Nuclear Suitcase Farce

Ukraine has been drawn into a new incident that has caused quite a ripple in the world: the London-based newspaper Al-Hayat reported that in 1998 a group of Ukrainian scientists had allegedly sold Al-Qaeda some suitcase-sized tactical nuclear weapons. This piece of news was promptly picked up by various international information agencies and other media which trumpeted throughout the world that Ukraine was again illegally selling arms and violating a series of international agreements. The truth of this information was immediately questioned by Ukrainian military experts, while Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued an official denial. However, such arguments as “this could not have happened because it is impossible in principle” will hardly satisfy the public which has long tended to distrust the Ukrainian government. It would thus be quite right and necessary to make a more in-depth analysis of the reports that link nuclear suitcase bombs (a term often applied to small-size nuclear charges to be utilized for sabotage purposes in the enemy rear), Al-Qaeda, and Ukraine.

First of all, it should be noted that this is in no way the first report that Al-Qaeda possesses nuclear arms. The aforesaid Al-Hayat reported in October 1998 that Osama bin Laden had acquired nuclear weapons. More detailed information on this was published in November of the same year by the magazine Al-Watan Al-Arabi. The magazine claims bin Laden paid a Chechen organized crime grouping $30 million US and two tons of opium for twenty nuclear warheads to be converted into “nuclear suitcase bombs” by ex-Soviet scientists whom bin Laden had hired for a $2000 a month. In December 2000 the newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reported that a European country’s security service had seized about twenty nuclear warheads smuggled from Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, and Turkmenistan and intended for bin Laden and the Taliban regime. In November 2001 the Australian Daily Telegraph wrote that Al-Qaeda had received a Russian-made nuclear suitcase from a certain Central Asian source. In September 2002 the weekly Al-Majallah claimed that bin Laden had bought 48 nuclear suitcases from the Russian mafia. None of these reports were confirmed by other sources and no material evidence was ever produced. All one can say for sure today is that Al-Qaeda attempts to take possession of the weapons of mass destruction or materials and technologies to produce them. In September 1998 Mahmoud Salim, an assistant of bin Laden’s, was arrested in Munich for trying to buy nuclear materials, including highly-enriched uranium. In February 2001 the former Al-Qaeda member Jamal al-Fadl testified in a US court that he had been involved in an operation to buy uranium, presumably of South African origin, in Sudan in 1993-1994. In November 2001 drawings were found in Kabul of a bomb of the type of the one dropped on Nagasaki in August 1945: two plutonium hemispheres encased in a common explosive sphere. Yet, these drawings were technically crude. In June 2002 Russia’s Federal Security Service announced it had foiled Al-Qaeda’s attempt to purchase about five kilograms of radioactive thallium removed from scrapped submarines’ measuring instruments.

If we assume that the latest accusations against Ukraine are not unfounded, this immediately raises a number of questions: why have the terrorists not yet used the nuclear arsenal they allegedly possess to achieve their goals? Why were these weapons not used to repel the US attack on Afghanistan in 2001? Why is Al-Qaeda still making efforts to produce less effective chemical or radiological weapons if it already possesses nuclear suitcase bombs? The conclusion is that the terrorists’ attempts to obtain weapons of mass destruction have not been successful, and all the loud claims that bin Laden has “nuclear suitcases” is nothing but bluff and part of the information war the terrorists are waging against the West.

For this kind of news can help boost the morale of terrorist gunmen, further build the organization’s prestige in the eyes of the sympathetic public (which may increase the infusions of money and manpower), and instill a sense of uncertainty and spread panic in the target countries. Hence, this kind of report should always be taken with a large grain of salt.

We would also like to recall the way the public got to know about such weapons as Soviet- made nuclear suitcases. Interestingly, almost all information on this subject is dated 1997-1998. What triggered a debate was the interview of then Secretary of Russia’s National Security Council, Aleksandr Lebed, with CBS. Earlier, at a private meeting with a US Congress delegation in Moscow in May 1997, Lebed had claimed that the commission appointed in July 1996 to clarify the situation with Russian nuclear suitcases on suspicion that Chechen terrorists could have got access to these weapons failed to track down 84 out of a total 132 such suitcases. But when interviewed by CBS, he said more than 100 out of 250 suitcases were missing. As time went by, the number of suitcases continued to rise and reached five hundred. One should remember the following: Mr. Lebed was dismissed from his office in October 1996, i.e., before the commission he had appointed could finish its work. This means the problem of the missing suitcases can be explained very easily: the commission just failed to finish its investigation and what Lebed knew was in no way full and final information. This also explains why the former National Security Council secretary named different figures every now and then. It is quite possible that not a single Soviet nuclear warhead was lost or stolen. Incidentally, most of the leading Western experts hold the same view.

It is extremely unlikely that some tactical nuclear warheads might have remained behind on the territory of Ukraine after 1992: rather tense relations between Kyiv and Moscow in the early nineties meant that the Russian side watched very closely that none of the tactical nuclear warheads should accidentally remain in Ukraine. In Moscow, the XII General Department of the Ministry of Defense kept a record of the serial numbers of all warheads, and each Ukrainian warhead was carefully checked as it was transferred to Russia.

Mr. Lebed’s announcements allowed the public to learn some technical characteristics of nuclear suitcases. One of them is that components have to be changed quite frequently. Failure to do so will drastically reduce the blast, or the bomb may not go off at all. It is known from open sources of information that the average service life of Soviet strategic warheads was about fifteen years. Following this, they needed overhauling in order to be given a new lease of life. As to a nuclear suitcase, it is a far more sophisticated and refined device which needs much more careful maintenance. In other words, if we assume that a certain number of nuclear suitcases remained behind in Ukraine after 1992, they could not be kept serviceable for the simple reason that all the design bureaus and nuclear bomb production facilities were located in Russia, while Ukrainian research institutes were short of technical capacity and expertise in this field. Although Ukraine is perhaps capable of establishing a technological cycle for producing and maintaining nuclear arms, it is sheer stupidity to claim that Ukraine set up a facility for maintaining the operational efficiency of a limited number of nuclear suitcases (quite an expensive project) without being able to produce a nuclear bomb as such and then decided to sell these suitcases to Afghanistan in 1998.

Thus one can assert quite boldly that the Al-Hayat article is an instance of unfair journalistic practices, and the reprinting of this material by other newspapers and coverage in other mass media is a glaring example of a situation when so-called fifth estate forgets, in pursuit of sensation, about impartiality and the lack of prejudice. Ukrainian politicians and officials also deserve a few critical words, for the public never heard any convincing denials of Al-Hayat’s accusations. It should be remembered that it is not enough to be right — one must also know how to substantiate one’s position and keep our own and foreign citizens informed in minute detail. Only then will nobody have any doubts about the honesty and sincerity of Ukraine.

In writing this article, the author used materials of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) at the Monterey Institute of International Studies as well as those of the Russian- American Nuclear Security Advisory Council.