So, since 9/11, airport security has been ramped up enormously, and with good cause. Terrorists seem intent on hijacking aircraft to fly them into buildings or destroy them mid-flight. Some are content with taking themselves out along with the target.
So, sensibly, security at airports scans for threats to prevent them even getting near the planes. It could be argued that the sum total of achievement of the terrorists against governments and their people is simply grief for lost loved ones for a few, and heaps of bureaucratic interference for everyone else.
I assume that terrorists on the whole are seeking to terrify a country’s citizens in order to get attention for their cause and make their demands known. They also tend to have little regard for human life, including their own.
So my question is, given this aim, why not target other places, such as the ticket-queuing area of an airport, where you don’t need security to access?
There would be thousands of people, making maximum terror and death. And inevitably security would be ramped up here too, making air travel even more inconvenient. And then the terrorists could move into the queues outside the airport, too, ad infinitum. It would end up with all of society being one giant security-laden fortress, with many dead and more in terror for their lives, exhausting morale and draining government money.
Of course, they might have terribly retribution on their home countries, but if they’re dead they won’t care.
Hitting transport has always been popular, but airports have far higher security than train stations or metros – not just at the security checkpoint. Airports are full of heavily armed police. Trains are a much easier target.
Well, let me rephrase: Why don’t terrorists avoid the security hotspots and go for soft targets, with maximum killcounts and terror? Post offices, bridges, heck, corner shops and bus stops? Be indiscriminate, make everyone paranoid about absolutely everything. It’s not just airports that are targets but absolutely everything.
What I’ve wondered – and I think this is what the OP is getting at – is why this does not happen more often. London, sure, but that was seven years ago. Madrid, almost nine years ago. While I’m glad it’s not more often, I have wondered why this sort of thing is not, say, every week or month.
The same here in Thailand. We’ve had an insurgency in the Deep South for coming up on nine years now. People used to think the bombers and terrorists plaguing the South will certainly move up to Bangkok. Security is pretty much a joke on the public transport and in the shopping malls. Some malls make you go through metal detectors, but even those places ignore the folks who impatiently walk around the detectors rather than wait in line, or the detectors are set up at only a couple of entrances and not all. They’d be easy targets. But nothing’s happened up here from the southern terrorists. I’ve wondered why.
Terrorists generally have a more or less specific agenda that they want to advance. So they usually assassinate some key persons to their cause, or sometimes they might attack a target that has a symbolic meaning.
Killing random people waiting at the bus stop will cause panic and mayhem, but ultimately will hurt their cause and turn the people who might be supportive against them.
Another thing is that each action they do increases the possibility of getting caught. So it is preferable to bomb a single big target instead of ten bus stops, there’s less exposure.
One big target could be Siam Paragon shopping center, a huge monstrosity that’s the largest mall in Southeast Asia. We were there on Sunday, and there were so many people waiting to pass through the metal detector that security just said “Fuck it” and threw open the doors to let everyone in. Even when you do pass through the detectors, it’s a joke. The wife and I set it off all the time with stuff like our umbrellas, but they just wave us through. It’s only tourists who stop and open their bags, thinking this is a real check and pissing off everyone in line behind them in the process. That would be a prime target.
The metal detectors at malls started after New Year’s 2006/07, after a real series of bombs across the city on New Year’s Eve. But that was related to the coup a few months before, widely believed to be minions of the ousted prime minister just stirring up the shit. But the Deep South separatists kill teachers, medical personnel and regular farmers every day down there. They’re Muslim instead of Buddhist and of a different ethnicity than the Thais, so mainly they just want Thailand out of their backyard. But it really would be simple to come up here and blow up something high profile.
I’ve wondered the same thing over the years (especially since the Tube attacks here in London which made everyone rather paranoid for a while). I’ve come to the conclusion that there simply can’t be as many unhinged suicide bombers around as the media would love us to believe. I think terrorists are more drawn to spectacular things like blowing up planes. Shooting random people at K-Mart doesn’t really cut it and probably loses them cred on the Al-Qaeda lecture circuit.
Heck, we’re no strangers to terrorism here in the UK thanks to a few noisy neighbours just to our west, but at least the IRA usually had the good manners to phone us first before blowing us up. When suicide bombing seemed to be the new threat in 2005, I thought, “Well, how can you defend yourself against that?” but thankfully so far there has been no repeat of that excitement…
I remember hearing somewhere that a lot of attacks are discovered and foiled while they’re still being planned and never come to light. Maybe the security’s better than we tend to assume?
There is that. There have been several arrests and raids, the most high-profile one being the “liquid bomb” plot a few years back. Quite a lot of them seem to just result from internet jihadists setting fire to their bedsits with fertiliser and flour, though.
Again using the Siam Paragon example, I’d estimate 2000 people easy in the food court on any given weekend lunch or dinner hour. Extend that to the other shops outside the food court but in the same area, the Burger King- and Au Bon Pain-type places, and you double that easily, maybe even, say, 5000 people. It’s an incredible mob. Two or three guys well placed wearing explosives could do a hell of a lot of them both in the blasts themselves and in the panicked stampede afterward.
The answer, I think, is a mixture of all of the above.
Mainly there really aren’t all that many homicidal manics and fewer of them are suicidal. Those that are aren’t necessarily out for the highest body count.
Further, although making explosives is relatively easy they have a fairly limited effect in crowded situations (barring the panic) unless specifically designed for maximum impact. It’s easier, and probably more effective, for your lone crazy to use a gun or a sword – both are reasonably common.
Generally you need someone that wants to kill people, is probably prepared to die, and has the to construct the explosives and scout the locations all without getting caught. If they’re part of a wider organization the chances of them getting caught beforehand goes up.
As you point out there are plenty of targets out there, and I agree that security in many places isn’t brilliant. Given the fact that we’re not seeing massive attacks every month that indicates to me that the supply of truly crazy people is probably pretty low, I think a lot of stuff is stopped by the authorities one way or another.
And terrorists with an agenda often don’t want to kill outright (which is why they phone in bomb warnings) or want to concentrate their resources on occasional unthinkable things (like attacking targets that people believed safe).
Yes, you are presuming that the terrorist are insane. Most of the masterminds are highly intelligent and and dedicated people. Attacks are made with certain objectives in mind, not for shits and giggles. The odd attack which rattles the target is one thing, multitude of attacks tend to be counterproductive as it turns away those who might otherwise be indifferent or supportive. Not to mention in such cases you want the targeted countries to find the campaign just intolerable enough that they way “fuck this”. Not so bad that they flatten everyone and everything in sight.
Yes actually a phoned-in bomb scare is extremely disruptive and doesn’t even require a suicide bomb, just a discardable phone. I don’t know why that doesn’t happen more often. I also wonder why a suicide bomber doesn’t fill a truck with explosives and set it off on the George Washington bridge. I think actual intelligence is pretty good just as long as there is also some at the top.
You don’t find the terrorist masterminds putting their own lives on the line too often. These guys are cowards who send the weak minded and insane to do their dirty work. It’s not that easy to get them to succeed. And failure, or even the chance of staying alive means the pawns may give up the goods on their masters putting them at risk.