Dirty Bomb Warheads Disappear

["Gerry Blackwood" <gpblackwood@justice.com>]

Those of you at the national labs and gov agencies

might be interested in this article. Transdniester is

well known to those of us in the weapons arena. Gerry



washingtonpost.com 

Dirty Bomb Warheads Disappear 

Stocks of Soviet-Era Arms For Sale on Black Market 



By Joby Warrick

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, December 7, 2003; Page A01 





TIRASPOL, Moldova -- In the ethnic conflicts that

surrounded the collapse of the Soviet Union, fighters

in several countries seized upon an unlikely new

weapon: a small, thin rocket known as the Alazan.

Originally built for weather experiments, the Alazan

rockets were packed with explosives and lobbed into

cities. Military records show that at least 38 Alazan

warheads were modified to carry radioactive material,

effectively creating the world's first

surface-to-surface dirty bomb. 



The radioactive warheads are not known to have been

used. But now, according to experts and officials, they

have disappeared.



The last known repository was here, in a tiny

separatist enclave known as Transdniester, which broke

away from Moldova 12 years ago. The Transdniester

Moldovan Republic is a sliver of land no bigger than

Rhode Island located along Moldova's eastern border

with Ukraine. Its government is recognized by no other

nation. But its weapons stocks -- new, used and

modified -- have attracted the attention of

black-market arms dealers worldwide. And they're for

sale, according to U.S. and Moldovan officials and

weapons experts.



When the Soviet army withdrew from this corner of

Eastern Europe, the weapons were deposited into an

arsenal of stupefying proportions. In fortified bunkers

are stored 50,000 tons of aging artillery shells, mines

and rockets, enough to fill 2,500 boxcars. 



Conventional arms originating in Transdniester have

been turning up for years in conflict zones from the

Caucasus to Central Africa, evidence of what U.S.

officials describe as an invisible pipeline for

smuggled goods that runs through Tiraspol to the Black

Sea and beyond. Now, governments and terrorism experts

fear the same pipeline is carrying nonconventional

weapons such as the radioactive Alazan, and that

terrorists are starting to tap in. 



"For terrorists, this is the best market you could

imagine: cheap, efficient and forgotten by the whole

world," said Vladimir Orlov, founding director of the

Center for Policy Studies in Moscow, a group that

studies proliferation issues.



Why the Alazan warheads were made is unknown. The

urgent question -- where are they now? -- is a matter

of grave concern to terrorism and nonproliferation

experts who know the damage such devices could do. A

dirty bomb is not a nuclear device but a weapon that

uses conventional explosives to disperse radioactive

materials, which could cause widespread disruption and

expose people to dangerous radiation. Unlike other

kinds of dirty bombs, this one would come with its own

delivery system, and an 8-mile range. A number of

terrorist groups, including al Qaeda, have sought to

build or buy one.



While it has no nuclear bombs of its own, Transdniester

is regarded by experts as a prime shopping ground for

outlaw groups looking for weapons of every type. It is

the embodiment of the gray zone, where failed states,

porous borders and weak law enforcement allow the

buying and selling of instruments of terror.



Transdniester possesses many of the trappings of

statehood, including an army and border guards who

demand visas and special entrance fees from visitors.

But according to Western diplomats based in the region,

these procedures are window dressing used to mask the

activities of a small clique that runs the country by

its own rules.



Much of the enclave's trade is controlled by a

consortium, Sheriff, controlled by the son of the

Transdniester's president, Igor Smirnov. Vladimir

Smirnov also heads the Transdniester Customs Service,

which oversees a river of goods flowing in and out of

the country. The cargoes move through the Tiraspol

airport; by truck overland to Ukraine or Moldova; and

on a rail-to-ship line that connects the capital to the

Black Sea port of Odessa. The Transdniester interior

minister, Maj. Gen. Vadim Shevtsov, is a former Soviet

KGB agent wanted in connection with a murderous attack

on pro-independence Latvians in 1991.



Organized crime figures and reputed terrorists flit in

and out of the region, according to law enforcement and

government officials in Moldova and U.S. officials.

Their cargoes are often disguised. "This is one of the

places where the buyers connect with the sellers," said

William C. Potter, director of the Center for

Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute for

International Studies. "It's one-stop shopping for

weapons and all kinds of other illicit goods. Very

possibly, that includes the materials for weapons of

mass destruction."



The enormous Soviet-style banners stretched across

intersections in downtown Tiraspol bid visitors welcome

to "The People's Pride: The Transdniester Moldovan

Republic." The city is locked in a Brezhnev-era time

warp. Nearly every corner bears a reminder of the

regime's stubborn embrace of old-school Soviet

communism: a statue of Lenin, a hammer-and-sickle

banner, a street named for Karl Marx.



