All About Chemistry: Islamic State's Ongoing Pursuit of Biological and Chemical Agents

On 4 May 2016, Kenyan authorities announced that they had discovered and prevented a  “potentially major bio-terror plot”. Kenyan police had arrested Mohammed Abdi Ali, a medical intern at Kenyan’s Wote District Hospital, as well as Ali’s wife and a friend of hers. The police were still reportedly searching for two other Kenya-based medical interns who were suspected of being co-conspirators. Kenyan authorities announced that Ali and his co-accused were linked to Islamic State (IS), and had planned to obtain anthrax for use in a large-scale terrorist attack on par with the 2013 Westgate Mall attacks, in which 67 people were killed by militants associated with the terrorist group, Al Shabab.

No further information was made publicly available clarifying precisely how Ali and his co-conspirators had planned to obtain and disseminate the anthrax in such an attack. As medical interns, it appears very unlikely that Ali or his associates would have had direct access to any cultures of Bacillus anthracis, the bacterium from which anthrax is made. Kenyan human rights advocates have also alleged that Ali’s missing co-conspirators had previously been taken into custody, and that the biological terrorism plot had been concocted afterwards in order to hide their disappearance.

No further information has been made publicly available through which to assess the truth behind the Kenyan authorities’ claims. If the allegations are true however, they would certainly not be IS’ first attempt to obtain a biological compound and employ it in an attack. In March 2016, the Moroccan Interior Ministry announced that it had arrested IS-linked militants in possession of materials “falling within the category of biological weapons dangerous for their capacity to paralyze and destroy the nervous system and cause death”. Similarly to the Kenyan case, no further information was provided by the Moroccan authorities clarifying the biological substances that had been seized, rendering it difficult to assess the accuracy of these claims. However, specific intelligence from North Africa has indicated that militant cells in the region are eager to obtain biological weapons, although no reports have emerged of more concrete attempts to achieve this goal.

Since the group’s rise to global prominence in 2014, it has on several occasions reaffirmed its intention to employ unconventional weapons, such as chemical, biological and radiological weapons, in its attacks. To date, the group appears to have had some success with its chemical capabilities, likely spurred on by the discovery of old Syrian and Iraqi stockpiles of compounds such as mustard gas. In May 2016, citizen journalists in Mosul, Iraq reported that IS was actively developing its own chemical compounds for use on the front-lines and in attacks, and was testing the compounds on animals and captured prisoners. While deeply concerning, these reports are not unexpected; whatever stockpiles initially discovered and used by IS would be depleted over time, and the group would naturally progress to creating its own compounds. However, until now, IS appears to have displayed no biological weapon capabilities, nor members with any expertise in this field. Claims of foiled biological terrorism plots by IS sympathisers in Morocco and Kenya therefore suggests that the group has not entirely abandoned its biological weapon ambitions, and is still seeking to obtain materials through any avenue.