Logic of Suicide Terrorism

I believe I've seen an interview with this gentleman.

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 campaign over 95 percent of all the incidents has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.

Most of the analysis appears to center around the idea that suicide bombings are for military strategy to remove invaders. Though I would say that the denial of a link to Islamic fundamentalism is being overly simple.

His first argument is that there are suicide bombers from non-Islamic groups. That I would argue doesn't disprove the fundamentalist argument in specific theaters. It does say that calling suicide terrorism a fundamentalist Islamic problem the cause is an over generalization, but doesn't eliminate the Islamic causal factors that are seen.

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 people three times the population of Iraq and three times the population of Saudi Arabia —with 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.

"Pivotal factor" is not a lone factor. Nor does it eliminate other causation. Again this fails in over generalization. Iran being used as an example should prompt some direct questions. If Iran hasn't had suicide bombers, why? What is different between Iran and the countries where many suicide bombers are coming from? Might there not be a cultural factor on top of the Islamic one? Remember that many of the suicide bombers in Iraq are Sunni. There is also suicide bombers that are specifically Batthist and Wahabi.

Our best information at the moment is that the Iraqi suicide terrorists are coming from two groups —Iraqi Sunnis and Saudis —the 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.

Note that he generalizes with the Sunni analysis. He doesn't give a break down of the ethnic relationship. There are Sunni Arabs and Sunni Kurds in Iraq. I'd wager that the Kurdish level of suicide bombers is nearly non-existant.

He does finally come down to the point of stating that there is a relationship to religion related to suicide bombings.

I not only study the patterns of where suicide terrorism has occurred but also where it hasn't 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 wouldn't 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.

This makes more sense. Causation of such thing is rarely a simple single factor. I would still state that his analysis is too simple as he states it at the start of the article. His use of Lebanon as an example of the decrease of suicide bombers when an occupying entity of different religious views leaves makes my point.

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 didn'’t 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.

I think he has missed the point that there was another occupier of Lebanon just at the time of the withdrawl. Syria. And the analysis of the Lebanese suicide bombers is interesting.

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.

I'm a bit baffled by the designations. Communist/Socialist doesn't tell you anything about their religious affiliations. The groups that claimed responsibility may have been designated as such, but it fails to provide useful analysis. Unless you wish us to believe that Communist/Socialist terrorists are secular, which I'm going to bet against.

The discussion on the IRA methodology and lack of suicide bombings I think takes a wrong turn in analysis. He seems to want us to believe that there were no suicide bombings because the IRA received concessions through the normal terrorist bombings and attacks. I think that argument is laughable. The culture/religious relations are totally ignored. Christianity sees suicide as having no redeeming value or reward in the afterlife. There is even specific places in Hell for those that commit suicide.

From the limits of this interview, I think that the author over simplifies the system that causes suicide bombers.