Longtime SM readers know that I enjoy making occasional forays into the past, so as to connect to the present. History is the most spiritual of subjects, more so than even religion in my eyes. Those who believe in reincarnation and karma will find as much wisdom in the recurring motifs of a history book as in any sacred text.
Yesterday we awoke to what may have been yet another attempted suicide bombing. The first words I heard this morning on NPR as my eyes opened were that police had shot “a South Asian man” in the Tube. About two months ago University of Chicago Professor Ropert Pape (who heads the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism) released his book Dying to Win on the history of suicide bombings. Here is an excerpt from his New York Times op-ed re-published on Truthout.org:
Over the past two years, I have compiled a database of every suicide bombing and attack around the globe from 1980 through 2003 – 315 in all. This includes every episode in which at least one terrorist killed himself or herself while trying to kill others, but excludes attacks authorized by a national government (like those by North Korean agents against South Korea). The data show that there is far less of a connection between suicide terrorism and religious fundamentalism than most people think.
The leading instigator of suicide attacks is the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a Marxist-Leninist group whose members are from Hindu families but who are adamantly opposed to religion. This group committed 76 of the 315 incidents, more than Hamas (54) or Islamic Jihad (27). Even among Muslims, secular groups like the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Al Aksa Martyr Brigades account for more than a third of suicide attacks.
What nearly all suicide terrorist attacks actually have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland. Religion is often used as a tool by terrorist organizations in recruiting and in seeking aid from abroad, but is rarely the root cause
Three general patterns in the data support these conclusions. First, nearly all suicide terrorist attacks – 301 of the 315 in the period I studied – took place as part of organized political or military campaigns. Second, democracies are uniquely vulnerable to suicide terrorists; America, France, India, Israel, Russia, Sri Lanka and Turkey have been the targets of almost every suicide attack of the past two decades. Third, suicide terrorist campaigns are directed toward a strategic objective: from Lebanon to Israel to Sri Lanka to Kashmir to Chechnya, the sponsors of every campaign – 18 organizations in all – are seeking to establish or maintain political self-determination.
But I don’t get it then. These “kids” in England are not seeking to establish or maintain political self-determination. They have it already. Also, they did not carry out their attacks as part of a political or military campaign. All that’s left of Al Qadea is an insane philosophy devoid of any tangible political objectives outside of countries like Iraq or Afghanistan. Why don’t these kids fit within Pape’s well thought out logic? To make personal sense of it I went back to the 12th Century. Before all these modern studies and modern motivations, there were other factors. Time Magazine focuses on a legend:
The promise of paradise has long been to drive men into battle. But what has brought me to Alamut is the legend, chronicled by Muslim and Crusader historians, that Hasan-i Sabbah, leader of the 12th century Middle Eastern terror cult known as the Assassins, had built a simulacrum here of the sensual delights of Paradise to quicken his men’s taste for martyrdom. The Assassins — a kind of al Qaeda of its time — operated by stealth, and armed only with daggers, they killed hundreds of princes, viziers, generals, and rival clergymen. According to legend, before being dispatched on a mission, an operative would be drugged into a deep sleep. He would wake in a lush garden filled with fountains, music and beautiful maidens. After cavorting briefly, he would be drugged back to sleep, and upon waking again would be told that he had tasted the paradise that awaited on the successful completion of his suicide mission.
Iranian officials are a bit ashamed of this fanatic lurking in their history, and tried to discourage me from going to Alamut, near Qazvin in northwestern Iran, about 80 miles northeast of Tehran. But Mehrdad and I pressed on anyway. We climb the steep rock outcrop atop which Alamut’s castle glowers over a valley of cherry orchards in full bloom. Inside the castle, however, we find no trace of the legendary pleasure garden — no crumbling stones of a fountain or wild thorns descended from the garden’s roses, only wind, gray rock and grasses. On the ramparts, we encounter a lone guard bearing a long staff.
“Was Sabbah the Osama bin Laden of his day?” I ask the guard before realizing that he was probably an Ismaili, one of the Assassins’ descendants who are today spread across Afghanistan, Pakistan and India and follow the Aga Khan, a determinedly peaceful lot.
“Of course not,” he replies angrily. “Sabbah never killed innocents. And his men only used a dagger, never poisons or easy ways of killing. They studied their victims, spent years getting close to them before they struck.”
