
Terrorism
is a low-cost tactic of coercion and fear that almost
anyone
anywhere can adopt. It takes only a few highly motivated
individuals to shatter the security of millions. It is
also a tactic that drives governments to extremes of
paranoia and into morally repugnant terrain. So great is
the fear of this method of political agitation that it
seems to stir almost as much revulsion as genocide,
bombardment of civilians, or the use of nuclear weapons
– though it has killed far fewer people. In fact, the
odds of dying in a terrorist attack on US soil are only
about 80,000 to one – much less than the chance of dying
in a car accident or getting shot in Washington D.C. Yet
it is routine for political leaders and commentators to
decry the evils of terrorism while many times more
civilians are killed by sophisticated aerial bombs – as
was the case during Israel’s attack on Lebanon this
summer where air raids killed over 900 Lebanese
civilians, while Hezbollah rockets killed 43 innocent
Israelis. Despite the Bush administration’s recent
election-time comparisons of the Al Qaeda to Nazi
Germany or Soviet Russia, terrorism remains a very
different sort of threat – one that Israel’s bombing of
Lebanon or America’s invasion of Iraq have probably made
worse. There is no military solution to the tactic of
terrorism because it is a political weapon whose
proponents tend to become stronger when governments
overreact and innocent people get killed. In fact,
tricking governments into overreacting or getting tied
down in places like Iraq is part of their strategy.
The
subject of terrorism tends to arouse emotional diatribes
for or against the tactic, but not much in the way of
dispassionate analysis. Among the exceptions are new
books by Robert Pape, Mia Bloom, and Farhad Khosrokhavar.
Pape and Bloom delve into the strategies of terrorists –
a profoundly important subject that few American
scholars since 911 have had the stomach or sense to
address. Most writers – as if it were their duty – treat
terrorist violence as senseless and random, when in fact
it rarely is. It follows regular patterns which suggest
a strategic logic that policy-makers ignore at their own
peril, or at least at the peril of citizens less
vulnerable than they are. Terrorism did not begin when
Al-Qaeda operatives struck America in 2001. Terrorist
tactics evolved over many decades in conflicts around
the world as a strategy of guerilla warfare, and one
that has succeeded as often as it has failed.
Both Pape and Bloom argue that suicide terrorist
organizations are basically rational and strategic –
that is, they do not kill as an end in itself, but as a
means to other ends. They weigh the costs and benefits
of different strategies and act accordingly. They adopt
the tactic of suicide terrorism because they believe it
works, because other tactics have failed, or, as Bloom
argues, to “outbid” rival militias in the use of
shocking tactics. This form of violence tends to be
carefully calibrated to end unpopular foreign
occupations. In a chapter entitled “Learning Terrorism
Pays”, Pape demonstrates that terrorists learn from the
successes of others. For example, the Lebanese Hezbullah
used suicide tactics to force American and French
peace-keeping troops to leave Lebanon in 1983, and later
the Israeli army. The Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka adopted
suicide bombing after observing the Hezbullah’s
successful use of the tactic. Since 1983 the Tigers
carried out more suicide attacks than any other group,
including the Hamas. While suicide bombing may sometimes
appear irrational or senseless, there are genuine
strategic reasons for adopting the tactic. For example,
suicide bombers can penetrate tight security cordons
without the need for an escape route. They also die
before they can be interrogated. Most importantly, the
fact that young men and women are willing to embrace
certain death in pursuit of the cause demonstrates great
resolve and triggers intense emotions of shock and awe
among friends and enemies alike. Whatever one might
think about its legitimacy as a tactic, suicide
terrorism can be a dangerous and effective tool.
Yet
one should not overstate the strategic dimensions of
suicide terrorism either. While leaders who adopt the
tactic may be rational, the same cannot always be said
of the young men and women who strap bombs to their
chests. The act itself seems prima facie irrational,
partly because it is incomprehensible to anyone living
in more agreeable circumstances. Perhaps the bombers
believe fervently in their cause or overvalue the
compensation promised to loved ones. In either of those
cases, the costs of certain death seem greater than any
conceivable benefit. On the other hand, the bombers may
calculate that suicide terrorism is the only significant
way to strike back at deadly enemies of their community.
Nonetheless, they will not survive to enjoy the
potential benefits of their actions. Pape and Bloom fall
short in their efforts to explain these apparently
irrational acts.
Pape includes interesting personal histories and
demographic profiles of suicide bombers. His data
suggests that there is no consistent profile. Different
people become suicide bombers for different reasons, and
they rarely survive to explain why they did it. Pape
profiles a woman named Dhanu, a member of Sri Lanka’s
LTTE who assassinated Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi
in 1991. She was gang-raped by Indian soldiers and her
entire family was killed during India’s brief
peacekeeping mission in Sri Lanka during the 1980s.
