tagged w/ Arabian Peninsula
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Al Qaeda group contemplated poisoning food in U.S., officials say
By Mike M. Ahlers and Brian Todd, CNN
December 21, 2010 6:24 p.m. EST
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula considered poisoning restaurant and hotel salad bars, U.S. officials say.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* NEW: Some terror experts say food poisoning may be within al Qaeda's capabilities
* Plot by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is months old, U.S. officials say
* "We don't know of any current plotting along these lines," one official says
* The tactic is one among many reportedly considered by al Qaeda, officials say
Washington (CNN) -- The al Qaeda group that built two toner-cartridge bombs in an unsuccessful attempt to blow up planes in October also has contemplated spreading poison on salad bars and buffets at U.S. hotels and restaurants, U.S. officials told CNN Tuesday.
But U.S. officials sought to downplay the threat -- first reported by CBS News -- saying it was months old, and that it was more in the nature of a discussion of "tactics" than an actual plot. Officials implied the tactic is beyond the capabilities of the terrorist organization, which is based in the Middle East.
The United States has received information the group -- al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula -- was considering the tactic of placing ricin and cyanide poisons into food supplies, Department of Homeland Security officials confirmed to CNN.
In response to that information, U.S. officials met through regular channels with representatives of the hotel and restaurant businesses to discuss the possibility that terrorists could target the food supply, and to reiterate "best practices" to ensure the food supply is safe.
Officials, however, likened the threat to numerous others discussed in jihadist publications such as the online magazine Inspire, where al Qaeda members and sympathizers discuss various ways to attack Western countries.
"We're talking months, not weeks (ago), that this came into the threat stream," one official said.
Earlier this year, the federal government staged a tabletop exercise, or role-playing drill, in which the government and industry practiced responses to a fictional incident involving "intentional contamination" of food. A Homeland Security Department official said the drill was not a direct response to the threat information, but that the threat from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, known as AQAP, helped define the scenario and add to its authenticity.
The group that held the exercise -- the Food and Agriculture Sector Coordinating Council -- declined to discuss the threat, referring CNN's calls to the Department of Homeland Security.
The CBS report quoted an unnamed intelligence source saying the threat was "credible."
But officials told CNN they did not believe the threat was in any advanced stage of planning.
"We're aware that terrorists have been interested in doing this kind of thing for a long time," one U.S. official told CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr. "They've said as much and, as a result, we take all of this very seriously. But we don't know of any current plotting along these lines."
Homeland Security Department's only official comment came in response to the CBS report.
"We are not going to comment on reports of specific terrorist planning. However, the counterterrorism and homeland security communities have engaged in extensive efforts for many years to guard against all types of terrorist attacks, including unconventional attacks using chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear materials," spokesman Sean Smith said in a prepared statement.
"Indeed, (al Qaeda) has publicly stated its intention to try to carry out unconventional attacks for well over a decade, and AQAP propaganda in the past year has made similar reference. Finally, we get reports about the different kinds of attacks terrorists would like to carry out that frequently are beyond their assessed capability," the statement said.
Some terror experts said food poisoning may be within al Qaeda's capabilities.
It's "easier to do this than get a bomb on a plane or make a sophisticated biological weapon that you would spray in the air," said Randall Larsen, a homeland security expert. "This is very crude, it's very simple, and with knowledge you get in a high school biology class, you could produce something that would cause a problem."
"It's good that the word is out there, because people in public health departments really need to know about this, so if they start seeing something coming into emergency rooms, they're kind of ready to look for it and to watch for it," Larsen said. "And ... restaurant owners and people like that (need) to know about this if there's a potential threat."
While ricin and cyanide can sicken or even kill people, neither is considered a weapon of mass destruction, Larsen said.
Experts say terrorists have long considered the possibility of contaminating water and food supplies with chemical or biological substances, and that both ricin and cyanide have been in the terrorists playbook. Ricin, a natural, highly toxic compound, is extracted from castor beans.
In 1978, Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was shot with a ricin-tipped dart fired from an umbrella while waiting for a bus in London. He died four days later. And in 2004, ricin was found in a letter in Sen. Bill Frist's mailroom in a letter demanding changes in truckers' sleep/work schedule rules.
The idea of contaminating salad bars also is not original. In 1984 members of an Oregon cult contaminated salad bars with salmonella, sickening hundreds of people in an attempt to influence a local election that day.
But if AQAP is contemplating such an attack, it would be a shift in direction.
CNN National Security Contributor Frances Fragos Townsend said AQAP "seems very focused on (creating) an improvised explosive device, preferably involving aviation."
