Dying to Win
The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism
Robert A. Pape
RANDOM HOUSE
NEW YORK
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
INTRODUCTION
1 The Growing Threat
2 Explaining Suicide Terrorism
PART I: THE STRATEGIC LOGIC OF SUICIDE TERRORISM
3 A Strategy for Weak Actors
4 Targeting Democracies
5 Learning Terrorism Pays
PART II: THE SOCIAL LOGIC OF SUICIDE TERRORISM
6 Occupation and Religious Difference
7 Demystifying al-Qaeda
8 Suicide Terrorist Organizations Around the Globe
PART III: THE INDIVIDUAL LOGIC OF SUICIDE TERRORISM
9 Altruism and Terrorism
10 The Demographic Profile of Suicide Terrorists
11 Portraits of Three Suicide Terrorists
CONCLUSION
12 A New Strategy for Victory
Appendix I: Suicide Terrorist Campaigns, 1980–2003
Appendix II: Occupations by Democratic States, 1980–2003
Appendix III: Salafism in Major Sunni Muslim Majority Countries
Notes
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright Page
To my mother,
Marlene Pape
INTRODUCTION
1
The Growing Threat
SUICIDE TERRORISM IS rising around the world, but there is great confusion as to why. Since
many such attacks—including, of course, those of September 11, 2001—have been perpetrated by
Muslim terrorists professing religious motives, it might seem obvious that Islamic fundamentalism is
the central cause. This presumption has fueled the belief that future 9/11’s can be avoided only by a
wholesale transformation of Muslim societies, a core reason for broad public support in the United
States for the recent conquest of Iraq.
However, the presumed connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism is
misleading and may be encouraging domestic and foreign policies likely to worsen America’s
situation and to harm many Muslims needlessly.
I have compiled a database of every suicide bombing and attack around the globe from 1980
through 2003—315 attacks in all.1 It includes every attack in which at least one terrorist killed
himself or herself while attempting to kill others; it excludes attacks authorized by a national
government, for example by North Korea against the South. This database is the first complete
universe of suicide terrorist attacks worldwide. I have amassed and independently verified all the
relevant information that could be found in English and other languages (for example, Arabic,
Hebrew, Russian, and Tamil) in print and on-line. The information is drawn from suicide terrorist
groups themselves, from the main organizations that collect such data in target countries, and from
news media around the world. More than a “list of lists,” this database probably represents the most
comprehensive and reliable survey of suicide terrorist attacks that is now available.
The data show that there is little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism,
or any one of the world’s religions. In fact, the leading instigators of suicide attacks are 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 suicide attacks
than Hamas.
Rather, what nearly all suicide terrorist attacks 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 rarely the root cause, although it is often used as a tool by
terrorist organizations in recruiting and in other efforts in service of the broader strategic objective.
Three general patterns in the data support my conclusions. First, nearly all suicide terrorist attacks
occur as part of organized campaigns, not as isolated or random incidents. Of the 315 separate attacks
in the period I studied, 301 could have their roots traced to large, coherent political or military
campaigns.
Second, democratic states are uniquely vulnerable to suicide terrorists. The United States, France,
India, Israel, Russia, Sri Lanka, and Turkey have been the targets of almost every suicide attack of the
past two decades, and each country has been a democracy at the time of the incidents.
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 have been terrorist
groups trying to establish or maintain political self-determination by compelling a democratic power
to withdraw from the territories they claim. Even al-Qaeda fits this pattern: although Saudi Arabia is
not under American military occupation per se, a principal objective of Osama bin Laden is the
expulsion of American troops from the Persian Gulf and the reduction of Washington’s power and
influence in the region.
Understanding suicide terrorism is essential for the promotion of American security and
international peace after September 11, 2001. On that day, nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four
airlines and destroyed the World Trade Center towers and part of the Pentagon, killing nearly 3,000
innocent people. This episode awakened Americans and the world to a new fear that previously we
had barely imagined: that even at home in the United States, we were vulnerable to devastating attack
by determined terrorists, willing to die to kill us.
What made the September 11 attack possible—and so unexpected and terrifying—was that
willingness to die to accomplish the mission. The final instructions found in the luggage of several
hijackers leave little doubt about their intentions, telling them to make
an oath to die. . . . When the confrontation begins, strike like champions who do not want to go back to this world. . . . Check your
weapons long before you leave . . . you must make your knife sharp and must not discomfort your animal during the slaughter. . . .
Afterwards, we will all meet in the highest heaven. . . .2
The hijackers’ suicide was essential to the terrible lethality of the attack, making it possible to
crash airplanes into populated buildings. It also created an element of surprise, allowing the hijackers
to exploit the counterterrorism measures and mind-set that had evolved to deal with ordinary terrorist
threats. Perhaps most jarring, the readiness of the terrorists to die in order to kill Americans
amplified our sense of vulnerability. After September 11, Americans know that we must expect that
future al-Qaeda or other anti-American terrorists may be equally willing to die, and so not deterred
by fear of punishment or of anything else. Such attackers would not hesitate to kill more Americans,
and could succeed in carrying out equally devastating attacks—or worse—despite our best efforts to
stop them.
September 11 was monstrous and shocking in scale, but it was not fundamentally unique. For more
than twenty years, terrorist groups have been increasingly relying on suicide attacks to achieve major
political objectives. From 1980 to 2003, terrorists across the globe waged seventeen separate
campaigns of suicide terrorism, including those by Hezbollah to drive the United States, French, and
Israeli forces out of Lebanon; by Palestinian terrorist groups to force Israel to abandon the West Bank
and Gaza; by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (the “Tamil Tigers”) to compel the Sri Lankan
government to accept an independent Tamil homeland; by al-Qaeda to pressure the United States to
withdraw from the Persian Gulf region. Since August of 2003, an eighteenth campaign has begun,
aimed at driving the United States out of Iraq; as of this writing, it is not yet clear how much this effort
owes to indigenous forces and how much to foreigners, possibly including al-Qaeda.
More worrying, the raw number of suicide terrorist attacks is climbing. At the same time that
terrorist incidents of all types have declined by nearly half, from a peak of 666 in 1987 to 348 in
2001, suicide terrorism has grown, and the trend is continuing. Suicide terrorist attacks have risen
from an average of three per year in the 1980s to about ten per year in the 1990s to more than forty
each year in 2001 and 2002, and nearly fifty in 2003. These include continuing campaigns by
Palestinian groups against Israel and by al-Qaeda and Taliban-related forces in Saudi Arabia and
Afghanistan, as well as at least twenty attacks in Iraq against U.S. troops, the United Nations, and
Iraqis collaborating with the American occupation.
Although many Americans have hoped that al-Qaeda has been badly weakened by U.S.
counterterrorism efforts since September 11, 2001, the data show otherwise. In 2002 and 2003, alQaeda
conducted fifteen suicide terrorist attacks, more than in all the years before September 11
combined, killing 439 people.
Perhaps most worrying of all, suicide terrorism has become the most deadly form of terrorism.
Suicide attacks amount to just 3 percent of all terrorist incidents from 1980 through 2003, but account
for 48 percent of all fatalities, making the average suicide terrorist attack twelve times deadlier than
other forms of terrorism—even if the immense losses of September 11 are not counted.3 If a terrorist
group does get its hands on a nuclear weapon, suicide attack is the best way to ensure the bomb will
go off and the most troublesome scenario for its use.
Since September 11, 2001, the United States has responded to the growing threat of suicide
terrorism by embarking on a policy to conquer Muslim countries—not simply rooting out existing
havens for terrorists in Afghanistan but going further to remake Muslim societies in the Persian Gulf.
To be sure, the United States must be ready to use force to protect Americans and their allies and must
do so when necessary. However, the close association between foreign military occupations and the
growth of suicide terrorist movements in the occupied regions should make us hesitate over any
strategy centering on the transformation of Muslim societies by means of heavy military power.
Although there may still be good reasons for such a strategy, we should recognize that the sustained
presence of heavy American combat forces in Muslim countries is likely to increase the odds of the
next 9/11.
To win the war on terrorism, we must have a new conception of victory. The key to lasting security
lies not only in rooting out today’s generation of terrorists who are actively planning to kill
Americans, but also in preventing the next, potentially larger generation from rising up. America’s
overarching purpose must be to achieve the first goal without failing at the second. To achieve that
purpose, it is essential that we understand the strategic, social, and individual logic of suicide
terrorism.
Our enemies have been studying suicide terrorism for over twenty years. Now is the time to level
the playing field.
2
Explaining Suicide Terrorism
MY STUDY ASSESSES the record of suicide terrorism and the state and global responses to it over
the past twenty years, with a view to explaining how and why suicide terrorism has occurred and
persisted, why the incidence is rising, how far the menace is likely to spread, and what can be done to
contain it. Although no approach can predict the future with absolute certitude, a comprehensive
analysis of the history and causes of suicide terrorism affords us the opportunity to ground our
policies in a real knowledge.
My general propositions hold across a wide variety of circumstances and account for a large
portion of suicide terrorism, but they have limits. My arguments are meant to account for modern
suicide terrorism, especially the increasing use of suicide attack by terrorist groups from the early
1980s to the present. Modern suicide terrorist groups share a number of features. In general, they are
weaker than their opponents; their political goals, if not their tactics, are broadly supported by a
distinct national community; the militants have a close bond of loyalty to comrades and devotion to
leaders; and they have a system of initiation and rituals signifying an individual’s level of commitment
to the community. Modern suicide terrorist groups may receive material assistance from states that
share some of their political aspirations, but they are independent actors who rarely follow the
dictates of others blindly. Perhaps most important, modern suicide terrorism is highly lethal, because
the attackers’ purpose is not only to die, but to use their deaths to kill the maximum number of people
from the opposing community.
These commonalities make it possible to develop a general theory of modern suicide terrorism.
However, the account I offer for the origins of suicide terrorism should not be viewed as a general
explanation for terrorism as a whole. “Ordinary,” nonsuicide terrorism is significantly different. It
occurs under a wider variety of circumstances, for a wider variety of goals, with wider variation in
the use of destructive force and in sympathy from the terrorists’ national community. In addition,
nonsuicide terrorism is often used by groups far smaller than those using suicide terrorism.
Accordingly, we should not expect the same factors to account equally well for suicide and
nonsuicide terrorism. I have set aside the broader problem of terrorism in general in order to
concentrate on the specific causes of the deadlier threat, suicide terrorism.
WHAT IS SUICIDE TERRORISM?
Terrorism involves the use of violence by an organization other than a national government to
intimidate or frighten a target audience.1 In general, terrorism has two broad purposes: to gain
supporters and to coerce opponents.2 Most terrorist campaigns seek both outcomes to some extent,
often aiming to change the target state’s policies while simultaneously mobilizing support and recruits
for the terrorists’ cause. Sometimes terrorism directed at outsiders can also be a way of competing
with rival groups for support within the same social movement. However, there are trade-offs
between these objectives, and terrorists can strike various balances between them. These choices
represent different forms of terrorism, the most important of which are “demonstrative,”
“destructive,” and “suicide” terrorism.
“Demonstrative terrorism” is as much political theater as violence. It is directed mainly at gaining
publicity, for any or all of three reasons: to recruit more activists; to gain attention to grievances from
soft-liners on the other side; and to gain attention from third parties who might exert pressure on the
other side. Groups that emphasize ordinary, demonstrative terrorism include the Orange Volunteers
(Northern Ireland), National Liberation Army (Colombia), and Red Brigades (Italy).3 Hostage taking,
airline hijacking, and explosions announced in advance are generally intended to bring issues to the
attention of the target audience. In these cases, terrorists often avoid doing serious harm, so as not to
undermine sympathy for the political cause. Brian Jenkins captures the essence of demonstrative
terrorism: “terrorists want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead.”4
“Destructive terrorism” is more aggressive, seeking to coerce opponents with the threat of injury or
death as well as to mobilize support for the cause. Destructive terrorists seek to inflict real harm on
members of the target audience at the risk of losing sympathy for their cause. Exactly how groups
strike the balance between harm and sympathy depends on the nature of the political goal. For
instance, the Baader-Meinhof group selectively assassinated rich German industrialists, acts that
alienated certain segments of German society but not others. Palestinian terrorists in the 1970s often
sought to kill as many Israelis as possible, fully alienating Jewish society but still evoking sympathy
from Muslim communities. Other groups that emphasize destructive terrorism include the Irish
Republican Army, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and the nineteenth-century
Anarchists.5
“Suicide terrorism” is the most aggressive form of terrorism, pursuing coercion even at the expense
of angering not only the target community but neutral audiences as well. What distinguishes a suicide
terrorist is that the attacker does not expect to survive the mission and often employs a method of
attack (such as a car bomb, suicide vest, or ramming an airplane into a building) that requires his or
her death in order to succeed. In essence, suicide terrorists kill others at the same time that they kill
themselves.6
The classic model of “suicide attack” that we most commonly think of today includes only
situations in which the attacker kills himself or, increasingly among the Tamil Tigers and Palestinians,
herself. A broader definition could include any operation that is designed in such a way that the
terrorist does not expect to survive it, even if he or she is actually killed by police or other defenders.
We might call such operations suicide missions instead of suicide attacks. An example would be the
February 1994 Hebron Massacre: its perpetrator, Baruch Goldstein, had no plan for escape, left a
note indicating he did not expect to return, and simply continued killing Palestinians until some of his
victims brought him down. Such suicide missions have occurred in a number of conflicts, as in the
cases of Palestinians who invade Israeli settlements on the West Bank with guns and grenades,
intending to kill the inhabitants; few of these assailants escape alive.
This book counts only suicide attacks that meet the classic definition, partly because it is the
common understanding of the concept, and partly because suicide missions are hard to identify
reliably since we rarely know for certain that an attacker who did not kill himself or herself actually
expected to die. In any event, including those suicide missions of which we can be confident would
not change my basic findings.
In principle, suicide terrorism could be used for demonstrative purposes or could be limited to
targeted assassinations. In practice, however, recent suicide terrorists often seek simply to kill as
many people as they can. Although this maximizes the coercive leverage that can be gained from
terrorism, it does so at heavier cost than other forms of terrorism. Maximizing the number of enemy
killed alienates virtually everyone in the target audience, including those who might otherwise have
been sympathetic to the terrorists’ cause. In addition, the act of suicide creates a debate and often loss
of support among moderate segments of the terrorists’ community, although it may also attract support
among radical elements. Thus, while coercion can be one of the aims of any form of terrorism,
coercion is the paramount objective of suicide terrorism.
THE HISTORY OF SUICIDE TERRORISM
The forms of suicide terrorism that concern us most today—a driver detonating a car laden with
explosives near a large, inhabited building, or a person exploding a suicide vest in a busy
marketplace—were practically unknown before 1980. Instances of suicide terrorism did occur
earlier, although these were mainly suicide missions rather than suicide attacks, and were much less
common than they are now.
The three best known of these earlier suicide campaigns were those of the ancient Jewish Zealots,
the eleventh- and twelfth-century Assassins, and the Japanese kamikazes during World War II.7
The world’s first suicide terrorists were probably two militant Jewish revolutionary groups, the
Zealots and the Sicarii.8 Determined to liberate Judea from Roman occupation, these groups used
violence to provoke a popular uprising—which historians credit with precipitating the “Jewish War”
of A.D. 66—committing numerous public assassinations and other audacious acts of violence in Judea
from approximately 4 B.C. to A.D. 70. They attacked their victims in broad daylight in the heart of
Jerusalem and other centers using small, sicklelike daggers (sicae in Latin) concealed under their
cloaks. Many of these must have been suicide missions, since the killers were often immediately
captured and put to death—typically tortured and then crucified or burned alive.9
One of the earliest attacks was an attempt by ten Jewish Zealots to assassinate Herod, the ruler of
Judea installed by Rome, for his role in establishing a set of institutions (such as the gymnasium and
the arena, and the display of graven images of Roman emperors) that were particularly inimical to
Jewish custom and law. Although the plot ultimately failed, the account of what happened when the
Jews were brought before Herod presents a remarkable picture of individuals willing to die to
complete their violent mission. As Josephus, the main historian of the period, says:
They openly displayed their daggers and freely confessed that the conspiracy was justified and had taken place . . . not because of
a desire for gain . . . but rather for the sake of communal customs . . . for which one is prepared to give up one’s life. . . . After
they had confessed their plot so openly, they were led away and, after they had endured every kind of torture, put to death.10
The Ismaili Assassins, a Shi’ite Muslim sect based in northwestern Iran in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries, created an effective organization for the planned, systematic, and long-term use of political
murder that relied on suicide missions for success. For two centuries, the Assassins’ daggers
terrorized and demoralized the mainly Sunni rulers of the region as well as leaders of Christian
Crusader states, chalking up more than fifty dramatic murders and inspiring a new word:
“assassination.” Most of the Assassins’ victims were political and military leaders who were so
heavily guarded that even successful attackers would almost surely have to pay for that success with
their lives. What made the Assassins so lethal was that their killers were willing to die to accomplish
their missions and often, rather than attempting to escape, reveled in their impending death. The first
successful Assassin, who killed the vizier to the Great Sultan Malikshah of Persia in 1092, exclaimed
before himself being killed: “The killing of this devil is the beginning of bliss.” Subsequent Assassins
undertook suicide missions with similar enthusiasm.11 These killers were routinely highly trained in
the art of murder, planned clever stratagems to gain access to their victims, and also routinely
expected to be caught, made no effort to escape, and considered that to survive a mission was
shameful.
The Japanese kamikazes in World War II are not normally considered terrorists because they
targeted solely soldiers and sailors, not civilians, and because their actions were directed and
authorized by a recognized national government. History records many cases of individual soldiers
who continued to fight for their country under certain-death circumstances or who, in response to a
sudden threat, sacrificed themselves to save others; indeed, such sacrifice is part of our common
definition of military heroism. The kamikaze program, however, was organized, planned, and
persistent, not a series of individual responses to battlefield emergencies. Desperate to stop the
advance of the American invasion fleet which was approaching from the Philippines, from July 1944
onward the Japanese high command organized a variety of “special attack” organizations whose
pilots—commonly called kamikazes—agreed to crash their airplanes, gliders, and even manned
torpedoes into U.S. naval vessels. Kamikaze raids continued for ten months, from October 25, 1944,
until Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945. In total, some 3,843 pilots gave their lives. These suicide
attacks did not stop the Americans, but they were four to five times more deadly than conventional
strike missions and did impose high costs on the invasion forces. They damaged or sank at least 375
U.S. naval vessels, killed 12,300 American servicemen, and wounded another 36,400.12
Between 1945 and 1980, suicide attacks temporarily disappeared from the world scene. Although
there were numerous acts of suicide by individuals in the service of political causes, there is not a
single recorded instance of a suicide terrorist killing others while killing himself.