Now this begins to make more sense to me. The promise of virgins in a garden of Heavenly delights would be very motivating to a poor, brain-washed madrassa student from parts of the Middle East and Pakistan. It might be enough enticement to give up one’s life even in the absence of one of Pape’s factors. Failed suicide bombers that have been captured have previously described such motivations in fact. They just don’t know any better and are easily seduced by fanatics who themselves were seduced. Again though, these British kids knew better. One of the deceased bombers was described as quite the ladies man with easy access to virgins. The question one must ask is whether every individual’s garden of pleasure would contain the same enticements. I do not believe so. Fame and Ego are the virgins of those raised in free western societies. Relegated to the growing ethnic ghettos of Europe, these kids may have been seduced by the desire to become someone. Their masters in the camps of Pakistan seduced them in much the same way that Hassan-i-Sabah did in his time. They put the false fear of imminent conquest in their minds.
Hasan was extremely strict and disciplined. The abrogation of Islamic law (sharia) occurred under a later Grand Master, Hasan II, in 1174. If hashish was used by the community (and this is uncertain) it probably also occurred later.
Not much is known about Hasan, but legends abound as to the tactics used to induct members into his quasi-religious political organization. A future assassin was subjected to rites very similar to those of other mystery cults in which the subject was made to believe that he was in imminent danger of death. But the twist of the assassins was that they drugged the person to simulate a “dying” to later have them awaken in a garden flowing with wine and served a sumptuous feast by virgins. The supplicant was then convinced he was in Heaven and that Sabbah was a minion of the divinity and that all of his orders should be followed, even to death. This legend derives from Marco Polo, who visited Alamut just after it fell to the Mongols in the thirteenth century.
America doesn’t have many ethnic ghettos. Rightly or wrongly our immigration policies for many decades now have been biased in favor admitting the best and the brightest, who economically assimilate much better. This demographic is hopefully (for now) less likely to succumb to terrorist ideology because they have so much more to lose. The out-of-control U.S. prison population however is another concern. This segment of our society has many things in common with the stagnant pools that breed terrorists in Europe. Politicians are starting to notice as well. In the past week I’ve twice heard that in America we should be more worried about those who converted to Islam in prison.
I am sure that this post will generate much discussion on a variety of topics I have touched on but my main point was to reference history. If only we were all forced to learn about the past 🙂
The leading instigator of suicide attacks is the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a Marxist-Leninist group whose members are from Hindu families but who are adamantly opposed to religion.
was under the impression that tamil catholics had a disproportionate role in the tigers. am i wrong? data anyone?
The promise of virgins in a garden of Heavenly delights would be very motivating to a poor, brain-washed madrassa student from parts of the Middle East and Pakistan.
they often aren’t poor. see here or here. the radicals who led the egyptian terror campaigns in the 1980s and 1990s were generally form university educated backgrounds (usually science or engineering). there are instances of suicide bombers coming from poor families, those in beruit were recruited from the refugee camps for example, but these are exceptions.
they often aren’t poor
Yes Razib, but wasn’t that my point? Those that aren’t poor have different enticements in their gardens. In that sentence I was specifically refering to those that are poor however.
police had shot “a South Asian man” in the Tube
Rejoice, o South Asians! This is the first time ever that I have seen that abominable term used to describe a potential terrorist. Congratulations! You are now officially a suspect breed. No amount of Pakistani terrorism was able to achieve this stupendous feat : create an implicit association between all desis and terrorism. Watch the creation and development of this meme as the PC Western media finds it expedient to genericise Muslim Jihadists under this label rather than call it what it really is. I am sure we’ll all enjoy the consequences of a billion plus Indians getting tarred with the same brush as those fundo mullahs in Pak, and their foot soldiers of the ummah in UK and elsewhere. Well done!
abhi, ok, but in any case, what proportion of the variation in “terror” in the population can you attribute the psychological motivations you describe? my personal reading suggests that far from being psychopathic and sex-starved most terrorists are stable and married (80% of salafist radicals according to the first link). so are their wives that hairy? or is the “black-eyed boys” they’re itching to get their hands on….
Razib, When you ask what %, the simple answer is a small % but that was my point. I was asking “why don’t these ‘new’ terrorists fall under the well defined examples that came before them.” They are an aberration from the norm, as you yourself point out. In my post I was trying to ask the question as to why they deviate from the “normal” suicide bomber. That is why I was bringing up the psychological motivations that haven’t seemed as prevalent in Pape’s studies.
Is that what you are asking?