After that ordeal, she joined the “Black Tigers”, the
LTTE’s special suicide squad. Her story suggests she
experienced great personal trauma, desired revenge, and
had nothing to lose. On the other hand, Mohammad Atta,
the leader of the 911 attacks, had a supportive family,
a graduate education, and a bright career. There is no
evidence that he experienced personal trauma that might
incline him toward revenge. It was an intellectual
passion for Al Qaeda’s brand of militant pan-Islamism
that influenced him to lay down his life. It’s possible
that, while leaders are motivated by common strategic
aims, individuals become suicide bombers for a host of
reasons.
Khosrokhavar goes into greater depth on this question of
what motivates these people. He does not believe the
question can be answered with the usual rationalism of
political science and economics. There is an irrational
element to the decision to become a suicide bomber. It
is a decision influenced primarily, he asserts, by
alienation and unswerving belief in a cause. The “new
martyrdom” reflects the despair of individuals in modern
society seeking to lend meaning and dignity to their
lives. The idea of becoming a martyr empowers those who
feel they have no control over their lives, who feel
oppressed by armies with seemingly unlimited resources.
It is a form of “holy rage”, a means to meet power with
faith through a combination of self-assertion and
resignation to death. Suicide bombers are praised as
heroes of the faith, willing to make the ultimate
sacrifice to fight injustice. It is the act itself that
matters – almost, but not quite, as an end in itself.
Khosrokhavar argues that the “specific feature of Islam
is that it legitimizes sacred death in the service of
the community or umma by making it part of the
fabric of a war that enjoys religious legitimacy, namely
jihad.” Faith and religious sanction help young
fighters overcome their fear of death and justify
violence in the name of God. Islam has no monopoly here.
Khosrokhavar examines cultures of martyrdom in three
religious traditions – Christianity, Sikhism, and Islam
– and finds that all encourage a sense of empowerment,
defiance, and blind faith which overrides material
concerns.
Khosrokhavar’s argument helps us to understand the
recruitment of suicide bombers as well as the popular
support they often enjoy. But the picture he paints is
no more complete than that of the other two authors.
While it is plausible that young men and women carry out
attacks for personal reasons, Khosrokhavar does not
account for the particular patterns of these attacks or
their role in larger political campaigns. Some bombers
may choose to kill as an end in itself, but they still
are only a few individuals in a larger organization. For
every suicide terrorist attack, there is not only the
bomber but many others involved in recruitment,
training, fund-raising, political activities, and
leadership. For example, the largest practitioner of
suicide bombing, the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, employ
suicide tactics as only a small part of an organization
that integrates carefully targeted suicide attacks with
larger ‘conventional’ guerilla operations and political
activities. Suicide bombing clearly is part of a broader
politico-military strategy. No doubt, ideas and emotions
are integral to recruiting young men and women to die
for a cause, but they are not all or even most of the
story.
Pape finds that suicide terrorist attacks reveal clear
patterns in terms of timing, target-selection, and
nationalist goals. Terrorist groups will go on the
offensive at key political moments in order to force
specific concessions. For example, the Hamas launched
suicide terrorist attacks in May 1994 and December 1995
so as to improve Hamas’ bargaining position and
accelerate negotiations with Israel. Once their
immediate objective was attained, Hamas leaders pulled
back. As many commentators have noted, suicide bombers
may also target democracies because doing so carries
less risk and more chance of success than attacking less
restrained authoritarian states, and because it seems
easier to operate in a free society than one teeming
with secret police (though the latter has not stopped
them either). But this begs the question, why would they
want to?
Terrorists don’t target America because “they hate our
values” but for more strategic reasons. Democratic
states must consider the long-term health of their
liberal values and institutions when fighting terrorism.
They must be restrained – or indeed abstain – in their
use of torture, strategic bombing, and collective
punishment. Widespread use of torture or indiscriminate
violence corrodes democracy itself, especially if these
tactics are used against one’s own people instead of
civilians abroad. Using coercion to crush a terrorist
group threatens the legitimacy of a democratic
government – almost by definition – more than it does an
autocratic regime with a long history of unrestrained
repression. Perhaps this is one reason why there is a
widespread insurgency in Iraq under the American
occupation, but not under Saddam Hussein – even though
he was no more popular among the majority of Iraqis. The
US cannot use poison gas against civilians in rebel-held
areas (as Saddam Hussein did against the Kurds in the
1990s), or engage in mass executions (as Saddam did
against the Shias when they rose up in 1991). Pictures
of naked prisoners standing on boxes and being mauled by
dogs caused a major crisis in the US government, while
tens of thousands were tortured to death under Saddam,
also to little consequence.
