A very recent article by Professor Robert Pape in the New York Times posited that suicide bombings were not due to religious fundamentalism, but aimed at liberal democracies as part of a political/military campaign of national self determination. He also suggests that deploying troops in foreign countries actually gives rise to suicide bombers and that beefing up homeland security without foreign deployment will reduce the incidence of suicide bombing.
There is much to say about this hypothesis but the argument needs to be further calibrated and clarified. Suicide bombing is an extremely complex phenomena and to draw public, international, security and military policy based upon inappropriate methodologies can seriously injure one’s health. I realise this may sound like arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but angels don’t usually go about blowing people up, hence a deeper look at Professor Pape’s work is in order.
From a purely American perspective, the good professor’s argument has a leg to stand on. Unfortunately, this argument falls down a bit when we consider a few other aspects. Let us first start with the epistemological issues, and then move on to consider the other aspect that need to be considered. The first issue is to consider whether an empirical positivistic framework is the appropriate one to model complex phenomena such as suicide bombing. Maybe yes, maybe no, but the issue is, can a bald sample of 315 suicide bombing events and analysing simple statistical measures of this sample give us conclusions that are good enough for policy research? In my opinion, this is difficult to do so with any degree of certainty.
Let us take a simple example. It is indeed true that once we consider the total number of suicide bombings in the sample, the Tamil Tigers against the Sri Lankan government did more than Islamic suicide bombers against the USA. Consequently, one will definitely say that the hypothesis, those suicide bombers are just driven by religious fanaticism and ideology will be disproved. On the other hand, this assumes that the American people are fungible in their thought processes, and will identify themselves with the Sri Lankan’s when considering suicide bombing. In other words, when they think of suicide bombing, they will consider both the Islamic suicide bombers as well as the Tamil Tigers. This is patently wrong.
The citizens of the United States of America will only consider attacks against them. That is human nature. Just like the Muslims reacted furiously when reports of the Quran flushed down the toilet were published, but do not say a word when Palestinians used the Bible as toilet paper in Bethlehem, or the French would have explicitly Christian holidays but try to ban the Hijab or the Sikh Patka as religious symbolism which is incompatible with the French republic. Consequently, as a way to explain the conclusion that Americans draw that all suicide bombing is ideologically driven, this way will not be accurate, simply because different people think differently.
The second philosophical aspect to be considered is whether such a complex phenomena can be reduced to a mathematical equation. One of the good professor’s assumptions is that the Islamic suicide bombers ranging from the 9/11 perpetrators to Hizbollah in Lebanon, to Hamas in Palestine, to Zarkawi’s gang in Iraq, to the Taliban in Afghanistan, Chechens in Russia to the Jehadi’s in Kashmir, Pakistan, Philippines, Turkey and Indonesia are all of the same type. Unfortunately, this is not so. Each group in each country has a distinct ideological flavour and they cannot be lumped together under any circumstances. The Shia groups are different from the Palestinian ones, to the Kurdish ones, to the Wahhabi/Salafi ones. It is also wrong to consider their motivation as simply ideological. We have evidence that many carried out suicide bombing for monetary purposes, following societal/honour killing factors, simple psychological pressures besides ideological imperatives.
The third philosophical aspect, which has not been considered, is where these people are sourced. Where do they come from? There is an “international brigade”, so to say, yet also extremely localised. Many suicide bombers are local, from the Palestinian refugee camps to Tamils to Chechens themselves, but there is also evidence that suicide bombers are sourced from what I call an “international brigade”. We have evidence that Islamic suicide bombers have come from the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Uzbekistan, Somalia, Sudan, all places which have no connection whatsoever to any ostensible self determination movement. This is a particularly complex issue, which cannot be reduced down to a simple equation or arithmetical analysis of suicide bombing.
The next aspect to be considered is the targeting of the suicide bombing attacks. Largely, military targets are engaged, but the most high profile attacks are against civilians. The Tamil Tigers mainly hit the Sri Lankan military or political leaders in Sri Lanka, as well as the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in India. Hizbollah also targeted the Israeli Military, as did some groups in Kashmir, but there is plentiful evidence that ordinary civilians are explicitly targeted such as in Russia, Israel, Kashmir, India, Afghanistan, Iraq, Spain, USA etc. This is where the shock value arises. People are less concerned with the attacks over military targets. It is when they see images of murdered children of the Beslan hostage situation, the dead in the Israeli busses, people dancing for joy when seeing the images of the dead in 9/11 and so on and so forth that the shock value becomes dramatic.
It is the explicit targeting of civilians, which is such a hallmark of Islamic suicide bombing. Non-consideration of this factor reduces the viability of the analysis by the good professor. A theme not considered is how the Islamist groups do not distinguish between civilians and military personnel. This differentiation is very important in many nations such as in India, Russia, UK, and USA, who have all faced terrorist activity. In these countries specifically, there is not that much of an over-reaction when suicide bombers attack the military units.
Well, with the exception of the suicide bombing in Lebanon of the marine barracks, but that was due to the large number of casualties. Targeting civilians explicitly is considered to be heinous and beyond the pale in these societies. Consequently, when the suicide bombers use religious justification for their attacks on civilians, for the broad public, it simply means that it is the religion that is to blame. Explanations that these terrorist groups and suicide bombers are using the religion wrongly are therefore ignored.