Since we were talking about suicide terrorists:
Suicide, the ultimate terror tactic
By David Isenberg
A rising phenomenon of the past two decades has been suicide terrorism. But despite all the news about it, from places such as Chechnya, Lebanon, India, Iraq, Israel, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Sri Lanka, the world still knows fairly little about why suicide attacks happen. And what we do know is wrong, according to newly-published research.
Contrary to the old bromides that suicide terrorists are irrational, religious fanatics, or come from poverty and have nothing to lose, a recent study finds that "suicide terrorism follows a strategic logic, one specifically designed to coerce modern liberal democracies to make significant territorial concessions".
The study, "Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism" by Robert Pape, associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago, summarized in the August issue of the American Political Science Review, notes that terrorist organizations are increasingly relying on suicide attacks to achieve major objectives, and that such attacks are increasing in tempo and location.
Any why are they increasing? Because, in a word, they work. One need only look back to October 23 1982 when a truck with 2,268 kilograms (5,000 lbs) of explosives detonated after a Hezbollah driver rammed it into a barracks in Beirut, killing 241 US Marines who had been part of a deployment under the "Reagan Plan" to protect the Palestine Liberation Organization's withdrawal from the country. Shortly thereafter, suicide bombers attacked the French military compound across the city with an 816 kilogram bomb, killing 58 personnel.
Over the past two decades, terrorist have sought to force US and French forces to abandon Lebanon in 1985, Israeli forces to quit the Gaza strip and the West Bank in 1994 and 1995, the Sri Lankan government to create an independent Tamil state from 1990 on, and the Turkish government to grant autonomy to the Kurds in the late 1990s. The terrorist groups did not achieve their full objectives in all cases, but, except for Turkey, they made more gains after resorting to suicide operations.
Pape analyzed 188 attacks from 1980 to 2001 and found the rate has increased from 31 in the 1980s to 104 in the 1990s, to 53 in 2000-2001 alone. The rise is especially remarkable, Pape notes, given that "the total number of terrorist incidents worldwide fell during the period from a peak of 666 to a low of 274 in 1998, with 348 in 2001".
Explosive pound for explosive pound, suicide terrorism is highly effective. The attacks Pape analyzed killed an average of 13 people each, not counting the large number of fatalities on September 11 or the attackers themselves. During the same period, there were about 4,155 total terrorist incidents worldwide, killing 3,207 people (also excluding September 11), or less than 1 person per incident. Put another way, suicide attacks amount to only 3 percent of all terrorist attacks, but they account for 48 percent of total deaths due to terrorism.
The idea that suicide attacks are religiously motivated is no longer valid, if it ever was. First, modern suicide terrorism is not limited to Islamic fundamentalism. For proof, just look to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka, whose ideology has Marxist/Leninist elements. The LTTE alone accounted for 75 (40 percent) of the suicide attacks from 1980 to 2001. Even among Islamic suicide terrorist attacks, groups with secular orientations account for a third of these attacks.
Incidentally, while suicide bombers are hardly a literary genre, one newly published book, Army of Roses, which examines female Palestinian bombers, criticizes manipulative male relatives who convince vulnerable and marginalized women to blow themselves up, and for opportunistic leaders - including Yasser Arafat - who encourage and reward such behavior. That coincides with Pape's point that "the vast majority of suicide terrorist attacks are not isolated or random acts by individual fanatics but, rather, occur in clusters as part of a larger campaign by an organized group to achieve a specific political goal".
The good news, if one can use the word, is that every major suicide campaign has held as a major objective - or as its central objective - coercing a foreign government that has military forces in what they see as their homeland and then taking those forces out. That may help explain, why, up until September 11 and the earlier World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the US homeland had not been the subject of such attacks. In that regard, it is worth bearing in mind that in the past one major objective of al-Qaeda was the removal of US troops from the Saudi peninsula. Ironically, they have succeeded in that goal as the Pentagon recently announced the removal of the last US troops there. But, as recent events have tragically shown in Iraq, suicide bombers may change their minds as long as US and other foreign forces are there.
Pape does note that a distinction must be made between the achievement of modest and ambitious goals by terrorists. While terrorists can cause withdrawal from territory of low importance or temporary and partial withdrawals from more important areas, they are unlikely to cause targets to abandon goals central to their wealth or security, such as a loss of territory that would weaken the economic prospects of the state or strengthen its rivals.
That brings us to the central question; what are the prospects for combating suicide attacks? In Pape's view, the record suggests that offensive military action or concessions alone rarely work for long. Israel's record of targeted killings of the leadership of Palestinian groups serves as one example of the meager success of military action.
While concessions can reduce popular support for terrorists, they can work if the concessions really do substantially satisfy the nationalist or self-determination aspirations of a large fraction of the community. But partial, incremental or deliberately staggered concessions can be portrayed as delaying tactics and actually increase distrust.
Given the limits of offense and of concessions, homeland security and defensive efforts generally must be a core part of any solution. But, in light of the current US occupation of Iraq, Pape's final words bear repeating. "Perhaps, most important, the close association between foreign military occupations and the growth of suicide terrorist movements in the occupied regions should give pause to those who favor solutions that involve conquering countries in order to transform their political systems. Conquering countries may disrupt terrorist operations in the short term, but it is important to recognize that occupation of more countries may well increase the number of terrorists coming at us."
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