Katowice roof collapse: five reports

Największa polska katastrofa budowlana: zmarła 67. ofiara

Józef Krzyk, Przemysław Jedlecki, Marcin Pietraszewski

Gazeta 30-01-2006

66 zabitych ludzi odnaleziono w rumowisku chorzowskiej hali. Nie wiadomo, ile jest jeszcze ofiar pod zwałami blachy i śniegu. Hektar dachu runął w sobotnie popołudnie na międzynarodową wystawę gołębi. W poniedziałek rano w szpitalu w Tychach zmarł mężczyzna - 67. ofiara katastrofy0-->
Katastrofa nastąpiła w sobotę o 17.15. W największym pawilonie Międzynarodowych Targów Katowickich (o wymiarach 97 m x 102 m) było wtedy co najmniej pół tysiąca osób. Z wysokości 11 metrów stalowe elementy spadały wprost na hodowców gołębi i zwiedzających. Środek dachu się zapadł, tworząc przy ścianach tunele . To wszystko nie trwało dłużej niż kilkanaście sekund. Uratowali się ci, którzy zdążyli dobiec do ściany lub stanąć pod stalowymi filarami. Te ustały, choć powyginały się, jakby były zrobione z tektury.Jerzy Kotryk, mieszkający w Neuburgu Polak, przyjechał na wystawę z 37-letnim synem. - Biegliśmy obok siebie, ja w jedną stronę, on w drugą, on zginął, zginął - powtarzał nam w szoku.Jak się nieoficjalnie dowiadujemy, kłopoty z dachem były już wcześniej - zalegający śnieg go wygiął. - Nie chcę tego komentować. Ale z tego, co słyszałem, to dach uginał się w tym roku - powiedział nam Jan Hoppe, przedsiębiorca, dziś wiceprezes Regionalnej Izby Gospodarczej w Katowicach, który miał udziały w spółce, gdy hala powstawała.W godzinę po wypadku pracowało już kilkuset strażaków, ratowników z psami wyszkolonymi do wyszukiwania przysypanych ludzi. Z rumowiska dobiegały dzwonki telefonów komórkowych i wołania o pomoc, ale stopniowo ucichły. W świetle strażackich reflektorów widać było tylko wzlatujące nad ruinami zdezorientowane gołębie. Czekały na sygnał od swych właścicieli.Z każdą chwilą robiło się mroźniej i szanse na odnalezienie żywych ludzi malały. Kilkunastu psychologów i kilku księży przyjechało, by pomóc rodzinom ofiar, ale także ratownikom. - Zdążyłem udzielić pięciu rannym sakramentu namaszczenia, jeden chwilę potem zmarł - mówił ksiądz Henryk Kuczob, kapelan straży pożarnej.Gdy w sobotę ok. 22 przyjechał premier Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz akurat wyciągano z ruin ostatnią uratowaną osobę. W niedzielę po godz. 14 prezydent Lech Kaczyński ogłosił żałobę narodową obowiązującą od 16 (chwilę wcześniej skończył się turniej skoków narciarskich w Zakopanem ). Rząd i Kancelaria Prezydenta przekazały po milionie złotych na pomoc dla rodzin ofiar. Pomoc w akcji ratunkowej zadeklarowały władze Niemiec i Izraela, ale Polacy nie skorzystali z niej.Z każdą godziną wzrastała liczba odnalezionych ciał. W niedzielę po południu ratownicy wydobyli ich już 66, w tym troje dzieci: chłopców - siedmioletniego i jedenastoletniego - oraz dziesięcioletnią dziewczynka. W poniedziałek rano w szpitalu w Tychach zmarł mężczyzna - 67. ofiara katastrofy. Wśród ofiar są obcokrajowcy: Niemiec, dwóch Słowaków, dwóch Czechów i Belg. Rannych jest 140 osób, w tym 13 obcokrajowców, głównie Czechów i Niemców.Gospodarze hali - szefowie Międzynarodowych Targów Katowickich - na miejsce przyjechali dopiero w niedzielę. Byli na konferencji w Hiszpanii. Wieczorem nie chcieli potwierdzić zarzutów, że nie zadbali o odśnieżenie dachu.Biegli szacują, że w chwili tragedii na dachu zalegało 2500 ton śniegu i lodu, co daje ok. 167 kg na metr kwadratowy (dach miał ok. 15 tys. m). Polskie normy dopuszczają 70-80 kg.


Świadkowie tragedii: Myśleliśmy że to koniec

"Nowy Dzień", jk, Dariusz Brzostek, jkś

Gazeta 29-01-2006 [first of three parts, only]


Rozmawiałem z ojcem, który został przewieziony do szpitala. - opowiada Henryk Kuczob, kapelan strażaków - Pytał o swoją trzynastoletnią córkę. Nie wiedział, że zginęła, a ja nie miałem odwagi mu o tym powiedzieć.

Henryk Musioł, uratowany hodowca gołębi -
To był fajny festyn. Z 10 minut wcześniej przeszedłem się po wystawie 10 minut. Może było z 500-800 osób. Ludzie siedzieli rozmawiali, podjadali. Skończyła grać kapela gdy nagle coś zatrzeszczało. Zobaczyłem jak tony żelastwa spadają na mnie. Nie było gdzie się schronić. Wokół mnie betonowa podłoga. Żadnej niszy, czegoś na czym ten beton by się zatrzymał. Zrobiłem krok i to był chyba najważniejszy krok w życiu.Jeden dźwigar grubszy niż ja spadł za mną, drugi taki sam przede mną. Tam gdzie stałem przedtem dach był leżał na płasko na podłodze. Gdybym się nie ruszył - byłbym zmiażdżony. Dostałem czymś w twarz, w łopatkę, w kolano, ale nie straciłem przytomności sprawdziłem, że nic nie mam złamane. Taka rura plastikowa, chyba odwadniająca docisnęła mnie i początkowo nie mogłem się ruszyć. Żeby sięgnąć po komórkę musiałem się rozebrać!Zadzwoniłem do żony. Wiedziała chyba jako pierwsza w Polsce, bo po 2 minutach. Co jej powiedziałem? Myślałem, że to koniec. Pożegnałem się. Usłyszałem też kilka innych osób dzwoniących z komórek.Po chwili pojawili się ludzie, to byli hodowcy, potem przyjechała policja zaczęła na mnie świecić.- Piłki, piłki mi dajcie - krzyczałem do nich. Po 20 minutach mi ją przynieśli i wspólnie ze strażakiem przeciąłem tę rurę, podał mi rękę i wydostałem się na zewnątrz i wsadzili mnie do karetki. To było cudowne ocalenie

Opowiada pan Józef z Rybnika, jeden z ocalonych
Na targach miałem stoisko, na którym sprzedawałem pokarm dla ptaków. W hali było sporo osób, grała kapela. Nagle, w sekundę, wszystko runęło. Nawet nie było myśli, by uciekać, tak szybko się to stało. Dostałem czymś w głowę. Jak się ocknąłem, leżałem na lodzie. Zacząłem się czołgać w kierunku wyjścia. Udało mi się. Czekam teraz na wiadomość o moich dwóch zięciach, którzy byli ze mną w hali. Nie wiem co z nimi. Na szczęście moja córka Magda przeżyła.

Jarosław Wojtasik, rzecznik prasowy śląskich strażaków
Najgorsza jest niska temperatura. Strażacy, którzy byli w środku hali opowiadają o zwałach śniegu, więc to nieprawda, że śnieg z dachu był zrzucony. Hala wygląda jak krater. Ci, którzy tuż przed tragedią przebywali w jej środkowej części zostali wgnieceni w ziemię.Na początku akcji ratownicy kierowali się słuchem, bo w rumowisku dzwoniły telefony, które ofiary miały przy sobie. Potem zamilkły. Może z mrozu wyczerpały się baterie? O godz. 23.30 ratownicy słyszeli w rumowisku krzyki tylko jednego człowieka, poza tym nikt inny nie dawał znaku życia, ale poszkodowani mogą być nieprzytomni, albo w szoku.

Lekarz pogotowia ratunkowego
Na miejscu przyjechaliśmy przed godz. 18 i weszliśmy na rumowisko. Obraz jest surrealistyczny. Pełno padłych kaczek, gołębi, królików, a między tym ciała ludzi. Lód i pióra. Okropne! Hala była ogrzewana, ludzie zostawiali wierzchnie okrycia w szatni. Ci, którzy wyszli z rumowiska o własnych siłach mieli na sobie jedynie sweterki czy bluzy. Byli potwornie wyziębieni. Mróz poczynił ogromne spustoszenia. Tuż po godz. 19 wyciągnęliśmy chłopczyka ze zmiażdżonymi nogami. Był już bardzo wyziębiony. Wielu rannych, którzy czekają w hali na pomoc może tego mrozu nie wytrzymać.

Opowiada ks. Henryk Kuczob, kapelan strażaków
Jestem na miejscu niemal od początku, by służyć pomocą duchową. Niewyobrażalna tragedia. Pięciu osobom zdążyłem udzielić ostatniego namaszczenia, jedna z nich chwile potem zmarła. Naoglądałem się tutaj strasznych dramatów. Rozmawiałem z ojcem, który został przewieziony do szpitala. Pytał o swoją trzynastoletnią córkę. Nie wiedział, że zginęła, a ja nie miałem odwagi mu o tym powiedzieć.Rozmawiam też z młodymi strażakami, dla których to pierwsza taka akcja w życiu. Nie mogą sobie poradzić z tym nieszczęściem, którego dotknęli. Tłumaczę im, że to służba, którą wybrali na całe życie. Muszą się cieszyć z każdego uratowanego człowieka, a nie rozpamiętywać, że kogoś nie udało im się uratować. Jak trzeba będzie, zostanę tu przez całą noc.

Zdzisław Karoń (członka PZHGP):
To był moment. Wielki krach i krzyk ludzi - To był moment. Wielki krach i krzyk ludzi. Odwróciłem się i zobaczyłem, jak nagle w rogu zawala się sufit. Tam, gdzie było podwyższenie, dekoracje i miały miejsce występy. Kawałek po kawałku sufit leciał na ludzi. Załamywał się dosłownie niczym "meksykańska fala". Ludzie zaczęli uciekać, ale nie mieli najmniejszych szans.Gdy usłyszałem huk, byłem pośrodku sali. Nie wiem, czy przebiegłem dziesięć metrów, gdy potężny słup powalił mnie na ziemię. Czułem wielki ból w okolicach miednicy. Później już tylko czekałem jak wszyscy na pomoc - opowiada Zdzisław Krasoń, członek Polskiego Związku Hodowli Gołębi Pocztowych.- Szczęście w nieszczęściu, że to miało miejsce ok. 17.15. Gdyby tragedia nastąpiła w południe... - ucina rozmowę. - O 11 była koronacja zwycięzców, w której uczestniczyły wszystkie zagraniczne delegacje. Tam wtedy było 5 tys. ludzi. Godzinę później rozpoczęła się aukcja gołębi na cele charytatywne, a po niej zbieraliśmy pieniądze na szpik dla chorej córki jednego z naszych kolegów. Gdyby to wtedy nastąpiło, to jestem pewien, że nikt nie miałby żadnych szans na przeżycie. Pamiętam, że po godz. 18 wyciągnęli mnie ratownicy, a ok. 19 byłem w szpitalu. Stamtąd powiadomiłem żonę, że przeżyłem, ale jestem ranny. Mogę sobie tylko wyobrazić, co ona czuła przez te dwie godziny.

