It is early 2006, and the global war on terror is in its fourth year.
Spearheaded by the US and launched in response to the September 11th terror attacks, the
war on terror now spans from the Middle East to the Philippines and even South America.
The tendrils of Al-Qaeda and other affiliated terror groups have been secretly spreading
across the world, all with the goal of becoming a multinational decentralized agency, capable
of carrying on terror operations even if one cell is destroyed elsewhere.
The expansion has been stunningly successful, and it would sadly take the deaths of thousands
on September 11th, 2001, to wake politicians up around the world to the cries of the intelligence
agencies who have been warning them of terror expansion for the last decade.
The attacks would reverberate through American’s daily lives, on the large scale like seeing
their military fighting on foreign soil to small inconveniences like no longer being
able to bring water onto a flight.
This is the story of how we got there.
Inside Pakistan, the United States and Great Britain both are carrying out covert surveillance
and espionage operations.
Despite overtures of friendship and cooperation, the intelligence agencies of both nations
warn their governments that the Pakistanis are secretly aiding and abetting Al-Qaeda,
the Taliban, and other insurgent forces streaming into Afghanistan.
The Pakistan government has forbidden NATO forces from carrying out offensive operations
against terror networks inside the tribal mountain areas, claiming that it does not
want an expansion of hostilities into its border.
Secretly though, Pakistan intelligence officers routinely coordinate the crossing of terrorists
and insurgents from Pakistan's mountainous border with Afghanistan, and supply arms,
medical supplies and even training.
For their part, the governments of the United States and Great Britain continue to seek
out the cooperation of Pakistan, who holds several key resupply routes into Afghanistan,
and believe they can sway the Pakistanis over to their side.
This will prove to be a completely wrong assumption, but in the meantime, at least the US and Britain
have both approved the use of covert intelligence operatives inside Pakistan- in violation of
their agreements to not carry out intelligence operations inside the nation without alerting
Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence agency, or ISI.
It is an unseasonably hot February morning in Islamabad, capital of Pakistan, when Rashid
Rauf enter his usual tea house for a morning drink.
A dual citizen of both Britain and Pakistan, Rauf routinely flies from England to Pakistan.
With the ramping up of the war on terror though, Rauf quickly earned himself a place on a carefully
selected watch list due to his numerous ties to militant groups- some of which held very
extremist views.
One of those ties includes his marriage to a relative of Maulana Masood Azhar, the head
and founder of Jaish-e-Mohammed, a militant terror group whose aim is to separate Kashmir
from India and merge it with Pakistan.
For weeks now Rauf has been recorded meeting with representatives of various charities
set up to collect donations for the victims of the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, a devastating
7.6 magnitude quake which killed over 80,000 people.
Yet some of the charities have been linked to extremist groups, and it's believed the
funds are being used to fuel terror activities.
The suspicions of the British agents tailing Rauf is only increased when he then meets
with young Muslim men known to have attended extremist mosques.
More and more it seems that Rauf is a critical link in the chain of a budding terror attack.
An associate of Rauf's, Abdulla Ahmed Ali, buys a ticket to Britain from Pakistan later
that June.
By now the surveillance on Rauf has expanded to his close associates, and its believed
that the two men are cooperating together on an as-yet unknown terror plot against Great
Britain.
American surveillance on Al-Qaeda assets confirms that such a plot exists, but can offer few
additional details.
As Ali's baggage arrives in England, British police secretly open the luggage and discover
packets of Tang, a powdered soft drink, and a large number of batteries.
Immediately the police become suspicious, and British lawmakers approve what will become
the UK's largest surveillance operation, puling in a total of 220 officers from Britain's
various police, counter-terrorism, military, and intelligence services.
Another man, Assad Sarwar, also linked to Rauf and Ali, is then observed buying objects
that seem to not fit his daily needs, and he is observed disposing of a large number
of empty hydrogen peroxide bottles at a recycling center.
Sarwar and Ali are then seen meeting at an east London park, and with evidence mounting,
MI5 secretly enter Ali's apartment and discover what appears to be a homemade bomb factory.
They covertly install cameras and microphones.
By now Al-Qaeda has publicly declared a threat to British aviation, and American intelligence
sources confirm the veracity of the threat- though details and methodology of the suspected
attack are as of yet, unknown.
For the British, it becomes clear that Ali and Sarwar have a hand in the plot to come,
and their suspicions are confirmed when in August 3rd Ali and another man, Tanvir Husain,
are filmed inside Ali's apartment constructing explosive devices out of soft drink bottles.
The next day, British agents then monitor Ali as he spends two hours at an internet
cafe carefully researching international flight timetables- the target it seems is British
flights headed to North America, with five US cities and two Canadian cities targeted.
On August 9th, the British police spring their trap and arrest 24 suspects, including Sarwar
and Ali.
Amongst the suspects is an undercover British officer which had infiltrated the group and
warned authorities that an attack was imminent.
As the investigation deepened, details of the plot began to come together, and an immediate
ban on liquids aboard commercial flights was installed.
Back in Pakistan, Rauf is arrested but found not guilty by a Pakistani court.
He would be killed in 2008 by a US drone strike.
So what exactly was the plot, and why are we now only allowed to carry just over three
ounces of liquid on a commercial flight?
The terrorist's plot involved using soft drinks filled with acetone peroxide and hydrogen
peroxide, which would be colored with Tang to resemble a normal soft drink.
Once aboard, the hydrogen peroxide would be injected into the acetone peroxide, and then
a trace amount of high explosive hidden inside a AA battery casing would be used as the explosive
charge to detonate the main bomb.
This charge would itself be detonated by linking the bottle of explosives to a light bulb and
a disposable camera, with the flash from the camera triggering the explosion.
The blast would have been large enough to tear open the fuselage of the Boeing 777s
and Airbus A330s being targeted, which would have been done while the plane was on approach
and over a crowded city.
This would have dropped the plane from the sky, killing over three hundred passengers
aboard, while causing untold devastating on the crowded cities below- potentially killing
hundreds more.
In total, it's believed that if the plot had been successful and all targeted planes downed,
the total body count would have been far greater than even the 9/11 attacks.
Immediately after the plot was discovered and dismantled, the British and American governments
forbade passengers from bringing liquids on board an aircraft.
With many recognizing that this was simply unfeasible to maintain long-term, explosives
and terrorism experts across America, Britain, and the world all began to test various liquid
explosives in order to determine if any amount of liquid would be safe to allow back on a
flight.
At last it was determined that 3.4 ounces of liquid represented the minimum risk to
an aircraft or passengers, with a blast from this amount of explosive not being large enough
to seriously damage an aircraft.
While many claimed that terrorists could then simply each bring aboard separate amounts
of liquid explosives and combine them once airborne, it was determined by explosives
experts that it would be impractical and not very realistic for the explosive liquids to
be safely mixed into a working explosive compound.
Rather, the terrorists would end up ruining the careful mix required or prematurely detonating
a much smaller amount of the explosive, severely injuring themselves and doing little to no
damage to the aircraft.
Sadly, we live in a world of ever-evolving threats and people willing to exploit them
to spread their agenda of fear and hatred.
While no amount of regulation will ever be enough to keep you truly safe as you fly,
governments around the world do the best they can to keep terror plots at bay and ensure
you land safely at your destination- even if it seems arbitrary and like a huge inconvenience
to you at the airport.
Think the liquid ban can really keep us safe in airplanes?
Why or why not?
Let us know in the comments, and as always if you enjoyed this video don't forget to
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