AQAP, was behind the October attack on two cargo planes. The group created bombs out of printer toner cartridges, but the devices were discovered and disarmed before they detonated. AQAP also has claimed credit for the September 6 crash of a UPS cargo plane in Dubai, but U.S. authorities say there is no evidence they played a role in the crash.Al Qaeda group contemplated poisoning food in U.S., officials say
By Mike M. Ahlers... more
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Archeologist: Persian Gulf sites hint at prehistoric people
Map of southwest Asia depicting exposed landscapes during the Last Glacial Maximum as well as ancient and modern drainage systems. Numbers indicate Pleistocene and Early Holocene sites mentioned in the study.
Emerging archeological evidence points to early human habitation 100,000 years ago in a Persian "Gulf Oasis" now underwater, suggests one archeologist.
In the upcoming Current Anthropology journal study, Jeffrey Rose of the United Kingdom's University of Birmingham, points to stone tools from 40 archeological sites throughout the Middle East to suggest that modern humans left Africa earlier than many model suggest (typically around 60,000 years ago), and populated Arabian coastal areas now underwater.
"The emerging picture of prehistoric Arabia suggests that early modern humans were able to survive periodic hyperarid oscillations by contracting into environmental refugia around the coastal margins of the peninsula," begins the study. The end of an Ice Age flooded today's Persian Gulf around 8,000 years ago, Rose notes, as sea levels rose. "There is a noticeable spike in settlement activity around the shoreline of the Gulf between 8,500 and 6,000 years ago," Rose says.
Archeologist Geoffrey Bailey of the United Kingdom's University of York, says the study's suggestion that Arabian continental shelves served as good environments for human during Ice Ages, "and served as a source of population expansion in the early Holocene (last 10,000 years), is an attractive one."
However, Robert Carter of the UK's Oxford Brookes University, questions the links that Rose sees between ancient stone age tools and the later Sumerian civilization, in a commentary accompanying the report.
"Unless one completely dismisses the notion that lithic technology is passed down the generations, there are problems with assigning both the populations of southern Mesopotamia and eastern Arabia to the same demographic origin in the Gulf basin. The leptolithic (blade-based) industry of early southern Mesopotamia has little in common with the Arabian bifacial tradition(s) that prevailed in the Arabian Peninsula between 8 and 6 (thousand years ago)," Carter writes.
Rose alludes to suggestions that the Biblical "Garden of Eden" and Noah's Ark stories may have a basis in the pre-flood Persian Gulf, to conclude his study. "Albeit epiphenomenal, it is interesting to note that the oldest known version of the ubiquitous Near Eastern flood myth, the "Eridu genesis", was written by the inhabitants of this region. The link between flood mythology and marine incursion into the Arabo-Persian Gulf basin has already been thoroughly explored by a number of authors and does not require any further elucidation"
(Reader note: In reference to the so-called "Arabo-Persian Gulf basin", Rose footnotes his paper to say, "The author acknowledges that 'Arabian Gulf' and 'Persian Gulf' are more typically used to refer to this body of water; however, to avoid contention, this paper adopts the convention of hyphenating the two designations.")
"Connecting the flood myth with any particular period is problematic," says archeologist Carrie Hritz of Penn State, noting studies showing repeated shifts in the Persian Gulf's shoreline, as well as overflowing rivers. "We have evidence from antiquity of highly destructive flood events throughout Mesopotamia, any one of which could have contribute to the formation of the myth that has some root in reality. Despite past archaeological work at Ur, there's just little evidence to date this to any particular event," she says, by email.
And archeologist Paul Mellars of the United Kingdom's University of Cambridge says he is skeptical of the Current Anthropology study's suggestion that early modern humans peopled Arabia more than 75,000 years ago. "I think this is just speculation," Mellars says. "And there is no archeological or skeletal evidence that supports the speculation."
Genetic evidence most strongly suggests that people emerged from Africa for good some 60,000 years ago, Mellars adds. The genetic argument for people expanding from a stillborn expansion of anatomically-modern-looking humans documented into modern-day Israel about 90,000 years ago, and from there to Arabia and India, he says, "relies upon the selection of a few points favoring the argument, and ignores the great weight of geneticist's views of how late modern humans emerged from Africa."