All
three authors note that suicide bombing is a “weapon of
the weak”. Though it has been used by states – Japanese
Kamikaze pilots, for example – it is militant
organizations that adopt the tactic as a means to
counteract the superior capabilities of governments with
standing armies and high tech weaponry. The Hamas cannot
hope to win militarily against a much stronger Israel,
but it can force a hurting stalemate that denies Israel
victory and makes refusal to negotiate costly and
painful. Bloom notes that the dilemma for the Israeli
army is that there are no targets to bomb in the
Palestinian territories, and thus no opportunity for the
world’s most sophisticated army to use the world’s most
sophisticated weapons. The capabilities of the militias
are in their members hidden among the population and
their resolve to absorb whatever the Israelis throw at
them. By firing rockets from crowded apartment buildings
in dense neighborhoods, the Hezbullah is daring the
Israeli military to kill civilians. If the Israelis do
not react, they look helpless; if they do, innocent
people get killed and they look like aggressors with no
regard for human life. If so, the Israelis cannot win
either way, morally speaking. As long as Lebanese blame
the Israelis and not the Hezbullah for the destruction,
Hezbullah will come out politically stronger. Bloom’s
answer is a common, if rarely availed, one: The Israelis
must win hearts and minds. But that is easier said than
done. The only way to win the hearts and minds of
insurgents is to do precisely what the authorities
usually don’t want to do – withdraw permanently from the
disputed lands. Bloom also does not fully appreciate the
dilemmas that a government faces when threatened by
numerous and competing militias. What should leaders do
when concessions may be viewed as a sign of weakness and
encourage further escalation? How is a leadership to
balance the benefits of offering concessions with the
costs of looking gullible?
Suicide terrorism is particularly dangerous because its
practitioners cannot be deterred and because one’s
defenses cannot be hermetically sealed. Pape quotes
Hamas leaders saying that in retaliation for Israeli
attacks that kill civilians and make Palestinians
insecure, Hamas will destroy the security of Israelis.
He quotes Israeli leaders saying that there is no way to
completely prevent suicide attacks. Nothing makes one’s
life appear more fragile than a sudden explosion in a
crowded market. What makes terrorism appear more
threatening than the targeting of civilian populations
by states in war is that it takes only a small number of
ardent individuals to accomplish the operation, and
partly because mass media will downplay ‘clean’ high
tech-inflicted deaths (via aerial bomb, smart or
otherwise, or artillery) versus more primitive lethal
mechanisms. When the ability to launch orchestrated
campaigns of violence against innocent populations
passes into the hands of shadowy organizations with no
fixed address, the security of a settled society is
severely undermined. No doubt, organizations like the
Hamas, al Qaeda, and the Tamil Tigers are aware of this.
Like other militant leaders involved in the killing of
innocents – such as Israel’s Menachim Begin, Ireland’s
Gerry Adams, and Algeria’s Ahmed Ben Bella – Hamas
leaders ironically have gone on to become elected
statesman. That’s what happens to insurgents who win.
The difference between terrorist groups and organized
militaries is not so much their tactics – legitimate
states deliberately killed tens of millions of innocent
people during the 20th century, terrorists
only thousands – but the fact that they employ violent
means without the legitimacy conferred by diplomatic
recognition.
The
gnawing fear is that if everyone with a grievance uses
terrorist tactics, there will be security for no one –
and without security, there can be no development or
civilization, only the law of the jungle. While violent
resistance is too often the only real means to resist
oppression, stable government is the only means to
establish order and security and (if a representative
one) to protect the weak from the strong according to
established laws. Since the 911 attacks Americans
discovered the dark side of armed resistance, but the
dark side of military occupation continues for millions
elsewhere. What goals and tactics are legitimate, and
under what circumstances? Thomas Jefferson raised
similar questions during the American Revolution. He
went so far as to say that people should rise up against
the government every twenty or so years – a notion that
America’s right-wing militias embrace. When, then, is it
right and good to take up arms against the government,
and with what means? The social scientists reviewed here
do not raise these knotty questions, much less address
them.
Pape argues that ordinary people living under foreign
occupation by a nation of another religion especially
tend to support violent resistance, including suicide
terrorism. Nearly every suicide terrorist attack has
occurred in conflicts involving a combination of
military occupation and religious differences. When
devout people believe their way of life is threatened by
a foreign army, they accept whatever means promise
results, not unlike cynical statesmen. As Franz Fanon
observed about the Algerian War for Independence, people
support the most extreme tactics when they feel their
existence is threatened. Whether right or wrong – and
the killing of innocents is always wrong – the situation
nonetheless reappears with depressing regularity. In
such situations, people may cultivate a culture of
martyrdom.