When Pape first started promoting his theory, it made a lot of sense to me. The examples of Sri Lanka and Lebanon seem to fit his theory nicely. And the fact that suicide bombing did not appear in Iraq until the U.S. arrived made Pape seem even more right.
But after awhile, reading other comments on other blogs, there are a couple of major deficiencies in Pape’s theory. Most important among these deficiencies, Pape downplays the role of ideology.
In Kashmir for example, you had a traditional insurgency – ambush attacks, landmines, planted bombs, kidnappings. Suicide bombers did not start appearing in Kashmir until the arrival of Lashkar e Toiba in the late 1990s. LET seeks not only to have Kashmir break away from India, but explicitly states it wants to re-establish the Mughal Empire in the subcontinent. For most Kashmiris, even ones that do not care for New Delhi’s policies, that is over the top.
Also, look at the pattern of suicide bombings after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan. Bali – most of the victims were Australian, and there were no Australian troops in Iraq at the time. Morrocco – a nation that was neutral in the Iraq war. Turkey – a nation which actively opposed the war. You had French journalists kidnapped, and the threat of more violence directed at the French if they did not withdraw their ban on headscarves. In Pakistan, you had 11 French engineers killed in Karachi. In none of these cases can you make the case that the bombers were seeking a removal of armed forces from occupied lands. In fact, since it has become much harder to hit American targets, Al Qaeda seeks to find peripheral targets.
Since ideology does play such a large role, military action alone will not defeat it. Nazism was beaten on the battlefield, but then the Germans undertook the task of removing all traces of Nazism from their culture. Communism’s ineptitude in delivering economic progress ensured that it would not be taken seriously as a form of government. Radical Islamism can be beaten, through force of arms coupled with examples of healthy Islamic societies.
For this to happen, not only must Islam modernise, I’d argue it needs to become less Arab. Christianity and Buddhism spread and flourished onces its disciples were able to add their own schools of thought, or abandon it entirely without fear of punishment. Hinduism’s lack of a formal structure has allowed it to adapt to rule by Hindu rajputs, Mughal emporers, the British Empire, and dynastic democracy. By insisting on a dull, dour interpretation of Islam (an observation initially made by Fareed Zakaria), Islam looks increasingly out of place.
This is the analysis that’s applied to people like Mark David Chapman, John Lennon’s killer, so it would make sense, to some extent. But I think there’s also a component of trying to drown your pain, sublimating it into the collective (in this case some form of radical islamic theology) rather than a substance–it’s like being a party-line follower of any creed. And then that pain erupts in outrage and anger and gets projected onto things like the War in Iraq –which you can come up with rational objections too also, making it all the easier to indulge your unhappiness. And of course you’re surrounded by others who feel the same way and are goaded into feeling the same way. By deliberately obscuring your humanity until you’re no longer in touch wtih it, you become incapable of recognizing other people’s and from there it’s only a few short steps to “necessary” violence without any regard for human life.
who cares whether or not these jackasses are poor, sex-starved, politically motivated, oppressed, frustrated, and so on…the bottom line is the more we try to understand what pisses them off the more they see that as a sign of weakness. What truly needs to be done is for countries like the US, UK, etc to quit overlooking things like Pakistan’s new status as Terrorist HQ and punish those idiots beyond the shadow of a doubt. Same w /the Saudi clowns as well. But as we know, there’s too much oil and weapons dealing to really make anyone do anything about it.
Because this goes beyond just “counterterrorism” and may point to social problems in the countries that are producing people like this.
Plus it’s kind of interesting.
btw, I don’t think Osama Bin Laden or Zarqawi are sitting around gloating over the fact that people like you and me and razib are trying to figure out what terrorism is about. What really shows them weakness is when military troops pull out–which is what the United States and Britain are going to do next year in Iraq. And since there really aren’t any politically viable options to keep them there because this whole enterprise is increasingly being revealed as poorly thought out, all I can say is, “Well done, Mr. Bush! You really showed them!”
KXB, razib has a good post on gnxp that references Understanding Terror Networks. I haven’t read it yet, but according to razib’s description, it would basically complement Pape’s broader analysis with specific analysis on this type of suicide bombing. I think the two together are probably more powerful than either standing on its own.
Oooohh! Lookee!
The Tamil Tigers are the leading instigators of suicide bombings. Hamas and Islamic Jihad are mere minor leaguers.
It really doesn’t matter that Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the PFLP, and the Al Aksa Martyr Brigades all play for the same team. Just make a nonsensical statistical analysis pithy quote which will no doubt get printed by all the dhimmi press in the West.