Famous self-immolations and hunger strikes did occur, but these were mainly demonstrative acts
intended to evoke political sympathy and involved little risk of harming others. Mahatma Gandhi
staged numerous hunger strikes against British rule in India, including in 1947; these events evoked
sympathy from the British public and may have hastened Indian independence. In South Vietnam
during the 1960s, Buddhist monks and nuns burned themselves to death in protest against religious
persecution by the regime of the Catholic president, Ngo Dinh Diem. These horrific suicides inspired
as many as 20,000 South Vietnamese to take to the streets in Saigon to demand the formation of a new
government and the withdrawal of American forces. On January 19, 1969, in Czechoslovakia, a
philosophy student, Jan Palach, burned himself alive in Prague’s Wenceslas Square to protest the
recent Soviet invasion, a dramatic suicide that brought hundreds of thousands of people into the
streets. In 1981, Bobby Sands and nine other Irish Republican Army prisoners died during a hunger
strike. They failed to achieve their announced aim of compelling the British government to accord
political status to IRA prisoners, but had the larger effects of strengthening Catholic perception of the
British government as callous and of swelling IRA recruitment.13
Modern suicide terrorism—in which the attackers kill others and themselves at the same time—got
its start in Lebanon the early 1980s and differs from its historical precursors in one striking way.
Previously, there had rarely or never been more than one suicide terrorist campaign active at the same
time. Only in recent years has suicide terrorism emerged as a tool of political coercion used by
multiple actors across the globe at the same time. Suicide terrorism is increasing, both in the raw
numbers of attacks and in geographical spread from one region to another.
Although not the very first modern instance, the suicide car bombing by the terrorist group called
Hezbollah of the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon on October 23, 1983, was so spectacular—killing
241 soldiers, demolishing the building, and coinciding with a near-simultaneous second attack that
killed fifty-eight French troops—that the event dominated media headlines for weeks, consumed
Western national leaders for months, and encouraged terrorist groups from Hamas to the Tamil Tigers
to al-Qaeda to adopt this method of attack. Hezbollah would go on to chalk up a total of thirty-six
suicide attacks against American, French, and Israeli targets during the 1980s.
In the 1990s, suicide terrorism spread to several additional countries. Starting in July 1990, the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam began a series of suicide attacks against Sri Lankan political
leaders, military targets, and civilians, as well as using a suicide attacker to kill former prime
minister Rajiv Gandhi. Suicide terrorism also spread to Israel in 1994, when the Palestinian terrorist
groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad started to use suicide attacks against Israeli civilians and troops; to
the Persian Gulf in 1995, when al-Qaeda initiated suicide attacks against American military targets in
the region; and to Turkey in 1996, when the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) began suicide attacks
against Turkish military and government targets.
Suicide terrorism spread further during the first years of the twenty-first century. Suicide attacks
continued in Sri Lanka, Israel, and the Persian Gulf, and began to occur in new regions of the world.
In 2000 and 2001, rebel groups in Chechnya launched suicide attacks against Russian targets, rebels
in Kashmir conducted similar attacks against Indian targets, and al-Qaeda escalated its operations
with the most spectacular suicide attack in history, the direct attack on the United States on September
11, 2001.
Altogether, between 1980 and 2003 there were 315 suicide terrorist attacks worldwide, of which
301 were carried out as parts of eighteen organized coercive campaigns—that is, each a series of
attacks that the terrorist leaders explained as aimed at gaining specific political concessions from a
named target government, and which continued until the terrorist leaders deliberately abandoned the
effort, either because sufficient gains were achieved or because the leaders became convinced that the
effort had failed. Five suicide terrorist campaigns were still ongoing as of the beginning of 2004.
THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
Although terrorism has long been part of international politics, we do not have good explanations for
the growing phenomenon of suicide terrorism. Traditional studies of terrorism tend to treat suicide
attack as one of many tactics that terrorists use, and so do not shed much light on the recent rise of this
type of attack.14 The small number of studies that explicitly address suicide terrorism tend to focus on
the irrationality of the act of suicide from the perspective of the individual attacker. As a result, they
focus on individual motives for suicide—either religious indoctrination, or psychological
predispositions that might drive individual suicide attackers.15 This work is important and largely
accounts for the twin explanations commonly offered in academic and journalistic accounts—that is,
that suicide terrorism is a product either of indoctrination into Islamic fundamentalism or of the
suicidal inclinations of individuals who would likely end their lives in any event.16
The first-wave explanations of suicide terrorism were developed during the 1980s and were
consistent with the data from that period. However, as suicide attacks mounted from the 1990s
onward, it has become increasing evident that these initial explanations are insufficient to account for
which individuals become suicide terrorists and, more important, why terrorist organizations
increasingly rely on this form of attack.
First, although religious motives may matter and although Islamic groups receive the most attention
in Western media, modern suicide terrorism is not limited to Islamic fundamentalism. As shown in
Table 1, the explicitly antireligious Tamil Tigers have committed 76 of the 315 suicide attacks, more
than any other group; they are responsible for the spectacular bombing of the World Trade Center in
Colombo in 1997 and the assassinations of two heads of state, Rajiv Gandhi of India and Ranasinghe
Premadasa of Sri Lanka.
Even among Muslims, secular groups account for over a third of suicide attacks. The Kurdish PKK,
which has used suicide bombers as part of its strategy to achieve Kurdish autonomy, is guided by the
secular Marxist-Leninist ideology of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, rather than by Islam. Even in the
conflicts most characterized by Islamic fundamentalism, groups with secular ideologies account for
an important number of suicide attacks. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a MarxistLeninist
group, and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, with allegiance to Yasser Arafat’s socialist Fatah
movement, together account for thirty-one of ninety-two suicide attacks against Israel, while
communist and socialist groups, such as the secular Lebanese National Resistance Front, the
Lebanese Communist Party, and the Syrian National Socialist Party, account for twenty-seven of
thirty-six suicide attacks in Lebanon in the 1980s.
Overall, Islamic fundamentalism is associated with about half of the suicide terrorist attacks that
have occurred from 1980 to 2003.17
Second, psychological explanations cannot explain why suicide terrorism occurs only in certain
societies and at certain times. While suicide rates vary from one society to another, they do not vary
enough to explain why the overwhelming majority of societies—even those experiencing political
violence—exhibit no suicide terrorism but a handful of societies have experienced dozens of attacks
each. This requires a political or social explanation. Similarly, while the supply of suicidal
individuals may vary somewhat over time, psychological explanations cannot account for why over
95 percent of all suicide terrorist attacks occur in organized campaigns that are concentrated in time.
Further, the demographic profile of suicide terrorist attackers does not fit the usual profile of suicidal
individuals. Until recently, the leading experts in psychological profiles of suicide terrorists
characterized them as uneducated, unemployed, socially isolated, single men in their late teens and
early twenties.18 This study, however, collects comprehensive data on the demographic
characteristics of suicide terrorist attackers (see Chapter 10), which shows that they have been
college educated and uneducated, married and single, men and women, isolated and socially
integrated; they have ranged in age from fifteen to fifty-two.19 In other words, suicide terrorists come
from a broad array of lifestyles. Some may exhibit suicidal tendencies as these are conventionally
understood, but many do not.
Recently, new explanations for suicide terrorism have begun to appear. Some have wondered
whether suicide terrorism is a product of especially deep poverty or domestic political competition
among various nonstate actors. The idea that suicide terrorism results from poverty is intuitively
attractive. It is easier to accept that individuals with little to live for would be more willing to
commit suicide than those with meaningful lives ahead of them, especially since suicide terrorism has
emerged from Third World societies, all of which are poorer than Western societies.
As scholars have shown, however, poverty is a rather poor explanation for suicide terrorism.20 A
brief look at the international economic facts of life helps to explain why, especially if we control for
the likely perturbing effects of the U.S. war on terrorism that led to the conquest of Afghanistan in
2001 and Iraq in 2003. As Table 2 shows, the countries plagued by suicide terrorism from 1980 to
2001 are by no means the worst off in the world; some would be considered “middle income”
societies, and their people enjoy life expectancies not dramatically lower than those in the United
States.
Table 3 shows economic statistics for a dozen of the most economically hopeless states in the
world, but neither these nor any of the forty-four countries that rank below India in gross national
product were associated with even a single suicide terrorist attack during this period.
Even if we include the countries associated with suicide terrorism after the U.S. war on terrorism
began, poverty remains a poor indicator of suicide terrorism. As Table 4 shows, of the five new
countries that would be added to the list of those associated with suicide terrorism, only Afghanistan
would be considered among the poorest forty-four countries (of 206) in the world.
The final explanation that has recently emerged is that suicide terrorism is a product of domestic
competition among multiple organizations for popular support from their community. What this
explanation has going for it is that it appears to correlate with some facts from the Palestinian case.21
Starting in 1994, two separate radical groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, began to conduct suicide
terrorist attacks that were rarely coordinated with each other and, starting in 2000, the al-Aqsa
Martyrs Brigades and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine launched suicide terrorist
attacks as well.
However, there are good reasons to doubt that domestic political competition among rival groups
is an adequate explanation either for the Palestinian case in particular or suicide terrorism in general.
Even if domestic competition accounts for why multiple Palestinian groups are engaged in suicide
terrorism and even if these groups are striving to outbid each other for popular support from the local
community, this does not explain why suicide terrorism is so popular among the Palestinian
population in the first place.22 More important, there are many societies in which multiple violent
groups compete for domestic political support without their competition leading to suicide terrorism
—for instance, Somalia, Colombia, El Salvador, Nigeria, and Nicaragua—while the vast majority of
cases of suicide terrorism are not associated with competition among multiple extremist
organizations. The Tamil Tigers and al-Qaeda had no competitors during the periods they carried out
suicide attacks, while the multiple groups that made up Hezbollah in Lebanon worked together rather
than in competition with each other.
THE STRATEGIC LOGIC OF SUICIDE TERRORISM
What causes suicide terrorism? To answer this question, we must recognize that modern suicide
terrorism occurs mainly in campaigns of suicide attacks carried out by organized groups for specific
political goals and extending over a considerable period of time. So the core phenomenon to be
explained is not an individual suicide attack, or even many such attacks considered one at a time, but
the existence of protracted suicide terrorist campaigns. Although the motives of individual attackers
matter, the crucial need is an explanation of the political, social, and individual conditions that jointly
account for why suicide terrorist campaigns persist, why so many are occurring now, and why they
occur where and when they do.
To explain suicide terrorism, it is helpful to think of a suicide terrorist campaign as the product of a
three-step process, to explain each step individually, and to provide a unifying framework for the
causal logic as a whole. The three principal questions are these.
First, what is the strategic logic of suicide terrorism? That is, why does suicide attack make
political sense from the perspective of a terrorist organization? If terrorist organizations did not
believe that suicide attack would advance their political goals, they would not do it.
Second, what is the social logic of suicide terrorism? Why does suicide attack receive mass
support in some societies and not others? Without social support from the terrorists’ national
community, suicide terrorist campaigns could not be sustained.
Third, what is the individual logic of suicide terrorism? What makes particular people willing to
give up their lives to carry out terrorist attacks? Without a ready supply of willing attackers, suicide
terrorist campaigns would be much more limited in scope than they are.
Suicide terrorism depends for its existence on all three of these components—the strategic, the
social, and the individual.23 The diagram on the following page illustrates the general framework for
the causal logic of suicide terrorism and supplies a brief summary of the principal mechanisms at
work in each level of analysis.
The strategic logic of suicide terrorism is aimed at political coercion. The vast majority of suicide
terrorist attacks are not isolated or random acts by individual fanatics, but rather occur in clusters as
part of a larger campaign by an organized group to achieve a specific political goal. Moreover, the
main goals of suicide terrorist groups are profoundly of this world. Suicide terrorist campaigns are
primarily nationalistic, not religious, nor are they particularly Islamic. From Hezbollah in Lebanon to
Hamas on the West Bank to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka, every group mounting
a suicide campaign over the past two decades has had as a major objective—or as its central
objective—coercing a foreign state that has military forces in what the terrorists see as their
homeland to take those forces out. Further, all of the target states have been democracies, which
terrorists see as more vulnerable to coercion than other types of regimes. Even al-Qaeda fits this
pattern. Osama bin Laden’s highest-priority objective—although he has others—is the expulsion of
U.S. troops from the Persian Gulf region. Terrorists loyal to al-Qaeda routinely attack American
troops, individuals from Western countries, and governments friendly to the West in Saudi Arabia and
other Gulf states.
CAUSAL LOGIC OF SUICIDE TERRORISM
*Altruistic suicides are those committed to further a goal that the individual’s community supports; they are to be distinguished from
egoistic suicides, which are committed to escape a life that has become intolerable. See Chapter 9.
There is a disturbing reason why suicide terrorism has been rising so rapidly: over the past two
decades, suicide terrorists have learned that this strategy pays. Suicide terrorists sought to compel
American and French military forces to abandon Lebanon in 1983, Israeli forces to leave Lebanon in
1985, Israeli forces to quit the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in 1994 and 1995, the Sri Lankan
government to create an independent Tamil state from 1990 on, and the Turkish government to grant
autonomy to the Kurds in the late 1990s. In all but the case of Turkey, the terrorists’ political cause
made more gains after the resort to suicide operations than it had before.
Second, suicide terrorism follows a social logic strikingly different from what many assume.
Suicide terrorist groups are neither primarily criminal gangs dedicated to enriching their top leaders,
nor religious cults isolated from the rest of their society. Rather, suicide terrorist organizations often
command broad social support within the national communities from which they recruit, because they
are seen as pursuing legitimate nationalist goals, especially liberation from foreign occupation.
Although suicide terrorism is virtually always a response to foreign occupation, only some
occupations lead to this result. Suicide terrorism is most likely when the occupying power’s religion
differs from the religion of the occupied, for three reasons. A conflict across a religious divide
increases fears that the enemy will seek to transform the occupied society; makes demonization, and
therefore killing, of enemy civilians easier; and makes it easier to use one’s own religion to relabel
suicides that would otherwise be taboo as martyrdom instead.
Finally, what motivates individual suicide terrorists? Are suicide attackers driven by economic
helplessness, social anomie, religious indoctrination, or something else? Not all suicides arise from
similar causes. Emile Durkheim’s famous study of suicide in nineteenth-century Europe showed that
there are multiple forms of suicide. The most common is “egoistic suicide,” in which personal
psychological trauma leads an individual to kill himself in order to escape a painful existence. Less
common is “altruistic suicide,” in which high levels of social integration and respect for community
values can lead normal individuals to commit suicide out of a sense of duty. Many, perhaps most,
suicide terrorists fit the paradigm of altruistic suicide, at least from the point of view of those who
support terrorism to further their political cause. From everyone else’s point of view, suicide attacks
are murders.
Few suicide attackers are social misfits, criminally insane, or professional losers. Most fit a nearly
opposite profile: typically they are psychologically normal, have better than average economic
prospects for their communities, and are deeply integrated into social networks and emotionally
attached to their national communities. They see themselves as sacrificing their lives for the nation’s
good.
The bottom line, then, is that suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation. Isolated
incidents in other circumstances do occur. Religion plays a role. However, modern suicide terrorism
is best understood as an extreme strategy for national liberation against democracies with troops that
pose an imminent threat to control the territory the terrorists view as their homeland.
Understanding the strategic, social, and individual logics of suicide terrorism has important
implications for America’s war on terrorism. Our current policy debate is misguided. Neither
offensive military force nor concessions alone are likely to work for long. The key problem we face
is that our security depends on achieving not one goal, but two: we must defeat the current pool of
terrorists seeking to launch spectacular attacks against the United States and our allies, while
simultaneously undermining the conditions that will otherwise produce the next, potentially larger
generation of terrorists. Accomplishing this overall purpose will require a new strategy for victory;
that strategy must recognize that a trade-off exists between our two objectives, because the use of
heavy offensive force to defeat today’s terrorists is the most likely stimulus to the rise of more.
September 11 has changed the lives of Americans. Every day, many wonder if each airplane,
building, or bus they see could be a danger to them or their families. When people themselves are
weapons of war, it is hard to be confident of safety. However, the future need not be grim.
Understanding the logic of suicide terrorism can help us pursue the right domestic and foreign
policies to contain this deadly threat.
PART I
THE
STRATEGIC
LOGIC
OF
SUICIDE
TERRORISM
3
A Strategy for Weak Actors
MOST SUICIDE TERRORISM is undertaken as a strategic effort directed toward particular political
goals; it is not simply the product of irrational individuals or an expression of fanatical hatreds. The
main purpose of suicide terrorism is to use the threat of punishment to compel a target government to
change policy, and most especially to cause democratic states to withdraw forces from land the
terrorists perceive as their national homeland.
It is true that suicide terrorist organizations often have additional goals, such as Hamas’s aim to
build a religious state in Palestine or al-Qaeda’s aim to do the same on the Arabian Peninsula. The
existence of these ultimate goals, however, should not distract us from the fact that the proximate,
operational goal of suicide operations is to gain control of territory. Neither side’s views about the
desirability of additional terrorist goals would matter unless the terrorists first succeed in forcing the
occupying power to leave.
THE STRATEGIC VALUE OF AN ATTACKER’S WILLINGNESS TO DIE
At its core, suicide terrorism is a strategy of coercion, a means to compel a target government to
change policy. The central logic of this strategy is simple: suicide terrorism attempts to inflict enough
pain on the opposing society to overwhelm its interest in resisting the terrorists’ demands, and so to
induce the government to concede, or the population to revolt against the government. The common
feature of all suicide terrorist campaigns is that they inflict punishment on the opposing society, either
directly by killing civilians or indirectly by killing military personnel in circumstances that cannot
lead to meaningful battlefield victory. As we shall see, suicide terrorism is rarely a onetime event,
but often occurs in a series of suicide attacks. It generates coercive leverage both from the immediate
panic associated with each attack and from the risk of punishment of innocents in the future.
Suicide terrorists’ willingness to die magnifies the coercive effects of punishment in three ways.
First, suicide attacks are generally more destructive than other terrorist attacks. An attacker who is
willing to die is much more likely to accomplish the mission and to cause maximum damage to the
target. Suicide attackers can conceal weapons on their own bodies and make last-minute adjustments
more easily than ordinary terrorists. They are also better able to infiltrate heavily guarded targets,
because they do not need escape plans or rescue teams. Suicide attackers are also able to use certain
especially destructive methods such as “suicide vests” and ramming vehicles into targets. The 315
suicide terrorist attacks from 1980 to 2003 killed an average of 12 people each, not counting the
unusually large number of fatalities on September 11 and also not counting the attackers themselves.
