mzalen-do
25th April 2006, 06:29
The car bomb has become the ubiquitous weapon of choice by all manner of groups and movements fighting a militarily superior foe and by governments out to prove they can play the game, too.
With the possible exception of Australia, car bombs have exploded on all continents at one time or another. Today, car bombs reign supreme in Iraq.
Where did car bombs originate and how have they evolved? It will surprise many that the first prototype car bomb — a horse drawn wagon packed with dynamite — exploded at the intersection of Broad and Wall streets, New York, in September 1920. An Italian anarchist, Mario Buda, was out to kill tycoon J.P. Morgan. He missed him, but the explosion snuffed out the lives of dozens of innocents.
According to Mike Davis, who has researched and written on the subject, the car bomb did not reappear until towards the end of the Second World War. A Jewish terrorist group, the Stern Gang, fighting against the British for an independent state, contrived powerful car bombs that devastated symbols of British authority in Palestine, then a British mandate.
The same group deployed car bombs against Palestinians in an effort to make them flee. Palestinians quickly absorbed the lessons and retaliated similarly, in the process indigenising the weapon.
Before the car bomb settled permanently in the Middle East, it made perfection tours to various parts of the globe. For instance, it showed up in Vietnam in the early 1950s as readers of Graham Greene’s novel, The Quiet America, will recall. It was instigated by American intelligence services who wanted to discredit the French and the various guerrilla groups contending for power in Vietnam. The effort succeeded and America was sucked in.
The car bomb next appeared in Algiers where France was engaged in a brutal fight against insurgents. Embittered former soldiers and French officials in Algeria unleashed several car bombs, in some instances killing dozens of Algerian civilians.
The car bomb technique then skipped across the Mediterranean Sea to Sicily, Italy, into the hands of the Italian Mafia who engaged in furious and deadly battles among themselves.
Until the 1970s, the car bomb was much like the prototypes of decades before. The Irish Republican Army vastly increased the destructive capacity of the bomb when its bomb experts incorporated fertiliser mixed with oil instead of dynamite in making the payload. They then deployed the upgraded bombs against the British in Belfast and London well into the last 1990s causing death, injury and extensive damage.
By the 1980s, the Middle East had become a seething cauldron of disputes and conflicts, and car bombs made a comeback, instantly making their horrifying effectiveness felt, especially in Lebanon. As if history was repeating itself, Israelis were the first to deploy them against their enemies in West Beirut. The demonstration effect spawned imitators. The Hezbollah took the car-mob a notch higher when they twined it with suicide bombers.
When the United States intervened in Lebanon and then took sides, it was targeted by a series of suicide car bombs culminating in a huge 12,000-pound high explosive one said to be the largest non-nuclear bomb ever deliberately detonated on the face of the earth. It levelled a US marine barrack in Beirut killing hundreds.
A series of car bombs targeted French barracks and other installations killing many. Shortly thereafter, the US and France announced that they were pulling out of Lebanon. The car bomb had achieved a strategic victory. The next massive car bomb explosion in Lebanon was sponsored by a US government agency against the leader of a group it deemed responsible for the marines’ barracks attack. It missed him but killed tens of innocent civilians. The target promptly retaliated by car bombing the new US embassy in Beirut, killing several people.
At this point, Afghanistan appeared as a training ground for terror-sowing, havoc-wreaking specialists. The trainers and financiers were American; graduates were deployed against the Soviet Union. When Russians were finally kicked out of Afghanistan, the newly unemployed terror experts turned their gaze on America.
The mastermind behind car bombs used in the first attack against the World Trade Centre in New York was a graduate of terror schools in Afghanistan. The same group carried out the 1998 Nairobi bombing. The group’s offshoots and sympathisers are the masterminds of quotidian car bombs in Iraq that have put paid to any hopes of peace and stability in that country. Car bombs, in the words of one writer, have become a poor man’s air force. Their use is likely to increase in future. That is if we will be around that long.
With the possible exception of Australia, car bombs have exploded on all continents at one time or another. Today, car bombs reign supreme in Iraq.
Where did car bombs originate and how have they evolved? It will surprise many that the first prototype car bomb — a horse drawn wagon packed with dynamite — exploded at the intersection of Broad and Wall streets, New York, in September 1920. An Italian anarchist, Mario Buda, was out to kill tycoon J.P. Morgan. He missed him, but the explosion snuffed out the lives of dozens of innocents.
According to Mike Davis, who has researched and written on the subject, the car bomb did not reappear until towards the end of the Second World War. A Jewish terrorist group, the Stern Gang, fighting against the British for an independent state, contrived powerful car bombs that devastated symbols of British authority in Palestine, then a British mandate.
The same group deployed car bombs against Palestinians in an effort to make them flee. Palestinians quickly absorbed the lessons and retaliated similarly, in the process indigenising the weapon.
Before the car bomb settled permanently in the Middle East, it made perfection tours to various parts of the globe. For instance, it showed up in Vietnam in the early 1950s as readers of Graham Greene’s novel, The Quiet America, will recall. It was instigated by American intelligence services who wanted to discredit the French and the various guerrilla groups contending for power in Vietnam. The effort succeeded and America was sucked in.
The car bomb next appeared in Algiers where France was engaged in a brutal fight against insurgents. Embittered former soldiers and French officials in Algeria unleashed several car bombs, in some instances killing dozens of Algerian civilians.
The car bomb technique then skipped across the Mediterranean Sea to Sicily, Italy, into the hands of the Italian Mafia who engaged in furious and deadly battles among themselves.
Until the 1970s, the car bomb was much like the prototypes of decades before. The Irish Republican Army vastly increased the destructive capacity of the bomb when its bomb experts incorporated fertiliser mixed with oil instead of dynamite in making the payload. They then deployed the upgraded bombs against the British in Belfast and London well into the last 1990s causing death, injury and extensive damage.
By the 1980s, the Middle East had become a seething cauldron of disputes and conflicts, and car bombs made a comeback, instantly making their horrifying effectiveness felt, especially in Lebanon. As if history was repeating itself, Israelis were the first to deploy them against their enemies in West Beirut. The demonstration effect spawned imitators. The Hezbollah took the car-mob a notch higher when they twined it with suicide bombers.
When the United States intervened in Lebanon and then took sides, it was targeted by a series of suicide car bombs culminating in a huge 12,000-pound high explosive one said to be the largest non-nuclear bomb ever deliberately detonated on the face of the earth. It levelled a US marine barrack in Beirut killing hundreds.
A series of car bombs targeted French barracks and other installations killing many. Shortly thereafter, the US and France announced that they were pulling out of Lebanon. The car bomb had achieved a strategic victory. The next massive car bomb explosion in Lebanon was sponsored by a US government agency against the leader of a group it deemed responsible for the marines’ barracks attack. It missed him but killed tens of innocent civilians. The target promptly retaliated by car bombing the new US embassy in Beirut, killing several people.
At this point, Afghanistan appeared as a training ground for terror-sowing, havoc-wreaking specialists. The trainers and financiers were American; graduates were deployed against the Soviet Union. When Russians were finally kicked out of Afghanistan, the newly unemployed terror experts turned their gaze on America.
The mastermind behind car bombs used in the first attack against the World Trade Centre in New York was a graduate of terror schools in Afghanistan. The same group carried out the 1998 Nairobi bombing. The group’s offshoots and sympathisers are the masterminds of quotidian car bombs in Iraq that have put paid to any hopes of peace and stability in that country. Car bombs, in the words of one writer, have become a poor man’s air force. Their use is likely to increase in future. That is if we will be around that long.