for violence because radicalised youth have no interest in reasoned discussion or in learning about their faith.

Many Muslim youth, like their counterparts across the globe, have grown up with the new social media and a worldview grounded in the Internet, Facebook, short texting, and tweets. Longer treatises on religion or any other subject for that matter turn them off.

When Western governments began to implement so-called strategic communications strategies in an attempt to engage mainstream and “moderate” Muslims and refute extremism, radicalised youth were already inculcated with Bin Ladin’s violent rhetoric.

My analysts and I frequently briefed senior policymakers on the need to study Al-Qaeda’s radical rhetoric and fight it with more convincing messaging. Accomplishing such a goal should have been easy since vast majorities of Muslims worldwide rejected violence and extremism. But it wasn’t.

Radicalisation did not succeed because of religion or values. Terrorist groups have cynically used Muslims’ disagreements with specific Western policies to spread their message of terror. They also used the politics of nationalism – including in Bosnia, Chechnya, the Arabian Peninsula, Kashmir, Western China, and Sub-Saharan Africa – for their global Islamic agenda.

They stoked opposition to the United States and other Western countries by exploiting popular anger on the “Islamic street” against invading Muslim countries, Guantanamo, drone strikes, and other “dirty wars” tactics.

Some Muslim youth, immigrants or children of immigrants who live in Western societies find it difficult to adjust to life in their adopted countries. As alienated adolescents and even college-age kids, they become easy prey to radical recruiters, whether in person or on the Internet.

Where do we go from here? The news from Canada about the role of Canadian Muslims in foiling the recent terror plot to blow up a train is a useful guide on how to proceed.

Canada, the UK, some European countries, and Australia have done a commendable job making their Muslim communities feel a sense of belonging to the country where they live. Several U.S. cities, especially New York City and Las Vegas, Nevada, have implemented similar policies.

Real engagement of Muslim communities in Western societies usually begets a sense of belonging, especially if it is accompanied by official condemnation of hate crimes and rhetoric, such as “Islamophobia”. A well-grounded feeling of belonging empowers mosque imams and other community leaders to spot signs of radicalisation in their community and report them to the authorities.

As one Muslim resident of New York City once said, “This is my city and don’t want anything to happen to it.”

The good news is that vast majorities of Muslims oppose terrorism and focus on improving their lives. As the Afghan war winds down, and as Al-Qaeda Central weakens, a time should come when Guantanamo is closed and “dirty wars’’ become subject to public scrutiny. That is when Bin Ladin’s message becomes irrelevant, the threat of radicalisation wanes, and the “See Something, Say Something” slogan gains acceptance among Muslims.

*Emile Nakhleh, a former director of the CIA Political Islam Strategic Analysis Programme, is a Research Professor at the University of New Mexico and author of “A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World”.

A shrine to the victims of the Boston bombing. Credit: Vjeran Pavic/cc by 2.0

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Apr 22 2013 (IPS)

Civil liberties and human rights groups are applauding the White House’s announcement Monday that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the lone surviving suspect in last week’s bombing in Boston, will not be charged as an enemy combatant, as some conservative politicians here had been urging.

The widely debated legal designation would have allowed for a much lengthier detention – potentially indefinitely – and would also have imposed fewer qualifications on the government’s ability to interrogate Tsarnaev. Some have also suggested that the label could have shifted jurisdiction for the case to the military, though this would have conflicted with Tsarnaev’s rights as a U.S. citizen."There seems to be a false sense that somehow a military response is a stronger response, and that’s really off the mark." -- HRF's Raha Wala

Nonetheless, many groups are decrying the U.S. government’s decision to begin interrogating the 19-year-old Tsarnaev without reading him what are known here as his “Miranda rights”, a due process assurance that requires law enforcement to verbally explain a suspect’s legal rights. These include rights to legal representation and to refuse to answer officials’ questions.