Father, Son and Sheriff 





A large portion of the population is made up

Russian-speaking pensioners, many of them Soviet

military retirees who served in the area and chose to

stay because of the relatively mild climate. Like the

elderly elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, the

retirees are nostalgic for a simpler, more predictable

time when the socialist state took care of all their

needs.



North of Tiraspol, an industrial center straddles the

main rail line into town. Steam blasts from a complex

of gray buildings housing the city's Elektromash works,

a leading factory that describes itself officially as a

producer of electrical engines. According to Moldovan

and Western intelligence officials, the factory's

product line includes assault rifles and machine

pistols, a centerpiece of Transdniester's most

profitable industry: weapons.



Once the industrial heartland of the Moldavian Soviet

Socialist Republic, Transdniester has a long history as

a production center for arms and weapons, including

machine guns and rockets. Today, the tradition

continues in at least six sprawling factories in the

capital and the cities of Tighina and Rybnitsa,

according to Ceslav Ciobanu, a former Moldovan

ambassador to the United States and now a senior

research scholar for James Madison University's William

R. Nelson Institute.



Among the weapons in production are Grad and Duga

multiple-rocket launchers, antitank mines,

rocket-propelled grenades and multiple lines of small

arms, Ciobanu said.



It's an impressive output for a country whose army, the

Dniester Republican Guard, numbers only 5,000. But

hardly any of the weapons are manufactured for local

use, according to Ciobanu, who described the arms trade

in a Nelson Institute paper released in June.

"Production of armaments and illegal weapons traffic

constitutes the most important factor of the economic

and military policy of the Tiraspol administration, and

the biggest source of revenues for its corrupt elites,"

Ciobanu said.



The same powerful troika that dominates Transdniester's

political and economic life controls the production of

weapons as well as exports abroad, Ciobanu said:

"Father, Son and Sheriff."



It's a view shared by Western officials based in the

region, as well as law-enforcement and weapons experts

abroad. Several Moldova-based diplomats, speaking on

the condition of anonymity, confirmed there is an

eastern flow of arms from Tiraspol to Odessa, the

Ukrainian port on the Black Sea. They also described

seizures of Transdniester-made weapons in conflicts

zones outside the enclave.



Last year, one such cache of pistols and other small

arms was seized in the basement of the home of one of

the leaders of the separatist Gagauz movement. The

Gagauz are a tiny Turkik-speaking minority in southern

Moldova. The weapons turned out to be poorly made

counterfeits of American weapons. "The guns were

stamped 'U.S. Army,' but the brand names were

misspelled," said one diplomatic source familiar with

the incident. Transdniester weapons exports also have

been traced to the breakaway Abkhazia region, in the

former Soviet republic of Georgia, and to war zones in

the Congo and Ivory Coast, according to Moldovan

officials and independent weapons experts.



But the largest weapons stockpile in Transdniester is

located at a massive arsenal near the northern town of

Kolbasna. Originally a supply depot for Red Army forces

in the Black Sea region, the Kolbasna arsenal swelled

in the early 1990s as troops departing newly

independent Eastern European states deposited weapons

and ammunition there. The arsenal currently holds an

estimated 50,000 tons of munitions of all kinds,

including large numbers of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft

missiles.



Moldova has pressed Russia to remove the munitions and

the 2,800 Russian troops who guard them. But over the

years, both Russia and Transdniester have used a

variety of excuses to block or delay their departure.

The arsenal, which is 600 miles from the Russian

border, is one of the main sticking points in ongoing

negotiations aimed at reconciling Moldova and its

former province, which fought a short, bloody civil war

that ended in 1992. Transdniester has opposed removing

the stockpile, partly because it hopes to receive

payment for the weapons, and also because the Russian

presence has helped guarantee Transdniester's survival

as an autonomous region. 



Moldova does not formally recognize that an independent

Transdniester exists. Thus, the largest border between

them -- and the one most likely to be used for

weapons-trafficking -- is unprotected. On the Moldovan

side, it has no checkpoints, no detectors and no guards.



Hundreds of westbound trucks and cars cross into

Moldova each day along the main Tiraspol-Chisinau

highway, just as freely as the trains heading east

along the rails to Odessa. Moldovan officials fret

privately about the smuggled goods they don't catch.

"Transdniester is like a cancer, and there's nothing we

can do about it," said one senior Moldovan official who

declined to be identified for fear he would lose his

job. "We're battling our own corruption, and out there

is a 400-kilometer border over which we have no control.