During the same period, there were about 4,155 total terrorist incidents worldwide, which killed
3,207 people (also excluding September 11), or less than one person per incident. Overall, from 1980
to 2003, suicide attacks amount to 3 percent of all terrorist attacks, but account for 48 percent of total
deaths due to terrorism, once again excluding September 11.1
Second, suicide attacks are an especially convincing way to signal the likelihood of more pain to
come, because suicide itself is a costly signal, one that suggests that the attackers could not have been
deterred by a threat of costly retaliation. Organizations that sponsor suicide attacks can also
deliberately orchestrate the circumstances around the death of a suicide attacker to further increase
expectations of future attacks. This can be called the “art of martyrdom.”2 The more suicide terrorists
justify their actions on the basis of religious or ideological motives that match the beliefs of a broader
national community, the more the status of terrorist martyrs is elevated, and the more plausible it
becomes that others will follow in their footsteps. Suicide terrorist organizations commonly cultivate
“sacrificial myths” that include elaborate sets of symbols and rituals to mark an individual attacker’s
death as a contribution to the nation. Suicide attackers’ families also often receive material rewards
both from the terrorist organizations and from other supporters. As a result, the art of martyrdom
elicits popular support from the terrorists’ community, reducing the moral backlash that suicide
attacks might otherwise produce, and so establishes the foundation for credible signaling of more
attacks to come.
Third, suicide terrorist organizations are better positioned than other terrorist groups to heighten
expectations of escalating future costs by deliberately violating norms in the use of violence. They can
do this by crossing thresholds of damage, by breaching taboos concerning legitimate targets, and by
broadening recruitment to confound expectations about limits on the number of possible terrorists.
The element of suicide itself helps increase the credibility of future attacks, because it suggests that
attackers cannot be deterred. Although the capture and conviction of Timothy McVeigh gave reason
for some confidence that others with similar political views might be deterred, the deaths of the
September 11 hijackers did not, because Americans would have to expect that future al-Qaeda
attackers would be equally willing to die.
LOGIC OF COERCION BY WEAK ACTORS
Suicide terrorism does not occur under the same circumstances as military coercion used by states,
and these structural differences help to explain the logic of the strategy. In virtually all instances of
international military coercion, the coercer is the stronger state and the target is the weaker state;
otherwise, the coercer would likely be deterred or simply unable to execute the threats. Under these
circumstances, coercers have a choice between two main coercive strategies: punishment and denial.
Punishment seeks to coerce by raising the costs or risks to the target society to a level that
overwhelms the value of the interests in dispute. Denial seeks to coerce by demonstrating to the target
state that it simply cannot win the dispute regardless of its level of effort, and that therefore fighting to
a finish is pointless—for example, because the coercer has the ability to conquer the disputed
territory. Hence, although coercers may initially rely on punishment, they often have the resources to
create a formidable threat to deny the opponent victory in battle and, if necessary, to achieve a bruteforce
military victory if the target government refuses to change its behavior. The Allied bombing of
Germany in World War II, American bombing of North Vietnam in 1972, and Coalition attacks
against Iraq in 1991 all fit this pattern.3
Suicide terrorism (and terrorism in general) occurs under the reverse structural conditions. In
suicide terrorism, the coercer is the weaker actor and the target is the stronger. Although some
elements of the situation remain the same, flipping the stronger and weaker sides in a coercive dispute
has a dramatic change on the relative feasibility of punishment and denial. In these circumstances,
denial is impossible, because military conquest is ruled out by relative weakness.
This accounts for why suicide terrorism often appears as a weapon of last resort. When rebels are
strong enough to achieve their territorial aims through conventional or guerrilla means alone, there is
little reason for them to accept the disapproval and costs that follow from resorting to suicide
terrorism. Thus, it is not surprising that although some groups using suicide terrorism have received
important external support, and some have been strong enough to wage guerrilla military campaigns
as well as terrorism, none have been strong enough to have any serious prospect of achieving their
political goals by conquest. The suicide terrorist group with the most significant military capacity has
been the LTTE, but it has not had a real chance of controlling the whole of the homeland that it claims,
including the Eastern and Northern Provinces of Sri Lanka.
So the only coercive strategy available to suicide terrorists is punishment. Although the element of
“suicide” is novel and the pain inflicted on civilians is often spectacular and gruesome, the heart of
suicide terrorism’s strategy is the same as the coercive logic used by states when they employ air
power or economic sanctions to punish an adversary: to cause mounting civilian costs to overwhelm
the target state’s interest in the issue in dispute and so to cause it to concede the terrorists’ political
demands. What creates the coercive leverage is not so much actual damage as the expectation of
future damage. Targets may be economic or political, military or civilian, but in all cases the main
task is less to destroy the specific targets than to convince the opposing society that it is vulnerable to
more attacks in the future. These features also make suicide terrorism convenient for retaliation, a titfor-tat
interaction that generally occurs between terrorists and the defending government.4
The rhetoric of major suicide terrorist groups reflects the logic of coercive punishment.
Hezbollah’s “Open Letter” of February 1985, the principal statement defining the purpose of the
movement, said that its “great and necessary objectives” were “to put an end to foreign occupation
and to adopt a regime freely wanted by the people of Lebanon” and “to expel the Americans, the
French and their allies definitely from Lebanon, putting an end to any colonialist entity on our land.”5
In late 1985, Ayatollah Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah, a spiritual leader of Hezbollah,
stressed the coercive value of suicide attack: “We believe that suicide operations should only be
carried out if they can bring about a political or military change in proportion to the passions that
incite a person to make of his body an explosive bomb.”6
Hamas’s first communiqué, of December 14, 1987, proclaimed the general purpose of resistance
as follows: “The intifada of our vigilant people in the Occupied Territories comes as a resounding
rejection of the occupation and its pressures, land confiscation and the planting of settlements, and the
policy of subjugation by the Zionists. . . . Let the reckless settlers beware. Our people know the way
of sacrifice and martyrdom and are generous in this regard. . . . Let them understand that violence
breeds nothing but violence and death bestows but death.” Similarly, the Hamas Charter of 1988
states, “If an enemy invades Muslim territories, then Jihad and fighting the enemy becomes an
individual duty on every Muslim.”7
Abdel Karim, a leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militant group linked to Yasser Arafat’s
Fatah movement, said the goal of his group was “to increase losses in Israel to a point at which the
Israeli public would demand a withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”8
Each year, the leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Velupillai Prabhakaran, gives a
speech to mark the anniversary of the “Heroes’ Day”—July 5, 1987, the day of the first suicide attack
by the LTTE. Although these speeches vary according to the events of the year, each year the core
message stresses the relationship between achieving the goal of liberation from Sinhalese occupation
and the willingness of the LTTE cadres to sacrifice themselves for this goal. In 1997, Prabhakaran
said, “Our martyrs were extraordinary human beings. They chose the noble cause of liberating our
people. Having lived and struggled for such a cause they finally sacrificed their precious lives for that
higher ideal. . . . Let us continue to struggle to expel the enemy forces who have occupied our sacred
land.”9
In December 2003, Chechnya’s rebel commander, Abu al-Walid al-Ghamidi, said, “As you have
seen and noticed, most of the suicide attacks were carried out by women. . . . These women,
particularly the wives of the mujahedin who were martyred, are being threatened in their homes, their
honour and everything are being threatened. They do not accept being humiliated and living under
occupation.”10
Al-Qaeda’s infamous fatwa against the United States, signed by Osama bin Laden and others,
reads: “The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies—civilians and military—is an individual
duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate
the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to
move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim.”11
There is also strong evidence that the leaders of terrorist groups view the offensive use of suicide
attack as a means to compensate for the relative military weakness of their groups compared with
their opponents.
In 1985, Daud Daud, a leader of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, said: “We are prepared to
sacrifice our lives—literally blow ourselves up in opposition to their tanks. . . . Since we cannot fight
the enemy with weapons, we have to sacrifice our lives. And this is what is happening right now in
South Lebanon.”
Sayeed Siyam, a Hamas leader in Gaza, said, “We in Hamas consider suicide bombing attacks
inside the 1948 borders”—inside Israel—“to be the card that Palestinians can play to resist the
occupation. . . . We do not own Apache helicopters ourselves, so we use our own methods. Given the
methods used by the Israelis, we consider the door to hell is open. Their assassination policy and the
bombardment—all this theater of war inside Palestinian villages and homes—we respond to that by
seeking to make Israelis feel the same, insecure inside their homes.”12
In 1995, the secretary general of Islamic Jihad, Fathi al-Shaqaqi, said, “Martyrdom actions will
escalate in the face of all pressures. . . . [they] are a realistic option in confronting the unequal
balance of power. If we are unable to effect a balance of power now, we can achieve a balance of
horror.”13
In 1997, the Tamil Tigers’ political spokesman, S. Thamilchelvan, gave an interview in which he
explained that the group devised the use of suicide bombing as a means to compensate for the Tamils’
numerical disadvantage—their population is about one-fourth that of the majority Sinhalese—and to
more effectively attack the Sinhalese military and political leadership. The goal, Thamilchelvan said,
was “to ensure maximum damage done with minimum loss of life.”14 The Tigers’ leader,
Prabhakaran, has also singled out the group’s suicide commandos. In a major speech in 1998, he said,
“In terms of manpower, firepower and resources, the enemy was strong and the balance of military
power was in his favor. Yet we had an extraordinary weapon which was not in the arsenal of the
enemy. The courage and commitment of our fighters was our most powerful weapon in the battle.”15
Similarly, he said, “The Black Tigers [suicide squad] are the self-protective armor of our race. They
are the men of flame who can destroy the enemy’s armed strength.”16
EARLIER CASES ALSO HAD COERCIVE GOALS
The best known suicide operations before 1980 also had coercive aims. The Zealots, the Assassins,
and the kamikazes all sought to coerce their political opponents, either to remove foreign military
forces from their homeland or to prevent imminent military invasions.
The Zealots and Sicarii
Information about the first-century Jewish Zealots and Sicarii is scant. Although we know that they
numbered in the “hundreds” and committed “numerous daily murders,” we lack important knowledge
about the groups’ organizational structure and attack doctrines, and do not have a solid basis for
estimating the total number of people who would have considered themselves members of these
groups.
However, we do have a reasonably clear understanding of the Zealots’ and Sicarii’s strategic
logic. According to scholars of the period, the Zealots and Sicarii adopted a strategy of violent
attacks designed to provoke a massive uprising among the Jewish population against the Roman
occupation. As David C. Rapoport summarizes it, “Consecutive atrocities continually narrowed
prospects for a political, more mutually agreeable, solution, serving to destroy the credibility of
moderates on both sides while steadily expanding the conflict.”17
After decades of attacks, which provoked steadily escalating Roman retaliatory responses, the
Zealots and Sicarii succeeded in generating two large-scale popular uprisings. These uprisings
triggered the Jewish War of A.D. 66, a bloody four-year struggle that ultimately led to the destruction
of the Temple in Jerusalem, extermination of the large Jewish centers in Egypt and Cyprus, and the
traumatic exodus of the Jews from Judea.18
For the Zealots and Sicarii, the Jewish War ended at Masada. Rather than submit to Roman rule
and, after years of war, probable murder, rape, and slavery, some 960 members of these groups chose
to commit what remains the most famous group suicide in history. Their motives, however, were at
least as much personal as political. The leader of the Sicarii, Eleazar, is said to have given the
following speech just as the Romans were preparing for the final assault on the fortress:
This grace has been given to us by God, namely to be able to die nobly and freely. . . . Only our shared death is able to protect our
wives and children from violation and slavery. . . . We, who have been brought up at home in this way, should set an example to
others in our readiness to die. . . . This—suicide—is commanded by our laws. Our wives and children ask for it. God himself has
sent us the necessity for it.19
The Assassins
Like the Zealots, the Ismaili Assassins have several features in common with modern suicide terrorist
groups: they were weak relative to their opponents; they were the militant arm of a broader,
geographically distinct community with widely shared beliefs and practices; they had a close bond of
loyalty to comrades and devotion to leaders; and they had a system of initiation and rituals signifying
an individual’s level of commitment to the community.
The Assassins also exploited their reputation as suicide killers for coercive purposes. Although the
overarching political program of the Assassins was to overthrow the existing Sunni order and to
establish the dominance of their own rulers, whom they believed to be more true to Islam, the
Assassins frequently used the threat of suicide attack to compel Sunni rulers to abandon military
campaigns against their strongholds and even to strike long-lasting peaceful settlements.
Territorial control was a key element of the Assassins’ program. Living in the remote Elburz
mountains of northern Iran, an area with many castles and a sympathetic Ismaili population, the
Assassins succeeded, as the historian Bernard Lewis writes, “in creating what was virtually a
territorial state.”20 Numerous sultans in Persia and Iraq sought to uproot the Ismaili menace by
military force only to find themselves meeting the Assassins’ daggers or accepting a negotiated
settlement. In 1118, a new sultan awoke to find an ornate dagger stuck in the ground beside his bed
and found a message from the Assassins’ leader: “Did I not wish the Sultan well, that dagger which
was struck into the hard ground would have been planted in his soft breast.” The sultan did not attack
the Assassins for the remainder of his ten-year rule.21 This pattern of threatened or actual
assassinations followed by mutual nonaggression pacts continued until the Mongols invaded Iran and
exterminated virtually the entire Ismaili population in the Elburz mountains in 1258.
The Kamikazes
The Japanese kamikazes during World War II were regular military forces and therefore are not
normally considered terrorists, although they also used suicide attack for coercive purposes.
Specifically, the kamikazes’ aim was not to defeat the American invasion forces, but to impose such
high costs on the attacking fleet that the United States would settle for a negotiated outcome to the
war. The name “kamikaze” derives from the “Divine Wind” that was said to have turned back a
Mongol invasion fleet in the thirteenth century. The purpose of the “special attack” squadrons was
similar, as Hichiro Naemura, a former instructor of kamikaze pilots, explained:
I did not believe we could win the war against the overwhelmingly powerful enemy, no matter how well we fought. . . . Our
special kamikaze tactics could delay the enemy’s advance towards our homeland and inflict severe damage upon him. By delaying
his encroachment we hoped that the enemy would agree to negotiate a truce.22
For Japanese leaders, suicide attack was a last resort. The first major plan for “body-crashing”
attacks was Rear Admiral Kameto Kuroshima’s “Invincible War Preparation” plan, which was
rejected in July 1943 by a conference of high-ranking officers who believed that they could defeat the
Allied forces in regular combat. However, with the fall of Saipan in July 1944 and the growing fear
that Japan’s defense perimeter would collapse island by island, the Japanese high command
reconsidered the earlier decision. Military leaders met on July 7, 1944, and ordered new designs for
planes intended specifically for suicide missions. In mid-September, a proposal for new forms of
attack stated: “The primary concern was to inflict maximum destruction on the enemy; it mattered
little whether the pilots had to be sacrificed or not.”23 The leading advocate of these new forms of
attack, Vice Admiral Takijiro Onishi, took command of Japan’s land-based air forces in the
Philippines on October 17, and, within days, formed the first kamikaze squadrons, which just days
later attacked American carriers and other vessels during the great naval battle of Leyte Gulf. As
Onishi explained to his senior staff officers, the only chance Japanese surface forces had to counter
the invasion was to “neutralize” the U.S. carriers for at least a week, and this could only be done one
way: “suicide attack units composed of Zero fighters armed with 250kg bombs, with each plane to
crash-dive into an enemy carrier.”24
Kamikaze pilots were also motivated by the belief that their sacrifice would enable Japan to avoid
occupation by the United States. These individuals, who were generally graduates of special training
programs for pilots or universities, often kept extensive diaries, many of which have been published.
Special attack pilots volunteered for their missions. Although social pressure may have contributed to
why individuals willingly stepped forward, the common explanation they give for why such missions
were important was that suicide attack was the only way to stave off American occupation. Shortly
before his death, one pilot wrote in his diary: “We must fight to the end so that the Japanese can
create a new era by the Japanese ourselves. We cannot succumb to the ‘red hair and blue eyes.’ “25
Similarly, Wada Minoru wrote, shortly before volunteering to be a special attack pilot:
Perhaps there is no other way to make a break-through [for Japan in the war] except by the human torpedo. The use of planes is
so ineffective in causing damage to enemy vessels in relation to casualties. With radar, it is now impossible to approach aircraft
carriers without being detected. . . . If human torpedoes must appear in Japan, there is no other group of people but us who would
become pilots.26
These contemporaneous accounts agree with testimony given by senior Japanese leaders to the United
States Strategic Bombing Survey after the war. When asked to account for the motivation of
individual kamikaze pilots, Lieutenant General Torashiro Kawabe said:
We believed that our spiritual convictions and moral strength could balance your material and scientific advantages. We did not
consider our attacks to be “suicide.” The pilot did not start out on his mission with the intention of committing suicide [i.e., of
immolating himself in a spirit of despair]. He looked upon himself as a human bomb which would destroy a certain part of the
enemy fleet . . . [and] died happy in the conviction that his death was a step towards the final victory.27
In the end, the kamikazes did not succeed in compelling the United States to accept a negotiated
surrender by Japan. They were, however, the most effective coercive tool available to Japan at the
time. Aptly, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey summarizes the kamikazes as “macabre, effective, and
supremely practical under the circumstances.”28
4
Targeting Democracies
NO PREVIOUS ANALYSIS of suicide terrorism has been able to draw on a complete survey of
suicide terrorist attacks worldwide. This drawback, together with the fact that many such attacks,
including all those against Americans, have been committed by Muslims have led many in the United
States to assume that Islamic fundamentalism must be the main underlying cause.1 This, in turn, has
fueled a belief that anti-American terrorism can be stopped only by wholesale transformation of
Muslim societies, a belief that helped create public support of the invasion of Iraq. Comprehensive
study of the phenomenon of suicide terrorism, however, shows that the presumed connection to
Islamic fundamentalism is misleading.
My study surveys all 315 suicide terrorist attacks around the globe from 1980 to 2003.2 The data
show that there is not the close connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism that
many people think. Rather, what all suicide terrorist campaigns have in common is a specific secular
and strategic goal: to compel democracies to withdraw military forces from the terrorists’ national
homeland. Religion is rarely the root cause, although it is often used as a tool by terrorist
organizations in recruiting and in other efforts in service of the broader strategic objective.
THREE PATTERNS IN SUICIDE TERRORISM
Three general patterns in the data support the conclusion that suicide terrorism is mainly a strategic
phenomenon. These three properties are consistent with the above strategic logic but not with
irrational behavior or religious fanaticism:
1. Timing. Nearly all suicide attacks occur in organized, coherent campaigns, not as isolated or
randomly timed incidents.
2. Nationalist goals. Suicide terrorist campaigns are directed at gaining control of what the
terrorists see as their national homeland, and specifically at ejecting foreign forces from that
territory.
