U.S. Rail Security and Terrorist Track Records

In response to renewed security concerns that al Qaeda is plotting to smuggle and detonate cell phone explosives on passenger aircraft bound for the United States, the Transportation Security Administration recently announcedthat passengers flying into the U.S. from overseas will have to power up their laptops and cellphones before boarding, and that those whose devices won’t turn on will not be allowed to board.

Amidst the attention this threat to aviation is receiving in the media, it is perhaps not surprising that a significant anniversary marking major attacks on other forms of passenger transport has gone largely unnoticed.  Nine years ago this week, al Qaeda jihadists detonated bombs in London on three subway trains and one double-decker bus, killing dozens of people and wounding hundreds.

Some analysts are warning that ground transportation systems in European cities may yet again be targeted as al Qaeda vies for primacy over its ISIS-rivals.  As Jamie Dettmer at the Daily Beast reports:

A senior European security official told The Daily Beast there are fears as well that jihadists recently returned from fighting in Syria with al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra are conspiring to detonate bombs on railways and buses in major European capitals such as London and Paris…

…[Washington Institute for Near East Policy scholar Aaron] Zelin says the most likely model for assaults on European transport systems would be the March 2004 Madrid train bombings and the coordinated suicide attacks in July 2005 in central London that targeted civilians using the London Underground and buses. The London bombings killed 52 civilians and wounded more than 700, while in Madrid the bombings of commuter trains killed 191 people and injured 1,800.

As some have observed, the volume of rail passengers entering trains from multiple locations, coupled with the challenge of monitoring disbursed infrastructure like tracks and tunnels, create significant challenges for preventing terrorist attacks on rail transport.  But as events in London nine years ago should remind us, we need to guard against attacks on the rails as vigorously as we are attempting to in our skies, if not more so.