By Dan VerganoArcheologist: Persian Gulf sites hint at prehistoric people
Map of southwest Asia... more
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As the US pours more troops into the "right war" in Afghanistan, a new front in the war against Al Qaeda seems to be emerging: Yemen. Why? The Underwear Bomber! Yemen is a hot and dusty country down at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula. Its government likes the US, but not all of its people like the government. Back in September, we posted a story asking if Yemen was the next failed state. It's got an armed insurgency battling the government which claims ties to Al Qaeda and it's got an awful lot of Somali refugees (as reported by Vanguard in "Beach of Death", they swim across the Gulf of Aden - even Yemen is better than Somalia).
But like so many other countries teetering on the brink of some sort of collapse, Yemen has largely slipped beneath the Western radar. That is, until the so-called Underwear Bomber was reported to have received his training and instruction from Al Qaeda in the country. All of a sudden: it's all eyes on Yemen.
Good news is, the US military was already there, quietly conducting a campaign against Islamic militants. On December 24, the day before the attempted Underwear Bombing, the New York Times reported on an airstrike in the country targeting senior Al Qaeda members.
A few days later, the Times followed up with a more in-depth picture of US involvement:
A year ago, the Central Intelligence Agency sent several of its top field operatives with counterterrorism experience to the country, according a former top agency official. At the same time, some of the most secretive Special Operations commandos have begun training Yemeni security forces in counterterrorism tactics, senior military officers said.
The Pentagon is spending more than $70 million over the next 18 months, and using teams of Special Forces, to train and equip Yemeni military, Interior Ministry and coast guard forces, more than doubling previous military aid levels.
And indeed, yesterday, the AP reported that US-funded Yemeni forces carried out a raid on an Al Qaeda stronghold.
But can Yemen win its war on terror? Again, just in September we were asking whether it would be the next failed state. Yemen may be raiding militant headquarters today, but they've got other problems - like the Houthi clan waging war against the state in the north. Newsweek asks whether Yemen can be a reliable ally.
...Washington is also rightfully wary of its ally in Sana—a caution that seems particularly justified in the wake of this week's in-flight bombing attempt by a Nigerian who had been studying in Yemen. The Yemeni government's relationship with Al Qaeda is a complicated one. The country's ruling clique, led for the past 30 years by President Ali Abdullah Saleh, has long been fighting off challenges from Shia tribesmen in the north and rebellious socialists in the south—threats that it sees as more immediate than a small band of Qaeda operatives without a real political agenda. In the past, Saleh has enlisted local Islamists—including, notably, jihadis returning from Afghanistan in the 1980s—to help fight those battles.
Not to mention the leaky security that allowed some of baddest of the Gitmo baddies to escape from prison in Yemen in 2006. Indeed, some of the militants behind the Christmas Day attempt are thought to be Guantanamo alums.
All of this to say: It's time to get to know to know your Yemen. Another American GWOT ally whose trials and tribulations will take the spotlight over the next few months as the US tries for a third time to publicly 'take the fight to the terrorists.'
Recently on the Current News Blog:
- China executes British national, flexes its diplomatic muscle?
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- How do you help Sebikotane, Senegal - Global Citizen Year
- Don't give into road rage - A doctor's commentary on the mammogram screening controversyAs the US pours more troops into the "right war" in Afghanistan, a new front... more
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On Saturday, Obama said the Christmas day non-attack over Detroit was the work of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the latest incarnation of the perennial boogieman used by government to frighten people into accepting foreign invasions and occupations and an ever-growing police state grid at home.
“We know that [Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab] traveled to Yemen, a country grappling with crushing poverty and deadly insurgencies. It appears that he joined an affiliate of al Qaeda, and that this group — Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula — trained him, equipped him with those explosives and directed him to attack that plane headed for America,” Obama said in his address to the nation.
Are we Headed to a 3rd War? this time with Yemen? read the Full Story here...http://ctpatriot1970.wordpress.com/2010/01/04/flight-253-attack-a-new-war-united-states-plans-retaliatory-attacks-on-yemen/On Saturday, Obama said the Christmas day non-attack over Detroit was the work of... more
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As the US pours more troops into the "right war" in Afghanistan, a new front in the war against Al Qaeda seems to be emerging: Yemen. Why? The Underwear Bomber! Yemen is a hot and dusty country down at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula. Its government likes the US, but not all of its people like the government. Back in September, we posted a story asking if Yemen was the next failed state. It's got an armed insurgency battling the government which claims ties to Al Qaeda and it's got an awful lot of Somali refugees (as reported by Vanguard in "Beach of Death", they swim across the Gulf of Aden - even Yemen is better than Somalia).