If you’d like to participate in discussions on this website I’d advise you to choose the words of your next comment very carefully.
but what did he say wrong, he did make a valid point in that due to the standard and paranoia of most people towards anything middle eastern or third world, it is highly possible that now this will foment serious backlash against innocent hindus who have nothing to do w/ this. Other than he may be boring you, if his point is valid why threaten him?
they often aren’t poor. see here or here. the radicals who led the egyptian terror campaigns in the 1980s and 1990s were generally form university educated backgrounds (usually science or engineering). there are instances of suicide bombers coming from poor families, those in beruit were recruited from the refugee camps for example, but these are exceptions.
Razib, You are focussing solely on the Global Salafist Jihadists who tend to have some education and as you pointed out mostly married and not necessarily poor either. However we need to differentiate between Global Salafist Jihadists and suicide bombers in localized conflicts. However the number of bombings carried about by the Global Salafist Jihadists pale in comparison when compared to the suicide bombings in Israel, Chechnya and Iraq. Pape’s profile of suicide bombers actually is pretty accurate when you look at most of the suicide bombers from Palestine, Chechnya and Iraq. Most of them are indeed poor and dont have a lot of education either. I would like to see some data on the percentage of bombers who are married in these localized conflicts. I suspect that a lot of them were married atleast in Palestine anyway.
Rejoice, o South Asians! This is the first time ever that I have seen that abominable term used to describe a potential terrorist. Congratulations!
Dont get too excited. For all we know, one or more of the suspects from the bombings yesterday might be Indian Muslims.
Interestingly, a statue commemmorating the very first Black Tiger attack, still stands in GoSL controlled property.
Also, to put in context, despite the Tigers holding the record for the highest number of suicide-bomb attacks, the vast majority of them have been aimed at political and military targets, as opposed to civilian.
Those interested might find this link useful: http://www.tamilnation.org/forum/sachisrikantha/blacktigers2.htm
Dont get too excited. For all we know, one or more of the suspects from the bombings yesterday might be Indian Muslims.
yeah but even then, you know how ignorant most ppl are, they can’t tell the difference between a sikh and a muslim half the time, now figure in the hindus.
IMHO in the case of the London terrorists they were driven more by a sense of rebellion, and disillusionment with general society caused by a confict between presures to fit in the host culture vs ethnic values.
Religion is important because it plays are role in determining how people deal with this pressure.
For instance I sympathize with 2nd gen muslims because in the case of Islam its almost an all or nothing deal i.e. there is a clear line between who is muslim and who is not. Its possible to be a moderate muslim but that would mean constantly having to deal with conflicting values, and the still may not be fully accepted.
Compare this to Christianity (liberal tendencies) or hinduism (Syncretistic tendencies) where it’s somewhat more permissiable to deviate from dogma and still be accepted by the community.
Whereas for someone like Tanweer Hussain (one of the london terroists) it was probably his inability to consolidate ethno-religious values with the predominant western ones that led him to regress to an extreme.
That is why I was bringing up the psychological motivations that haven’t seemed as prevalent in Pape’s studies.
Is that what you are asking?
i think we’re talking past each other, so nevermind.
Pape’s profile of suicide bombers actually is pretty accurate when you look at most of the suicide bombers from Palestine, Chechnya and Iraq. Most of them are indeed poor and dont have a lot of education either.
i don’t know about the last two conflicts, but the second link i provided actually addresses the palestinians, and most of the recent wave of suicide bombers are not poor (like the ones recruited from the refugee camps in lebanon were a generation back).
It really doesn’t matter that Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the PFLP, and the Al Aksa Martyr Brigades all play for the same team
the problem with assertions like this is that, for example, the PFLP was founded by a palestinian orthodox christian. i think people should know little details like this before accepting assertions that they “play for the same team.”
as for why understanding terrorism is important, before you can beat the enemy it is best to know his game plan. it’s the difference between modern engineering and tinkering. tinkering is fun, but only if nothing is at stake.
I just came across this Slate article that references this additional study. More food for thought (I have yet to read through it).
i don’t know about the last two conflicts, but the second link i provided actually addresses the palestinians, and most of the recent wave of suicide bombers are not poor
I am going to contest this assertion. The link has no concrete numbers on the distribution of suicide bombers among the middle class living in East Jerusalem or Ramallah, West Bank as compared to the refugee camps in the West Bank for the current intifada (uprising) I am going to look up for numbers and get back to you on this. I might of course be wrong, so let me look them up.