Pape finds that nearly all suicide bombers volunteer,
and that their families tend to be proud of their
choices. They tend to be educated, politically involved
individuals from middle class families. They share none
of the characteristics of ‘typical’ suicidal young
people. Indeed, ordinary suicide is least prevalent
where suicide terrorism occurs. Cultures of martyrdom do
not develop where local communities do not believe that
the terrorists’ cause is just and their methods
justifiable. It matters little what outsiders think
about the morality of the tactic. The fact is that those
who support these operations will continue to do so as
long as the conditions that make for conflict do not
change. Saying the terrorists are evil may influence
ordinary people in the US and Israel, but holds little
sway among the militants’ own constituencies in the
Palestinian territories. As US and Israeli condemnations
of the Hamas escalated in the 1990s, so did the popular
support it enjoyed among Palestinians.
When an entire population
rises up and supports the militias, violence cannot be
stopped through coercive means alone, no matter what a
government wants to believe. Khosrokhavar tells the
story of the Iranian Bassidj,
dedicated young Iranians willing to die in defense of
the Iranian Revolution. The organization grew to over
400,000 during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. They died
in droves in “human wave attacks” that eventually
repulsed the Iraqi army. The Bassidj were not
conventional foot soldiers with a salary and pension;
they were volunteers. If the US invaded Iran and the
Bassidj grew to anywhere near its former strength,
it would dwarf the insurgency in neighboring Iraq. If so
many young Iranians were willing to die to defend Iran
from Saddam’s Iraq, there is little reason they would
not do the same against the US. After the death of the
Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 and the rise of a new
generation less enamored of Khomeinism, the Bassidj
mostly fell into crime and lost their luster. An armed
struggle against America, however, might be just what
the regime’s hardliners require to recapture the sway
they have gradually lost since the Revolution. Even
people living under corrupt and oppressive regimes tend
to support those governments against foreign invaders.
The
public and the government in the US are only beginning
to understand the insuperable difficulties of
transforming the Middle East through military force.
American leaders gave a blank check to Israel as it
launched a disastrous campaign of air-raids on southern
Lebanon this summer that killed over 900 Lebanese
civilians but less than 100 Hezbullah militants – and
all on the slim pretext of two kidnapped Israeli
soldiers. The plain message is that an Israeli or
American life is worth a hundred dead Lebanese or Iraqi
civilians – just the sort of idea that makes such
devalued people support armed resistance. Heavy-handed
tactics may kill a few militants here and there, but the
suffering it imposes can only make the militias stronger
in the long run – especially when it is done by a
foreign power that most ordinary people view with
distrust, and that has no real interest in repairing the
damage done by its bombs and blockades. These policies
seem almost too naïve to be true. One looks back at the
disastrous outcomes of the US invasion of Iraq and
Israel’s recent air-raids on Lebanon in much the same
way: How could these leaders not have known this
would happen? Shouldn’t these policy-makers with all
their classified information, professional experts, and
political experience know better than to stake so many
lives on such obviously suspect assumptions? Either US
leaders are obtusely stupid, or they did not care what
the outcome would be. Are policy-makers in Washington
telling us the truth about the situation we face? They
were not completely honest about what they did and did
not know before the invasion, or their reasons for
carrying it out.
The
US invaded Iraq under the mistaken assumption that US
forces would be embraced as liberators – so much so that
the US government did not even formulate a plan for the
post-war occupation. This inexplicable belief that the
US could destroy every vestige of order in such a
complex and fractious nation without any plan for its
reconstruction was a serious error in thinking and
leadership – one that cannot be attributed to bad
information or the fog of war. It seems to run so
contrary to common sense that it is difficult to
believe, yet it is true – and by now well-documented in
Thomas Ricks’ new book about the invasion. It was the
sort of failure of thinking that occurs in closed
societies where debate is circumscribed – where
important questions are not raised until it is too late.
The systematic failure of the American government and
the public to correctly perceive the threats they face
and the proper means to deal with them suggests that
academic writers like Pape, Bloom, and Khosrokhavar have
an important illuminating role to play. The standard
dismissive criticism of academic writers is that they do
not understand the difficult realities of politics and
war. But, debacles like Iraq demonstrate that the
political leadership can be even more out of touch.
Gerald Meyerle is a Ph.D. Candidate in the
Department of Politics, University of Virginia. He can
be contacted at
gmm5f@virginia.edu.
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