If you wanted to cause a lot of injury to Israel, the US or their first world
allies why would you pick anthrax?
When you pick a biological weapon you want three things:
1) You want it to get the enemy, not you.
2) You want it to kill, or at least incapacitate the enemy. (Yes a cold virus
could be a good bio-weapon. It lowers productivity.)
3) It should work fast.
Anthrax is a good choice for a bioweapon exactly because it is *not* very
contagious.
For Americans fighting Indians smallpox blankets were ideal. The soldiers
were imune, but for the Indians they were leathal.
Smallpox would be a *bad* choice for Al-Qaeda. It could easilly become
pandemic and kill more Muslims than first-worlders.
Anthrax is probably too conservative.
Were I them I would opt for one of the agressive hemoragic fevers.
Ebola starts out as highly contageous and leathal. However, it is so leathal
that it kills hosts faster than it can find new ones and burns itself out.
In the process it also becomes less leathal. With a good choice of a
hemoragic virus and you could kill thousands. Hundreds of thousands if you
are lucky, swap a first world healthcare system, and really drive a spike
into any economy. However, even if a traveler made it to Cairo or Jakarta
they might show symptoms in time to quarantine a flight. Even in a bad case,
WHO would probably arrive fast enough to ensure an acceptable, probably even
a positive, kill ratio.
There are excellent odds that Afghanistan would be unscathed. The odds
of a global pandemic would be miniscule.
