After humble start, car bomb threat spans the globe

Washington: The threat from car bombs now spans the globe. Anywhere and anyone, a government building, an airport, could be a target. From Downing Street to the White House, governments are turning their offices into fortresses – and waiting for the next attack.

The US military is spending £2.1 billion a year on secret programmes run by a military task force, JIEDDO (the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organisation), to counter the car bomb, The Sunday Times reported. But even JIEDDO’s deputy director, Brigadier-General Anthony Tata, admits: “A car is a commercial entity. You go buy a car, find some old 155mm shells and you’ve got yourself a car bomb.” If you can’t pick up old artillery shells, instructions for making your own explosives are on the internet.

The Lebanese did not invent the car bomb; that honour goes to the Americans. The world’s first car bomb, a horse-and-car bomb, exploded on Wall Street on September 16, 1920, killing 38 people. But the Lebanese made car bombs a lot more lethal. When they planted them, it was to make the pavements run with blood. Everyone did it: the Christians, the Palestinians, Hezbollah and the Israelis.

For more than three decades Lebanon has been a research laboratory for car bombers. The same signature car-bomb techniques turned up in Baghdad soon after the 2003 US invasion. A lot of Lebanese car bombers just drove across the border into Syria and on to Baghdad. On October 23, 1983, at 6.20am, a bomber hit the main US marine barracks with a 12,000lb suicide truck, and 241 marines were killed.

Since the invasion of Iraq, the car bomb has gone from a worldwide phenomenon, used by extremists to target specific financial and governmental nodes, to a daily feature of modern urban warfare. In May 2007, IED incidents in Iraq peaked at 60 per day, but have since declined sharply, while the number of suicide car bombings and use of roadside bombs is beginning to gain momentum throughout Afghanistan.

The car is as basic a tool of our civilisation as a knife. It is no longer a dream of freedom; it’s a necessity. And so, with its perfect invisibility in everyday traffic, it will continue to be a decisive weapon in all future human conflict.