Salaam,
A professor has compiled and wrote a book about suicide bombing in
man history..
Link...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_to_Win:_The_Strategic_Logic_of_Suicide_Terrorism
The Logic of Suicide Terrorism
Its the occupation, not the fundamentalism
Last month, Scott McConnell caught up with Associate Professor
Robert Pape of the University of Chicago, whose book on suicide
terrorism, Dying to Win, is beginning to receive wide notice. Pape
has found that the most common American perceptions about who the
terrorists are and what motivates them are off by a wide margin. In
his office is the worlds largest database of information about
suicide terrorists, rows and rows of manila folders containing
articles and biographical snippets in dozens of languages compiled
by Pape and teams of graduate students, a trove of data that has
been sorted and analyzed and which underscores the great need for
reappraising the Bush administrations current strategy. Below are
excerpts from a conversation with the man who knows more about
suicide terrorists than any other American.
The American Conservative: Your new book, Dying to Win, has a
subtitle: The Logic of Suicide Terrorism. Can you just tell us
generally on what the book is based, what kind of research went
into it, and what your findings were?
Robert Pape: Over the past two years, I have collected the first
complete database of every suicide-terrorist attack around the
world from 1980 to early 2004. This research is conducted not only
in English but also in native-language sourcesArabic, Hebrew,
Russian, and Tamil, and othersso that we can gather information
not only from newspapers but also from products from the terrorist
community. The terrorists are often quite proud of what they do in
their local communities, and they produce albums and all kinds of
other information that can be very helpful to understand
suicide-terrorist attacks.
This wealth of information creates a new picture about what is
motivating suicide terrorism. Islamic fundamentalism is not as
closely associated with suicide terrorism as many people think.
The world leader in suicide terrorism is
a group that you may not be familiar with: the Tamil Tigers in Sri
Lanka.
This is a Marxist group, a completely secular group that draws from
the Hindu families of the Tamil regions of the country. They
invented the famous suicide vest for their suicide assassination of
Rajiv Ghandi in May 1991. The Palestinians got the idea of the
suicide vest from the Tamil Tigers.
TAC: So if Islamic fundamentalism is not necessarily a key variable
behind these groups, what is?
RP: The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by
religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to
compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the
territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From
Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every
major suicide-terrorist campaignover 95 percent of all the
incidentshas had as its central objective to compel a democratic
state to withdraw.
TAC: That would seem to run contrary to a view that one heard
during the American election campaign, put forth by people who
favor Bushs policy. That is, we need to fight the terrorists over
there, so we dont have to fight them here.
RP: Since suicide terrorism is mainly a
response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism, the
use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies over
there, if you would, is only likely to increase the number of
suicide terrorists coming at us.
Since 1990, the United States has stationed tens of thousands of
ground troops on the Arabian Peninsula, and that is the main
mobilization appeal of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. People who
make the argument that it is a good thing to have them attacking us
over there are missing that suicide terrorism is not a
supply-limited phenomenon where there are just a few hundred around
the world willing to do it because they are religious fanatics. It
is a demand-driven phenomenon. That is, it is driven by the
presence of foreign forces on the territory that the terrorists
view as their homeland. The operation in Iraq has stimulated
suicide terrorism and has given suicide terrorism a new lease on
life.
TAC: If we were to back up a little bit before the invasion of Iraq
to what happened before 9/11, what was the nature of the agitprop
that Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were putting out to attract
people?
RP: Osama bin Ladens speeches and sermons run 40 and 50 pages
long. They begin by calling tremendous attention to the presence of
tens of thousands of American combat forces on the Arabian
Peninsula.
In 1996, he went on to say that there was a grand plan by the
United Statesthat the Americans were going to use combat forces to
conquer Iraq, break it into three pieces, give a piece of it to
Israel so that Israel could enlarge its country, and then do the
same thing to Saudi Arabia. As you can see, we are fulfilling his
prediction, which is of tremendous help in his mobilization
appeals.
TAC: The fact that we had troops stationed on the Arabian Peninsula
was not a very live issue in American debate at all. How many
Saudis and other people in the Gulf were conscious of it?
RP: We would like to think that if we could keep a low profile with
our troops that it would be okay to station them in foreign
countries. The truth is, we did keep a fairly low profile. We did
try to keep them away from Saudi society in general, but the key
issue with American troops is their actual combat power. Tens of
thousands of American combat troops, married with air power, is a
tremendously powerful tool.
Now, of course, today we have 150,000 troops on the Arabian
Peninsula, and we are more in control of the Arabian Peninsula than
ever before.
TAC: If you were to break down causal factors, how much weight
would you put on a cultural rejection of the West and how much
weight on the presence of American troops on Muslim
territory?
RP: The evidence shows that the presence of American troops is
clearly the pivotal factor driving suicide terrorism.
If Islamic fundamentalism were the pivotal factor, then we should
see some of the largest Islamic fundamentalist countries in the
world, like Iran, which has 70 million peoplethree times the
population of Iraq and three times the population of Saudi
Arabiawith some of the most active groups in suicide terrorism
against the United States. However, there has never been an
al-Qaeda suicide terrorist from Iran, and we have no evidence that
there are any suicide terrorists in Iraq from Iran.
