How
Trains Are A Prime Target for Terrorists
by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
July 26, 2016
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 On July 18, a young
man stormed through a train outside of Wurzburg, Germany. Crying
"Allahu Akbar," (God is greatest) he brandished an axe high into
the air, then slashed at the men and women seated around him. Within minutes,
the car, as one person described
it, " looked like a slaughterhouse."
Then he fled.
By the time the day had ended, five people had been seriously wounded:
four on the train, and a woman who had the misfortune of walking her dog at
the moment he passed by. She remains in critical condition.
A day later, the Islamic State took credit for the attack, calling the
killer, a 17-year-old refugee who was ultimately shot and killed by German
police, a "soldier for ISIS." It was the first full-scale Islamic
terrorist attack in Germany.
But it was not the first Islamic terrorist attack on a train. Far from
it: starting with the 2004 commuter train bombings in Madrid and the July
7, 2005 bombings of the London Underground, trains and metros have been a
common target for extremist groups. Some efforts, like the bombing of the
Brussels metro station this past April, succeeded; many more have failed.
But the attempts, successful or not, betray a gaping hole in international
security, and one that may not be easy to repair.
In fact, a 2007 report from the Council on Foreign Relations noted
that "security professionals see trains as some of the likeliest
targets." Consequently, when it comes to the possibility of a major
attack on U.S. or European railway or metro systems, former Homeland
Security officer Sean Burke told Boston's WCVB news, "We have to expect it.
That's the bottom line."
Such an attack, if large enough, could be devastating. While air traffic
remains substantial, five times as many people ride trains as fly in the
United States, and in Europe, the rapid, efficient and low-cost trains
often offer the best transportation options between countries, especially
in an era of long airport security lines and early check-ins. Moreover,
freight shipments, including highly toxic industrial chemicals, travel the
same routes as passenger trains, frequently passing through densely
populated areas. Because of this situation, the Council on Foreign
Relations reported in 2007 that former White House Deputy Homeland Security
Adviser Richard Falkenrath considered such trains "the single greatest
danger of a potential terrorist attack in our country today.'"
Yet security on both continents is weak, and in Europe, often at the
bare minimum; one will rarely find a policeman or other security personnel
at a train station in the Netherlands, for instance. Even on international
trains, like the high-speed Thalys between the Netherlands, Belgium, and
France, customs and immigration officials are few and far between. Rarely
is anyone asked for ID (let alone a passport), and there are, as in the
U.S., no security screenings even at major rail stations like Paris' Gare
du Nord and Berlin Hauptbanhof.
Which may in part explain why the real identity of the axe-wielder in
Bavaria is still uncertain: at a July 20 press conference in
Berlin, officials admitted that his name is still uncertain since he, like
many other asylum seekers, entered the country without a passport or other
identifying papers. Indeed, Time reports that, "Authorities
have discovered that he could be from Afghanistan or Pakistan, and that the
information he provided to officials in Germany could be partly or entirely
false."
It also likely explains the many other, less successful attempts on
European trains, such as the 2006 plot to bomb trains at the Cologne station; an
attempt to blow up the main train station in Bonn in 2006; a suspected plot
disrupted last New Year's Eve to send suicide bombers onto trains in Munich; and the
foiled attack by Ayoub el Khassini, who opened fire on a Thalys train in
August 2015. In the latter instance, three American tourists – two of whom
were in the military - ultimately overpowered
and subdued the Moroccan-born Belgian resident, who had boarded the
train armed with a Kalashnikov, pistol, hammer, bottle of petrol, nearly
300 rounds of ammunition, and other weapons.
Yet, counterterrorism and national security officials in the U.S. as
well as Europe admit there is little they can do. As Time notes, in
Europe, "some of the trains linking major cities stop at countless
small towns along the way," and the cost of installing metal detectors
and setting up TSA-style inspections at all of these stations would be
prohibitive. As Christophe Piednoel, a spokesman for the French SNCF
railway told Liberation, "Stations are public
places....We cannot ask the French to wait one hour before boarding a
train. Moreover, 15,000 trains cross France every day, and traverse 3000
stations."
The same is true in the U.S., where some say Amtrak, which carries over 30 million passengers a year through 46
states and parts of Canada, is a prime target. Tracks pass through tunnels,
across bridges, in and out of remote villages and major cities. As Burke
also told WCVB, "The passenger rail system is designed to be open.
It's specifically put in densely populated areas. [It's] a system that is
vulnerable really from the beginning of its trip to the end of its
trip."
Added to that is the threat of toxic, chemical freight, which is carried
in pressurized tanks: the CFR report points out that "security along
their route tends to be lax, and at times tanks sit unmonitored in rail
yards for days at a time." Despite this fact, efforts to reroute such
shipments have failed; not only are they costly, but impractical, since
many of the shipments are themselves bound for populated areas, including
major cities.
Despite this danger, the TSA all but overlooks train safety, budgeting just 2 percent of its spending on train and
subway security, according to the New York Times. Even considering
the practical complications and costs of adding metal detectors to all
train stations and subway entrances in the country, this hardly seems like
enough. New York subways are regularly patrolled by transit authority
police who will perform random searches of bags, but with 5.6
million passengers riding the system daily, these measures scarcely
seem adequate.
What is especially disturbing is that security officials, both in the
U.S. and in many European countries, even seem aware of this: after the
Paris attacks in November 2014, K-9 teams swept train stations across
America. And after the Brussels metro attacks, train terminals saw a
stepped up police and military presence in a number of major cities and
even some smaller European towns. In New York and Washington, D.C.,
security was intensified not just on trains and subways, but also on
bridges, tunnels, and even highways.
And then, suddenly, they were gone. It was as if the dangers in New York
and Washington and Chicago were resolved, once the perpetrators of the
attack in Brussels had been arrested or killed.
True, records show that TSA at airports have failed to stop a single
terrorist attack (though they did find over 2,200 firearms, along with grenades,
knives, and other weapons in 2015). At the same time, that may be because
their presence discourages potential terrorists from attempting to strike
on board a plane these days. There are, after all, easier options. Like
trains.
Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in
the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New
York and the Netherlands.
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