But like so many other countries teetering on the brink of some sort of collapse, Yemen has largely slipped beneath the Western radar. That is, until the so-called Underwear Bomber was reported to have received his training and instruction from Al Qaeda in the country. All of a sudden: it's all eyes on Yemen.
Good news is, the US military was already there, quietly conducting a campaign against Islamic militants. On December 24, the day before the attempted Underwear Bombing, the New York Times reported on an airstrike in the country targeting senior Al Qaeda members.
A few days later, the Times followed up with a more in-depth picture of US involvement:
"A year ago, the Central Intelligence Agency sent several of its top field operatives with counterterrorism experience to the country, according a former top agency official. At the same time, some of the most secretive Special Operations commandos have begun training Yemeni security forces in counterterrorism tactics, senior military officers said. The Pentagon is spending more than $70 million over the next 18 months, and using teams of Special Forces, to train and equip Yemeni military, Interior Ministry and coast guard forces, more than doubling previous military aid levels."
And indeed, yesterday, the AP reported that US-funded Yemeni forces carried out a raid on an Al Qaeda stronghold.
But can Yemen win its war on terror? Again, just in September we were asking whether it would be the next failed state. Yemen may be raiding militant headquarters today, but they've got other problems - like the Houthi clan waging war against the state in the north. Newsweek asks whether Yemen can be a reliable ally.
"...Washington is also rightfully wary of its ally in Sana—a caution that seems particularly justified in the wake of this week's in-flight bombing attempt by a Nigerian who had been studying in Yemen. The Yemeni government's relationship with Al Qaeda is a complicated one. The country's ruling clique, led for the past 30 years by President Ali Abdullah Saleh, has long been fighting off challenges from Shia tribesmen in the north and rebellious socialists in the south—threats that it sees as more immediate than a small band of Qaeda operatives without a real political agenda. In the past, Saleh has enlisted local Islamists—including, notably, jihadis returning from Afghanistan in the 1980s—to help fight those battles."
Not to mention the leaky security that allowed some of baddest of the Gitmo baddies to escape from prison in Yemen in 2006. Indeed, some of the militants behind the Christmas Day attempt are thought to be Guantanamo alums.
All of this to say: It's time to get to know to know your Yemen. Another American GWOT ally whose trials and tribulations will take the spotlight over the next few months as the US tries for a third time to publicly 'take the fight to the terrorists.'
NEWS BLOG: http://blogs.current.com/news/2009/12/31/get-to-know-yemen-the-new-hot-front-in-the-war-on-terror/
SOURCES: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/24/reports-of-new-strike-on-radicals-in-yemen/
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/28/world/middleeast/28yemen.html
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/12/30/general-ml-yemen-us-airliner-attack_7243231.html
http://www.newsweek.com/id/228633As the US pours more troops into the "right war" in Afghanistan, a new front... more
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Fossil traces found in an oil field on the Arabian Peninsula are the oldest evidence yet of animals, pushing back the known origins of higher life to more than 635 million years ago.
The animals' remains don't look like traditional fossils. They're more like fossil echoes: chemical traces of a compound only produced — at least in modern times — by demosponges, descendants of what some scientists consider to be the last common ancestor of all animals.
"It is, definitively, the earliest evidence for animals," said geochemist Gordon Love of the University of California, Riverside, lead author of the study published Wednesday in Nature.Fossil traces found in an oil field on the Arabian Peninsula are the oldest evidence... more
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lvp
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Scientists have discovered the tracks of a herd of 11 long-necked sauropods walking along a coastal mudflat in what is now the Republic of Yemen, the first discovery of dinosaur footprints on the Arabian peninsula.
Sauropods, the largest land animals in earth's history, walked on four stout legs and ate plants.
"The nice thing is we finally filled in a bit of a blank spot in the dinosaur map," said Anne Schulp, a palaeontologist at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, who worked on the study.
"Until 10 years not even bones were known from the Arabian peninsula and at last we have some dinosaur tracks."
The footprints dating from about 150 million years ago showed the sauropods traveling at the same speed along a river, likely in search of food, Schulp said in a telephone interview.
The creatures roamed the Earth from about 228 million years ago to 65 million years ago, the middle of the age of dinosaurs.
The well-preserved tracks, found about 50 miles north of Yemen's capital Sanaa, ranged from 43 centimeters to 70 centimeters and suggested strides of about 2.5 meters, Schulp added.
Paleontologists have so far unearthed only a few dinosaur fossils from the Arabian peninsula and possible fragments of a long-necked dinosaur from Yemen.Scientists have discovered the tracks of a herd of 11 long-necked sauropods walking... more
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kushan
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3 years ago
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