Sudan is a country of 21 million people. Its government is
extremely Islamic fundamentalist. The ideology of Sudan was so
congenial to Osama bin Laden that he spent three years in Sudan in
the 1990s. Yet there has never been an al-Qaeda suicide terrorist
from Sudan.
I have the first complete set of data on every al-Qaeda suicide
terrorist from 1995 to early 2004, and they are not from some of
the largest Islamic fundamentalist countries in the world. Two
thirds are from the countries where the United States has stationed
heavy combat troops since 1990.
Another point in this regard is Iraq itself. Before our invasion,
Iraq never had a suicide-terrorist attack in its history. Never.
Since our invasion, suicide terrorism has been escalating rapidly
with 20 attacks in 2003, 48 in 2004, and over 50 in just the first
five months of 2005. Every year that the United States has
stationed 150,000 combat troops in Iraq, suicide terrorism has
doubled.
TAC: So your assessment is that there are more suicide terrorists
or potential suicide terrorists today than there were in March
2003?
RP: I have collected demographic data from around the world on the
462 suicide terrorists since 1980 who completed the mission,
actually killed themselves. This information tells us that most are
walk-in volunteers. Very few are criminals. Few are actually
longtime members of a terrorist group. For most suicide terrorists,
their first experience with violence is their very own
suicide-terrorist attack.
There is no evidence there were any suicide-terrorist organizations
lying in wait in Iraq before our invasion. What is happening is
that the suicide terrorists have been produced by the
invasion.
TAC: Do we know who is committing suicide terrorism in Iraq? Are
they primarily Iraqis or walk-ins from other countries in the
region?
RP: Our best information at the moment is that the Iraqi suicide
terrorists are coming from two groupsIraqi Sunnis and Saudisthe
two populations most vulnerable to transformation by the presence
of large American combat troops on the Arabian Peninsula. This is
perfectly consistent with the strategic logic of suicide
terrorism.
TAC: Does al-Qaeda have the capacity to launch attacks on the
United States, or are they too tied down in Iraq? Or have they made
a strategic decision not to attack the United States, and if so,
why?
RP: Al-Qaeda appears to have made a deliberate decision not to
attack the United States in the short term. We know this not only
from the pattern of their attacks but because we have an actual
al-Qaeda planning document found by Norwegian intelligence. The
document says that al-Qaeda should not try to attack the continent
of the United States in the short term but instead should focus its
energies on hitting Americas allies in order to try to split the
coalition.
What the document then goes on to do is analyze whether they should
hit Britain, Poland, or Spain. It concludes that they should hit
Spain just before the March 2004 elections because, and I am
quoting almost verbatim: Spain could not withstand two, maximum
three, blows before withdrawing from the coalition, and then others
would fall like dominoes.
That is exactly what happened. Six months after the document was
produced, al-Qaeda attacked Spain in Madrid. That caused Spain to
withdraw from the coalition. Others have followed. So al-Qaeda
certainly has demonstrated the capacity to attack and in fact they
have done over 15 suicide-terrorist attacks since 2002, more than
all the years before 9/11 combined. Al-Qaeda is not weaker now.
Al-Qaeda is stronger.
TAC: What would constitute a victory in the War on Terror or at
least an improvement in the American situation?
RP: For us, victory means not sacrificing any of our vital
interests while also not having Americans vulnerable to
suicide-terrorist attacks. In the case of the Persian Gulf, that
means we should pursue a strategy that secures our interest in oil
but does not encourage the rise of a new generation of suicide
terrorists.
In the 1970s and the 1980s, the United States secured its interest
in oil without stationing a single combat soldier on the Arabian
Peninsula. Instead, we formed an alliance with Iraq and Saudi
Arabia, which we can now do again. We relied on numerous aircraft
carriers off the coast of the Arabian Peninsula, and naval air
power now is more effective not less. We also built numerous
military bases so that we could move large numbers of ground forces
to the region quickly if a crisis emerged.
That strategy, called offshore balancing, worked splendidly
against Saddam Hussein in 1990 and is again our best strategy to
secure our interest in oil while preventing the rise of more
suicide terrorists.
TAC: Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders also talked about
the Crusaders-Zionist alliance, and I wonder if that, even if we
werent in Iraq, would not foster suicide terrorism. Even if the
policy had helped bring about a Palestinian state, I dont think
that would appease the more hardcore opponents of Israel.
RP: I not only study the patterns of where suicide terrorism has
occurred but also where it hasnt occurred. Not every foreign
occupation has produced suicide terrorism. Why do some and not
others? Here is where religion matters, but not quite in the way
most people think. In virtually every instance where an occupation
has produced a suicide-terrorist campaign, there has been a
religious difference between the occupier and the occupied
community. That is true not only in places such as Lebanon and in
Iraq today but also in Sri Lanka, where it is the Sinhala Buddhists
who are having a dispute with the Hindu Tamils.