Cały ten ból jednak nijak ma się do tego, co każdy z nas przeżył i co czuł. Ja również bardzo mocno to wszystko przeżywam. Od rana mam ogromny dół psychiczny. Choć mam lewą nogę drętwą i nie mogę ruszać palcami oraz poobijany kręgosłup, to nie jestem połamany. Ale cały ten ból, który pozostał w psychice, jest dużo gorszy od reszty. Aż ciężko człowiekowi wycedzić kilka słów.



Poles call off search for survivors after roof collapse claims 66 lives

Luke Harding in Berlin and Roman Osica in Katowice

Guardian January 30, 2006

Rescuers yesterday abandoned hopes of finding any more survivors under the debris of an exhibition hall in Poland that collapsed on Saturday, killing at least 66 people. The rescue operation in the southern city of Katowice was called off yesterday afternoon, following a night in which temperatures plunged to -15C (5F). Heavy equipment was brought in to begin clearing away debris.
"The probability that there are still victims underneath is very, very low," fire chief Kazimierz Krzowski said.

The disaster happened at about 5.15pm on Saturday when the hall's giant roof collapsed on a gathering of pigeon enthusiasts from across Europe. Pictures taken minutes earlier show delegates sitting on packed trestle tables, drinking beer and munching sandwiches.
Witnesses described a "strange creaking noise". The metal roof then fell in, engulfing dozens of the delegates as they tried to flee.
"We heard something snap like a match breaking and people started to panic right away, realising what was happening," one survivor receiving hospital treatment told Polish television. "I started to run and something fell on me. Others trampled over me and I was able to crawl out on hands and knees."
"At first I thought a plane had fallen on the roof," another woman said. "The roof first collapsed in the middle. It then spread to all sides, like a game of dominoes."
Some of those trapped under the debris called for help on their mobile phones. One injured man was pinioned between metal sheets.
Rescuers blew warm air into the shattered building but the operation was hampered by bitter, freezing temperatures.
"The hall is full of ice. It's ice hell," a rescuer told the Guardian at the scene. "We cut holes in the roof using axes. We peered in. It was a horrible sight. Some statues for the winners were still on tables. There were lots of dead birds, and bird boxes."
Yesterday Poland's president, Lech Kaczynski, confirmed that 66 people had been killed, including two children and seven foreigners, from the Netherlands, Belgium, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Germany. Some 144 people needed hospital treatment, with 19 seriously injured, officials said. The death toll was not expected to rise, the president added, declaring a day of national mourning after what he said was "the greatest tragedy of the third Polish republic".
It was not immediately clear why the hall gave way. But the collapse came amid one of the coldest winters in eastern Europe in living memory, which has seen temperatures in Poland, Germany and Russia fall to below -30C. Some survivors blamed heavy snow piled on the roof. The building's management, however, insisted the snow had been regularly cleared.
Witnesses said two of the emergency exits appeared to be locked.
Franciszek Kowal said that he was inside the building when he saw the roof starting to buckle. He escaped to a terrace, and then jumped about four metres (13ft) to safety.
He said: "Luckily nothing happened to me, but I saw a macabre scene, as people tried to break windows in order to get out. People were hitting the panes with chairs, but the windows were unbreakable. One of the panes finally broke, and they started to get out by the window."

At least 66 die as roof collapses in Poland

Associated Press, Agence France-Presse

International Herald Tribune JANUARY 29, 2006

Katowice. Rescuers on Sunday abandoned their search for survivors after the snow-laden roof of an exhibition hall in southern Poland collapsed during a pigeon racing show, killing at least 66 people and injuring 141.

"The number of casualties cannot be considered final, and several victims still could be under the debris," the police commander, Marek Bienkowski, said at a news conference in Katowice, 300 kilometers, or 200 miles, south of Warsaw. "It's highly unlikely that anyone else has survived."

The roof collapsed Saturday afternoon when an estimated 500 people were in the hall for the "Pigeon 2006" exhibition, which opened Friday with more than 120 exhibitors, including groups from Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Ukraine and Poland. The gathering was devoted to pigeon racing, a sport in which homing pigeons are released and race home using their sharp sense of direction.

Police officers said that the hall could hold 700 people but that the crowds had dwindled before the disaster struck.

"It all happened so fast, in three seconds," said a survivor, speaking by telephone from his hospital bed.

"If the roof had collapsed an hour earlier, there would have been a massacre," he said. "The exhibition hall was packed at the time. There were so many people you couldn't move."

Nearly 1,000 police officers, firefighters, soldiers and workers from local mines converged on the scene, deploying cutting equipment and thermal-imaging gear to search for survivors. Some trapped victims had called loved ones on their mobile phones from the ruins of the hall, describing the frozen corpses around them and the metal sheets that boxed them in during their last moments alive.

One victim, Tomek Michalski, called his mother late Saturday from within the rubble. "Both of his legs and his shoulder are blocked by metal bars," she said. "Next to him, a young woman is dead. He tried to save her life. She was a colleague. She had a 6-month-old boy."

Interminable hours went by without more news from her son. Then, late Saturday evening, about five hours after the disaster struck, she got another phone call from Michalski.

"He was trapped for five hours in the rubble of the exhibition hall. He called us again when he was in the ambulance, on his way to the hospital. He was among the last people to be rescued," she said. "He can't feel one of his legs, but we hope they will be able to save it."

The last survivor to be pulled from the wreckage was found at 10 on Saturday night, and medical experts helping with the rescue effort said it was unlikely anyone could have survived overnight in the debris because of bitterly cold temperatures.

By Sunday morning, after temperatures fell to minus 17 degrees Celsius (1 degree Farenheit) overnight, there were no more cries emerging from the twisted sheet-metal wreckage.

Marek Brodzki, a surgeon in charge of an 18-member medical team at the site, said the metal of the building's remains, covered in snow, had acted like a freezer.

"The rescuers are cutting into the sheet metal, boring holes into it. But inside it's even colder," he said. "Now I'm just identifying the bodies."

A police spokesman, Janusz Jonczyk, said 51 of the victims had been identified by Sunday afternoon, including 7 foreigners. Another police spokesman, Arkadiusz Szweda, said they included two Slovaks, two Czechs and one victim each from the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. The bodies of the other victims still needed to be identified late Sunday.

President Lech Kaczynski declared three days of national mourning starting Sunday afternoon. President Jacques Chirac of France, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Vladimir Putin of Russia offered their condolences in separate statements Sunday.

Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz ordered an investigation amid suggestions that too much snow had been allowed to accumulate on the roof, which was erected five years ago.

The government also ordered the local authorities to clear snow from all buildings open to the public. It was the second time this winter in which heavy snow in Eastern and Central Europe has caused a building to cave in, with fatal consequences. On Jan. 2, the snow-covered roof of a skating rink collapsed in the German Alpine spa town of Bad Reichenhall, killing 15 people.

Jonczyk, the police spokesman, said heavy snow on the roof appeared to have caused the collapse. But a spokesman for the building's management company said snowfall was regularly removed. Interior Minister Jerzy Polaczek said the layer was half that thick at 50 centimeters, or 20 inches.

People who escaped said that two emergency exits were open but that other exits were locked, leaving others trapped. Grzegorz Slyszyk, an attorney who represents the company that owns the building, said that he had no information on the reports but that if exits were locked the reasons would be investigated.

66 Found Dead in Debris of Collapsed Roof in Poland

Richard Bernstein

New York Times 30 January 2006

KATOWICE, Jan. 29 — Rescue workers said Sunday that they had finished searching the wreckage of a football-field-size convention center in this city in southern Poland, finding the bodies of 66 people who died when a snow-laden roof collapsed late Saturday during the final hour of an international pigeon fanciers' fair.
Survivors described being trapped in a small crawl space between the collapsed roof and the floor until rescuers reached them. About 150 people were injured, the authorities said.
"It is possible that more bodies may be found," said Aleksander Kotulecki, an official of the Katowice Crisis Management Department, which is supervising the rescue work. But Mr. Kotulecki said in an interview in the Katowice City Hall that rescue workers had carefully combed through the debris on Saturday night and had probably found everybody there, whether dead or alive.
"It was minus 17 degrees Celsius," Mr. Kotulecki said, about minus 1 Fahrenheit, "so it was very hard, and the human body can be frozen, especially if it's trapped under the ruins."
Polish television said that dogs normally used to find people trapped in rubble were ineffective because of the cold, so rescue workers relied on thermal imaging gear instead to find victims hidden under shards of concrete, often using cutting equipment to get them out.
The accident occurred late in the afternoon at the International Katowice Fair, in the Chorzow neighborhood of this industrial city of around 360,000 about 175 miles southwest of Warsaw, after nearly two feet of snow had accumulated on the structure's flat roof. Polish news reports said the interior warmth of the building began to melt the snow and that made the wooden and concrete roof shift, causing it to fall in on itself.
President Lech Kaczynski, who paid a quick visit to the site on Saturday, said that he would personally lead the investigation into the causes of the collapse.
By Sunday evening, only a few of the 1,300 firefighters, police officers and soldiers who had searched the building overnight Saturday remained on the site; a group of them huddled around an outdoor fire. Television floodlights illuminated the blue-and-white sides of the building, which, with the roof gone, seemed to lean inward and seemed in danger of toppling.
Witnesses of the cave-in said the roof came down without warning. In just a few seconds, the huge convention center holding an estimated 500 visitors and exhibitors turned into a nightmarish scene as wooden beams and slabs of concrete fell and the injured cried out for help.
"It was very fast, just five seconds and everything started to move and the roof just fell in," said Marek Wosiek, a veterinarian from the Polish town of Krotoszyn, between Poznan and Warsaw, who had been inside. "I found myself lying on the floor, and the roof was just above my head.
Mr. Wosiek, who said he was attending the fair to sell medicine to pigeon breeders, said he lay there for about three hours, using a small flashlight on his cellular phone to signal rescue workers. He was interviewed at bedside in the Miejski Hospital in Katowice, where he was being treated for four fractured vertebrae. A doctor said he would probably recover fully.
Grzegorz Jablonski, of Olsztyn in northern Poland, said one of his fingers had to be amputated after he was rescued. But he said his life was saved by the fact that he was sitting on a cardboard box in the middle of the convention center when the roof came crashing down.
"If I had been standing up, the roof would have sliced off my head," he said. As it was, he said, he was hit by two large pieces of wood and knocked to the ground where, like Mr. Wosiek, he found himself in a kind of crawl space between the floor and a piece of collapsed roof.
"A colleague of mine had left the hall just before so he knew where I was," Mr. Jablonski said. "He brought some firemen to the place, and they lifted up the roof so they could get me out."
"There was a horrible noise," Mr. Jablonski said of the moment when the roof collapsed, and "people crying in pain and yelling for help."
Polish government prosecutors were reported to be inspecting the wreckage of the building on Sunday in an attempt to collect evidence of possible negligence. The convention center building, in an area of corporate offices and the Katowice television station, was constructed only eight years ago in a part of Poland where heavy winter snowfalls are common.
"Probably there was some flaw in the construction for the whole building to have collapsed," said Mr. Kotulecki, the local crisis management official.
Katowice is a former coal mining district where pigeon breeding and racing of carrier pigeons have long been popular pastimes.
Witnesses said that earlier in the day on Saturday, a far larger number of people had been at the fair. There had been perhaps as many as 10,000, said one pigeon breeder, Jan Grondziel, from the town of Plock, who said he left just a few minutes before the roof collapsed.
"It sounded like fireworks," he said, standing on Sunday night outside the ruined convention center next to two empty wooden carrying cases for pigeons. "I thought maybe a truck with fireworks had exploded, or that maybe they were setting off fireworks at the end of the fair."
Among the dead were one German, a Belgian, two Czechs, and a Slovak, the Polish press reported; the event drew visitors from most European countries and as far away as the United States.
It was unclear why so high a percentage of the victims of the collapse were Poles, but one likely explanation is that the fair was to close at 6 p.m., less than an hour before the roof collapsed, and most foreign visitors had already left for their hotels or for home.