3. Target selection. All suicide terrorist campaigns in the last two decades have been aimed at
democracies, which make more suitable targets from the terrorists’ point of view. Nationalist
movements that face non-democratic opponents have not resorted to suicide attack as a means
of coercion.
Timing
Of the 315 separate suicide terrorist attacks between 1980 and 2003, 301, or 95 percent, were parts
of organized, coherent campaigns, while only 14 were isolated or random events. Nine separate
disputes have led to suicide terrorist campaigns: the presence of American and French forces in
Lebanon; Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza; the status of the Tamil regions of Sri Lanka;
the status of the Kurdish region of Turkey; the Russian occupation of Chechnya; the Indian occupation
of Kashmir; the Indian control of Punjab; and the presence of American forces in Iraq and in the
Arabian Peninsula. Overall, however, there have been eighteen distinct campaigns, because in certain
disputes the terrorists elected to suspend operations one or more times, either in response to
concessions or for other reasons. Thirteen of the campaigns have ended and five were ongoing as of
the end of 2003. The attacks making up each campaign were organized by the same terrorist group (or,
sometimes, a set of cooperating groups, as in the ongoing “second intifada” in Israel/Palestine),
clustered in time, publicly justified in terms of a specified political goal, and directed against targets
related to that goal.
A suicide terrorist campaign can be distinguished from a string of isolated attacks. A campaign
consists of an intended series of attacks that terrorist leaders explain and justify as aimed at gaining
political concessions from a target government. A campaign also continues until the terrorist leaders
deliberately abandon it, either because sufficient gains have been made or because the leaders
believe that the effort has failed. The Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) attack on the Indian chief
minister of Punjab in August 1995 meets the minimum criteria for an organized campaign, even though
there was only one successful operation that clearly meets the classic definition of suicide attack. The
BKI sought over a period of years to coerce India to permit Sikh independence in Punjab, publicly
tied the August 1995 attack to this goal, and carried out at least one other possible (though ambiguous)
suicide attack and at least one that meets the broader definition of a suicide mission. The BKI also
attempted other, unsuccessful, suicide operations.3
The most important indicator of strategic orientation is the timing of the suspension of campaigns.
Suspension is most often based on a strategic decision by leaders of the terrorist organizations that
further attacks would be counterproductive to their coercive purposes—for instance, in response to
full or partial concessions by the target state to the terrorists’ political goals. Such suspensions are
often accompanied by public explanations that justify the decision to opt for a “cease-fire.” Further,
the terrorist organizations’ discipline is usually fairly good; although there are exceptions, such
announced cease-fires usually do stick for a period of months at least, normally until the terrorist
leaders take a new strategic decision to resume in pursuit of goals not achieved in the earlier
campaign. This pattern indicates that both terrorist leaders and their recruits are sensitive to the
coercive value of the attacks.
As an example of a suicide campaign, consider Hamas’s suicide attacks in 1995 to compel Israel to
withdraw from towns in the West Bank. Hamas leaders deliberately held off attacking during the
spring and early summer in order to give PLO negotiations with Israel an opportunity to finalize a
withdrawal. However, in early July, when Hamas leaders came to believe that Israel was backsliding
and delaying withdrawal, Hamas launched a series of suicide attacks. Israel accelerated the pace of
its withdrawal, after which Hamas ended the campaign. Mahmud al-Zahar, a Hamas leader in Gaza,
announced following the cessation of suicide attacks in October 1995:
We must calculate the benefit and cost of continued armed operations. If we can fulfill our goals without violence, we will do so.
Violence is a means, not a goal. Hamas’s decision to adopt self-restraint does not contradict our aims, which include the
establishment of an Islamic state instead of Israel. . . . We will never recognize Israel, but it is possible that a truce could prevail
between us for days, months, or years.4
If suicide terrorism were mainly irrational or even disorganized, we would expect a much different
pattern: political goals would not be articulated (for example, we would see references in news
reports to “rogue” attacks), or the stated goals would vary considerably even within the same conflict.
We would also expect the timing to be either random, or perhaps event-driven in response to
particularly provocative or infuriating actions by the other side, but little if at all related to the
progress of negotiations over issues in dispute that the terrorists want to influence.
Nationalist Goals
Suicide terrorism is a high-cost strategy, which makes strategic sense for a group only when crucial
interests are at stake, and even then as a last resort. The reason is that suicide terrorism maximizes
coercive leverage at the expense of support among the terrorists’ own community and so can be
sustained over time only when there already exists a high degree of commitment among the potential
pool of recruits. The most important goal that a community can have is the independence of its
homeland (population, property, and way of life) from foreign influence or control. As a result, a
strategy of suicide terrorism is most likely to be used to achieve nationalist goals.
In fact, every suicide campaign from 1980 to 2003 has had as a major objective—or as its central
objective—coercing a foreign government that has military forces in what they see as their homeland
to take those forces out. Table 6 summarizes the disputes that have engendered suicide terrorist
campaigns. Since 1980, there has not been a suicide terrorist campaign directed mainly against
domestic opponents or against foreign opponents who did not have military forces in the terrorists’
homeland. Although attacks against civilians are often the most salient to Western observers, actually
every suicide terrorist campaign in the past two decades has included attacks directly against the
foreign military forces in the relevant country, and most have been waged by guerrilla organizations
that also use more conventional methods of attack against those forces.
Even al-Qaeda fits this pattern. Although Saudi Arabia is not under American military occupation,
at least from the perspective of the United States, and although the terrorists have political objectives
against the Saudi regime and others, one major objective of al-Qaeda is the expulsion of U.S. troops
from the country. There have been attacks by terrorists loyal to Osama bin Laden against American
troops in Saudi Arabia. To be sure, there is a major debate among Islamists over the morality of
suicide attacks, but within Saudi Arabia there is little debate over al-Qaeda’s objection to American
forces in the region, and over 95 percent of Saudi society reportedly agrees with Bin Laden on this
matter.5
Still, even if suicide terrorism follows a strategic logic, could some suicide terrorist campaigns be
irrational in the sense that they are being waged for unrealistic goals?
In fact, some suicide terrorist groups have not been realistic in expecting the full concessions
demanded of the target, but this is normal in disputes involving overlapping nationalist claims, and
even for coercive attempts in general. However, the ambitions of terrorist leaders are realis-tic in
two other senses. First, suicide terrorists’ political aims, if not their methods, are often more
mainstream than observers realize; they generally reflect quite common, straightforward nationalist
self-determination claims of their community. Second, these groups often have significant support for
their policy goals with respect to the target state, goals that are typically much like those of other
nationalists within their community. Differences between the terrorists and more “moderate” leaders
usually concern the usefulness of a certain level of violence, and—sometimes—the legitimacy of
attacks against targets other than foreign troops in the country (such as attacks in other countries, or
against third parties and civilians). Thus, it is not that terrorists pursue radical goals and then seek
others’ support. Rather, terrorists are simply the members of their societies who are the most
optimistic about the usefulness of violence for achieving goals that many, and often most, support.
The behavior of Hamas illustrates the point. Hamas terrorism has provoked Israeli retaliation that
has been costly for Palestinians, while pursuing the—apparently unrealistic—goal of abolishing the
state of Israel. Although prospects of establishing an Arab state in all of “historic Palestine” may be
poor, most Palestinians agree that it would be desirable if possible. Hamas’s terrorist violence was
in fact carefully calculated and controlled. In April 1994, as its first suicide campaign was beginning,
Hamas leaders explained that “martyrdom operations” would be used to achieve intermediate
objectives, such as Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza, while the final objective of
creating an Islamic state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean may require other forms of
armed resistance.6
Democracies as the Targets
Suicide terrorism is more likely to be employed against states with democratic political systems than
against authoritarian governments, for three reasons. First, democracies are often thought to be
especially vulnerable to coercive punishment. Domestic critics and international rivals, as well as
terrorists, often view democracies as “soft,” usually on the grounds that their publics have low
thresholds of cost tolerance and high ability to affect state policy. Even if there is little evidence that
democracies are easier to coerce than other regime types, this image of democracy matters.7 Since
terrorists can inflict only moderate damage by comparison with even small inter-state wars, terrorism
can be expected to coerce only if the target state is viewed as especially vulnerable to punishment.
Second, suicide terrorism is a tool of the weak, which means that, regardless of how much punishment
the terrorists inflict, the target state almost always has the capacity to retaliate with far more extreme
punishment or even by exterminating the terrorists’ community. Accordingly, suicide terrorists must
not only have high interests at stake, they must also be confident that their opponent will be at least
somewhat restrained. Democracies are widely perceived as less likely to harm civilians, and no
democratic regime has committed genocide in the twentieth century, although recent scholarship casts
strong doubt on the presumption that democracies are generally more restrained than authoritarian
states.8 Finally, suicide attacks may also be harder to organize or publicize in authoritarian police
states, although these possibilities are weakened by the fact that weak authoritarian states are also not
targets.
In fact, the target state of every modern suicide campaign has been a democracy. The United States,
France, Israel, India, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Russia were all democracies when they were attacked
by suicide terrorist campaigns, even though the last three became democracies more recently than the
others. To be sure, these states vary in the degree to which they share “liberal” norms that respect
minority rights; Freedom House, a respected non-profit organization that monitors democracy in
countries around the world, rates Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Russia as “Partly Free” (3.5–4.5 on a 7point
scale) rather than “Free” during the relevant years, partly because of their handling of minority
rights and partly because terrorism and civil violence themselves lower the freedom rating of these
states. Still, all these states elect their chief executives and legislatures in multiparty elections and
have seen at least one peaceful transfer of power, making them solidly democratic by standard
criteria.9
The Kurds, who straddle Turkey and Iraq, illustrate the point that suicide terrorist campaigns are
more likely to be targeted against democracies than authoritarian regimes. Although Iraq has been far
more brutal toward its Kurdish population than has Turkey, violent Kurdish groups have used suicide
attacks exclusively against democratic Turkey and not against the authoritarian regime in Iraq. There
are plenty of national groups living under authoritarian regimes with grievances that could possibly
inspire suicide terrorism, but none have.
Thus, the fact that rebels have resorted to this strategy only when they face the more suitable type of
target counts against arguments that suicide terrorism is a non-strategic response, motivated mainly by
fanaticism or irrational hatreds.
OCCUPATION AND SUICIDE TERRORISM
The Core Logic
At bottom, suicide terrorism is a strategy for national liberation from foreign military occupation by a
democratic state. In general, foreign occupation involves the exertion of political and military control
over territory by an outside group.10 Most foreign occupations involve stationing well-armed troops
on or near the occupied territory. So do military alliances. In fact, foreign occupiers have often
claimed they were merely supporting a local government and so should be treated as an ally, not an
“occupier.”
To avoid confusion, this study defines a foreign occupation as one in which a foreign power has the
ability to control the local government independent of the wishes of the local community. The key is
not the number of troops actually stationed on the occupied territory, so long as enough are available,
if necessary, to suppress any effort at independence. Rather, the critical requirement is that the
occupying power’s political control must depend on coercive assets—whether troops, police, or
other security forces—that are controlled from outside the region. If control can be maintained using
only police who are responsible to indigenous authorities, then the territory cannot be said to be under
foreign occupation.
In addition, many or most members of the occupied community should recognize that the foreign
power exerts control over the local government, even if their estimates of the magnitude of control are
vague. Accordingly, the ultimate test is the political decisiveness of foreign-controlled coercive
power: if political control of the local government would change—or if most of the local community
believes that it would change—if the foreign military power left, then the territory is under foreign
occupation. By this standard, the United States’ liberation and occupation of Italy, Germany, and
Japan in World War II qualifies as occupation, but American military deployments to Great Britain
and France during the conflict count as military alliances.
The association between foreign occupation and suicide terrorism does not mean that religion plays
no role; it does suggest that the widely shared view that suicide terrorism emanates from Islamic
fundamentalism—or religious hatred in general—is wrongheaded. Since national and religious
identities often overlap, distinguishing the main motive for particular suicide terrorist campaigns may
seem excessively difficult. However, these two motives will not always lead terrorists to attack the
same enemies. Attacking certain enemies would make sense for nationalist objectives, but not
religious ones, while attacking others would make sense for religious but not nationalist reasons.
Hamas and al-Qaeda are crucial cases. Both groups espouse Islamic fundamentalist ideologies.
Both charge Christians and Jews with crimes against Muslims. And both seek to overturn what they
view as foreign military occupations—Hamas, to end Israeli occupation of Palestinian land; alQaeda,
to drive out what it sees as the American occupation of the Arabian Peninsula since 1990 as
well as of Afghanistan since 2001 and Iraq since 2003.
Comparison of target selection for Hamas and al-Qaeda shows that combating foreign military
occupation is more central than religious motives for both groups. If religious hostility were
paramount, one would expect both Hamas and al-Qaeda to attack both Christians and Jews. Similarly,
if revenge for perceived injuries were a central motive, one would expect both groups to attack both
the United States and Israel. However, each group in fact concentrates its efforts against the opponent
that actually has troops stationed on what it sees as its homeland territory. Hamas concentrates almost
all of its effort against Israel and has not attacked the United States or American citizens outside of
Israel and Palestine. Al-Qaeda’s main effort has been against the United States and against American
allies that have deployed troops in Afghanistan and Iraq; al-Qaeda has never attacked Israel and has
rarely attacked Jewish targets elsewhere. Although Hamas complains that the United States supports
Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and al-Qaeda says that Israel and Jews control American foreign
policy, neither group actually expends significant effort to attack opponents who do not have troops
occupying their homeland.
Hamas
In the June 1967 war, Israel captured the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem. East
Jerusalem was immediately annexed to Israel, while the West Bank and Gaza have remained under
Israeli occupation since then. As of 2001, there were about 2.7 million Palestinians living in the
Occupied Territories. Although the overwhelming majority of Palestinians in the Occupied
Territories detest Israel’s occupation, and although strikes, protests, and other forms of nonviolent
resistance began as early as 1972, for many years most of the Palestinian population preferred to
accept the benefits of the economic modernization that occurred under Israeli rule rather than support
violent rebellion.11 Beginning in 1987, however, Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation grew
progressively from violent (but unarmed) rebellion in the first intifada from 1987 to 1992, to
protracted guerrilla war and suicide terrorism in the 1990s, to large-scale suicide terrorism since the
start of the second intifada in September 2000.
We do not know exactly why the Palestinian rebellion against Israeli occupation began when it did.
Few observers at the time expected an uprising in 1987, especially since, by this time, Palestinians
had been under Israeli rule for twenty years. That the rebellion has continued and escalated for a
decade and a half, while not wholly unexpected, has disappointed those who expected the Oslo peace
negotiations to reduce Palestinian resistance.
However, we do know that Islamic fundamentalism did not play a role in the initiation of the
rebellion. The first intifada was largely a spontaneous uprising of independent grassroots activists
and was quickly supported by the main Palestinian nationalist organization, Fatah, a secular
movement. The most important Islamist organization that has played a role in Palestinian politics and
in suicide terrorism, Hamas, did not yet exist in 1987.
One factor that probably did contribute significantly to the rise and persistence of the Palestinian
rebellion was the increasing encroachment of Jewish settlers on Palestinian land. As Chart 1 shows,
during the first thirteen years of the occupation (1967 to 1980), only about 12,000 Jewish settlers
resided in the Occupied Territories. From 1980 to 1995, this number increased more than tenfold, to
146,000, and by a further 50 percent from 1995 to 2002, to 226,000.12 The growth of Jewish
settlements not only consumed more land and water, but also required progressive expansion of the
Israeli military presence in the West Bank and Gaza, including more and more checkpoints that made
it difficult for Palestinians to travel or even carry out ordinary business. The second intifada appears
to be a response to the failure of the Oslo peace process to lead to full Israeli withdrawal from the
Occupied Territories, and especially the failure of the Camp David negotiations in August 2000. The
growing number of Jewish settlers likely contributed to this sense of failure.
Palestinian suicide terrorist attacks began in April 1994 and continued at a rate of about three a
year until the start of the second intifada, when the number rose to over twenty a year. Although two
Islamist organizations, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, have conducted the majority of
Palestinian suicide attacks (79 out of 110 attacks between 1994 and 2003), there is strong evidence
that Islamic fundamentalism has not been the driving force behind Palestinian suicide terrorism.13 The
most important evidence is the trajectory of Palestinian public support for suicide operations, because
this is necessary to their persistence over time. However, as Table 7 shows, public opinion polls
show that suicide operations have consistently commanded much more support than Hamas or even
all Islamist groups combined. Support for suicide terrorism was roughly flat during the 1990s, and
rose sharply with the start of the second intifada.
CHART 1. JEWISH SETTLERS IN
WEST BANK AND GAZA
Sources: Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, IsraelYearbook and Almanac, Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), Jerusalem Post (August
8, 2001; February 3, 2003).
Support for Hamas and other Islamist groups also remained steady during the 1990s and rose at the
start of the second intifada, although not as dramatically as support for suicide terrorism. The rise in
support for Hamas and Islamic Jihad cannot be the main cause of the rise in support of suicide
terrorism, because the latter is a much broader phenomenon. Indeed, support for the Islamist groups is
more likely an effect of the rising popularity of suicide terrorism than a cause of it.
The most likely explanation for the growth of popular support for suicide terrorism is not rising
fundamentalism, then, but simply the intensified rebellion itself or increased Israeli use of force
against the rebellion. Indeed, one poll conducted in April 2002 found that 65 percent of the
Palestinians who supported suicide operations cited as a main reason Israeli military incursions.14
Moreover, once the second intifada began and suicide terrorism became more popular, non-Islamist
groups, such as the Marxist-oriented Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the al-Aqsa
Martyrs Brigades, also began using suicide operations, which also suggests that the phenomenon is
not tightly driven by Islamic fundamentalism.
In addition, as Table 8 shows, throughout the 1990s Hamas commanded far less support than Fatah,
the main secular Palestinian nationalist organization, attaining rough parity only when Fatah support
declined during the second intifada. Hence, a possible additional cause of the rise in support for
Hamas may be frustration with Fatah’s failure to compel Israel to withdraw. While support for
Islamist views may have risen somewhat over the past twenty years, there is no evidence that Hamas
or any other Islamist group has made domestic political gains through the use of suicide operations. In
fact, support for both groups has followed a similar trajectory, with both at constant low levels
through the 1990s and both rising to higher but still constant levels after the second intifada began in
fall 2000.
From 1994 to 2003, there have been more than 100 Palestinian suicide terrorist attacks. All of
these attacks have been directed against Israeli targets in Israel or the Occupied Territories. Although
Palestinian terrorist groups have used ordinary, non-suicide tactics to attack a small number of Israeli
targets outside the region, there have been no attempts to kill Americans, Europeans, or Christians,
and no general campaign to attack Jews living outside of Palestine. The pattern of the suicide attacks
over the past decade suggests that the Palestinian terrorists are concentrating their fire against the
state that is actually occupying the territory they view as their homeland.
Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda is an Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organization whose central purpose is to end the
American occupation of the Arabian Peninsula. Like Hamas, al-Qaeda derives its core ideology from
the tradition of the Muslim Brotherhood, which stresses the obligation on Muslims to resist Western
imperialism and to work toward the establishment of an Islamic regime. Unlike Hamas, however, alQaeda
draws its membership from the transnational community of Muslim believers, not from a single
country. Also unlike Hamas, while al-Qaeda focuses principally on a particular territory (the Arabian
Peninsula), the group also emphasizes grievances of Muslims in multiple countries and seeks to
establish Islamic regimes in all of them.15
The close relationship between Islamic fundamentalism and the membership of al-Qaeda has given
many Americans the impression that religion is the main force driving al-Qaeda’s suicide operations.
On November 8, 2001, President George W. Bush addressed the nation, saying: “We are the target of
enemies who boast they want to kill—kill all Americans, kill all Jews, and kill all Christians. . . .
This new enemy seeks to destroy our freedom and impose its views. . . . We wage a war to save
civilization itself.”16
However, to ascribe al-Qaeda’s suicide campaign to religion alone would not be accurate. The
targets that al-Qaeda has attacked, and the strategic logic articulated by Osama bin Laden to explain
how suicide operations are expected to help achieve al-Qaeda’s goals, both suggest that al-Qaeda’s
principal motive is to end foreign military occupation of the Arabian Peninsula and other Muslim
regions. The United States and its allies who have been under al-Qaeda’s fire do export democratic,
liberal, capitalist, and (arguably) Christian values to the Muslim world. The critical question is a
counterfactual one: would these religious or ideological provocations suffice if the United States and
European allies did not also station troops in the Middle East?
The evidence suggests that answer is no. The taproot of al-Qaeda’s animosity to its enemies is
what they do, not who they are.
First, consider the identity of al-Qaeda’s suicide attackers. From 1995 to 2003, seventy-one alQaeda
suicide attackers completed their missions and actually killed themselves. The Chicago
Project on Suicide Terrorism collected information from a variety of languages on these attackers,
ascertaining the names of fifty-six and the nationalities of sixty-seven. The majority were from Saudi
Arabia and other Persian Gulf states. Although there is clearly some transnational support, the
movement would probably pose little threat to the United States and might even collapse without this
core support from Persian Gulf states.
Further, if religious, social, or economic grievances were primary, then al-Qaeda should have been
interested in combating three enemies—the United States, Europe, and Israel—with more or less
equal weight and with little regard for the target states’ military policies. However, al-Qaeda’s
timing and choice of targets shows that religious and ideological factors are not the forces driving the
strategic logic of this suicide terrorist campaign.
The United States has been exporting cultural values that are anathema to Islamic fundamentalism
for several decades, but bin Laden and the al-Qaeda organization did not turn toward attacking the
United States until after 1990, when the United States sent troops to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Bahrain.
CHART 2. NATIONALITY OF AL-QAEDA SUICIDE ATTACKERS
Source: Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism, 2004.
CHART 3. U.S. MILITARY FORCES ON THE ARABIAN
PENINSULA, 1980 TO 2001
Not only the timing of the campaign against the United States but also bin Laden’s public statements
reflect a focus on U.S. occupation of Arabia. In 1996, bin Laden issued a lengthy statement explaining
the motives behind his campaign against the United States:
The people of Islam have suffered from aggression, iniquity and injustice imposed on them by the Zionist-Crusader alliance and
their collaborators. . . . The latest and the greatest of these aggressions, incurred by the Muslims since the death of the Prophet . .
. is the occupation of the land of the two Holy Places [the cities of Mecca and Medina]—the foundation of the house of Islam. . .
. The explosion at Riyadh and Al-Khobar [he is referring to the June 25, 1996, attack on the Khobar Towers apartment complex,
which killed nineteen] is a warning of this volcanic eruption emerging as a result of the severe oppression, suffering, excessive
iniquity, humiliation and poverty. . . . [I]t is essential to hit the main enemy who divided the Ummah [the Muslim community] into
small and little countries and pushed it, for the last few decades, into a state of confusion. . . . Clearly after Belief (Imaan) there is
no more important duty than pushing the American enemy out of the holy land [Arabia].17
In his famous 1998 fatwa, “Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders,” bin Laden asserted:
The Arabian Peninsula has never . . . been stormed by any forces like the crusader armies spreading in it like locusts, eating its
riches and wiping out its plantations. . . . For over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the
holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors,
and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples. . . . We issue the
following fatwa to all Muslims: The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies—civilians and military—is an individual duty for
every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy
mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to
threaten any Muslim.18
To be sure, bin Laden may have his own personal reasons for pursuing this campaign against the
United States. One may speculate that he is ultimately motivated by revenge for how the United States
abandoned Muslim fighters in Afghanistan after the victory against the Soviet Union in 1988, or that
he is driven by a peculiar brand of Yemeni religious nationalism related to the Wahhabi strand of
Islam. However, even if bin Laden has such private motives, they do not form the basis of his public
appeals to gain support within his own community. When bin Laden appeals for support, he focuses
on American military policies that have led to the occupation of Muslim countries. Bin Laden surely
hates the United States, but it is his public opposition to American military policies that ultimately
matters.
Although Europeans do not pose as great a cultural threat to Muslim society as does the United
States, European societies have also been a source of economic, social, and religious pressure on
traditional Muslim values for decades. Until recently, however, al-Qaeda has not selected European
countries or citizens for attack, nor did bin Laden’s public statements mention any grievances against
them. This changed following the arrival of European troops in Afghanistan in 2001 and in Iraq in
2003. From 2002 to 2003, Europeans became al-Qaeda’s most frequent target: ten of fifteen suicide
attacks during this period were directed mainly at European or Australian citizens, although these
people were in Muslim countries. In every one of the ten cases, the victims came from countries that
had troops in Afghanistan or Iraq.
Al-Qaeda’s declared strategy suggests that the motive for attacking Europeans is to undermine
foreign occupation of the Arabian Peninsula and other Muslim countries. In September 2003, an alQaeda
planning document published on a radical Islamic Web page described a coherent strategy for
how to compel the United States and its allies to leave Iraq. The forty-two-page document assumed
that new spectacular attacks directly against the United States would be insufficient to compel
America’s withdrawal, and so it would be more effective to attack America’s European allies, who
could be coerced to withdraw their forces, thus increasing the economic and other burdens that the
United States would have to shoulder in order to continue the occupations of Afghanistan, Iraq, and
the Arabian peninsula.
The document went on to evaluate the prospects of using spectacular terrorist attacks to coerce
Spain, Great Britain, and Poland, concluding that Spain—because of strong domestic opposition to
the Iraq war—was the most vulnerable and recommending strikes against Spain just before the March
2003 national elections. Below are important passages from the analysis of terrorist attacks on Spain:
In order to force the Spanish government to withdraw from Iraq the resistance should deal painful blows to its forces. This should
be accompanied by an information campaign clarifying the truth of the matter inside Iraq. It is necessary to make utmost use of
the upcoming general election in Spain in March next year.
We think that the Spanish government could not tolerate more than two, maximum three blows, after which it will have to
withdraw as a result of popular pressure. If its troops still remain in Iraq after these blows, then the victory of the Socialist Party is
almost secured, and the withdrawal of the Spanish forces will be on its electoral program.
Lastly, we emphasize that a withdrawal of the Spanish or Italian forces from Iraq would put huge pressure on the British presence
(in Iraq), a pressure that Tony Blair might not be able to withstand, and hence the domino tiles would fall quickly. Yet, the basic
problem of making the first tile fall still remains.19
These strikes did occur and Spain did withdraw its forces from Iraq, just as the document predicted.
Shortly after Spain’s decision to withdraw from Iraq, bin Laden issued a statement in which he
offered to cease attacks on European countries that withdrew their forces from Iraq and Afghanistan:
I announce a truce with the European countries that do not attack Muslim countries. . . . [T]he door to a truce is open for three
months. . . . The truce will begin when the last soldier leaves our countries [Iraq and Afghanistan]. . . . They say that we kill for
the sake of killing, but reality shows that they lie. . . . [T]he Russians were only killed after attacking Afghanistan in the 1980s and
Chechnya, Europeans after invading Iraq and Afghanistan[,] and the Americans in New York after supporting the Jews in
Palestine and their invasion of the Arabian Peninsula. Stop spilling our blood so we can stop spilling your blood [April 15, 2004].20
European countries officially rejected the offer.
Israel, like the United States and Europe, is a source of Western religious, cultural, social, and
economic pressure on the Muslim world, and in addition occupies land populated by Muslims and
holds Islam’s third most important holy city, Jerusalem. Many Muslims, including bin Laden, believe
that Israel controls American foreign policy and suspect it of aiming at the conquest of additional
Muslim territory.
The 1996 and 1998 statements in which bin Laden justified attacks on the United States also accuse
Israel: “Division of the land of the two Holy Places, and annexing of the northerly part of it by Israel .
. . is an essential demand of the Zionist-Crusader alliance. The existence of such a large country with
its huge resources under the leadership of the forthcoming Islamic State, by Allah’s Grace, represent a
serious danger to the very existence of the Zionist state in Palestine” (1996). “If the Americans’ aims
behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews’ petty state and divert
attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their
eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the
states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their
disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel’s survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade
occupation of the Peninsula” (1998).
Unlike the United States and Europe, however, Israel has never had troops on the Arabian
peninsula, or in Iraq or Afghanistan, and despite al-Qaeda’s rhetoric, it has never attacked Israel and
has mounted only one attack directed primarily against Jews (in Istanbul in November 2002).21
SEVERITY OF OCCUPATION AND SUICIDE TERRORISM
Suicide terrorism is primarily an extreme national liberation strategy used against foreign occupiers
with a democratic political system. This immediately raises a core question: is suicide terrorism
simply a product of the severity of the occupier’s policies?
Foreign occupation can have its own logic of violence. Even when an occupying power is
restrained in the use of force, the common spiral of local resistance leading to retaliation leading to
more local resistance can dramatically escalate the level of harm to the civilian community. As a
result, there could be a threshold of violence above which the local community becomes so desperate
that it resorts to suicide terrorism because many believe they will die anyway or because they are
seeking revenge for those who have died.
If severity of occupation were the main cause of suicide terrorism, then we would expect to find a
consistent relationship between the magnitude of violence and the use of suicide terrorism in the nine
occupations in which suicide terrorism occurred. Testing this proposition is fairly straightforward.
Although precise estimates of civilian casualties are often difficult, there are reasonably good rough
estimates for the number of total deaths suffered by each occupied community, and we can compare
levels across cases by controlling for population size. We can then compare the level of deaths in the
occupied community to the number of suicide terrorists and see if there is a consistent relationship
between the two. This method will not show the importance of small differences in occupation
policies, but it will allow us to test the strongest form of the question whether harsh occupation
policies routinely lead to suicide terrorism, while relatively benign occupation policies do not.
The striking finding from Table 10 is that there is no strong relationship between the level of harm
suffered by the occupied community and the level of suicide terrorism. Although the number of
disputes is too small to conduct tests for statistical significance, the level of harm and the number of
suicide terrorists both vary dramatically and in opposite directions across the cases. The two least
harmful cases—the United States in the Arabian Peninsula, and Israel in the West Bank and Gaza—
account for nearly 43 percent of all suicide terrorists due to occupation (192/448), while the two
most harmful—Russia in Chechnya and Israel in Lebanon—account for about 17 percent (74/448).
This does not mean that harsh occupation policies cannot drive up the level of suicide terrorism
once it occurs. However, it does mean that we must look further than the severity of the occupier’s
policies if we are to improve our understanding of the causes of suicide terrorism.
5
Learning Terrorism Pays
THE MAIN REASON that suicide terrorism is growing is that terrorists have learned that it works.
Even more troubling, the encouraging lessons that terrorists have learned from the experience of
suicide terrorist campaigns since 1980 are not, for the most part, products of wild-eyed
interpretations or wishful thinking. They are, rather, quite reasonable assessments of the relationship
between terrorists’ coercive efforts and the political gains that the terrorists have achieved in many of
these cases.
To understand how terrorist groups have assessed the effectiveness of suicide terrorism requires
three tasks: (1) explanation of appropriate standards for evaluating the effectiveness of coercion from
the standpoint of coercers; (2) analysis of the eleven suicide terrorist campaigns that have ended as of
2001 to determine how frequently target states made concessions that were, or at least could have
been interpreted as, due to suicide attack; and (3) close analysis of terrorists’ learning from particular
campaigns. Because some analysts see suicide terrorism as fundamentally irrational, it is important to
assess whether the lessons that the terrorists drew were reasonable conclusions from the record.1
TERRORISTS’ ASSESSMENTS OF SUICIDE TERRORISM
Terrorists, like other people, learn from experience. Since the main purpose of suicide terrorism is
coercion, the lessons likely to have the greatest impact on terrorists’ future behavior are those they
have drawn from past campaigns about the coercive effectiveness of suicide attack.
Most analyses of coercion focus on the decision making of target states, largely to determine their
vulnerability to various coercive pressures.2 The analysis here, however, seeks to determine why
terrorist coercers are increasingly attracted to a specific coercive strategy. For this purpose, we must
develop a new set of standards, because assessing the value of coercive pressure for the coercer is
not the same problem as assessing its impact on the target.
From the perspective of a target state, the key question is whether the value of the concession being
demanded is greater than the costs imposed by the coercive pressure, regardless of what form—risk
to human life, economic hardship, or something else—that pressure takes. However, from the
perspective of the coercer, the key question is whether a particular coercive strategy promises to be
more effective than alternative methods of influence, and so warrants continued (or increased) effort.
This is especially true for terrorists who are highly committed to a particular goal and so are willing
to exhaust virtually any means rather than abandoning it. In this search for an effective strategy,
coercers’ assessments are likely to be largely a function of estimates of the success of past efforts; for
suicide terrorists, this means assessments of whether past suicide campaigns produced significant
concessions.
A glance at the behavior of suicide terrorists reveals that such trade-offs between alternative
methods are important in their calculations. Nearly all of the organizations that have resorted to
suicide terrorism began their coercive efforts with more conventional guerrilla operations, nonsuicide
terrorism, or both. Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the PKK, the LTTE, and al-Qaeda all
used demonstrative and destructive means of violence long before resorting to suicide attack. Indeed,
in looking at the trajectory of terrorist groups over time, one can see a distinct element of
experimentation in the techniques and strategies used by these groups and clear movement toward the
most effective means. Al-Qaeda actually prides itself on a commitment to tactical learning over time:
the infamous “terrorist manual” frequently stresses the importance of writing “lessons learned”
memoranda that can be shared with other members to improve the effectiveness of future attacks.
The most important analytical difficulty in assessing outcomes of coercive efforts is that successes
are more ambiguous than failures. Whenever a suicide terrorist campaign, or any coercive effort, ends
without obtaining significant concessions, presumably the coercers must judge the effort a failure.
When, however, the target state does make policy changes in the direction of the terrorists’ political
goals, it may not always be reasonable to attribute this outcome to the coercive pressure of suicide
terrorism. The target government’s decision could have been mainly or partly a response to the
punishment inflicted by the suicide attacks, but it also could be a response to another type of pressure
(such as an ongoing guerrilla campaign), or to pressure from a different actor (such as one of the
target state’s allies or another country), or the target’s policy decision may not even have been
intended as a concession at all, but could have been taken for other reasons that only coincidentally
moved in a direction desired by the terrorists. For example, when Israel released Sheikh Ahmed
Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, from prison in October 1997 it was not clear whether this was
a response to coercive pressure from recent Hamas suicide attacks or to diplomatic pressure from the
United States and Jordan following a bungled Israeli attempt to assassinate a Hamas leader in Jordan.
How a terrorist organization makes judgments between such alternative explanations determines what
lessons are learned about the future usefulness of suicide attack.
Standard principles from social psychology suggest how terrorists are likely to resolve these
ambiguities. Under normal conditions, most people tend to interpret ambiguous information in ways
that are consistent with their own prior beliefs and that justify their past actions.3 Suicide terrorists, of
course, are likely to have at least some initial confidence in the efficacy of suicide attack or else they
would not resort to it, and the fact of having carried out such attacks gives them an interest in
justifying that choice. Thus, whenever targets of suicide terrorism make a real or apparent concession
and it is plausible to interpret that behavior as due to the coercive pressure of the suicide campaign,
we would expect terrorists to favor that interpretation even if other interpretations are also plausible.
This does not mean that we should simply expect terrorists to interpret virtually all outcomes,
regardless of evidence, as encouraging further terrorism; that would not constitute learning and would
make sense only if the terrorists were deeply irrational. To control for this possibility, it is crucial to
consider the assessments of the same events by other well-informed observers. If we find instances in
which suicide terrorist leaders claim credit for coercing concessions by opponents, but few other
observers share this judgment, then it would be appropriate to dismiss these interpretations as
irrational. If, on the other hand, we find that their interpretations are shared by a significant portion of
other observers, across a range of circumstances and interests—from target state leaders, to others in
the terrorists’ community, to neutral analysts—then we should assume that their assessments are as
rational as anyone else’s and should take the lessons they draw seriously. In making these judgments,
the testimony of target state leaders is often especially telling; although states like the United States
and Israel virtually never officially admit making concessions to terrorism, leaders such as Ronald
Reagan and Yitzhak Rabin have at times been quite open about the impact of suicide terrorism on
their own policy decisions, as we see below.
Finally, our consideration of how terrorists assess the effectiveness of suicide terrorism should
also be influenced by our prior understanding of the fanatical nature of the specific terrorists at issue.
If the most fanatical groups also make what appear to be reasonable assessments, then this would
increase our confidence in the finding that most terrorists would make similar calculations. Hamas
and Islamic Jihad are the most crucial case, because these groups have been considered fanatical
extremists even by comparison with other terrorists.4 Thus, detailed examination of how Hamas and
Islamic Jihad leaders assessed the coercive value of suicide attacks during the 1990s is especially
important.