“yeah but even then, you know how ignorant most ppl are, they can’t tell the difference between a sikh and a muslim half the time, now figure in the hindus.”
Pardon me for my whitey ignorance, but if a Sikh ain’t wearing a turban and a beard and a Muslim ain’t wearing a skullcap and a lunghi, how DOES one tell the difference? How is it that those bombers (3 brown/1 black, looks like the same combo again today from the CCTV footage) LOOKED Muslim? Most South Asian youth in the UK dress and act the same regardless of their religon. Even the media said the first bombers just looked like regular backpackers. So what else were they going to say, other than “South Asian man shot”? I certainly agree this is unfortunate for all non-Muslim brown people, but don’t blame everyone else for not knowing whose parents came from where.
Abhi, you’re an ass. I try not to read your posts, but… damn!
This is mature. rolls eyes
Not really. I’m actually very nice. I have a nice ass though. Is that what you meant by any chance?
Abhi, what was the motive of Hassan-i-Sabbah or of Osama Bin Laden? These two may have managed to set up a cult of paradise-seeking suicidal terrorists, but what was their motivation?
One way of beating the OBLs is to deny them foot-soldiers, but perhaps a more efficient way is to eliminate the OBLs of this world.
Unfortunately you’ll never be able to eliminate the OBLs of the world. Its the same reason that Obi-wan was willing to let Vader chop him down. Once a teaching exists you can’t kill it. You can kill OBL but someone else will eventually take his place just as the methods of Hassan-i-Sabbah re-surfaced. The best way to fight it is to educate. Education is the best way to fight all evil things in this world isn’t it?
[end of preachy Star Wars philosophy]
I don’t know what the root motivation of Hassan was but it was probably conquest from what little I gathered. I am going to try and learn more about him though.
Ideally, education is the best path to take. But OBL/UBL and al-Zawahiri provide a figurehead and leadership for these disillusioned youth to act out their deranged beliefs. If the leaders are eliminated, perhaps peace can be temporarily secured for a while. And then we can educate.
Indeed, we’ll never be able to eliminate the OBL’s of the world, but we’ll kill damn well enough of them for it to count.
Yes, after the 9-11 World Trade Center bombings, it’s very bad P.R. to continue LTTE attempts to blow up Sri Lanka’s own World Trade Center.
WTC, Temple of the tooth, Sri Lankan Central Bank – those could be political targets, but they’re not. They’re civilian.
Maybe after 9-11, they have targeted military and political targets. But certainly not before.
Wouldn’t killing them be counter-productive? Martyrdom is a major theme in this discussion right?
Identifying and focusing all your efforts on the one guy makes him that much more compelling to the ‘disillusioned’
And education is such a vague concept, what would we teach them? Isn’t the problem alienation rather than a lack of knowledge?
Even translating this into the non-star wars world (i.e. changing education into promoting idnividual and community power and democracy and human rights and all that), I still think it elides the problem a bit. The long term solutions are necessary, but I think the London bombing and other things show that you need to choose the least unpalatable and most intelligent short term and medium term strategies as well (i.e. how to destroy the infrastructure of the al qaeda and other violent networks, how to make it harder to finances these operations, how to make it hard to buy or make bombs, etc.). Because if nice people don’t do that (thereby becoming slightly less nice), then a$$holes are going to start taking over the agenda on those issues–like vigilantes who patrol the borders or people who want to deport all the Muslims. That doesn’t mean we need to “get tough” or buy iunot the solutions that “get tough” people propose but just be a little more precise and specific about how to combat actual terrorism today (vs. phantom threats).
Take the NYC subway searches. I was shocked when I heard abot them, but I’m not sure if I’m committed enough to civil liberties on principle or my own right not to be searched to want to deal wtih the fear of getting blown up everytime I get on the train.
Then again, I haven’t been subjected to it yet, so we’ll see after I go through the experience and see it in action and hear about some of the particularly egregious violations that will likely emerge with this kind of policy if it’s sustained over time.
Counterproductive or not, I think General Patton said it best:
“No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”
Is this whole root cause analysis really going to lead to the solution? Maybe some people have a mental problem, to paraphrase Chris Rock – whatever happened to plain old crazy?…
List goes on, seems to me the problem is IN the human brain which causes people to latch on to any number of things and cause mayhem. Some people are crazy physiologically, that’s it. If not islamic theology they will find the color of your shoes offensive and that may be reason enough for them to kill you. The only effective solution is identification of the neurological basis for these problems, subject people to regular tests and fix these people or go with some state assisted music lessons . Strip search a crazy guy he will turn into a bomber, strip search a normal guy he will shrug it off. The crazy guy will latch on to something else, stopping strip search will do nothing to the problem.