Help was almost with them, but one by one they died in the cold

By Roger Boyes and Marcin Pietraszewski, in Katowice

Times 30 January 2006

AT FIRST survivors trapped beneath the twisted wreckage of the Katowice exhibition hall called relatives on their mobile telephones.
“He’s alive,” one frantic mother said after receiving a call from her son. “His legs and a shoulder are blocked by metal beams. Next to him a young woman is dead.”

For hours rescue workers pumped warm air into the rubble in a desperate attempt to keep alive survivors pinioned by girders and frozen to the metal debris. A few managed to guide the rescuers to where they were. But, one by one, the rest perished as temperatures plummeted to minus 15C (5F) and the pavilion walls acted like a freezer.
Rescue efforts continued yesterday, but hope gradually vanished. At least 66 people were dead and 160 injured. The collapse of the roof of Pavilion 1 on a racing pigeon show attended by 500 enthusiasts was pronounced the worst disaster of Poland’s post-communist era. President Kaczynski ordered a day of mourning and promised to oversee an investigation personally.
“We must take steps to ensure that such accidents are avoided in future,” he said.
Last night the rescue teams brought in a heavy crane to hoist the fallen girders. They had used only hand tools until then, fearing that moving the rubble could kill, rather than save, survivors. But the tracker dog teams exploring the caverns of the ruined hall had been scenting corpses, not the living, for most of the day. Police and fire officals blamed the weight of snow for the roof’s collapse, although the managers said that it had been regularly cleared. Even before Saturday’s tragedy nearly 200 people had died in Poland’s coldest winter in decades.
Katowice is at the heart of Poland’s coal-mining region. Like miners across the world, they love to race pigeons and keep dovecotes in their narrow gardens. Pigeon 2006 was one of the main international events for racers, and was attended by exhibitors from across Europe. As many as seven foreigners were believed to be among the dead, none of them British. Yesterday, bewildered birds perched on the twisted rafters as bodies were pulled from the wreckage.
Survivors talked of hearing a thunderous crack, as if an aircraft had smacked on to the roof. There was a rush of cold air, a moment of silence and then howling and whimpering.
Krystyna Winiarska, an exhibitor from Wroclaw who suffered a broken wrist and shoulder, remembers only the noise. “Then I was lying among the snow and the steel fragments, next to me, my sister, my brother-in-law and their son. They couldn’t move, they were pinned down by a pillar.”
She tried unsuccessfully to move the beam. The first rescue workers came quickly. “But they didn’t know who to help first. I tried to ring my sister again and again. But there was no answer.”
Most of those treated in hospital were only lightly injured. “We’re the lucky ones,” said Francis Nolmans, a Belgian exhibitor who was injured in the eye. “Those who got out are mostly in reasonable condition,” a surgeon said. “It’s those who didn’t who escape immediately who are in trouble.”
Tadeusz Dlugosz escaped to find that his 26-year-old son had been killed. “It was his idea to come to the fair. He found his grave there.”
Escaping from the building was also dangerous, with dangling cables threatening survivors with electrocution. Some exhibitors said that at least two emergency exits were blocked. “I saw people desperately trying to break windows with chairs,” Franciszek Kowal said.
The inquiry will have to establish whether the roof collapsed because of the heavy snow, or because many months of packed ice weakened the structure of the hall. Temperatures in Upper Silesia have sometimes dropped to minus 30C (-22F).
Edmund Koloska, 62, who had gone to the exhibition to buy pigeons for the spring racing season, recalled: “The atmosphere was great, the music was a bit loud, but the birds were beautiful. Then came that crashing noise.” He cannot remember what happened next, finding himself in hospital with minor injuries. “I don’t know to whom I should say thank you.”

Saudi Arabia and internal terrorism

Terrorist Challenges to Saudi Arabian Internal Security

Joshua Teitelbaum

Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol 9, no 3, Sept 2005

Saudi Arabia has faced a full-fledged Islamic insurgency since May 2003. In combating this insurgency, the kingdom is hampered by the lack of loyal security forces, which seem to be penetrated by al-Qa'ida. In the beginning the regime tried the old methods of co-optation, including a generous amnesty to bring in the insurgents. However, it has recently discovered that it must go on a determined offensive, and it is this strategy that has brought several recent successes. Crushing this insurgency is Riyadh's top priority, and it should be Washington's as well--far ahead of reform or democracy.
This article was originally written for a project and conference on "After the Iraq War: Strategic and Political Changes in Europe and the Middle East," co-sponsored by the GLORIA Center and The Military Centre for Strategic Studies (CeMiSS) of Italy.