THE APPARENT SUCCESS OF SUICIDE TERRORISM
Perhaps the most striking aspect of recent suicide terrorist campaigns is that they are associated with
gains for the terrorists’ political cause about half the time. As Chapter 4 shows, of the thirteen suicide
terrorist campaigns that were completed during 1980–2003, seven correlate with significant policy
changes by the target state toward the terrorists’ major political goals. In one case, the terrorists’
territorial goals were fully achieved (Hezbollah versus U.S./F, 1983); in three cases, the terrorists’
territorial aims were partly achieved (Hezbollah versus Israel, 1983–85; Hamas versus Israel, 1994,
and Hamas versus Israel, 1994–95); in one case, the target government entered into sovereignty
negotiations with the terrorists (LTTE versus Sri Lanka, 1993–94 and 2001); and in one case, the
terrorist organization’s top leader was released from prison (Hamas versus Israel, 1997). Six
campaigns did not lead to noticeable concessions (Hezbollah’s second effort against Israel in
Lebanon, 1985–86; BKI’s attacks against Indian leaders in Punjab in 1995; a Hamas campaign in
1996 retaliating for an Israeli assassination; the LTTE versus Sri Lanka, 1995–2002; and both PKK
campaigns). Even a 50 percent success rate is remarkable: international military and economic
coercion generally works less than a third of the time, and is especially rare for groups with few other
options.5
So these seven concessions, or at least apparent concessions, help to explain why suicide terrorism
is on the rise. In four of the cases, the target government’s policy changes are clearly due to coercive
pressure from the terrorist group. The American and French withdrawal from Lebanon was perhaps
the most clear-cut coercive success for suicide terrorism. In his memoirs, President Ronald Reagan
explained the U.S. decision to withdraw: “The price we had to pay in Beirut was so great, the tragedy
at the barracks was so enormous. . . . We had to pull out. . . . We couldn’t stay there and run the risk
of another suicide attack on the Marines.”6
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) withdrawal from most of southern Lebanon in 1985 and the Sri
Lankan government decisions in 1994 and 2001 to negotiate with the LTTE were also widely
understood to be direct results of the coercive punishment imposed by Hezbollah and LTTE
respectively. In both cases, the concessions followed periods in which the terrorists had turned more
and more to suicide attacks. Since Hezbollah and the LTTE employed a combination of suicide attack
and conventional attack, one can question the relative weight of suicide attack in coercing the target
states. However, there is little question in either case that punishment pressures inflicted by these
terrorist organizations were decisive in the outcomes. For instance, as a candidate for the November
9, 1994, presidential election in Sri Lanka, Mrs. Chandrika Kumaratunga explicitly asked for a
mandate to redraw boundaries so as to appease the Tamils in their demand for a separate homeland in
the island’s northeast provinces. She said, “We definitely hope to begin discussions with the Tamil
people, with their representatives—including the Tigers—and offer them political solutions to end the
war . . . [involving] extensive devolution.” This would, Kumaratunga said, “create an environment in
which people could live without fear.”7
The other three concessions, or arguable concessions, are less clear-cut. All three involve Hamas
campaigns against Israel. Not counting the ongoing second intifada, Hamas waged four separate
suicide attack campaigns against Israel, in 1994, 1995, 1996, and 1997. One, in 1996, did not
correspond with Israeli concessions. This campaign was announced as retaliation for Israel’s
assassination of a Hamas leader; no particular coercive goal was announced, and it was suspended by
Hamas after four attacks in two weeks. The other three all do correspond with Israeli concessions. In
April 1994, Hamas began a series of suicide bombings in retaliation for the Hebron Massacre,
committed by Baruch Goldstein in February of that year. After two attacks, Israel decided to
accelerate its withdrawal from Gaza, which was required under the Oslo agreement but which had
been delayed. Hamas then suspended attacks for five months. From October 1994 to August 1995,
Hamas (and Islamic Jihad) carried out a total of seven suicide attacks against Israel. In September
1995, Israel agreed to withdraw from certain West Bank towns that December, which it earlier had
claimed could not be done before April 1996 at the soonest. Hamas then suspended attacks for five
months until its retaliation campaign during the last week of February and first week of March 1996.
Finally, from March to September 1997, Hamas conducted a suicide attack campaign that included an
attack about every two months. In response, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu authorized the
assassination of a Hamas leader in September 1997. The attempt, in Amman, Jordan, failed and the
Israeli agents were captured. To get them back, Israel agreed to release Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the
spiritual leader of Hamas. This was not a concession to the terrorists’ territorial goals, and there is no
evidence that Hamas interpreted the release in any way different from the standard view, namely that
it was the product of American and Jordanian pressure. Accordingly, the key Hamas campaigns that
might have encouraged the view that suicide terrorism pays were the 1994 and 1995 campaigns,
which were associated with Israel’s military withdrawals from Gaza and the West Bank. Terrorists’
assessments of these events are evaluated in detail.
THE CRUCIAL CASE OF HAMAS
The Hamas and Islamic Jihad suicide campaigns against Israel in 1994 and 1995 are crucial tests of
the reasonableness of terrorists’ assessments, because these are the groups most frequently cited as
aiming at unrealistic goals and therefore as basically irrational. Many observers characterize Hamas
and Islamic Jihad as fanatical, extreme both within Palestinian society and among terrorist groups in
general. In both the 1994 and 1995 cases, terrorist leaders claimed that Israeli concessions increased
their confidence in the coercive effectiveness of suicide attack. However, there is an important
alternative explanation for Israel’s concessions in these cases: the Israeli government’s obligations
under the Oslo Accords. The 1994 and 1995 campaigns are also of special interest because they
helped to encourage the most intense ongoing campaign, the second intifada against Israel, and may
also have helped to encourage al-Qaeda’s campaign against the United States.
Examination of these crucial cases demonstrates that the terrorist groups came to the conclusion
that suicide attack accelerated Israel’s withdrawal in both cases. Although the Oslo Accords formally
committed Israel to withdrawing the IDF from Gaza and the West Bank, Israel routinely missed key
deadlines, often by many months, and the terrorists came to believe that Israel would not have
withdrawn when it did, and perhaps would not have withdrawn at all, but for the coercive leverage of
suicide attack. Moreover, this interpretation of events was hardly unique. Numerous other observers
and key Israeli government leaders themselves came to the same conclusion. To be clear, Hamas may
well have had motives other than coercion for launching particular attacks, such as retaliation, gaining
local support, or disrupting negotiated outcomes it considered insufficient.8 However, the experience
of observing how the target reacted to the suicide campaigns appears to have convinced terrorist
leaders of the coercive effectiveness of this strategy.
To evaluate these cases, we need to know: (1) the facts of each case; (2) how others interpreted the
events; and (3) how the terrorists interpreted these events. Each campaign is discussed in turn.
ISRAEL’S WITHDRAWAL FROM GAZA, MAY 1994
The Facts
Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed the Oslo Accords on September 13, 1993.
These obligated Israel to withdraw its military forces from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of
Jericho beginning on December 13 and ending on April 13, 1994. In fact, Israel missed both
deadlines. The major sticking points during the implementation negotiations in fall and winter of
1993–94 were the size of the Palestinian police force (Israel proposed a limit of 1,800, while the
Palestinians demanded 9,000) and jurisdiction over certain criminal matters, especially whether
Israel could retain a right of hot pursuit with respect to Palestinian attackers who might flee into
Palestinian-ruled zones. As of April 5, 1994, these issues had not been resolved. Hamas then
launched two suicide attacks, one on April 6 and another on April 13, killing fifteen Israeli civilians.
On April 18, the Israeli Knesset voted to withdraw, effectively accepting the Palestinian positions on
both disputed issues. The suicide attacks then stopped and the withdrawal was actually conducted in a
few weeks starting on May 4, 1994.9
These two suicide attacks may not originally have been intended as coercive, since Hamas leaders
had announced them in March 1994 as part of a planned series of five attacks in retaliation for the
February 24 Hebron Massacre, in which an Israeli settler killed twenty-nine Palestinians, and had
strong reservations about negotiating a compromise settlement with Israel.10 However, when Israel
agreed to withdraw more promptly than expected, Hamas decided to forgo the remaining three
planned attacks. There is thus a circumstantial case that the attacks coerced the Israelis into being
more forthcoming in the withdrawal negotiations, and both Israeli government leaders and Hamas
leaders publicly drew this conclusion.
Israeli and Other Assessments
There are two main reasons to doubt that terrorist pressure accelerated Israel’s decision to withdraw.
First, one might think that Israel would have withdrawn in any case, as it had promised to do in the
Oslo Accords. Second, one might point out that Hamas was opposed to a negotiated settlement with
Israel. Taking both points together, therefore, Hamas’s attacks could not have contributed to Israel’s
withdrawal.
The first of these arguments, however, fails to address the fact that Israel had already missed the
originally agreed deadline and as of early April 1994 did not appear ready to withdraw at all if that
meant making concessions on the size of the Palestinian police force and legal jurisdiction over
terrorists. The second argument is simply illogical. Although Hamas objected to surrendering claims
to all of historic Palestine, it did value the West Bank and Gaza as an intermediate goal, and certainly
had no objection to obtaining this goal sooner rather than later.
Most important, other observers took explanations based on terrorist pressure far more seriously,
including the person whose testimony must count most, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. On April
13, 1994, Rabin said:
I can’t recall in the past any suicidal terror acts by the PLO. We have seen by now at least six acts of this type by Hamas and
Islamic Jihad. . . . The only response to them and to the enemies of peace on the part of Israel is to accelerate the negotiations.11
On April 18, 1994, Rabin went further, giving a major speech in the Knesset explaining why the
withdrawal was necessary:
Members of the Knesset: I want to tell the truth. For 27 years we have been dominating another people against its will. For 27
years Palestinians in the territories . . . get up in the morning harboring a fierce hatred for us, as Israelis and Jews. Each morning
they get up to a hard life, for which we are also, but not solely responsible. We cannot deny that our continuing control over a
foreign people who do not want us exacts a painful price. . . . For two or three years we have been facing a phenomenon of
extremist Islamic terrorism, which recalls Hezbollah, which surfaced in Lebanon and perpetrated attacks, including suicide
missions. . . . There is no end to the targets Hamas and other terrorist organizations have among us. Each Israeli, in the territories
and inside sovereign Israel, including united Jerusalem, each bus, each home, is a target for their murderous plans. Since there is
no separation between the two populations, the current situation creates endless possibilities for Hamas and the other
organizations.12
Independent Israeli observers also credited suicide terrorism with considerable coercive
effectiveness. The most detailed assessment is by Efraim Inbar:
A significant change occurred in Rabin’s assessment of the importance of terrorist activities. . . . Reacting to the April 1994
suicide attack in Afula, Rabin recognized that terrorist activities by Hamas and other Islamic radicals were “a form of terrorism
different from what we once knew from the PLO terrorist organizations.” . . . Rabin admitted that there was no “hermitic”
solution available to protect Israeli citizens against such terrorist attacks. . . . He also understood that such incidents intensified the
domestic pressure to freeze the Palestinian track of the peace process. Islamic terrorism thus initially contributed to the pressure
for accelerating the negotiations on his part.13
Arab writers also attributed Israeli accommodation to the suicide attacks. Mazin Hammad wrote in
an editorial in a Jordanian newspaper:
It is unprecedented for an Israeli official like Y. Rabin to clearly state that there is no future for the settlements in the occupied
territories. . . . He would not have said this [yesterday] if it was not for the collapse of the security of Israel. . . . The martyrdom
operation in Hadera shook the faith of the settlers in the possibility of staying in the West Bank and Gaza and increased their
motivation to pack their belongings and dismantle their settlements.14
Terrorists’ Assessments
Even though the favorable result was apparently unexpected by Hamas leaders, given the
circumstances and the assessments voiced by Rabin and others, it certainly would have been
reasonable for them to conclude that suicide terrorism had helped accelerate Israeli withdrawal, and
they did.
Hamas leader Ahmed Bakr said, “What forced the Israelis to withdraw from Gaza was the intifada
and not the Oslo agreement,” while Imad al-Faluji judged:
All that has been achieved so far is the consequence of our military actions. Without the so-called peace process, we would have
gotten even more. . . . We would have got Gaza and the West Bank without this agreement. . . . Israel can beat all Arab armies.
However, it can do nothing against a youth with a knife or an explosive charge on his body. Since it was unable to guarantee
security within its borders, Israel entered into negotiations with the PLO. . . . If the Israelis want security, they will have to
abandon their settlements . . . in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem.15
Further, these events appear to have persuaded terrorists that future suicide attacks could
eventually produce still greater concessions. Fathi al-Shaqaqi, the leader of Islamic Jihad, said in
April 1995:
Our jihad action has exposed the enemy weakness, confusion, and hysteria. It has become clear that the enemy can be defeated,
for if a small faithful group was able to instill all this horror and panic in the enemy through confronting it in Palestine and southern
Lebanon, what will happen when the nation confronts it with all its potential[?] . . . Martyrdom actions will escalate in the face of
all pressures. . . . [They] are a realistic option in confronting the unequal balance of power. If we are unable to effect a balance of
power now, we can achieve a balance of horror.16
ISRAEL’S WITHDRAWAL FROM WEST BANK TOWNS, DECEMBER 1995
The second Hamas case, in 1995, tells essentially the same story as the first. Again a series of suicide
attacks was associated with Israeli territorial concessions to the Palestinians, and again a significant
fraction of outside observers attributed the concessions to the coercive pressure of suicide terrorism,
as did the terrorist leaders themselves.
The Facts
The original Oslo Accords scheduled Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian-populated areas of the
West Bank by July 13, 1994, but after the delays over Gaza and Jericho all sides recognized that this
deadline could not be met. From October 1994 to April 1995, Hamas, along with Islamic Jihad,
carried out a series of seven suicide terrorist attacks that were intended to compel Israel to make
further withdrawals, and suspended attacks temporarily at the request of the Palestinian Authority
after Israel agreed on March 29, 1995, to begin withdrawals by July 1. Later, however, the Israelis
announced that withdrawals could not begin before April 1996 because bypass roads needed for the
security of Israeli settlements were not ready. Hamas and Islamic Jihad then mounted new suicide
attacks on July 24 and August 21, 1995, killing eleven Israeli civilians. In September, Israel agreed to
withdraw from the West Bank towns in December (Oslo II) even though the roads were not finished.
The suicide attacks then stopped and the withdrawal was actually carried out in a few weeks starting
on December 12, 1995.17
Israeli and Other Assessments
Although Israeli government spokesmen frequently claimed that suicide terrorism was delaying
withdrawal, this claim was contradicted by, among others, Prime Minister Rabin. Rabin explained
that the decision for the second withdrawal was, like the first in 1994, motivated in part by the goal of
reducing suicide terrorism:
INTERVIEWER: Mr. Rabin, what is the logic of withdrawing from towns and villages when you know
that terror might continue to strike at us from there?
RABIN: What is the alternative, to have double the amount of terror? As for the issue of terror, take the
suicide bombings. Some 119 Israelis . . . have been killed or murdered since 1st January 1994, 77 of
them in suicide bombings perpetrated by Islamic radical fanatics. . . . All the bombers were
Palestinians who came from areas under our control.18
Similarly, an editorial in the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot explained:
If the planners of yesterday’s attack intended to get Israel to back away from the Oslo accord, they apparently failed. In fact,
Prime Minister Y. Rabin is leaning toward expediting the talks with the Palestinians. . . . The immediate conclusion from this line
of thinking on Rabin’s part—whose results we will witness in the coming days—will be to instruct the negotiators to expedite the
talks with the Palestinians with the aim of completing them in the very near future.19
Terrorists’ Assessments
As in 1994, Hamas and Islamic Jihad came to the conclusion that suicide terrorism was working.
Hamas’s spokesman in Jordan explained that new attacks were necessary to change Israel’s behavior:
Hamas, leader Muhammad Nazzal said, needed military muscle in order to negotiate with Israel from a position of strength. Arafat
started from a position of weakness, he said, which is how the Israelis managed to push on him the solution and get recognition of
their state and settlements without getting anything in return.20
After the agreement was signed, Hamas leaders also argued that suicide operations contributed to the
Israeli withdrawal. Mahmud al-Zahar, a spokesman for Hamas, said:
[T]he [Palestinian] Authority told us that military action embarrasses the PA because it obstructs the redeployment of the Israeli’s
forces and implementation of the agreement. . . . We offered many martyrs to attain freedom. . . . Any fair person knows that the
military action was useful for the Authority during negotiations.
Moreover, the terrorists also stressed that stopping the attacks only discouraged Israel from
withdrawing. An early August Hamas communiqué read:
They said that the strugglers’ operations have been the cause of the delay in widening the autonomous rule in the West Bank, and
that they have been the reason for the deterioration of the living and economic conditions of our people. Now the days have come
to debunk their false claims . . . and to affirm that July 1 [a promised date for IDF withdrawal] was no more than yet another of
the “unholy” Zionist dates. . . . Hamas has shown an utmost degree of self-restraint throughout the past period. . . . but matters
have gone far enough and the criminals will reap what their hands have sown.21
TERRORIST GROUPS LEARN FROM ONE ANOTHER
The tremendous increase in suicide terrorism over the last two decades is primarily due to terrorist
groups learning from each other’s coercive successes. The original source of the global spread of
suicide terrorism was the success of Hezbollah in driving Israel, France, and—especially—the
United States out of Lebanon in the early 1980s. These successes persuaded the Tamil Tigers,
Palestinian terrorist groups, and al-Qaeda that suicide terrorism would be an effective tool for
reaching their own goals. The world we live in today was created in large part by the decisions of
three governments twenty years ago.
The inspiration for the Tamil Tigers’ first suicide attack, in 1987, came from Lebanon. In the late
1970s and early 1980s, the LTTE sent fighters to train with the PLO and other terrorist groups in
Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. Prabhakaran was especially impressed by Hezbollah’s 1983 suicide attack
against the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon and concluded that the same tactic could be employed to
compel the Sri Lankan government to accept Tamil independence. As Prabhakaran says, “Tamil
Eelam [the Tamil homeland] can be achieved in 100 years. But if we conduct Black Tiger [suicide]
operations, we can shorten the suffering of the people and achieve Tamil Eelam in a shorter period of
time.”22
Palestinian terrorist groups were also encouraged by their assessments of the success of
Hezbollah’s coercive efforts to believe that suicide terrorism would be an effective way of coercing
Israel. The Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Shallah argued in November 2001:
The shameful defeat that Israel suffered in southern Lebanon and which caused its army to flee it in terror was not made on the
negotiations table but on the battlefield and through jihad and martyrdom, which achieved a great victory for the Islamic resistance
and Lebanese people. . . . We would not exaggerate if we said that the chances of achieving victory in Palestine are greater than
in Lebanon. . . . If the enemy could not bear the losses of the war on the border strip with Lebanon, will it be able to withstand a
long war of attrition in the heart of its security dimension and major cities?23
Palestinian terrorists are now applying the lessons they have learned. In November 2000, Khalid
Mish’al explained Hamas’s strategy for the second intifada, which was then in its early stages:
Like the intifada in 1987, the current intifada has taught us that we should move forward normally from popular confrontation to
the rifle to suicide operations. This is the normal development. . . . We always have the Lebanese experiment before our eyes. It
was a great model of which we are proud.