You can talk forever about why people end up with anxiety, investigate circumstances and come up with tens of theories of how something “causes” anxiety, the bigger the investigated group the more ‘causation theories’ that emerge. You are much better off having a valium pill to take care of it. I look forward to the day when people can leisurely walk into malls and get their brains cleaned up, much like a manicure today.
Until then key leaders like OBL need to killed periodically. Like many mental problems there is a very small percentage of people who have this mental imbalance. It is not an endless reservoir, unlike sustaining philosophies which depends on sane people, OBL theories depend on presence of ‘crazy’ people and will not spread as an epidemic. Kill the crazies and their leaders the problem dies on its own.
The solution is not education but a little bit of potion and some violent demolition…
Therapy can work much better than a pill (although meds are useful too). But you can’t really know what will work until you realize why “Some people are crazy physiologically” and in what ways.
Exactly. Not to mention bombing to bits the Sri Lanka international airport, car-bombs during rush hour traffic jams, letterbombs to journalists, etc. While almost 1500 girls from my grade-school were at mass, a sharp eyed priest saw an untended van and called the cops..After the church was evacuated, the found 200kg of gelignite under the floorboards. So to all the LTTE apologists who say they never target civilians – SHUT THE FUCK UP.
The random murder of civilians is the hallmark of terrorism, in my opinion, because it utterly destabilizes the fundamental tenents a democratic society. People fear each other and pressure the govt to ‘do something’…investors back out of deals, so economic stability is undermind…Govt. assumes a more totalitarian form, and people willingly give up civil liberties for the promise of safety. It’s just a fucking mess.
I’d be all for bag checks in the subways if I trusted the police here to have any idea of what they were doing in terms of sussing out suspects. Also, anyone with an explosive is not going to fucking open the goddamn bag for inspection! He’s going to try to sneak by, and if called upon, will run like fucking crazy – and my worst fear is that some overexcited rookie cop then screams “stop” while pulling the trigger…on a sweltering subway platform packed with New Yorkers just trying to get home from work…
Trying to explain/understand exactly why people turn to terrorism – the motivations, circumstances etc – seems a bit foolhardy to me. Too many factors, variables, cultural unknowns etc.
I think, if one were to boil it down, people who turn to terrorism feel a righteous anger about some long-held grievance. The longer it’s held onto, the worse it gets because a lot of false information, tall tales and heightened emotion get stirred into the original story.. (i.e. young LTTE supporters in North America who’ve never stepped a foot in Sri Lanka. They’ve absorbed and amplified their parents sensibilities.)
Eventually, violence seems the only (and justified, because well, those bastards just didn’t get it any other way, did they?) solution. And there will always be the brain behind the organization who will come up with some story to seduce the younger, more vulnerable and volatile members into sacrificing their lives. The story (virgins, glory, the righteousness of the cause, whatever) doesn’t really matter, does it? It’s all the fucking same..
Wise words indeed. Apparently they don’t know what they are doing.
Fair enough. I never miss an opportunity for Star Wars wisdom just so you know. 🙂
Here is what I REALLY think we should do (if Abhi ruled the world). Every time there is a suicide bombing we scrape the bomber’s body parts off the walls and floor. Then we put them all in close proximity and in the appropriate anatomical locations. Then we take hi-res pictures and publish them ALL over the news and TV. Everywhere. We don’t even warn television viewers what they are about to see. The three Abrahamic religions generally believe that your present body is what you take with you to the afterlife. Every future suicide bomber that sees those pictures is then going to envision his mutilated corpse hitting on a virgin in heaven and getting no play. Every fame seeking youth is going to know that the last picture anyone sees of them is going to be so horrible that mothers take their screaming children out of the room. I bet you it would prevent at least some bombings.
That’s my suggestion at least.
Oh, and I’d also want black diamonds and pearls (if I ruled the world I mean)
second London bombing? what? I haven’t check the news since Wed… god.. poor Anna.