"Trucks cross the border every day, slip into one of

the smaller roads and disappear," the official

continued. "And I'm 100 percent sure of this: Some of

those trucks are carrying weapons."



Western and Moldovan officials point to numerous

incidents in which seized Russian weapons were traced

back to Transdniester. In one well-documented case in

1999, a truck halted by Moldovan police on the

Transdniester border was discovered to contain

Russian-made shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles,

along with plastic explosives and detonators. Driving

the truck were several members of Transdniester's army,

along with Lt. Col. Vladimir Nemkoff, a deputy

commander of Russian peacekeeping troops in the

enclave. 



On the same day, Nemkoff's son, an officer in

Transdniester's Ministry of Security, was arrested

while driving a vehicle that contained three

Soviet-made Igla surface-to-air rockets, similar to the

U.S.-made Stinger missile.



Nemkoff was convicted of weapons-trafficking in a trial

in Moldova, but was later pardoned and allowed to

return to Transdniester. Within days, he regained his

old job as a Russian peacekeeper.



Such incidents suggest the Kolbasna arsenal is a "black

hole" where dangerous weapons can be obtained, if the

price is right, said Iurie Rosca, leader of the

Christian Democratic People's Party, a leading

pro-Western opposition faction in Moldova.



"It's well known to us: If you need a Stinger and you

have the money, you can get one," Rosca said. "If it's

a Kalashnikov you want, you can get one of those, too."



Radioactive Warheads 





The most unusual weapon in Transdniester's arsenal was

never meant to be a weapon at all. The Alazan, a

slender, three-foot-long rocket, was part of a broader,

rather extravagant Soviet experiment in weather

control. Soviet scientists believed that hail could be

suppressed by firing rockets into approaching storm

clouds. The idea is vaguely similar to cloud-seeding as

practiced in the United States. American scientists

familiar with the anti-hail program say the results are

highly dubious, at best.



When the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, scores of

batteries of tube-fired Alazans were left throughout

the Soviet bloc, including Eastern Europe. As ethnic

clashes erupted in the newly independent former Soviet

republics, the Alazan and a slightly larger rocket

called the Alan were reactivated for war.



Potter documented 50 cases in which the rockets were

used in clashes, by both guerrilla fighters and

government forces. In most incidents, Alazans were

fired indiscriminately at civilian targets, often

crowded urban centers. They were used by Azeri forces

in the war with Armenia over the disputed enclave of

Nagorno-Karabakh, and used by separatists in South

Ossetia in clashes with Georgian troops.



"Some of the reports indicated that the Alazan, which

is notoriously inaccurate as a surface-to-surface

missile, was used as a psychological or terror weapon,"

Potter said.



Since Soviet times, at least three Alazan batteries

were known to exist in the Transdniester region, as

documented by military inventories of the time. In

1992, there was a confirmed case of attempted smuggling

of Alazans for use as weapons. On May 24 of that year,

two Moldovan police were killed when they tried to stop

delivery of Alazan rockets to ethnic Gagauz militants,

according to local press accounts of the incident.

Moldovan officials believe the source of the rockets

was Transdniester.



But the existence of "radiological warheads" for the

Alazan was unknown until two years ago, when military

documents describing them were obtained by the

Institute for Policy Studies, a research group in

Chisinau, the Moldovan capital.



The documents, which were provided to The Washington

Post, are a series of official letters written in 1994

by a Transdniester civil defense commander, Col. V.

Kireev, who apparently became concerned about radiation

given off by the rockets. 



One document described an inventory of 38 "isotopic

radioactive warheads of missiles of the Alazan type,"

including 24 that were attached to rocket. In the two

other documents, the commander requested technical help

in dealing with radiation exposure related to storage

of the warheads. He complained that uniforms of

soldiers working with the warheads were so contaminated

that they had to be "destroyed by burning and burying."



"I propose to categorically ban all work with the

missile . . . and to label it as a radioactive danger,"

Kireev wrote on Oct. 24, 1994.



Several U.S. and Moldovan government officials

knowledgeable about Transdniester's weapons said in

interviews that they were familiar with the reports of

radioactive Alazans, but could neither verify or

dispute the existence of such devices. 



Oazu Nantoi, a former Moldovan government official and

political analyst, sought in 2001 to trace the Alazans

with radiological warheads, using contacts in Moldova

and Transdniester. He said that the last known location

of the weapons was a military airfield north of

Tiraspol, but what happened to them after the 1990s

remains a mystery. 



"They are not Scuds, but clearly, the only application

for these rockets is a military one," said Nantoi. "Our

fear is someone, somewhere, will turn these rockets

into dirty bombs."





© 2003 The Washington Post Company 



http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41921-2003Dec6?language=printer



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