Since May 2003, Saudi Arabia has been threatened by a terrorist insurgency inspired by Usama bin Ladin. [1] This is not to suggest that Saudi Arabia was not plagued by violent internal opposition in the past. One could actually start an examination of this insurgency with the 1979 attack on the Grand Mosque in Mecca, or the attack on the U.S. Office of the Program Manager/Saudi Arabian National Guard (OPM/SANG) in 1995, but compared to the rate and nature of the current wave of attacks, those were isolated incidents. An examination of incidents since the year 2000, however, reveals that there were a series of under-reported incidents that predate 9/11--a small bomb here, the killing of an officer there. Since May 2003, hardly a week goes by without some kind of attack or confrontation. According to Saudi officials speaking at a counter-terrorism conference in February 2005, over the past two years a total of 221 people, including 92 terrorists were killed in terror attacks and clashes. [2] In December 2004 alone there were three significant attacks: the December 6 assault on the U.S. Consulate in the Red Sea port of Jeddah, the December 29 car bomb attacks at key security installations in Riyadh, and another attack in which the Ministry of Interior was hit by a remote-control car bomb, following which the bomber engaged in a gun battle with police. Later that evening two suicide bombers drove into the Special Forces Training Building. [3] These attacks demonstrated that al-Qa'ida was still alive and kicking despite several key Saudi successes in killing or capturing al-Qa'ida leaders. [4]
Saudi Arabia is not the only Gulf country beset by these ills. Since January 2005, Kuwait has been witness to a series of terrorist incidents, some involving Saudis sympathetic to Usama bin Ladin. Al-Qa'ida sympathizers in the Kuwait armed forces have been arrested and accused of plotting to kill U.S. soldiers during joint maneuvers. Kuwait houses nearly 37,500 U.S. troops and military contract personnel supporting operations in Iraq. Large arms caches and plans have been discovered, although the cells in Kuwait seem to be less "articulated," meaning that they have not achieved the level of terrorist operation specialization in areas such as finance, bomb making, etc. [5]
Even other Gulf countries are not immune. In January 2005, reportedly hundreds of Islamists were arrested in Oman in unclear circumstances relating to what Omani officials termed "endangering the national order," that involved intercepted arms and an apparent plan to sabotage a cultural event in Muscat. [6] In Qatar as well, a suicide bomber killed one Briton and injured several other people watching a performance of the mostly British Doha Players Theater in March. In April, explosive devices were found in a residential compound. [7]
Needless to say, these countries are oil producers whose stability is key to the world economy. Their location on the edge of the Persian Gulf sets them astride a major oil artery and across the Gulf from Iran, an adversary of the US and a country assured of becoming armed with nuclear weapons within the next few of years.
Saudi Arabia is beset by many acute problems, such as the need for economic and political reform, corruption, unemployment, and a burgeoning population. These are concerns of a strategic nature, and they need to be addressed, even if they are close to insurmountable, since Saudi legitimacy is based on an ideology of religious extremism, and a new vision of a tolerant Islam is too slow in the making. Reform will not immediately stop the insurgency, nor will it rob the insurgents of support. Indeed, Kuwait is an example of a country seemingly on the road to democracy (it has an elected legislature), yet it has also suffered from terrorist attacks. But in Saudi Arabia, it is unclear how ready the current leadership is for serious change, despite the restricted municipal elections of early 2005, and a succession struggle is looming.
THE FAILURE OF TRIED AND TRUE METHODSToday the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia faces a full-scale Islamic-based insurgency. This is an immediate and present danger to the regime, or, as military analyst Anthony Cordesman has written, "The Kingdom's most urgent security threat…" [8] The regime can ill-afford a long-drawn out insurgency that would cripple its economy, from the oil-industry to the pilgrimage. Putting down this insurgency must therefore be the regime's first priority, as well as Washington's.
The insurgents have been compared to the Ikhwan tribal forces of the early twentieth century who helped Ibn Sa'ud conquer most of the Arabian Peninsula, but who eventually rebelled when they objected to the Saudi leader's contacts with Christians and his limitations on their cross-border raiding. [9] But today's threat is much greater, not the least because the methods used to quell the Ikhwan rebellion in the 1920's are not working this time around, and, more importantly, the loyalty and efficacy of the Saudi security forces are in doubt.
The Saudis are historically adept at co-opting their opposition. Usually marriages with families of rebellious shaykhs, jobs, and financial rewards have sufficed to calm even the most determined rebels. But these methods, although they are being employed once again, do not seem adequate to quell the present and immediate challenge.
The Saudi ambassador to Washington, Bandar bin Sultan, has held up Ibn Sa'ud's treatment of the Ikhwan as a paradigm for how to deal with the threat. In an article in his uncle Khalid Al Faysal's newspaper, al-Watan, Bandar called for "war" against the insurgents, just as Ibn Sa'ud fought the Ikhwan, and he mentions their defeat at the "Battle of Sabila" on March 30, 1929. [10] But to learn what really happened with the Ikhwan, Bandar should take a look at scholar John Habib's classic study of that movement.
Following the defeat of the Ikhwan at Sabila (it was really just a short-lived skirmish), Ibn Sa'ud did not pursue the rebels and kill them. Instead he created alliances and so isolated the leadership. When he finally caught up with them, he demonstrated magnanimity and let them live out their lives in prison, which, given the circumstances of the rebellion, Habib judged to be relatively lenient. Others were pardoned and received high positions, such as Majid bin Khuthayla, who was made responsible for Ibn Sa'ud's camels. It was Bin Khuthayla who was authorized to form repentant or loyal units of the Ikhwan into what would later become the Saudi Arabian National Guard. [11] Ibn Sa'ud's handling of his enemies is summarized by Habib:
Ibn Sa'ud's ability to consolidate his hold over the country, after the rebellion, was due in no small part to his ability to rise above small and petty rivalries and sometimes over major clashes, to forgive his enemies and to give them a share and vested interest in the regime. [12]
In other words, Ibn Sa'ud removed the wind from the movement's sails by co-optation, not by war, as Bandar suggests.
But the tried and true methods of co-optation do not seem to be working this time around, even as Ministry of Interior Na'if bin 'Abd al-'Aziz meets with tribal leaders in an attempt to enlist their support. [13]
Even if Bandar's historical analogy is wrong, his prescription may be right on. In al-Watan he states that his call for war against the terrorists "does not mean delicacy, but brutality." He concluded his article with a call to kill them all. [14] Co-optation, as with the Ikhwan, does not seem to be the solution for this insurgency. Indeed, in the month-long amnesty offered by the regime in June 2004, only six terrorists gave themselves up.
In both Egypt and Algeria, governments have successfully put down Islamic insurgencies (more successfully in the former than in the latter). This was due to a determined government and a concerted effort, what Israeli scholar Emmanuel Sivan terms "the stiff and increasingly effective resistance of existing governments." [15]
The Egyptians have definitely crushed their Islamic insurgency. One method used in 1992 was to enter the Cairo suburb of Imbaba, which was an Islamist stronghold, and attack the Islamists. The Egyptians moved later to crush the Islamists entirely. It was not a nice affair, but it did turn public opinion against the terrorists. The Mubarak regime is still in power, and terrorism has nearly ended. [16] Algeria seems well on the way to ending its Islamic terrorist nightmare. Apparently, nothing succeeds like suppression.
ARE THE SAUDI SECURITY SERVICES UP TO THE TASK?The Saudi security forces are notoriously unreliable, incompetent, or, worse, both. Since the 1950's, not a decade has gone by without arrests carried out within the ranks of the security forces. [17] It is worth going into some detail on sympathy for the terrorists within the security forces, because if the Saudis are to be able to crush this insurgency, they must have the military tools to do so.
It appears that the regime continues to identify supporters of Bin Ladin in the armed forces. In September 2003, it was reported by two Bin Ladin websites that forty workers at Saudi Arabia's Dhahran airbase had been arrested on suspicion of ties to al-Qa'ida and for expounding on the necessity of jihad. Alleged detainees included the commander of a helicopter wing, Lieutenant Colonel Salih 'Abd al-Hadi al-Qahtani, and two others with the rank of major. [18]
The ability of terrorists to escape once being surrounded by security forces, points again to extreme incompetence, collaborators, or both. On May 6, 2003, 19 terrorists, after escaping following a shootout with Saudi security forces, participated in the massive attack that followed a week later. Weapons found at the site of the attack were traced to Saudi Arabian National Guard (SANG) stockpiles. It is clear that the May 12, 2003 nearly simultaneous bombings of three compounds needed significant cooperation from the SANG men guarding them. Several terrorists wore SANG uniforms. At the compound of the Virginia-based Vinnell Corporation, which has a contract to train the SANG, the bombers detonated their bomb inside the compound, just outside the main housing block, which they reached in less than a minute. It was clear that they knew where the switches were to operate the gates, and where the most densely inhabited housing complex was located. They drove directly to it with their 200-kilogram bomb.[19]
Several injured Vinnell employees have asserted that the attackers were assisted by SANG members. They allege that SANG members knew about the bombing in advance and gave inside help to the terrorists. On that day security was especially lax, despite repeated security warnings. An "exercise" organized by SANG removed dozens of security staff, the compound was left wide open, machine guns were unloaded, and guards unarmed. [20]
During the attack of November 8 on a residential compound in Riyadh, there were gun battles between terrorists and security forces. All of the terrorists got away. They had arrived in a car with the markings of the Special Security Forces, one of the main units of the security apparatus engaged in hunting down al-Qa'ida. It seems clear that the use of a Special Security Forces car meant that this was an "inside job," and that al-Qa'ida has infiltrated parts of the security forces. [21]
On May 1, 2004, in an attack in the Hijazi coastal city of Yanbu', it took nearly an hour for security forces to confront the terrorists, who succeeded in wounding more than 30 members of the security forces before being killed themselves. [22]
The late May 2004 attacks in al-Khobar in the Eastern Province were blatant and seemingly easy to carry out. The attackers took their time, separating Muslims from non-Muslims, killing 22 people, conversing and eating breakfast with Muslims in the complex, and then – again – slipping easily away, two and a half hours before the assault on the complex by Saudi forces, according to Arab News. They found shelter in a nearby mosque, where the imam, Mazin al-Tamimi, was alleged to have given them aid. A few hours later, they skirmished with security forces before escaping once again. [23]
On June 6, BBC cameraman Simon Cumbers was killed and reporter Frank Gardner seriously wounded while filming in the Riyadh neighborhood of al-Suwaydi. Authorities considered the neighborhood to be filled with al-Qa'ida sympathizers, and residents included 15 of the country's 26 most wanted terrorists. Its most famous resident was the leader of al-Qa'ida in Saudi Arabia, 'Abd al-Aziz al-Muqrin. Its clerics preached a virulent anti-western message, no doubt fanning the popularity of Bin Ladin. [24] Many of the residents were recently urbanized nomadic bedouins. Residents of the neighborhood were not afraid to identity themselves to journalists as they expressed their hatred of Americans and their support for al-Muqrin and al-Qa'ida. "These (kidnappers) are holy warriors, heroes, who never waver," said one Mizahen al-Etbi to a reporter. [25] This is not surprising in a country where over half of 15,000 Saudis polled said that they supported Bin Ladin. [26]
The Saudi terrorists continued to play with the authorities. The three escapees from the al-Khobar attack went looking for their wounded comrade, Nimr al-Biqami, in the Riyadh hospital where he was under police guard. Dressed as women, they waltzed through the Ministry of Interior medical complex, shouting Biqami's name. When they could not locate him, they fled--once again--unharmed. [27]
The Saudis eventually tracked down al-Muqrin and three accomplices, killing them in a shootout in mid-June. Al- Qa'ida soon announced that Salih al-'Awfi would assume command in the Arabian Peninsula. Al-'Awfi reportedly trained with the Saudi military, and later reached the rank of sergeant in the prison service, overseen by the Ministry of Interior, which supervises internal security in the kingdom. [28] It would not be surprising if al-'Awfi still maintained connections with internal security organizations.
The terrorists also boasted that during the mid-June 2004 kidnapping of Paul M. Johnson, an American defense contractor they later beheaded, they used uniforms and vehicles supplied by sympathizers in the security forces, and were able to set up a fake checkpoint. If true, particularly the latter claim, it is an indication of a total lack of coordination between the security forces-a definite possibility-or, even worse, the existence of collaborators at a very high level. [29] Saudis themselves seem to have a poor view of their army, although apparently their view of the security forces is much better.[i][30]
It was recently made public in an official US military publication that in 2004 a Saudi military official with ties to al-Qa'ida was apprehended by the FBI and the US Air Force Office of Special Investigations after completing a course at an Air Force technical school. The officer allegedly had knowledge of al-Qa'ida plans and safe houses in the kingdom. [31]
For the security services to be up to the task, al-Qa'ida sympathizers need to be rooted out from within, as happened in the Egyptian and Algerian armies. Moreover, the authorities have to conduct house-to-house searches, confrontationally, if necessary, in neighborhoods like al-Suwaydi, just as the Egyptians did in Imbaba. The successful anti-insurgency campaigns of the Egyptian and Algerian governments were not hearts and minds campaigns. The Saudis' feeble attempts at an amnesty for the terrorists yielded few takers.
But there are indications that the Saudis are finally getting the message. They have been more aggressive in searching out terrorists and forcing them into confrontations. In early April, security forces surrounded a group of terrorists in the Qasim regions' city of al-Rass, around 300 kilometers northwest of Riyadh. The confrontation went on nearly 48 hours before 14 terrorists were killed. [32]
The insurgents seem to have suffered a blow, but continue to carry out attacks on a weekly and sometimes daily basis. Two terrorists and two security officials were killed in a clash in late April in Mecca, and similar incidents occurred in April and June. [33]
Returnees from the jihad in Iraq are a major concern. Western intelligence estimates that there are several hundred Saudi nationals now amongst the insurgents; other estimates are in the thousands. According to one analysis, Saudi citizens represented 61 percent of the 154 foreign Arabs killed in Iraq. Said one official, "They are coming back with security experience, ranging from skills in how to lose people who are trailing them, as well as having the qualities of guerilla fighters. They also know how to do surveillance." [34]
FRAGMENTATION OF RELIGIOUS AND MONARCHICAL AUTHORITYThe legitimacy of the Al Sa'ud rested to a great extent, for many years, on the approbation of the establishment clerics. But since the death of the Wahhabi éminence grise, General Mufti 'Abd al-'Aziz bin Baz in 1999, the prestige of these clerics has dropped. The government has thus turned to two formerly imprisoned clerics, Salman bin Fahd al-'Awda and Safar bin 'Abd al-Rahman al-Hawali-known as the "Awakening Shaykhs" for their leadership of the Saudi Islamic "awakening" (sahwa) in the 1990's--to support them in its efforts against terrorism. [35] This fragmentation of religious authority makes the efforts of the Al Sa'ud to combat extremism all the more difficult. This difficulty is compounded when establishment clerics continue to rail against Jews and Christians, despite apparent government efforts to rein in these types of statements.
The royal family itself is plagued by a succession crisis that probably does not contribute to unified decision making. King Fahd is about 83 years old and is incapacitated since suffering a stroke in 1995 (as of this writing, he has been hospitalized for nearly three weeks, reportedly with pneumonia), and Crown Prince 'Abdallah is 81 years old. Even if 'Abdallah were to live long enough to succeed Fahd, one wonders if he will have time enough in office to really crack down on extremists and carry out reforms. To complicate matters further, the decision as to who will be 'Abdallah's crown prince remains to be settled. The most likely candidate, Minister of Defense Sultan, is about 80 years old.
Nevertheless, the Al Sa'ud have weathered crises before. When the family is threatened, the princes pull together, and one hopes that this current threat will overcome internal disagreements. Saudi Arabia is not Iran. Iran has a long tradition of mass political activity. Saudi Arabia does not, and therefore it is reasonable to assume that barring mass deprivation, it is unlikely that the kingdom faces a popular revolt.
Moreover, the possibility of a military coup of the type that used to plague Arab countries for much of the twentieth century is an unlikely one. The armed forces are quite large and dispersed, each headed by rival members of the royal family, and it is difficult to see anyone or any group with the capabilities to organize over such a large area and amongst such great numbers. The government does seem to have its priorities straight. During the latest oil boom, the royal family made sure to distribute a two-month salary bonus to the security forces. [36]
Saudi Arabia is not in the midst of a civil war. It is suffering a severe security crisis, something, say, on the level of the troubles in Northern Ireland, perhaps even less so. [37]
While real reform and a new-found legitimacy are necessary for the monarchy's survival in the long term, the current insurgency needs to be crushed quickly, and different and stronger methods need to be applied. It otherwise will undermine the country's economy and wreak havoc with the world oil market. In Usama Bin Laden's recorded statement in mid-December 2004, he gave encouragement to the terrorists, encouraged them to attack oil installations, and said that oil should be at $100 a barrel. A recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies notes that al-Qa'ida in Saudi Arabia has been eroded over the years, but it still remains a threat which is unlikely to disappear for years to come. [38] In December 2004, Crown Prince 'Abdallah spoke of fighting the enemy for twenty, thirty, or forty years. [39] A long-term insurgency does not bode well for the Saudi economy, or for that of the west. Crushing this insurgency must therefore be the top priority, ahead of issues of reform. U.S. policymakers need to take this into account.