“As to whether he’s an enemy combatant, this was not really a close decision at all,” Raha Wala, a senior counsel with Human Rights First (HRF), a Washington advocacy group, told IPS. “Here we have individuals engaged in criminal terrorist operations, and that should be handled by civilian authorities. It’s hard to see any connection here to ongoing armed conflict or even broader extremist operations.”

The announcement puts an end a fast-rising debate over how to deal with Tsarnaev, who was captured Friday.

“He will not be treated as an enemy combatant,” White House spokesperson Jay Carney told reporters Monday. “We will prosecute this terrorist through our civilian system of justice … This is absolutely the right way to go and the appropriate way to go.”

Tsarnaev was charged Monday with using a weapon of mass destruction to injure and kill people, an accusation that could carry the death penalty. Last Monday, Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan, allegedly killed three people and seriously injured more than 100 at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, where they are said to have set off two homemade bombs made from pressure cookers packed with nails and other metal.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed Friday in a shoot-out with police, while his younger brother was captured, badly injured, after a massive police search.

Thereafter, some conservatives have cited Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s alleged links to militant Islam as a motivating rationale for designating him as an enemy combatant.

“You can’t hold every person who commits a terrorist attack as an enemy combatant,” Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the most outspoken advocates of using the designation for Tsarnaev, admitted to the media over the weekend.

“But you have a right, with his radical Islamist ties and the fact that Chechens are all over the world fighting with Al Qaeda … to go down that road, and it would be a big mistake not to go down that road. If we didn’t hold him for intelligence-gathering purposes, that would be unconscionable.”

In Tsarnaev’s case, however, U.S. law appears to be straightforward, given that the suspect, although born in Kyrgyzstan, became a naturalised U.S. citizen last fall.

“Under U.S. law, United States citizens cannot be tried in military commissions,” Carney stated Monday, noting that Attorney-General Eric Holder, the Department of Justice and President Barack Obama’s entire national security team agree with the decision.

Systems that work

Rights groups have excoriated other elements of the administration’s handling of the Tsarnaev case, however. Particular concern is being paid to the decision to proceed with interrogations outside of the ambit of the suspect’s Miranda rights, with officials invoking a recently expanded exemption in cases involving public safety.

“The Miranda warnings were put in place because police officers were beating and torturing ‘confessions’ out of people who hadn’t even been formally accused of a crime. We cannot afford to repeat our mistakes,” Vincent Warren, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a legal advocacy group, said in a statement, noting that this has been the longest such exemption to date.

“If officials require suspects to incriminate themselves, they are making fair trials and due process merely an option and not a requirement. To venture down that road again will make law enforcement accountable to no one.”

As of Monday evening, police reports suggested that Tsarnaev, suffering from a gunshot in the neck, could not speak but had begun initial questioning, reportedly writing down answers to basic questions.

Detainee rights in terrorism cases are particularly polarised today given the recently stepped-up debate over the U.S. military prison in GuantanamoBay. There, new reports suggest that around half of remaining detainees are on hunger strike to protest their indefinite detention, which scholars have repeatedly suggested violates international law.

CCR’s Warren explicitly linked the two issues, noting: “Like Obama’s expanded killing programme and his perpetuation of indefinite detention without trial at Guantanamo, this is yet another erosion of the Constitution to lay directly at the president’s feet.”

Despite President Obama’s failure to follow through on 2008 pledges to close the prison at Guantanamo, the administration is seeing Monday’s announcement as being in line with a broader push against efforts to emphasise military over civilian justice in terrorism cases.

“It is important to remember that since [the attacks of Sep. 11, 2001], we have used the federal courts system to convict and incarcerate hundreds of terrorists,” White House spokesperson Carney noted Monday. “The effective use of the criminal justice system has resulted in the interrogation, conviction and detention of both U.S. citizens and non-citizens for acts of terrorism committed inside the United States and around the world.”

Although President Obama did make early attempts to have some high-profile terror suspects tried in the federal court system, public backlash scuppered the plan. In March, however, the administration decided to have Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, a former Al-Qaeda spokesperson and son-in-law of Osama bin Laden, put on trial in New York City.