Even before the second intifada began, other Hamas statements made a similar point:
[T]he Zionist enemy . . . only understands the language of Jihad, resistance and martyrdom, that was the language that led to its
blatant defeat in South Lebanon and it will be the language that will defeat it on the land of Palestine.24
Al-Qaeda, too, drew encouraging lessons from Hezbollah’s accomplishments against American
troops in Lebanon. In March 2003, Osama bin Laden said:
[T]he Islamic nation today possesses tremendous forces sufficient to save Palestine and the rest of the Muslim lands. . . . I should
like to remind you of the defeats suffered by a number of the great powers at the hands of the Mujahideen. . . . the defeat of the
American forces in the year 1402 of the Muslim calendar [1982] when the Israelis invaded Lebanon. The Lebanese resistance
sent a truck full of explosives to the American Marines’ center in Beirut and killed over 240 of them.25
The bottom line is that the ferocious escalation of the pace of suicide terrorism that we have
witnessed in the past several years cannot be considered irrational or even surprising. It is simply the
result of the lesson that terrorists have quite reasonably learned from their experience of the previous
two decades: suicide terrorism pays.
THE LIMITS OF SUICIDE TERRORIST COERCION
Despite the encouraging lessons that suicide terrorist groups have learned, there are sharp limits to
the types and scale of concessions that terrorists are likely to gain. Punishment, using anything short of
nuclear weapons, is a relatively weak coercive strategy because modern nation-states generally will
accept high costs rather than abandon important national goals, while modern administrative
techniques and economic adjustments over time often allow states to minimize civilian costs. The
most punishing air attacks with conventional munitions in history were the American B-29 raids
against Japan’s sixty-two largest cities from March to August 1945. Although these raids killed nearly
800,000 Japanese civilians—almost 10 percent died on the first day, in the March 9, 1945, firebombing
of Tokyo, which killed more than 85,000—the conventional bombing did not compel the
Japanese to surrender.26
Suicide terrorism makes adjustment to reduce damage more difficult than for states faced with
military coercion or economic sanctions. However, it does not affect the target state’s interests in the
issues at stake. As a result, suicide terrorism can coerce states to abandon limited or modest goals,
for example, by withdrawing from territory of low strategic importance, or, as in Israel’s case in
1994 and 1995, by a temporary and partial withdrawal from a more important area. However, suicide
terrorism is unlikely to cause targets to abandon goals central to their wealth or security, for example,
by allowing a loss of territory that would weaken the economic prospects of the target state or
strengthen the target state’s rivals.27
Suicide terrorism makes punishment more effective than in traditional military campaigns. Targets
remain willing to countenance high costs for important goals, but administrative, economic, or
military adjustments that will prevent suicide attack are harder to make, while suicide attackers
themselves are unlikely to be deterred by the threat of retaliation. Accordingly, suicide attack is likely
to present a threat of continuing limited civilian punishment that the target government cannot
completely eliminate, and the upper bound on what punishment can gain for coercers is recognizably
higher in suicidal terrorism than in international military coercion.
The data on suicide terrorism from 1980 to 2003 support this conclusion. While suicide terrorism
has achieved modest or very limited goals, it has so far failed to compel target democracies to
abandon goals central to national wealth or security. When the United States withdrew from Lebanon
in 1984, it had no important security, economic, or even ideological interests at stake. Lebanon was
largely a humanitarian mission and not viewed as central to the national welfare of the United States.
Israel withdrew from most of Lebanon in June 1985, but remained in a security buffer on the edge of
southern Lebanon for more than a decade afterward, even though seventeen of twenty-two suicide
attacks occurred in 1985 and 1986. Israel’s withdrawals from Gaza and the West Bank in 1994 and
1995 occurred at the same time that settlements increased and did little to hinder the IDF’s return, so
these concessions were more modest than they may appear. The Sri Lankan government did conduct
apparently serious negotiations with the LTTE from November 1994 to April 1995, but did not
concede the Tamils’ main demand, for independence. The war continued until 2001, when the Sri
Lankan government again agreed to negotiations over the future status of Tamil homelands. These
negotiations are still going on.
Thus, the logic of punishment and the record of suicide terrorism suggest that, unless suicide
terrorists acquire far more destructive technologies, suicide attacks in the service of more ambitious
goals are likely to fail and will continue to provoke more aggressive military responses.
PART II
THE
SOCIAL
LOGIC
OF
SUICIDE
TERRORISM
6
Occupation and
Religious Difference
THE TARGETS OF modern suicide terrorist campaigns have been democratic states which have
stationed heavy combat troops on the territory that the terrorists viewed as their national homeland.
What accounts for this? Why do some foreign occupations result in suicide terrorism, while others do
not? Why, for instance, did Hezbollah in the 1980s and the Tamil Tigers in the 1990s rely on suicide
terrorism to achieve self-determination for their local communities, whereas the ETA, which sought
independence for Spain’s Basques, did not?
Existing accounts of suicide terrorism focus on personal alienation, mass unemployment, social
humiliation, or religious totalitarianism. Each of these fits aspects of some cases, but all miss the
central feature of modern suicide terrorist campaigns.
My hypothesis is that the taproot of suicide terrorism is nationalism—the belief among members of
a community that they share a distinct set of ethnic, linguistic, and historical characteristics and are
entitled to govern their national homeland without interference from foreigners.1 Since the French
Revolution, nationalism has been a powerful force in international politics. It has created nationstates,
undermined multinational empires, and contributed to some of the bloodiest struggles in
history. Nationalism is also the main reason why local communities resist foreign occupation. Some
occupations inflame nationalist sentiments more than others; the hottest situations arise when the
predominate religion in the occupier’s society is different from the predominate religion in the
occupied society. Under the conditions of a foreign occupation, religious difference—more than
Islam or any other particular religion—hardens the boundaries between national communities and so
makes it easier for terrorist leaders to portray the conflict in zero-sum terms, demonize the opponent,
and gain legitimacy for martyrdom from the local community. That is, religious difference helps to
create conditions that encourage resistance movements to use suicide terrorism. Although it is not the
bedrock cause of national resistance and may not be a necessary or sufficient condition for suicide
terrorism, religious difference significantly increases the risk that a nationalist rebellion against
foreign occupation by a democratic state will escalate to the use of suicide terrorism.
The first section of this book explained why suicide terrorism makes strategic sense for terrorist
leaders. This chapter and the next two explain the social logic of suicide terrorism—that is, the
conditions under which it gains mass support and which, in turn, determine when suicide terrorist
campaigns can occur. Suicide terrorist campaigns are more likely when (1) a national community is
occupied by a foreign power; (2) the foreign power is of a different religion; (3) the foreign power is
a democracy. Of nine occupations that have generated suicide terrorist campaigns, eight met all three
conditions, and the last, of the Kurds in Turkey, met two of the three.2 Further, with respect to the
fourteen nationalist rebellions that have taken place since 1980 and that were directed against a
democracy with a different religion, these three conditions account for the presence or absence of
suicide terrorism in all fourteen, once concessions to ordinary rebellion alone are taken into account.
Suicide terrorism occurred in seven, while the rebels were able to gain concessions without resorting
to suicide terrorism in the other seven. By contrast, only one of twenty-two nationalist rebellions that
did not meet all three criteria produced a suicide terrorist campaign—again, the Kurds in Turkey. The
next two chapters add robustness to the theory by tracing the causal effects of the three key variables
through numerous important cases, including al-Qaeda.
WHAT IS TO BE EXPLAINED?
Suicide terrorism is an extreme strategy for national liberation. Although isolated incidents do occur,
the overwhelming majority of suicide terrorist attacks take place as part of organized, coherent
campaigns in which individual after individual, or team after team, voluntarily kill themselves as a
means to kill the maximum number of people in the target society in order to compel that state to end a
foreign occupation of their homeland.
Protracted campaigns of suicide terrorism require significant community support, for three reasons.
The first does not necessarily require wide popular support, but the other two do.
First, community support enables a suicide terrorist group to replenish its membership. Other kinds
of terrorists can try to husband their human resources by hiding from society, but suicide terrorist
organizations cannot operate without losses. Most suicide attackers are walk-in volunteers, and thus
the terrorist organization must have a relatively high profile so that it is easy to find, especially if the
flow of volunteers is to be maintained over time or expanded substantially, as has happened in
several suicide terrorist campaigns.3 Hence, suicide terrorist organizations have strong incentives to
become deeply embedded in social institutions such as schools, universities, charities, and religious
congregations. However, since the number of suicide attackers is never large—the most active
suicide terrorist group, the Tamil Tigers, used 143 suicide attackers between 1987 and 2001—
sufficient volunteers might be obtainable from a relatively narrow subpopulation of the national
community. So replenishment in itself requires deep, but not necessarily wide, popular support.
Second, community support is essential to enable a suicide terrorist group to avoid detection,
surveillance, and elimination by the security forces of the target society. Given that recruitment needs
oblige them to keep a relatively high profile, suicide terrorist groups cannot prevent many members of
the local community from gaining basic information that would be useful to the enemy (for instance,
the identity of recruiters, common locations for recruitment, and even locations of frequently used safe
houses, means of communication, and other logistics).4 As a result, without broad sympathy among the
local population, suicide terrorist groups would be especially vulnerable to penetration, defection,
and informants. They must therefore be popular enough that society as a whole would be willing to
silence potential informants. Everyone may know who the terrorists are. No one must tell.
Third, and most important, community support is necessary for martyrdom. If at all possible,
terrorist groups need their suicide attackers to be accepted as martyrs by the wider community. This
is important because individuals are more likely to volunteer if they can expect to be accorded high
status after their deaths than if their sacrifices will go unnoticed. In addition, if the community refuses
to accept that the suicide attackers qualify as martyrs, their acts risk condemnation as socially
unacceptable. Such condemnation could undermine support for the terrorist campaign.
Martyrdom—death for the sake of one’s community—is a social construct. An individual may wish
to become a martyr and may voluntarily sacrifice his or her life to achieve this aim. However, it is the
community that designates the qualifications for martyrdom and judges whether the self-sacrifice of
specific individuals meets the requirements for this special status. Communities commonly reserve a
prominent place for the names of their martyrs. Streets and schools are named in their honor.
Monuments list their names. But adding new names is up to the community. An individual can die.
Only a community can make a martyr.
By using elaborate ceremonies and other means to identify the death of a suicide attacker with the
good of the community—such as high-profile funerals, “martyr videos,” and murals and graffiti—
suicide terrorist organizations can promote the idea that their members should be accorded martyr
status. Such propaganda may influence social responses to suicide terrorism. Still, it is the community
as a whole, not the terrorists, that decides to whom it will accord the status of martyr.5
Evidence from prominent cases suggests that mass support for suicide terrorist campaigns usually
goes far beyond a tiny fringe. Hard data are limited, since active rebellions usually make it
impossible to conduct accurate polls. However, we do have reliable data directly on the issue in one
case, that of the Palestinians. Since the mid-1990s, surveys of Palestinians living in the West Bank
and Gaza have shown levels of popular support for suicide terrorist attacks against Israel rising from
roughly a third of respondents in 1994 to 1999 to more than two thirds since the start of the second
intifada in 2001.6 We also have indirect evidence of mass support in three other cases. A poll of
Saudis taken after September 11, 2001, found that over 95 percent of respondents agreed with Osama
bin Laden’s objection to American forces in the region, although the respondents were not asked
specifically about suicide terrorism.7 In Sri Lanka, after more than a decade of suicide attacks by the
Tamil Tigers, a survey of Tamils in 2002 found that 47 percent supported the use of force to achieve
an independent homeland.8 In Iraq, American estimates of the number of “active supporters” of the
Sunni insurgency grew from 5,000 in spring 2004 to 20,000 by fall 2004, while in January 2005 the
Iraqi government estimated the number as 100,000.9 The main exception is the PKK’s suicide
terrorism in Turkey, which lacked wide support in the occupied community and was also the least
aggressive suicide campaign, killing twenty-two people in fourteen attacks.10
The close conjunction between community support and protracted campaigns of suicide terrorism
compels us to ask how such violent behavior can become acceptable and supported by a society at
large. From the perspective of the terrorist organization, the central problem in suicide terrorism is to
persuade the local community to re-define acts of suicide and murder as acts of martyrdom on behalf
of the community. There are powerful prohibitions against suicide in virtually every society.
(Although Muslims have committed more suicide attacks than non-Muslims, Muslim societies’ norms
against suicide are among the strongest in the world, as Chapter 9 shows in detail.) Hence, terrorist
organizations must typically overcome deep religious and social norms in order to persuade their
communities to support suicide campaigns. Absent a foreign military presence that threatens core
elements in a community’s national identity, such a transformation of communal norms is likely to be
rare.
A NATIONALIST THEORY OF SUICIDE TERRORISM
A theory that predicts when suicide terrorism will occur and when it will not must focus on the
occupied community’s support for individual self-sacrifice; that support, in turn, is affected by the
relationship between the identity of the foreign occupier and nationalist sentiments in the occupied
community.
Defining “Occupation”
For the purpose of understanding suicide terrorism, it is imperative to view occupation from the
perspective of the resistance movement (e.g., terrorists, revolutionaries), because it is the behavior of
the local actors, not the foreign power, that determines whether suicide terrorism occurs. Whether the
foreign power regards itself as a “stabilizing” ally rather than an “occupying” power is not relevant.
“Occupation” means the exertion of political control over territory by an outside group.11 The
critical requirement is that the occupying power’s political control must depend on employing
coercive assets—whether troops, police, or other security forces—that are controlled from outside
the occupied territory. The number of troops actually stationed in the occupied territory may or may
not be large, so long as enough are available, if necessary, to suppress any effort at independence.
The best test is the political decisiveness of foreign-controlled coercive power: if the local
government requires the power of foreign “stabilizing” troops or police in order to maintain order—
or if most of the local community believes that this is the case—then, from the perspective of the
resistance, these foreign troops are occupying forces that are preventing a change of government that
would otherwise occur. The contention that the foreign troops are occupying forces is made stronger
if the local government is engaged in actions that benefit the foreign power at the expense of the local
populace.12
By this standard, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar all qualify today, because (1) U.S. combat
troops have been present on their soil or in nations immediately adjacent to them for over a decade;
and (2) owing to the United States’ strong economic interest in maintaining the flow of oil from the
Persian Gulf, the troops might well be used to prop up these pro-Western regimes if necessary. The
other Persian Gulf regimes—Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman—also qualify, since U.S.
troops are available in neighboring countries. In short, the presence of heavy American military
power—tens of thousands of frontline combat troops since 1990—on the Arabian Peninsula
constitutes a foreign occupation, certainly in the eyes of opponents of the local regimes. This is so
even if the United States disputes the characterization.
The Value of the Homeland
Although foreign occupation of any territory creates a motivation for resistance, the prospect of the
homeland being occupied and ruled by foreigners usually constitutes an especially severe provocation
to nationalist sentiments. Once a community no longer governs its homeland, it loses the ability to
protect the political, economic, and social interests of its members. Worse, the occupiers may
threaten the local community’s ability to perpetuate the special characteristics that purportedly form
the basis of its distinct national identity.13 Even when the constituent elements of a community’s
identity are contested—as is often true apart from any external threat—the fact of an occupation
means that the future trajectory of the “nation” is no longer determined by the members of the
community, who now must compete with the powerful foreigners who are in political control of the
territory most associated with the community’s identity. In such a situation, people who love their
nation can come to feel intense loathing toward the nation occupying their homeland and may develop
a heroic sense of duty to inflict terrible punishment on the enemy society in order to compel it to
leave. Accordingly, people and communities often go to extreme lengths to regain self-determination,
that is, the ability to maintain and reproduce a community’s national heritage without interference
from others.
Even in today’s globalizing world, the territory that national groups perceive as the birthplace of
their community usually evokes special commitment. Although boundaries may be ambiguous and
history may be contested, the homeland is imbued with memories, meanings, and emotional
attachments. The homeland is also a space on which to establish political power. As Guntram H.
Herb says, “Over time, as a group occupies and narrates a particular territory, a transformation
occurs. Instead of the group defining the territory, the territory comes to define the group.”14
Even when many or most members of the local community were not especially nationalist before,
foreign occupation commonly unifies them by creating a sense of shared threat. The foreign forces’
efforts to police the occupied territory or to suppress even mild resistance often kill or injure the
innocent as well the guilty, because the occupiers’ intelligence about the loyalties and behavior of the
local population is often poor, and as a result the occupiers may resort to indiscriminate use of heavy
firepower. This, in turn, can lead members of the occupied community to believe that their lives are
being treated as more expendable than are the lives of occupation forces. These conditions often
intensify nationalist commitment and help to explain the willingness of individuals to sacrifice
personal interests to fight and die for the nation.15 As Frantz Fanon famously said of Algerian
resistance to French occupation:
Individualism is the first to disappear. . . . Henceforward, the interests of one will be the interests of all, for in concrete fact
everyone will be discovered by the troops, everyone will be massacred—or everyone will be saved. The motto “look out for
yourself,” the atheist’s method of salvation, is in this context forbidden.16
The Importance of the Occupier’s Identity
National identities are constructed in relation to other nations. Without a boundary based on purported
differences between “us” and “them,” nationalism could not exist. If there is no “them,” there is no
“us.” Further, a national identity can only be defined fully in relation to a particular other nation and a
particular moment in time. Understandings of the nation’s special properties depend in part on the
nature of the purported differences that separate one’s own nation from the other, and on
understandings of both the history and the current state of relations between the two nations. When one
country is in political control of another, the national identities of both communities usually include
more negative images of the other than do the identities of the same two nations when they are at
peace. The boundary between the nations hardens, as well.
The main exception is when the occupied community would face an even greater threat from a
different foreign enemy, if it were not occupied. As David Edelstein has shown, the threat from the
Soviet Union dampened nationalist resistance to the American occupation of Germany and Japan
during the Cold War and created a powerful basis for the establishment of deep institutional bonds
that reinforced cooperation among the alliance partners.17
Absent a superior external threat, however, the identity of the foreign occupier is normally the most
important “other” in relation to the occupied community. A group’s identity comprises the distinct set
of attributes that a body of individuals believes it has in common. These attributes include not only
common objective elements, such as language, history, customs, and institutions, but also people’s
subjective self-identification. Although nationalism depends on the belief that a community has a
unique set of ethnic, linguistic, religious, and other cultural traits that separate it from other
communities, all communities do not differ equally across prominent social characteristics. People
living in Chicago may view themselves as a Chicagoans, Irish, Catholics, Americans, Westerners,
and Christians. They may share many attributes with people living in Dublin (Irish heritage, Catholic,
Westerner, Christian), some attributes with people living in Berlin (Westerner, Christian), and few
attributes with people living in Sudan.