Dr. Joshua Teitelbaum is Senior Fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies. He is the author of The Hashemite Kingdom of Arabia, and Holier Than Thou: Saudi Arabia's Islamic Opposition.

NOTES

[1] In two long messages, Usama Bin Ladin has expounded on the importance of armed activity against the Saudi regime. See the English translations of his statements of August 22, 1996, and December 16, 2004, at www.jihadunspun.com.
[2] Arab News, February 6, 2005.
[3] Raid Qusti,"Two Explosions Hit Riyadh," Arab News, December 30, 2004; "Car Bombers Target Saudi Security Units," Washington Post, December 30, 2004.
[4] JE Peterson, "Security and Political Challenges in Saudi Arabia," December 12, 2004 (http://www.jepeterson.net/id12.htm).
[5] Financial Times, January 11, February 3, 2005; Daily Star, January 17, 19, 31, February 2, 2005; Reuters, January 30, 31, February 1, 5, 2005; Michael Knights, "Backing Kuwait's Stand against Terrorism," PolicyWatch, No. 955, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, February 11, 2005.
[6] AP, January 26, 2005; Reuters, January 30, 2005. Thirty-one were eventually put on trial in April for trying to reestablish the Ibadhi Imamate through an armed organization. They were convicted in May, but pardoned in April. Gulf News, March, 27, April 19, 20, 2005; AFP, May 2, 2005; Oman Observer, May 3, 2005; BBCNEWS, June 10, 2005. For more on this incident, see JE Peterson, "Oman: Omanis, Ibadis, and Islamism," February 28, 2005 (http://www.jepeterson.net/id12.htm). In March, an Omani was sentenced to life imprisonment for attempting to kill two Britons. Gulf News, March 22, 2005.
[7]Tony Thompson, "Qatar Blast Kills Britain," The Observer, March 20, 2005; Gulf News, April 20, 2005.
[8] Anthony Cordesman and Nawaf Obaid, "Saudi Arabia Internal Security, A Risk Assessment: Terrorism and the Security Services - Challenges and Developments," Center for Strategic and International Studies (Washington, DC), May 30, 2004, online at http://www.csis.org/burke/saudi21/sis_ariskassessment.pdf.
[9] See John Habib's classic study of the Saudi Ikhwan, Ibn Sa‘ud’s Warriors of Islam: The Ikhwan of Najd and Their Role in the Creation of the Sa‘udi Kingdom, 1910-1930 (Leiden: Brill, 1978).
[10] Bandar bin Sultan, al-Watan, June 1, 2004, translated by MEMRI, online at http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=countries&Area=saudiarabia&ID=SP72504.
[11] Habib, Ikhwan, Ibn Sa‘ud’s Warriors of Islam, pp. 152-54.
[12] Habib, Ikhwan, Ibn Sa‘ud's Warriors of Islam, pp. 154-55.
[13] Simon Henderson, "Why Americans Die in Riyadh," FrontPageMag.Com, June 21, 2004, online at http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13850.
[14] Bandar bin Sultan, al-Watan, June 1, 2004, translated by MEMRI, online at http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=countries&Area=saudiarabia&ID=SP72504.
[15] See Emmanuel Sivan, "Why Radical Muslims Aren't Taking Over Governments," Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 2, No. 2 (May 1998), pp. 9-16. Sivan points to further successes against Islamic insurgents by Saddam Husayn in Iraq (1980, 1991), and in Syria (1982).
[16] Ami Ayalon, "Egypt," in Ami Ayalon (ed.), Middle East Contemporary Survey 1992 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), p. 368; Lee Smith, "The Saudi Civil War: Who is Fighting? Who Will Win?," Slate, June 18, 2004, online at http://slate.msn.com/id/2102628/.
[17] See Joshua Teitelbaum, "A Family Affair: Civil-Military Relations in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia," http://www.iue.it/RSCAS/RestrictedPapers/conmed2003free/200303Teitelbaum12.pdf. This paper is currently being revised.
[18]Yoni Fighel, "Saudi Arabia Confronts Bin Laden Supporters," International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism, online at http://www.ict.org.il/articles/articledet.cfm?articleid=498.
[19] John Bradley, "Conspiracy of Silence in Riyadh?," Daily Star, November 22, 2003; "Terror Weapons Linked to Armed Forces," San Francisco Chronicle, May 19, 2003; Peter Finn, Al-Qaeda Link to Saudi National Guard," The Age, May 20, 2003.
[20] Mark Hollingsworth, Independent, May 17, 2004; Mark Hollingsworth, "US Bomb Victims Sue Saudi Royal Family for 'Negligence'," Independent on Sunday, May 8, 2005.
[21] John Bradley, "Conspiracy of Silence in Riyadh?," Daily Star, November 22, 2003. On the Special Security Forces, see Anthony Cordesman and Nawaf Obaid, “Saudi Arabia Internal Security, A Risk Assessment: Terrorism and the Security Services - Challenges and Developments," Center for Strategic and International Studies (Washington, DC), May 30 2004, online at http://www.csis.org/burke/saudi21/sis_ariskassessment.pdf.
[22] Huge Pope and Chip Cummins, "Saudi Suffer Fresh Terrorist Attack," Wall Street Journal, June 1, 2004.
[23] Saeed Haidar, "Manhunt Continues for the Three Escaped Terrorist," Arab News, June 1, 2004; Al-Sharq al-Awsat, June 1, 2004.
[24] Dave Montgomery, "Anti-Western Sentiment Rises in Saudi Neighborhood," Kansas City Star, June 14, 2004; Mohammed Rasooldeen, "Al-Muqrin Remained a Brutal Killer All His Life," Arab News, June 20, 2004.
[25] Salah Nasrawi, "Saudi Anti-Extremist Campaign Not Working," Washington Post, June 19, 2004. For more on al-Suwaydi, see John Bradley, "The Slum Where BBC's Frank Gardner Was Shot," Yemen Times, June 14, 2004, online at http://www.johnrbradley.com/art_13.html.
[26] Henry Shuster, "Poll of Saudis Shows Wide Support for Bin Laden's Views," CNN.com, June 9, 2004, online at http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/06/08/poll.binladen/.
[27] Michael Theodoulou and Daniel McGrory, "Disguised Gunmen Try to Free Terror Leader," Times (London), June 9, 2004.
[28] Al-Quds al-'Arabi, June 21, 2004; Brian Whitaker, "Sacked Sergeant Is New al-Qaida Chief in Saudi Arabia, Guardian, June 22, 2004; "New al Qaeda Cell Leader Trained with Saudi Military," CNN..COM, June 21, 2004, online at http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/06/21/alaoofi.ap/index.html.
[29] "Al-Qaida: Sympathizers Aided Abduction," AP, June 20, 2004.
[30] Henry Shuster, "Poll of Saudis Shows Wide Support for Bin Laden's Views," CNN.com, June 9, 2004, online at http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/06/08/poll.binladen/.
[31] James Gordon Meek, "Saudi Military Official linked to al-Qaida trained with Air Force," New York Daily News, February 1, 2005; Brig. Gen. Eric Patterson, "A Year in Reflection: OSI Tempered for the Future," Global Reliance, November/December 2004, p.3.
[32] UPI, April 3, 5, 7, 9, 2005; AP, April 4 , 6, 2005; Arab News April 4, 5, 8, 10, 2005; Reuters, April 5, 2005; Washington Post, April 6, 2005.
[33] Reuters, April 21, June 1, 2005; AP, April 21, May 13, June 18, 2005.
[34] William Wallis and Mark Huband, "Saudi Arabia Fears Attacks from Insurgents Battel-Hardened in Iraq," Financial Times, December 20, 2004; Reuven Paz, "Arab Volunteers Killed in Iraq: An Analysis," PRISM Series on Global Jihad, No. 1/3, March 2005; Donna Abu-Nasr, "Saudi Youth Export Holy War,” AP, March 9, 2005; Susan B. Glasser, "'Martyrs' in Iraq Mostly Saudis," Washington Post, May 15, 2005; Eric Schmitt, "US and Allies Capture More Foreign Fighters," New York Times, June 19, 2005.
[35] On Hawali and 'Awda, see Joshua Teitelbaum, Holier Than Thou: Saudi Arabia’s Islamic Opposition (Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2000).
[36] Hugh Pope, "Oil Boom Buys Time for Saudis," Wall Street Journal, November 15, 2004.
[37] JE Peterson, "Security and Political Challenges in Saudi Arabia," December 12, 2004 (http://www.jepeterson.net/id12.htm).
[38] Reuters, January 11, 2005.
[39]Simon Henderson, "Lights, Camera, Inaction? Saudi Arabia's Counterterrorism Conference," PolicyWatch, No. 956, February 11, 2005, Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Bin Laden's (?) latest tape

Text: 'Bin-Laden tape'

The pan-Arab TV station al-Jazeera has broadcast an audio tape purporting to be by al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, in which the speaker says al-Qaeda is preparing new attacks on the US.
Here is the full text of the message, as carried on al-Jazeera's website.