Rights groups have suggested the move offers a new precedent for terrorism-related trials.

“The big dynamic following the Abu Ghaith decision is that the Obama administration is now clearly pushing in the right direction – towards using systems that work,” HRF’s Wala told IPS.

“There seems to be a false sense that somehow a military response is a stronger response, and that’s really off the mark when you look at how terrorism cases have proceeded. Fortunately, the U.S. criminal justice system has made lots of advances since 9/11 in handling terrorism cases and avoiding the uncertainties of detention at Guantanamo.”

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents have said the Boston Marathon bombing was carried out with kitchen pressure cookers packed with explosives, nails and other lethal shrapnel, but said they still didn’t know who did it and why.

An intelligence bulletin issued to law enforcement and released late on Tuesday included a picture of a mangled pressure cooker and a torn black bag the FBI said were part of a bomb.

Earlier, law enforcement officials said they had recovered forensic evidence that suggested the two explosive devices which ripped through participants of the marathon on Monday may have been inside heavy black nylon bags.

The FBI and other prominent law enforcement agencies repeatedly pleaded for members of the public to come forward with photos, videos or anything suspicious they might have seen or heard.

Barack Obama, the U.S. president, branded the attack an act of terrorism but said officials didn’t know “whether it was planned and executed by a terrorist organisation, foreign or domestic, or was the act of a malevolent individual”.

Speaking at a joint law enforcement news conference on Tuesday, Richard DesLauriers, the FBI special agent in charge of the case, said that investigators had received “voluminous tips” and were interviewing witnesses and were analysing the crime scene.

DesLauriers pledged “we will go to the ends of the Earth” to find whoever carried out the deadly attack on one of the city’s most famous civic holidays, Patriots Day.

Authorities served a warrant on a suburban Boston home and appealed for any images or audio of the blasts that killed three people and injured 176.

Following the bombings, major cities across the U.S. have been placed on high alert.

Amid heightened security across the country, Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, said a letter containing ricin or another poision had been sent to the office of Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi.

Hundreds gathered Tuesday around Parkman Bandstand on Boston Common for a vigil that aimed to bring peace to a community shaken by the bombings that shook the city’s marathon on Monday.

In the quiet crowd visitors fought back tears and then embraced friends and loved ones in the gathering to honour the victims of the Boston Marathon explosion that has taken three lives and wounded 176 others.

“I think it’s a good showing. It’s nice to see people in this community right here,” said Kate Bergstrom, a Boston resident.

Friends were seen crying on a caring shoulder as others held each other as they sang songs of hope and love to honour and remember the victims of Monday’s horrific events.

Dozens lit candles and laid flowers on the ground during the quiet and somber event.

Pressure cookers

The explosions at the marathon took place about 10 seconds and about 90 metres apart, knocking spectators and at least one runner off their feet.

Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher, reporting from Boston, said such a bomb was set to explode by using a mobile phone and had been used in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“The police were saying that there were traces of pressure cooker found at the site,” he said. “The suggestion is that the pressure cooker was put in a backpack and placed on the ground, and that is why we’ve got so many lower body injuries.”

Our correspondent said that would explain why there was a small blast which caused a great deal of damage to the people nearby, as the shrapnel spread over a wide area.

Deval Patrick, governor of Massachusetts, said that no unexploded bombs were found at the marathon. He said the only explosives were the ones that went off on Monday.

On Monday, the Massachusetts state police confirmed that a search warrant related to the investigation into the explosions was served in Revere, but gave no further details.

Some investigators were seen leaving the Revere house early on Tuesday carrying brown paper bags, plastic trash bags and a duffel bag.

Dr Stephen Epstein of the emergency medicine department at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre said he saw an X-ray of one victim’s leg that had “what appears to be small, uniform, round objects throughout it – similar in the appearance to BBs”, referring to ball bearings.

Police said three people were killed. Eight-year-old Martin Richard was among the dead. The boy’s mother, Denise, and six-year-old sister, Jane, were badly injured in the blasts.

Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said 17 people were in a critical condition.

*Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.