Until recently, I had a Sri Lankans passport. SL passport holders are not allowed layovers in European airports without a visa for the layover country. Even if you’re not leaving the airport. Even if it’s just for an HOUR. In the airplane. On the tarmac. Terrorism, you see.. (to be fair, before 9/11, they inspected because the SL fucking govt warned of explosive ‘statements’ being made abroad.)
So I got used to being frisked, my underwear held up and shaken, my face poweder being sniffed and tasted…all while I stand there scowling, wearing the red plastic barretts, blue nailpolish, yellow “Doobie Brothers” Tshirt, and thirft store brown cords that was my college uniform.
I mean, I’d give them credit for suspecting women – female LTTE members killed just as many as the men – but if I were about to meet my maker, would that really have been my sartorial choice?
The three Abrahamic religions also believe that suicide is wrong. The rules don’t apply to ‘maytrdom‘.
It’s often a useful thing 🙂 At the NILC conference, I saw a pretty contentious debate about a piece of Comprehensive Immigartion Reform legislation get a little more civil because of some Star Wars metaphors 🙂
Your idea about demonstrating the consequences in graphic form is probably a good idea (perhaps slightly modified ;). I wonder if you showed every parent some pictures of suicide bomber remnants whether it would change the way they raised their kids.
It’s basically what Al Jazeera did for a while (not sure if they still do) to highlight Muslims being killed or abused, except for a far better purpose. It’s similar to what the US government does to us about drugs (and now smoking) as well.
From telegraph.co.uk
I think Abhi’s concluding point is very interesting and worthy of a more serious and sober discussion. The Wall Street Journal did a lot of reporting on the phenomena of Islamic conversion in prisons, but unfortunately it’s all locked up. (here are some excerpts.)
It shouldn’t be surprising to anyone. “How I learned to read” is a classic excerpt from The Autobiography of Malcolm X–besides being a powerful testament to the power of books as simple as a dictionary (whaddaya know? the meanings are actually more important than the spellings. . .), it’s a great glimpse at the kind of transformations that are possible in prison. Naturally, those an wind up anyway–some would argue Malcolm’s was no improvement, though I would disagree in the long run. Big things can happen, and some of them are bound to be bad. You’ve literally got a captive audience, with a lot of pent up energy and time to think and no distractions to mellow and smooth out growing convictions.
It’s a serious phenomena that merits thoughtful concern. I remember very clearly when the Denver Iskcon Temple (which at the time was a major local house of worship for desi Hindus) was firebombed in 1984, and the bombing that was was much, much later tied to al-Fuqra,, which in turn is linked to prison recruiting. (Sorry to link to free republic, but it actually *has the whole article.)
Naturally, those can wind up any way. Sorry ’bout that.
And the “growing convictions” bit was a totally unintended and unwanted pun. Sorry Manish, didn’t mean to be crowding on your turf.
Where do you come up with this stuff? How many Black Tigers were foreign born? Look at the link Parthi posted, it lists every tamil suicide bomber along with the place they were from – see any western cities on there? What leads you to believe that the current tamil youth are more extreme about the tamil independence movement than their parents? None of this even remotely mirrors my experience.
Maybe you’ve been influenced by the same type of half-truths, misinformation and exaggeration that you claim exists on the other side? I mean, how could the tamil people still support the tigers when the glorious and benevolent government of Sri Lanka is beckoning with open arms? Clearly they must all have been brainwashed.
Anyways, as has been pointed out, the Tigers, the Chechens etc. don’t fall into the same category as these latest bombers. The tigers didn’t form a resistance based on some vague disaffection/identity crisis. Their methods might be similar but the analogy doesn’t go much further than that. You’re letting your personal experience colour your statements.
“What nearly all suicide terrorist attacks actually have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland. Religion is often used as a tool by terrorist organizations in recruiting and in seeking aid from abroad, but is rarely the root cause…”
this contrasts with the reductionist view of al-qaeda which sees their struggle as motivated by a desire for theocracy – instead we must understand the geopolitical reasons for suicidal terrorism. the (april 98?) fatwa commanding muslims to ‘kill americans, military or civilian’ listed three grievances – the occupation of palestine, the sanctions on iraq, and the presence of u.s. troops in saudi arabia. yet americans continue to believe that al-qaeda desires global domination – when bin laden and his henchmen defeated the soviet empire, did they go on to convert every russian to islam? no.
i would say that bin laden is the hassan i sabban of his day – assassination no longer works as a viable strategy because tyrants have become adept at stopping them and because medical science has dramatically improved (e.g. reagan was shot, but didn’t die). i wish both the u.s. military and al-qaeda did everything they could to avoid civilian deaths, but that’s not the world we live in. sadly. .k
In my opinion, the average alienated disaffected person is usually quite ineffective as well, and requires an enabler to become dangerous. This is perhaps illustrated by the two rounds of London bombings – all the disaffectedness and alienation in the world wont’ make a bomb explode properly, it requires expertise.