BBC 19 January 2006

My message to you is about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the way to end it.
I had not intended to speak to you about this issue, because, for us, this issue is already decided on: diamonds cut diamonds.
Praise be to God, our conditions are always improving and becoming better, while your conditions are to the contrary of this.
However, what prompted me to speak are the repeated fallacies of your President Bush in his comment on the outcome of the US opinion polls, which indicated that the overwhelming majority of you want the withdrawal of the forces from Iraq, but he objected to this desire and said that the withdrawal of troops would send a wrong message to the enemy.
Bush said: It is better to fight them on their ground than they fighting us on our ground.
In my response to these fallacies, I say: The war in Iraq is raging, and the operations in Afghanistan are on the rise in our favour, praise be to God.
The Pentagon figures indicate the rise in the number of your dead and wounded, let alone the huge material losses, and let alone the collapse of the morale of the soldiers there and the increase in the suicide cases among them.
So, just imagine the state of psychological breakdown that afflicts the soldier while collecting the remnants of his comrades' dead bodies after they hit mines, which torn them. Following such situation, the soldier becomes between two fires. If he refuses to go out of his military barracks for patrols, he will face the penalties of the Vietnam butcher, and if he goes out, he will face the danger of mines.
So, he is between two bitter situations, something which puts him under psychological pressure - fear, humiliation, and coercion. Moreover, his people are careless about him. So, he has no choice but to commit suicide.
What you hear about him and his suicide is a strong message to you, which he wrote with his blood and soul while pain and bitterness eat him up so that you would save what you can save from this hell. However, the solution is in your hand if you care about them.
The news of our brother mujahideen, however, is different from what is published by the Pentagon.
This news indicates that what is carried by the news media does not exceed what is actually taking place on the ground. What increases doubts on the information of the White House's administration is its targeting of the news media, which carry some facts about the real situation.
Documents have recently showed that the butcher of freedom in the world [US President Bush] had planned to bomb the head office of al-Jazeera Space Channel in the state of Qatar after he bombed its offices in Kabul and Baghdad, although despite its defects, it is [Al-Jazeera] one of your creations.
Jihad is continuing, praise be to God, despite all the repressive measures the US army and its agents take to the point where there is no significant difference between these crimes and those of Saddam.
These crimes include the raping of women and taking them hostage instead of their husbands. There is no power but in God.
The torturing of men has reached the point of using chemical acids and electric drills in their joints. If they become desperate with them, they put the drill on their heads until death.
If you like, read the humanitarian reports on the atrocities and crimes in the prisons of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
I say that despite all the barbaric methods, they have failed to ease resistance, and the number of mujahideen, praise be to God, is increasing.
In fact, reports indicate that the defeat and devastating failure of the ill-omened plan of the four - Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz - and the announcement of this defeat and working it out, is only a matter of time, which is to some extent linked to the awareness of the American people of the magnitude of this tragedy.
The wise ones know that Bush has no plan to achieve his alleged victory in Iraq.
If you compare the small number of the dead when Bush made that false and stupid show-like announcement from an aircraft carrier on the end of the major operations, to many times as much as this number of the killed and injured, who fell in the minor operations, you will know the truth in what I am saying, and that Bush and his administration do not have neither the desire nor the will to withdraw from Iraq for their own dubious reasons.
To go back to where I started, I say that the results of the poll satisfy sane people and that Bush's objection to them is false.
Reality testifies that the war against America and its allies has not remained confined to Iraq, as he claims.
In fact, Iraq has become a point of attraction and recruitment of qualified resources.
On the other hand, the mujahideen, praise be to God, have managed to breach all the security measures adopted by the unjust nations of the coalition time and again.
The evidence of this is the bombings you have seen in the capitals of the most important European countries of this aggressive coalition.
As for the delay in carrying out similar operations in America, this was not due to failure to breach your security measures.
Operations are under preparation, and you will see them on your own ground once they are finished, God willing.
Based on the above, we see that Bush's argument is false. However, the argument that he avoided, which is the substance of the results of opinion polls on withdrawing the troops, is that it is better not to fight the Muslims on their land and for them not to fight us on our land.
We do not object to a long-term truce with you on the basis of fair conditions that we respect.
We are a nation, for which God has disallowed treachery and lying.
In this truce, both parties will enjoy security and stability and we will build Iraq and Afghanistan, which were destroyed by the war.
There is no defect in this solution other than preventing the flow of hundreds of billions to the influential people and war merchants in America, who supported Bush's election campaign with billions of dollars.
Hence, we can understand the insistence of Bush and his gang to continue the war.
If you have a genuine will to achieve security and peace, we have already answered you.
If Bush declines but to continue lying and practicing injustice [against us], it is useful for you to read the book of "The Rogue State", the introduction of which reads: If I were a president, I would halt the operations against the United States.
First, I will extend my apologies to the widows, orphans, and the persons who were tortured. Afterwards, I will announce that the US interference in the world's countries has ended for ever.
Finally, I would like to tell you that the war is for you or for us to win. If we win it, it means your defeat and disgrace forever as the wind blows in this direction with God's help.
If you win it, you should read the history. We are a nation that does not tolerate injustice and seek revenge forever.
Days and nights will not go by until we take revenge as we did on 11 September, God willing, and until your minds are exhausted and your lives become miserable and things turn [for the worse], which you detest.
As for us, we do not have anything to lose. The swimmer in the sea does not fear rain. You have occupied our land, defiled our honour, violated our dignity, shed our blood, ransacked our money, demolished our houses, rendered us homeless, and tampered with our security. We will treat you in the same way.
You tried to deny us the decent life, but you cannot deny us a decent death. Refraining from performing jihad, which is sanctioned by our religion, is an appalling sin. The best way of death for us is under the shadows of swords.
Do not be deluded by your power and modern weapons. Although they win some battles, they lose the war. Patience and steadfastness are better than them. What is important is the outcome.
We have been tolerant for 10 years in fighting the Soviet Union with our few weapons and we managed to drain their economy.
They became history, with God's help.
You should learn lessons from that. We will remain patient in fighting you, God willing, until the one whose time has come dies first. We will not escape the fight as long as we hold our weapons in our hands.
I swear not to die but a free man even if I taste the bitterness of death. I fear to be humiliated or betrayed.
Peace be upon those who follow guidance.
BBC Monitoring selects and translates news from radio, television, press, news agencies and the internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages. It is based in Caversham, UK, and has several bureaus abroad.

Moscow cold

They're trying to break into jail as city heads for -40C

From Jeremy Page in Moscow

The Times 18 January 2006

VITALY has tried being drunk and disorderly, disturbing the peace, even assaulting a friend — anything to get inside a Moscow police cell.
Any other week, the 42-year-old vagrant would do anything to avoid the city’s notorious police. But with a cold front from Siberia pushing temperatures towards -40C – their lowest in more than half a century — getting arrested has become a matter of life or death.

“At least it’s warm in a cell,” he said. “In this weather, if you can’t find a warm place to sleep, you die.”
On Monday two people froze to death and 14 were taken to hospital with hypothermia in the capital as temperatures plunged from zero to -28C.
Russians are no strangers to harsh weather, but the cold snap has come as a shock after a series of relatively mild winters. The meteorological service told The Times that in the next few days it expected to register some of the coldest temperatures in the capital since 1940, when it hit -42C. The coldest temperature recorded in Russia was -71C (-96F) in the northern region of Yakutia in the 1950s.
Moscow authorities responded by ordering police to suspend their usual practice of turfing the homeless out of stairwells, metro stops and railway stations. Health officials also warned the elderly and infirm to stay at home and those with heart conditions to pause in their doorways to adjust to the cold before going outside.
But it is not just the homeless, old and sick who are at risk from the cold front that has wrought havoc across eastern and central Russia. Many Muscovites fear that the Siberian freeze will cut off their supplies of electricity and hot water, which is still pumped in massive pipes from Soviet-era heating stations.
The celebrated Botkinskaya Hospital suffered a two-hour power cut on Monday, according to one doctor there. “Thank God no one was in the operating theatre or they would have died,” she said.
Yesterday city authorities reduced power supplies to some businesses by up to 90 per cent to conserve energy for hospitals and other basic infrastructure. They said that private homes would not be affected. Nevertheless, the power cuts have rekindled anger at Anatoly Chubais, the oligarch who heads the electricity monopoly and who was widely blamed for a huge blackout in Moscow last summer. Mr Chubais threatened in November to reduce the power to non-essential points if it was below -25C for three days or more.
Nestor Serebryannikov, the former head of the Moscow municipal power utility, said the cuts were unprecedented. “The capital for the first time has come up against a situation where, due to the cold, its demands for energy may well exceed supplies,” he said.
Heating systems have been stretched to breaking point in other towns and cities. In St Petersburg an accident at a power plant left 45 blocks without electricity or heating; in Komi province in northwestern Russia, 83 people — including 66 children — were moved away from their village after a heating failure; in the Samara region in the southwest, a burst main left nearly 10,000 people without central heating or water as the temperature fell to -36 C. There were also heating problems in the western Siberian province of Tomsk when temperatures fell to -53C, the lowest in a century.
So extreme is the cold that authorities in Moscow and St Petersburg have had to supply buses with special “Arctic” diesel fuel. Traffic policemen have also been issued with traditional Russian felt boots.
Moscow Zoo implemented emergency procedures for the first time since the winter of 1978-79, moving most of its animals into heated pavilions. Zookeepers also smashed holes in two ponds to allow aquatic birds access to water and laid straw on the ice to protect their feet. Only a handful of animals, including Amur tigers and, strangely, the African white-tailed gnu, preferred to remain outside.
A few human beings were enjoying the cold, however. Schoolchildren were told they could stay at home if temperatures were below -20C in the morning.
And the “walruses” — swimmers who plunge through holes in the ice in the belief that it cures disease, cleanses the soul and improves the libido — said they would carry on as normal. Four morning and night dips will take place in Moscow tonight to celebrate Orthodox Epiphany.
THE EXTREMES
· Record snowfalls in Japan, with 13ft drifts, killed 100 and injured at least 1,000
· An unusually cold winter has killed hundreds in India, Bangladesh and Nepal, with Delhi seeing 0.2C, its lowest temperature in 70 years
· Sydney recorded its highest temperature since 1939 this month at 44.2C
· Freezing weather and lows of -12C meant much of Britain recorded its coldest December for a decade, while southern England had its driest year since 1921


Plunged Into a Deep Freeze, Russians Pull on Their Speedos

By Kim Murphy

Los Angeles Times 19 January 2006

MOSCOW — In Russia, complaining about the cold in winter is like arguing with the sun for rising — an exercise for fools, not to mention wimps.So as the nation staggered in the grip of a fierce Arctic cold wave that stretched from Finland to Japan, the capital braced for a predicted low of minus 35 degrees early today with characteristic defiance: Dozens of Muscovites stripped down to their bathing suits at midnight and plunged into a tributary of the Moscow River.

God bless Russia!" 28-year-old Gennady Mordvintsev screamed as he dived into a hole in the ice. He emerged, dripping and frosting over quickly, several minutes later."This is why Americans can't understand what a Russian is," boomed Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, stuffed in a fur coat and hat and surrounded by bodyguards after his own encounter with the water. "We've been doing this for a thousand years!"The Orthodox holiday of Epiphany was what drew dozens of swimmers out to the water's edge. But on any given Saturday night, Russians can be seen padding down to the river to dip into the icy water, or stumbling out of their wood-fired banyas, the Russian version of saunas, to plunge headlong and naked into the snow.All week, there have been frequent reminders that this is the land that left the armies of Napoleon and Hitler foundering in its forbidding frosts.While Moscow had already hit minus 22 by mid-evening Wednesday, the temperature had sunk to minus 63 in Yakutsk and minus 70 in the Evenk Autonomous Area of Siberia. Power consumption in the capital reached a record 15,760 megawatts by 6 p.m., nearly three times what Los Angeles uses on its hottest summer days.Twelve people had died of exposure in the Novgorod region by Wednesday, authorities said, and about 100 people had to be evacuated from the village of Yeletsky in the north-central region of Komi when a heating plant failed at 53 degrees below zero."When it's sunny and minus 50, it's one thing. Children can easily go for a walk. But this is a completely different thing — we have a snowstorm and a hurricane going on here, and it was minus 39," said Olga Korolyova, head of administration in Yeletsky.An eerie, hazy gloom settled over Moscow, as city officials dimmed some streetlights and kiosks to save power, and frozen moisture in the air formed a biting haze, finer than sleet and popularly known as "ice needles."Heating plants that pump steam in enormous pipes to apartment buildings all over the city were belching exhaust into the frigid air.Stray dogs stood shivering on the roadsides, while the city's alcoholics and homeless — usually the first casualties of the cold — were hauled off to jail or ushered into railroad stations and other shelters."What Moscow and many other central Russian cities and regions are experiencing now is what we call a deep cold period. Deep cold is dangerous and serious — it can hit you and hit you seriously before you even know something is happening to you," said Yuri Vedeneyev, spokesman for the Moscow Emergencies Ministry."However, we were warned this was coming well in advance and had sufficient time to prepare for it," he said.Meteorologists say a high-pressure zone of Arctic air leaked across the Urals out of Siberia, plunging temperatures in European Russia down to levels normally seen in the colder regions of the east and far north. Moscow was poised to break a record set in 1950, when temperatures fell below minus 22 degrees for three days in a row, said Dmitry Kiktyov, deputy director of the Hydro-Meteorological Center of Russia."There has not been an anomaly of such intensity and duration for a long time," he said.The freeze coincided with the Epiphany, when thousands of Russians flock to rivers and lakes to immerse themselves as a commemoration of the baptism of Christ. Epiphany is always cold, but this year it was "infernally cold," said Father Alexei Uminsky of Moscow, who said his wife had ruled out his participation in the ceremony out of concern for his health.Still, he said, a large and growing number of Russians typically brave the January cold to dunk themselves in water made holy by the holiday blessing."People come in expensive cars, they come in incredible off-road vehicles," he said. "I think first and foremost it is because they miss traditionalism in their lives. They have a desire to return to some roots that have been destroyed."And of course, there's the purely national Russian love for extremes."