When there is a religious difference between the occupier and the
occupied, that enables terrorist leaders to demonize the occupier
in especially vicious ways. Now, that still requires the occupier
to be there. Absent the presence of foreign troops, Osama bin Laden
could make his arguments but there wouldnt be much reality behind
them. The reason that it is so difficult for us to dispute those
arguments is because we really do have tens of thousands of combat
soldiers sitting on the Arabian Peninsula.
TAC: Has the next generation of anti-American suicide terrorists
already been created? Is it too late to wind this down, even
assuming your analysis is correct and we could de-occupy
Iraq?
RP: Many people worry that once a large number of suicide
terrorists have acted that it is impossible to wind it down. The
history of the last 20 years, however, shows the opposite. Once the
occupying forces withdraw from the homeland territory of the
terrorists, they often stopand often on a dime.
In Lebanon, for instance, there were 41 suicide-terrorist attacks
from 1982 to 1986, and after the U.S. withdrew its forces, France
withdrew its forces, and then Israel withdrew to just that six-mile
buffer zone of Lebanon, they virtually ceased. They didnt
completely stop, but there was no campaign of suicide terrorism.
Once Israel withdrew from the vast bulk of Lebanese territory, the
suicide terrorists did not follow Israel to Tel Aviv.
This is also the pattern of the second Intifada with the
Palestinians. As Israel is at least promising to withdraw from
Palestinian-controlled territory (in addition to some other
factors), there has been a decline of that ferocious
suicide-terrorist campaign. This is just more evidence that
withdrawal of military forces really does diminish the ability of
the terrorist leaders to recruit more suicide terrorists.
That doesnt mean that the existing suicide terrorists will not
want to keep going. I am not saying that Osama bin Laden would turn
over a new leaf and suddenly vote for George Bush. There will be a
tiny number of people who are still committed to the cause, but the
real issue is not whether Osama bin Laden exists. It is whether
anybody listens to him. That is what needs to come to an end for
Americans to be safe from suicide terrorism.
TAC: There have been many kinds of non-Islamic suicide terrorists,
but have there been Christian suicide terrorists?
RP: Not from Christian groups per se, but in Lebanon in the 1980s,
of those suicide attackers, only eight were Islamic
fundamentalists. Twenty-seven were Communists and Socialists. Three
were Christians.
TAC: Has the IRA used suicide terrorism?
RP: The IRA did not. There were IRA members willing to commit
suicidethe famous hunger strike was in 1981. What is missing in
the IRA case is not the willingness to commit suicide, to kill
themselves, but the lack of a suicide-terrorist attack where they
try to kill others.
If you look at the pattern of violence in the IRA, almost all of
the killing is front-loaded to the 1970s and then trails off rather
dramatically as you get through the mid-1980s through the 1990s.
There is a good reason for that, which is that the British
government, starting in the mid-1980s, began to make numerous
concessions to the IRA on the basis of its ordinary violence. In
fact, there were secret negotiations in the 1980s, which then led
to public negotiations, which then led to the Good Friday Accords.
If you look at the pattern of the IRA, this is a case where they
actually got virtually everything that they wanted through ordinary
violence.
The purpose of a suicide-terrorist attack is not to die. It is the
kill, to inflict the maximum number of casualties on the target
society in order to compel that target society to put pressure on
its government to change policy. If the government is already
changing policy, then the whole point of suicide terrorism, at
least the way it has been used for the last 25 years, doesnt come
up.
TAC: Are you aware of any different strategic decision made by
al-Qaeda to change from attacking American troops or ships
stationed at or near the Gulf to attacking American civilians in
the United States?
RP: I wish I could say yes because that would then make the people
reading this a lot more comfortable.
The fact is not only in the case of al-Qaeda, but in
suicide-terrorist campaigns in general, we dont see much evidence
that suicide-terrorist groups adhere to a norm of attacking
military targets in some circumstances and civilians in
others.
In fact, we often see that suicide-terrorist groups routinely
attack both civilian and military targets, and often the military
targets are off-duty policemen who are unsuspecting. They are not
really prepared for battle.
The reasons for the target selection of suicide terrorists appear
to be much more based on operational rather than normative
criteria. They appear to be looking for the targets where they can
maximize the number of casualties.
In the case of the West Bank, for instance, there is a pattern
where Hamas and Islamic Jihad use ordinary guerrilla attacks, not
suicide attacks, mainly to attack settlers. They use suicide
attacks to penetrate into Israel proper. Over 75 percent of all the
suicide attacks in the second Intifada were against Israel proper
and only 25 percent on the West Bank itself.
TAC: What do you think the chances are of a weapon of mass
destruction being used in an American city?
RP: I think it depends not exclusively, but heavily, on how long
our combat forces remain in the Persian Gulf. The central motive
for anti-American terrorism, suicide terrorism, and catastrophic
terrorism is response to foreign occupation, the presence of our
troops. The longer our forces stay on the ground in the Arabian
Peninsula, the greater the risk of the next 9/11, whether that is a
suicide attack, a nuclear attack, or a biological attack.