Now I don’t know whether education or otherwise will stop the creation of potential terrorists. I read the NYT story of the rickshaw-walla’s son, trying to pass the IIT entrance exam., failing once and trying again. Now, why wasn’t this boy a candidate for disaffection and alienation? Almost surely he was living in surroundings and physical circumstances far worse than the London bombers. Almost surely the bombers had much easier grasp of opportunities to improve their lives. Almost certainly our IIT candidate had naysayers and discouragers. So, I do not think we can explain why someone works hard against the odds, and another gives up and becomes alienated. So, while we should work on making life less difficult in general for everyone, this is a long-term goal and does not address the current problem of terrorism.
If we remove the enablers – the people who convert alienated aimless youth into determined effective killers – then we have a much better chance of abating terrorism than by education.
The author’s study is only valuable to provide a historical perspective. Since 2003, when he stopped collecting data, the number of suicide attacks has increased by some magnitude across the globe. Also, since 2003, I’m guessing, the number of suicide attacks by Tamils has probably decreased. I would assume last year’s tsunami has all but halted their efforts to blow each other up.
My hypothesis is that the Tamil’s have fallen to a distant third behind the Israeli / Palesinian conflict and the war in Iraq / Afghanastan.
Anathan, given that Parthi’s post lead to an essay titled Homage to the Black Tigers: A Review of Sooriya Puthalvargal 2003 Memorial Souvenir, with additional essays such as Vignettes on Three Black Tiger Heroes in the Battlefield and Resistance and Martyrdom in the Process of State Formation of Tamil Eelam, I’m going to take a wild guess and say this not the most unbiased of sources.
(I just love how the LTTE manages to buff up their actions with such a shiny intellectual gloss.)
Perhaps I should’ve been clearer, but I never said any Black Tigers were foreign born. I meant that the young supporters abroad don’t really have any sense of the complexity of the situation. Their facts are distorted, they are really emotional about July ’83 (despite never having lived through it) and other crimes against Tamils..and I generally end up being called a sucker for GoSL propaganda. (Hmm…why does your post seem so familiar…)
Most people who lived in Sri Lanka, at least during the riots of ’83 when Sinhalese mobs attacked Tamils (did I mention yet that I’m half-Tamil and that we were hiding under beds, while my dad stood out front trying to convince thugs that we were a fully Sinhala household?)…know that there is no ‘right’ side, that this ‘war’ made various govt administrations more politically powerful, the LTTE grew from idealistic (foolishly so, IMO) university kids into a well-organized, ruthless, military outfit, the wealthy became obscenely rich, and the rest of us – Sinhalese and Tamil – watched our beautiful country go up in flames.
Now, where, exactly, in my post, did I use the words vague disaffection/identity crisis?? Your whole argument against me seems to based on something I didn’t even say. Nice.
Let’s look at what I did say, shall we? I think, if one were to boil it down, people who turn to terrorism feel a righteous anger about some long-held grievance. The “Sinhala Only” act, the revoking of Tamil citizenship (soon reinstated, but still), the seizure of land in jaffna…these are the grievances I referred to. Tamils, generally, did fairly well under the Briitish, so the GoSL’s actions were a result of long-held grievances held by the Sinhalese. See how that works? No?
Well, let me simplify further: the crayzees on each side claim to be wronged, but the larger side gains political clout so it wins. The smaller side tries, with gradual success, to level playing field until the impatient crayzees on that side said “fuck this” and reached for the ammo.
And now that we see how the British govt. reacted after one terrorist explosion (that guy they plugged FIVE times, while holding him down didn’t have anything on him. He was suspiciously “wearing a winter coat” and had alleged “links to known terrorists. ack.)…why don’t you tell me how the GoSL should have reacted these past 30 years?
I hope this isn’t too far off-topic, but My Son the Fanatic examines the reasons for why a Western-born Muslim kid would turn to fundamentalism. Starring the always-great Om Puri. And made, prophetically, in 1997.
The bit about how father and son are both clinging to imaginary utopias – tolerant Britian and pure Pakistan – comes across really well in the movie. And I think it couldn’t be more true.