Big freeze continues in Moscow

Novosti 19 January 2006

MOSCOW, January 19 - Moscow remains in the grips of extremely low temperatures Thursday, but the cold spell has so far failed to break records, meteorologists said.
The Arctic conditions were enough to stop several clocks on the capital's streets, but the drop to -31°C (-23.8°F) just missed out on the -32°C (-25.6°F) record for January 19 in the last 100 years, which was registered in 1927.
Muscovites and visitors to the capital can take some comfort, though, as the chill does seem to be heading toward the coldest date on record - January 17, 1940 - when the temperature fell to -42°C (-43.6°F).
The current temperature in the Russian capital is -29-30°C (-20.2-22°F) and a slight increase to -27°C (-16.6°) is expected Thursday afternoon.
Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov issued instructions Wednesday to impose a power-saving regime at building sites and markets that do not sell food.
City Hall also called on bosses to make January 19 and 20 days-off "to ease the burden on the capital's power system during the severe cold."

Forecast of doom for the Earth?

James Lovelock: The Earth is about to catch a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years

Each nation must find the best use of its resources to sustain civilisation for as long as they can

Independent 16 January 2006

Imagine a young policewoman delighted in the fulfilment of her vocation; then imagine her having to tell a family whose child had strayed that he had been found dead, murdered in a nearby wood. Or think of a young physician newly appointed who has to tell you that the biopsy revealed invasion by an aggressive metastasising tumour. Doctors and the police know that many accept the simple awful truth with dignity but others try in vain to deny it.
Whatever the response, the bringers of such bad news rarely become hardened to their task and some dread it. We have relieved judges of the awesome responsibility of passing the death sentence, but at least they had some comfort from its frequent moral justification. Physicians and the police have no escape from their duty.
This article is the most difficult I have written and for the same reasons. My Gaia theory sees the Earth behaving as if it were alive, and clearly anything alive can enjoy good health, or suffer disease. Gaia has made me a planetary physician and I take my profession seriously, and now I, too, have to bring bad news.
The climate centres around the world, which are the equivalent of the pathology lab of a hospital, have reported the Earth's physical condition, and the climate specialists see it as seriously ill, and soon to pass into a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years. I have to tell you, as members of the Earth's family and an intimate part of it, that you and especially civilisation are in grave danger.
Our planet has kept itself healthy and fit for life, just like an animal does, for most of the more than three billion years of its existence. It was ill luck that we started polluting at a time when the sun is too hot for comfort. We have given Gaia a fever and soon her condition will worsen to a state like a coma. She has been there before and recovered, but it took more than 100,000 years. We are responsible and will suffer the consequences: as the century progresses, the temperature will rise 8 degrees centigrade in temperate regions and 5 degrees in the tropics.
Much of the tropical land mass will become scrub and desert, and will no longer serve for regulation; this adds to the 40 per cent of the Earth's surface we have depleted to feed ourselves.
Curiously, aerosol pollution of the northern hemisphere reduces global warming by reflecting sunlight back to space. This "global dimming" is transient and could disappear in a few days like the smoke that it is, leaving us fully exposed to the heat of the global greenhouse. We are in a fool's climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.
By failing to see that the Earth regulates its climate and composition, we have blundered into trying to do it ourselves, acting as if we were in charge. By doing this, we condemn ourselves to the worst form of slavery. If we chose to be the stewards of the Earth, then we are responsible for keeping the atmosphere, the ocean and the land surface right for life. A task we would soon find impossible - and something before we treated Gaia so badly, she had freely done for us.
To understand how impossible it is, think about how you would regulate your own temperature or the composition of your blood. Those with failing kidneys know the never-ending daily difficulty of adjusting water, salt and protein intake. The technological fix of dialysis helps, but is no replacement for living healthy kidneys.
My new book The Revenge of Gaia expands these thoughts, but you still may ask why science took so long to recognise the true nature of the Earth. I think it is because Darwin's vision was so good and clear that it has taken until now to digest it. In his time, little was known about the chemistry of the atmosphere and oceans, and there would have been little reason for him to wonder if organisms changed their environment as well as adapting to it.
Had it been known then that life and the environment are closely coupled, Darwin would have seen that evolution involved not just the organisms, but the whole planetary surface. We might then have looked upon the Earth as if it were alive, and known that we cannot pollute the air or use the Earth's skin - its forest and ocean ecosystems - as a mere source of products to feed ourselves and furnish our homes. We would have felt instinctively that those ecosystems must be left untouched because they were part of the living Earth.
So what should we do? First, we have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realise how little time is left to act; and then each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they have to sustain civilisation for as long as they can. Civilisation is energy-intensive and we cannot turn it off without crashing, so we need the security of a powered descent. On these British Isles, we are used to thinking of all humanity and not just ourselves; environmental change is global, but we have to deal with the consequences here in the UK.
Unfortunately our nation is now so urbanised as to be like a large city and we have only a small acreage of agriculture and forestry. We are dependent on the trading world for sustenance; climate change will deny us regular supplies of food and fuel from overseas.
We could grow enough to feed ourselves on the diet of the Second World War, but the notion that there is land to spare to grow biofuels, or be the site of wind farms, is ludicrous. We will do our best to survive, but sadly I cannot see the United States or the emerging economies of China and India cutting back in time, and they are the main source of emissions. The worst will happen and survivors will have to adapt to a hell of a climate.
Perhaps the saddest thing is that Gaia will lose as much or more than we do. Not only will wildlife and whole ecosystems go extinct, but in human civilisation the planet has a precious resource. We are not merely a disease; we are, through our intelligence and communication, the nervous system of the planet. Through us, Gaia has seen herself from space, and begins to know her place in the universe.
We should be the heart and mind of the Earth, not its malady. So let us be brave and cease thinking of human needs and rights alone, and see that we have harmed the living Earth and need to make our peace with Gaia. We must do it while we are still strong enough to negotiate, and not a broken rabble led by brutal war lords. Most of all, we should remember that we are a part of it, and it is indeed our home.
The writer is an independent environmental scientist and Fellow of the Royal Society.
Imagine a young policewoman delighted in the fulfilment of her vocation; then imagine her having to tell a family whose child had strayed that he had been found dead, murdered in a nearby wood. Or think of a young physician newly appointed who has to tell you that the biopsy revealed invasion by an aggressive metastasising tumour. Doctors and the police know that many accept the simple awful truth with dignity but others try in vain to deny it.
Whatever the response, the bringers of such bad news rarely become hardened to their task and some dread it. We have relieved judges of the awesome responsibility of passing the death sentence, but at least they had some comfort from its frequent moral justification. Physicians and the police have no escape from their duty.
This article is the most difficult I have written and for the same reasons. My Gaia theory sees the Earth behaving as if it were alive, and clearly anything alive can enjoy good health, or suffer disease. Gaia has made me a planetary physician and I take my profession seriously, and now I, too, have to bring bad news.
The climate centres around the world, which are the equivalent of the pathology lab of a hospital, have reported the Earth's physical condition, and the climate specialists see it as seriously ill, and soon to pass into a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years. I have to tell you, as members of the Earth's family and an intimate part of it, that you and especially civilisation are in grave danger.
Our planet has kept itself healthy and fit for life, just like an animal does, for most of the more than three billion years of its existence. It was ill luck that we started polluting at a time when the sun is too hot for comfort. We have given Gaia a fever and soon her condition will worsen to a state like a coma. She has been there before and recovered, but it took more than 100,000 years. We are responsible and will suffer the consequences: as the century progresses, the temperature will rise 8 degrees centigrade in temperate regions and 5 degrees in the tropics.
Much of the tropical land mass will become scrub and desert, and will no longer serve for regulation; this adds to the 40 per cent of the Earth's surface we have depleted to feed ourselves.
Curiously, aerosol pollution of the northern hemisphere reduces global warming by reflecting sunlight back to space. This "global dimming" is transient and could disappear in a few days like the smoke that it is, leaving us fully exposed to the heat of the global greenhouse. We are in a fool's climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.
By failing to see that the Earth regulates its climate and composition, we have blundered into trying to do it ourselves, acting as if we were in charge. By doing this, we condemn ourselves to the worst form of slavery. If we chose to be the stewards of the Earth, then we are responsible for keeping the atmosphere, the ocean and the land surface right for life. A task we would soon find impossible - and something before we treated Gaia so badly, she had freely done for us.
To understand how impossible it is, think about how you would regulate your own temperature or the composition of your blood. Those with failing kidneys know the never-ending daily difficulty of adjusting water, salt and protein intake. The technological fix of dialysis helps, but is no replacement for living healthy kidneys.
My new book The Revenge of Gaia expands these thoughts, but you still may ask why science took so long to recognise the true nature of the Earth. I think it is because Darwin's vision was so good and clear that it has taken until now to digest it. In his time, little was known about the chemistry of the atmosphere and oceans, and there would have been little reason for him to wonder if organisms changed their environment as well as adapting to it.
Had it been known then that life and the environment are closely coupled, Darwin would have seen that evolution involved not just the organisms, but the whole planetary surface. We might then have looked upon the Earth as if it were alive, and known that we cannot pollute the air or use the Earth's skin - its forest and ocean ecosystems - as a mere source of products to feed ourselves and furnish our homes. We would have felt instinctively that those ecosystems must be left untouched because they were part of the living Earth.
So what should we do? First, we have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realise how little time is left to act; and then each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they have to sustain civilisation for as long as they can. Civilisation is energy-intensive and we cannot turn it off without crashing, so we need the security of a powered descent. On these British Isles, we are used to thinking of all humanity and not just ourselves; environmental change is global, but we have to deal with the consequences here in the UK.
Unfortunately our nation is now so urbanised as to be like a large city and we have only a small acreage of agriculture and forestry. We are dependent on the trading world for sustenance; climate change will deny us regular supplies of food and fuel from overseas.
We could grow enough to feed ourselves on the diet of the Second World War, but the notion that there is land to spare to grow biofuels, or be the site of wind farms, is ludicrous. We will do our best to survive, but sadly I cannot see the United States or the emerging economies of China and India cutting back in time, and they are the main source of emissions. The worst will happen and survivors will have to adapt to a hell of a climate.
Perhaps the saddest thing is that Gaia will lose as much or more than we do. Not only will wildlife and whole ecosystems go extinct, but in human civilisation the planet has a precious resource. We are not merely a disease; we are, through our intelligence and communication, the nervous system of the planet. Through us, Gaia has seen herself from space, and begins to know her place in the universe.
We should be the heart and mind of the Earth, not its malady. So let us be brave and cease thinking of human needs and rights alone, and see that we have harmed the living Earth and need to make our peace with Gaia. We must do it while we are still strong enough to negotiate, and not a broken rabble led by brutal war lords. Most of all, we should remember that we are a part of it, and it is indeed our home.

The writer is an independent environmental scientist and Fellow of the Royal Society.

Why Gaia is wreaking revenge on our abuse of the environment

By Michael McCarthy

Independent 16 January 2006

With anyone else, you would not really take it seriously: the proposition that because of climate change, human society as we know it on this planet may already be condemned, whatever we do. It would seem not just radical, but outlandish, mere hyperbole. And we react against it instinctively: it seems simply too sombre to be countenanced.
But James Lovelock, the celebrated environmental scientist, has a unique perspective on the fate of the Earth. Thirty years ago he conceived the idea that the planet was special in a way no one had ever considered before: that it regulated itself, chemically and atmospherically, to keep itself fit for life, as if it were a great super-organism; as if, in fact, it were alive.
The complex mechanism he put forward for this might have remained in the pages of arcane geophysical journals had he continued to refer to it as "the biocybernetic universal system tendency".
But his neighbour in the village of Bowerchalke, Wiltshire, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist William Golding (who wroteLord of The Flies), suggested he christen it after the Greek goddess of the Earth; and Gaia was born.
Gaia has made Professor Lovelock world famous, but at first his fame was in an entirely unexpected quarter. Research scientists, who were his original target audience, virtually ignored his theory.
To his surprise, it was the burgeoning New Age and environmental movements who took it up - the generation who had just seen the first pictures of the Earth taken by the Apollo astronauts, the shimmering pastel-blue sphere hanging in infinite black space, fragile and vulnerable, but our only home. They seized on his metaphor of a reinvented Mother Earth, who needed to be revered and respected - or else.
It has been only gradually that the scientific establishment has become convinced of the essential truth of the theory, that the Earth possesses a planetary control system, founded on the interaction of living organisms with their environment, which has operated for billions of years to allow life to exist, by regulating the temperature, the chemical composition of the atmosphere, even the salinity of the seas.
But accepted it is, and now (under the term Earth System Science) it has been subsumed into the scientific mainstream; two years ago, for example, Nature, the world's premier scientific journal, gave Professor Lovelock two pages to sum up recent developments in it.
Yet now too, by a savage irony, it is Gaia that lies behind his profound pessimism about how climate change will affect us all. For the planetary control system, he believes, which has always worked in our favour, will now work against us. It has been made up of a host of positive feedback mechanisms; now, as the temperature starts to rise abnormally because of human activity, these will turn harmful in their effect, and put the situation beyond our control.
To give just a single example out of very many: the ice of the Arctic Ocean is now melting so fast it is likely to be gone in a few decades at most. Concerns are already acute about, for example, what that will mean for polar bears, who need the ice to live and hunt.
But there is more. For when the ice has vanished, there will be a dark ocean that absorbs the sun's heat, instead of an icy surface that reflects 90 per cent of it back into space; and so the planet will get even hotter still.
Professor Lovelock visualises it all in the title of his new book, The Revenge of Gaia. Now 86, but looking and sounding 20 years younger, he is by nature an optimistic man with a ready grin, and it felt somewhat unreal to talk calmly to him in his Cornish mill house last week, with a coffee cup to hand and birds on the feeder outside the study window, about such a dark future. You had to pinch yourself.
He too saw the strangeness of it. "I'm usually a cheerful sod, so I'm not happy about writing doom books," he said. "But I don't see any easy way out."
His predictions are simply based on the inevitable nature of the Gaian system.
"If on Mars, which is a dead planet, you doubled the CO2, you could predict accurately what the temperature would rise to," he said.
"On the Earth, you can't do it, because the biota [the ensemble of life forms] reacts. As soon as you pump up the temperature, everything changes. And at the moment the system is amplifying change. "So our problem is that anything we do, like increasing the carbon dioxide, mucking about with the land, destroying forests, farming too much, things like that - they don't just produce a linear increase in temperature, they produce an amplified increase in temperature.
"And it's worse than that. Because as you approach one of the tipping points, the thresholds, the extent of amplification rapidly increases and tends towards infinity.
"The analogy I use is, it's as if we were in a pleasure boat above the Niagara Falls. You're all right as long as the engines are going, and you can get out of it. But if the engines fail, you're drawn towards the edge faster and faster, and there's no hope of getting back once you've gone over - then you're going down.
"And the uprise is just like that, the steep jump of temperature on Earth. It is exactly like the drop in the Falls."
Professor Lovelock's unique viewpoint is that he is just not looking at this or that aspect of the Earth's climate, as are other scientists; he is looking at the whole planet in terms of a different discipline, control theory.
"Most scientists are not trained in control theory. They follow Descartes, and they think that everything can be explained if you take it down to its atoms, and then build it up again.
"Control theory looks at it in a very different way. You look at whole systems and how do they work. Gaia is very much about control theory. And that's why I spot all these positive feedbacks."
I asked him how he would sum up the message of his new book. He said simply: "It's a wake-up call.''

Environment in crisis: 'We are past the point of no return'

Thirty years ago, the scientist James Lovelock worked out that the Earth possessed a planetary-scale control system which kept the environment fit for life. He called it Gaia, and the theory has become widely accepted. Now, he believes mankind's abuse of the environment is making that mechanism work against us. His astonishing conclusion - that climate change is already insoluble, and life on Earth will never be the same again.

By Michael McCarthy Environment Editor

Independent 16 January 2006

The world has already passed the point of no return for climate change, and civilisation as we know it is now unlikely to survive, according to James Lovelock, the scientist and green guru who conceived the idea of Gaia - the Earth which keeps itself fit for life.
In a profoundly pessimistic new assessment, published in today's Independent, Professor Lovelock suggests that efforts to counter global warming cannot succeed, and that, in effect, it is already too late.
The world and human society face disaster to a worse extent, and on a faster timescale, than almost anybody realises, he believes. He writes: " Before this century is over, billions of us will die, and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable."
In making such a statement, far gloomier than any yet made by a scientist of comparable international standing, Professor Lovelock accepts he is going out on a limb. But as the man who conceived the first wholly new way of looking at life on Earth since Charles Darwin, he feels his own analysis of what is happening leaves him no choice. He believes that it is the self-regulating mechanism of Gaia itself - increasingly accepted by other scientists worldwide, although they prefer to term it the Earth System - which, perversely, will ensure that the warming cannot be mastered.
This is because the system contains myriad feedback mechanisms which in the past have acted in concert to keep the Earth much cooler than it otherwise would be. Now, however, they will come together to amplify the warming being caused by human activities such as transport and industry through huge emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2 ).
It means that the harmful consequences of human beings damaging the living planet's ancient regulatory system will be non-linear - in other words, likely to accelerate uncontrollably.
He terms this phenomenon "The Revenge of Gaia" and examines it in detail in a new book with that title, to be published next month.
The uniqueness of the Lovelock viewpoint is that it is holistic, rather than reductionist. Although he is a committed supporter of current research into climate change, especially at Britain's Hadley Centre, he is not looking at individual facets of how the climate behaves, as other scientists inevitably are. Rather, he is looking at how the whole control system of the Earth behaves when put under stress.
Professor Lovelock, who conceived the idea of Gaia in the 1970s while examining the possibility of life on Mars for Nasa in the US, has been warning of the dangers of climate change since major concerns about it first began nearly 20 years ago.
He was one of a select group of scientists who gave an initial briefing on global warming to Margaret Thatcher's Cabinet at 10 Downing Street in April 1989.
His concerns have increased steadily since then, as evidence of a warming climate has mounted. For example, he shared the alarm of many scientists at the news last September that the ice covering the Arctic Ocean is now melting so fast that in 2005 it reached a historic low point.
Two years ago he sparked a major controversy with an article in The Independent calling on environmentalists to drop their long-standing opposition to nuclear power, which does not produce the greenhouses gases of conventional power stations.
Global warming was proceeding so fast that only a major expansion of nuclear power could bring it under control, he said. Most of the Green movement roundly rejected his call, and does so still.
Now his concerns have reached a peak - and have a new emphasis. Rather than calling for further ways of countering climate change, he is calling on governments in Britain and elsewhere to begin large-scale preparations for surviving what he now sees as inevitable - in his own phrase today, "a hell of a climate", likely to be in Europe up to 8C hotter than it is today.
In his book's concluding chapter, he writes: "What should a sensible European government be doing now? I think we have little option but to prepare for the worst, and assume that we have passed the threshold."
And in today's Independent he writes: "We will do our best to survive, but sadly I cannot see the United States or the emerging economies of China and India cutting back in time, and they are the main source of [CO2] emissions. The worst will happen ..."
He goes on: "We have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realise how little time is left to act, and then each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they have to sustain civilisation for as long as they can." He believes that the world's governments should plan to secure energy and food supplies in the global hothouse, and defences against the expected rise in sea levels. The scientist's vision of what human society may ultimately be reduced to through climate change is " a broken rabble led by brutal warlords."
Professor Lovelock draws attention to one aspect of the warming threat in particular, which is that the expected temperature rise is currently being held back artificially by a global aerosol - a layer of dust in the atmosphere right around the planet's northern hemisphere - which is the product of the world's industry.
This shields us from some of the sun's radiation in a phenomenon which is known as "global dimming" and is thought to be holding the global temperature down by several degrees. But with a severe industrial downturn, the aerosol could fall out of the atmosphere in a very short time, and the global temperature could take a sudden enormous leap upwards.
One of the most striking ideas in his book is that of "a guidebook for global warming survivors" aimed at the humans who would still be struggling to exist after a total societal collapse.
Written, not in electronic form, but "on durable paper with long-lasting print", it would contain the basic accumulated scientific knowledge of humanity, much of it utterly taken for granted by us now, but originally won only after a hard struggle - such as our place in the solar system, or the fact that bacteria and viruses cause infectious diseases.
Rough guide to a planet in jeopardy
Global warming, caused principally by the large-scale emissions of industrial gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2), is almost certainly the greatest threat that mankind has ever faced, because it puts a question mark over the very habitability of the Earth.
Over the coming decades soaring temperatures will mean agriculture may become unviable over huge areas of the world where people are already poor and hungry; water supplies for millions or even billions may fail. Rising sea levels will destroy substantial coastal areas in low-lying countries such as Bangladesh, at the very moment when their populations are mushrooming. Numberless environmental refugees will overwhelm the capacity of any agency, or indeed any country, to cope, while modern urban infrastructure will face devastation from powerful extreme weather events, such as Hurricane Katrina which hit New Orleans last summer.
The international community accepts the reality of global warming, supported by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In its last report, in 2001, the IPCC said global average temperatures were likely to rise by up to 5.8C by 2100. In high latitudes, such as Britain, the rise is likely to be much higher, perhaps 8C. The warming seems to be proceeding faster than anticipated and in the IPCC's next report, 2007, the timescale may be shortened. Yet there still remains an assumption that climate change is controllable, if CO2 emissions can be curbed. Lovelock is warning: think again.

'The Revenge of Gaia' by James Lovelock is published by Penguin on 2 February, price £16.99