The wider the difference between the identities of the foreign occupier and of the local community
—the fewer prominent attributes they share—the more the local community is likely to view the
occupier as “alien,” the more it will fear that the occupation will lead to radical and permanent
transformation of its national characteristics, and the more it will seek to end the occupation at almost
any price. The occupying power already is stronger than any military force in the occupied community
—otherwise, the condition of occupation would not exist—and so has the power to damage its
political, economic, social, and religious institutions with inevitable effects on other aspects of local
culture as well. Even if the occupier does not directly use this power, it necessarily poses an
existential threat to the ability of the local community to determine and perpetuate its national identity.
Accordingly, we should expect national resistance in general, and suicide terrorism in particular, to
be greater in an “alien occupation,” when there are few social attributes in common between the
foreign rulers and the local community, than in a “kindred” occupation, when both share many social
attributes.
“Alien” Occupation and Religious Difference
What, exactly, defines an “alien” occupation? In principle, there are no hard-and-fast rules. Since
national identity is partly subjective, it is susceptible to manipulation, at least over long periods of
time. In practice, however, some national attributes are likely to be more important than others in
distinguishing the social relationship between an occupier and the local community.
For example, ancestral heritage, customs, and language are less crucial than one might at first
expect. These attributes almost always differ between a foreign occupier and a local community, so
using them to distinguish alien occupation from kindred occupation would largely collapse the
meaning of these concepts together. Political ideology, often viewed as a crucial difference between
nation-states, is also less important in the context of an occupation, precisely because the occupation
itself defines the most salient political difference between the groups: the occupier controls the
government, while the local population does not.
Although exceptions can occur, religious difference is probably the most important attribute
separating the identity of foreign rulers from the local community.18 The reason is not that some
occupied communities are more intensely religious than others. The reason is also not that some
religions guard their independence more fiercely than others. Rather, the fact that the occupier is
associated with a different religion in itself enables specific dynamics that can increase the fear that
the occupation will permanently alter the ability of the occupied community to determine its national
characteristics—secular as well as religious.19
The main mechanism is exclusivity. The harder the boundary between groups—the more exclusive
are membership rules—the more extreme is the “us” versus “them” dichotomy. Religion is normally
more exclusive than other national differences (except for race) under the conditions of an occupation
and so often becomes the principal defining boundary between an occupier and the local community.
People can learn the occupier’s language without abandoning their own, and can even participate in
many social practices associated with the occupier’s society without rejecting their own, but a person
cannot be a member of two religions at once, except under the rarest circumstances. (Indeed, most of
the world’s major religions prohibit simultaneous practice of or membership in another religion.)20
Even when members of the occupied community have no religious commitment at all, religious
difference tells them that they and other members of their society are not part of the occupier’s
society, while the need for national cohesion for resistance to an occupation intensifies this sense of
difference between the two communities. Such nonreligious individuals need not be motivated by a
new commitment to the predominant religion of “us” (although some may), but can be motivated
simply against the clearly defined “other.”
Religious Versus Linguistic Differences
To explain the mechanism of exclusivity, it is helpful to compare the effects of religious difference
and linguistic difference on the intensity of nationalist sentiments under the conditions of an
occupation. Many scholars of nationalism argue that language differences are more important to the
formation of national identities than are religious differences. Language helps demarcate nations,
commonly through its impact on economic incentives. In an industrial or post-industrial world, most
people are employable only in places where they speak the locally dominant language. A—or perhaps
the—most important difference between Germans and Danes is that neither could function well
economically in the other’s country.21
How identities are constructed, however, is different in peace and in war.22 When external threats
to national self-determination are low, language differences may be more important than religious
differences in constructing the boundaries between one’s own nation and others. When threats to self-
determination are high, such as when the nation is at war, or extreme, as when it is under foreign
military occupation, the relative importance of religious and linguistic differences reverses. To be
clear: under the circumstances of a foreign occupation, the relative importance of religious and
linguistic differences normally reverses and religious difference can inflame nationalist
sentiments in ways that encourage mass support for martyrdom and suicide terrorism.
In an intense conflict, religious differences make for a harder—more exclusive—boundary than do
language differences. Under foreign occupation, individuals can learn the enemy’s language without
changing their membership in their own community, but anyone who converts to the enemy’s religion
will be understood as having defected from his or her own nation to the enemy nation. The reason that
this matters in a foreign occupation is rarely that anyone fears that mass conversion to the occupier’s
religion will sharply diminish the numbers of the occupied community. Of the eight occupations with
a religious difference that are studied in this book, there were few or no such conversions in any of
them.23 Rather, the fact that such conversions are virtually unthinkable helps demonstrate just how
exclusive religious differences become under occupation conditions.
When occupation hardens communal boundaries along a religious difference, there are three factors
that manifestly intensify nationalist resistance and encourage mass support for extreme self-sacrifice
required for suicide terrorism.
1. Zero-Sum Conflict. The presence of a religious difference reduces room for compromise between
the occupying power and the occupied community, because the conflict is seen as zero-sum. Local
resources (land, water, minerals) are divisible and the occupier has the power to redistribute them.
The more the occupier is viewed as a distinct entity, the more members of the occupied community—
secular and religious—are likely to fear that any redistribution of those resources would come at their
expense. Hence, to the population of an occupied land, the most tangible evidence of increased
autonomy is a retreat by the occupying power in its control of these resources. As Chapter 8 shows,
Hezbollah could recruit many secular Lebanese (and several Christians) as well as Islamists to carry
out suicide attacks, largely because of the common belief that Israel would use Lebanese resources at
the expense of the community as a whole.
Moreover, religious symbols themselves often become focal points in occupations involving a
religious difference, precisely because the central structures and ground associated with a particular
religion are genuinely indivisible across a religious divide. Churches, mosques, temples, and
monasteries are sacred spaces that cannot be shared with another religion and always have some
restrictions on access or behavior that are considered inviolable.24 Also, religious symbols are
normally central in the histories, memories, and emotional attachments that most members of the
society—secular and religious—share. Few secular Jews, even among those who would hand over
the West Bank and Gaza to Palestinian control, would also willingly surrender Jerusalem. One LTTE
suicide attacker was motivated by the thought that the Sinhalese Buddhists would destroy the Hindu
temples near her village, even though she had never visited them.
2. Demonization. Religious difference can enable extreme demonization—the belief that the enemy is
morally inferior as well as militarily dangerous, and so must be dealt with harshly.25 To most people
brought up in any religion, the dogmas and practices of any other religion will seem strange, perhaps
inexplicable or pointless, and possibly immoral. This sense of moral difference can heighten fears
that the occupying forces may use their superior power to indiscriminately kill members of their own
community. Further, most religions claim to possess superior insight into ultimate truths, from which it
follows that devotees of any other religion must be misguided, amoral, immoral, or even actively evil.
Especially when nationalist sentiments are intensified by war or foreign occupation, the religious
inferiority of the enemy can promote a feeling that he is less than fully human. These problems are
often made worse by resistance leaders who often exploit religious differences to depict the enemy in
as negative a way as possible to mobilize mass support for the resistance. Although any cultural
difference between rivals can be manipulated by resistance leaders, religious difference is readymade
for the purpose because it goes to the heart of the moral code attributed to the opponent.
Demonization encourages the two main features of suicide terrorism—the willingness to die and
the willingness to kill innocents. The more a foreign occupation threatens a community’s national
identity, the more patriotic sentiments can inspire members of the occupied community to voluntarily
accept great personal sacrifice to maintain the community’s original identity. The more the foreign
culture is viewed with scorn and revulsion, the more malignant sentiments can justify cruel treatment
of even innocent members of the foreign society.
Accordingly, even individuals with no religious commitment at all can support and sacrifice for a
national rebellion against a foreign occupier identified with a religion different from the local
community’s. The Tamil Tigers, a secular group drawn from Hindu families in Sri Lanka, used
suicide terrorism to gain national independence largely because they do not accept the decision by the
Sinhalese majority that Buddhism should be the dominant religion for the island as a whole.
3. Legitimacy for Martyrdom. Religious difference lends greater credibility to extremist groups who
seek to use the language of martyrdom to legitimate their violence. The main problem for a community
wishing to applaud the self-sacrifice of a martyr is that the act is a direct violation of one of the most
common and absolute community norms, the prohibition against suicide. Since the suicide taboo is
usually grounded in religious doctrine, if those same doctrines can be re-interpreted to justify selfinflicted
death in certain circumstances, then this directly undermines the basis for the suicide taboo,
at least in those circumstances.
A religious difference does not solve the extremists’ problem, but it reduces the degree of
manipulation necessary to re-define acts of suicide and murder as acts of martyrdom for the defense
of the community. There are two reasons for this. First, the rhetoric intended to mobilize resistance to
occupations with a religious difference is likely to use religious terms, even among secular groups.
Although both secular and religious groups honor “martyrs,” the idea of martyrdom is religious in
origin and remains primarily a religious concept even today.26 “Martyrdom” means death for the sake
of faith, and it or closely related terms are common to all the world’s major religions as the sole
exception to the prohibition on voluntary death. For instance, the Jewish concept of Kiddush haShem—“sanctification
of God’s Name”—is an exception to the prohibitions against suicide and is
reserved for individuals who voluntarily died for their religion.27
Second, a religious difference is itself a common standard for martyrdom. Although other
qualifications vary, all the world’s primary religions hold that the main indicator that one has died for
faith is that one has been killed by someone from outside the faith, who is part of a community hostile
to the faith. A Jew cannot be martyred by a Jew, a Muslim by a Muslim, or a Christian by a Christian,
barring highly exceptional circumstances—for example, that the killer was part of a heretical
community acting to undermine the faith.28 To be sure, the mainstream understanding of martyrdom in
all the world’s religions still prohibits a person from killing himself or herself. If, however, a
religious schism exists and the enemy is viewed as from an alien faith, one of the common
qualifications for martyrdom is fulfilled and the suicide terrorist group need only argue that the
difference between high-risk missions and self-inflicted-death missions against the foreign enemy
should be overlooked. Under the conditions of foreign occupation, manipulation of the normal
definition of martyrdom can succeed, because what matters is persuading the community to
temporarily suspend the prohibition against voluntary death with respect to those who die for the sake
of the community, not to accept voluntary death as legitimate beyond this circumstance.
Together, these effects of religious difference can increase mass support for suicide terrorism in
three direct ways: by increasing people’s willingness to support rebellion; by increasing support for
killing any members of the enemy community, even those who would otherwise be considered
innocent; and by convincing some individuals that they have a duty to kill as many of the enemy as
possible even at the cost of their own lives.
We cannot measure quantitatively how much these mechanisms increase the likelihood of suicide
terrorism. What we can say is that the presence of a religious difference tends to promote suicide
terrorism in ways that a language difference would not.
Last Resort Against Democratic Opponents
Although public attention is understandably drawn to the rhetoric of suicide terrorist groups
themselves, the central issue in explaining the onset of suicide terrorism is not why one or several
extremist leaders call for suicide operations against an occupier, but why the occupied community as
a whole would lend significant support to calls for martyrdom.
Expediency is a key factor in determining when a community will promote martyrdom for the sake
of national liberation. For a community to re-define what counts as legitimate martyrdom requires the
broad acceptance of new interpretations of existing norms, a process that would make little sense if a
community already had an effective strategy to achieve self-determination through more conventional
means. Hence, we should expect that, even in cases of religious difference, suicide terrorism would
be a last resort, typically coming once more conventional means of resistance have been exhausted or
were obvious non-starters in the first place.
Occupation is a situation in which there is extreme asymmetry between the strength of the occupier
and the strength of the local community. This power asymmetry virtually rules out conventional
military confrontation, because the occupied community no longer controls sufficient territory and
resources to train, arm, or equip large military formations. In many cases, the power asymmetry is so
stark that even minimally organized resistance cannot get off the ground.29
When resistance does occur, the most common strategy is guerrilla warfare. This strategy was used
frequently to resist imperial control in the twentieth century and is still the main strategy of rebellion
in the world today.
Although guerrillas often seek self-determination from government forces, guerrilla resistance
commonly escalates into deliberate attacks against innocents associated with the foreign occupier.
Partly, the reason is the nature of guerrilla warfare. Guerrillas are too weak to confront the occupier’s
military forces directly. Instead, they aim to gradually wear down the occupier, fighting in small units
dispersed over large areas in order to steadily inflict losses over a protracted period of time, rather
than seeking to destroy those forces in major battles.30 As a result, the line between isolated and
easily targeted combatants, and noncombatants, is blurred in guerrilla warfare.
If guerrilla resistance succeeds and the foreign power leaves, then the local community again has
no reason to resort to more extreme measures. However, if guerrilla resistance does not succeed (or
is not feasible from the outset), then resistance leaders face a sharp choice: accept rule by what may
now be an even more hostile occupier, or escalate to more extreme measures. Over the past twenty
years, suicide terrorism has increasingly become the choice for groups that choose to escalate rather
than quit.
This helps to explain an important fact about suicide terrorist groups. Many people assume that
suicide terrorist groups are similar to ordinary terrorist groups—small in number, committed to a
strange cause that is unpopular within their own local community—and that such groups are choosing
between ordinary forms of terrorism and suicide attack. However, suicide terrorist groups and
ordinary terrorist groups have quite different organizational profiles and relationships to their local
community.31 Suicide terrorism rarely evolves from tiny bands of ordinary terrorists, but instead
commonly arises from broad-based nationalist liberation movements, those that typically have
pursued guerrilla warfare and found that a guerrilla strategy is inadequate to achieve their nationalist
aspirations. In other words, suicide terrorist groups are not choosing between ordinary terrorism and
suicide terrorism, but are deciding whether to use suicide attack as an extension of a broader guerrilla
warfare strategy. This is why suicide terrorism often appears to be a strategy of “last resort.”
The evolution from guerrilla warfare also helps to account for the willingness of suicide terrorists
to target noncombatants. Although this is the most horrifying element in the strategy, most resistance
movements have already come to view the targeting of noncombatants as legitimate before they resort
to suicide attack. Indeed, often the main purpose of a suicide attack is to inflict the maximum damage
possible on the target society, a goal that suicide terrorists share with many guerrilla resistance
movements. The reason that suicide terrorists inflict more horrific damage is not that they have
suddenly become willing to target civilians, but that they are now willing to use suicide attack to do
so.
If an occupied community pursues the goal of self-determination rationally, it will adopt the
strategy most likely to restore its ability to perpetuate and configure national characteristics in the
long run. Violent resistance is often not the best choice, either because the power asymmetry between
the occupier and local community is so great that even modest rebellion would surely fail or because
it would provoke such extreme retaliation against the community that the group could cease to exist.
Democracies are commonly thought to be vulnerable to coercive pressure and less willing than
authoritarian states to use extremely harsh repression, such as mass extermination. Scholars have
recently shown that democracies are not as soft as commonly believed.32 However, unless this
widespread perception changes, the coercive strategy of suicide terrorism is most likely against a
foreign power with a democratic political system than other regime types.
The Absence of Concessions. The logic of last resort against democratic regimes leads to an
important precondition for suicide terrorism. Since suicide terrorism is mainly a strategy to compel
democracies to make concessions that will enable a community to achieve self-determination, if the
democracy does make concessions toward the terrorists’ political cause, then we would expect the
suicide terrorism to decline, pause, or stop altogether, depending on the magnitude of the concession.
Similarly, if the democracy makes concessions to rebels using guerrilla warfare or ordinary
terrorism, then we would not expect the rebellion to escalate to suicide terrorism.
Alternative Explanations
The nationalist theory of suicide terrorism argues that under foreign occupation by a democratic
country, nationalist sentiments are heightened by differences in religion, which leads to community
support for martyrdom, which results in suicide terrorism. However, it is theoretically possible that
the causal process could run in the opposite direction, in either of two ways. First, since national
identities are socially constructed by discourse, practice, or both, it is possible that rebellion itself,
or even suicide terrorism, could contribute to the strengthening of a national identity that was
previously weak or absent. This could mean that suicide terrorism is produced largely as an output of
a self-reinforcing spiral rather than as the outcome of the mainly linear causal process that I claim.
Empirically, however, in seven of the nine occupations that have produced suicide terrorism, the
national identities of the occupied communities were well formed long before the beginning of the
rebellion.33
The two arguable cases are the Palestinians and al-Qaeda. Some scholars contend that Palestinian
national identity was relatively weak until it was solidified by the first intifada, of 1987–1992.34
However, this still places both the hardening of communal identity and the beginning of the rebellion
prior to the start of suicide terrorism, which was first used by Palestinians in 1994.
Al-Qaeda appeals to national identities on three levels—Arabian, pan-Arab, and pan-Muslim.35 Of
these, Arabian national identity was well formed long before the existence of al-Qaeda. Pan-Arab and
pan-Muslim identities also pre-date al-Qaeda, although pan-Arab nationalism remains a relatively
weak force and pan-Islam weaker still.36 It is possible that the activities of al-Qaeda and Western
responses to them could have the effect of strengthening one or both of these identities.
Second, even if we can show that nationalism usually precedes both rebellion and suicide
terrorism, it could still be possible that the terrorism might inspire mass support for the rebellion,
instead of the other way around.37 Empirically, however, in eight of the nine occupations that led to
suicide terrorism, large-scale rebellion either preceded the first suicide terrorist attack or was
simultaneous with it. In six cases, rebellion preceded suicide terrorism by several years. In two
cases, both began nearly simultaneously. Hezbollah began its guerrilla resistance to the United States,
France, and Israel in November 1982 and committed its first suicide attack in the same month. In Iraq,
virtually simultaneous guerrilla warfare and suicide attacks began as the United States began to take
control of the country in April 2003.
The only exception is al-Qaeda, whose first suicide attack—against American troops in Saudi
Arabia in 1995—was not an outgrowth of a local rebellion. Indeed, al-Qaeda hopes to use suicide
terrorism to inspire rebellion in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, although it has not yet
succeeded in this. Al-Qaeda did, however, have a substantial guerrilla organization as early as 1988
in Afghanistan, and its first attack on U.S. forces took place in 1992, when it sent 250 fighters to
combat them in Somalia. Although al-Qaeda’s suicide terrorism was not an outgrowth of a popular
rebellion, formation of a guerrilla army did pre-date its first suicide terrorist attack by seven years.
Thus, in six cases rebellion led to terrorism, in two cases they happened nearly simultaneously, and
in one case mass rebellion did not precede the use of suicide terrorism, although the creation of a
substantial military organization outside the country did.
In short, in occupations that have generated suicide terrorism, the causal effects run mainly in the
direction that I claim: from nationalism to rebellion and terrorism.
ALTERNATIVE CAUSAL PATHWAYS OF
SUICIDE TERRORISM
Solid arrows represent the theory proposed in this book.
The dashed arrow represents a causal path that sometimes influences the production of national identity, but that plays little role in
determining when suicide terrorism campaigns occur.
The dotted arrow represents a causal path that al-Qaeda and perhaps other terrorist organizations have hoped will occur, but that has not
done so.38
TESTING THE THEORY
To test my theory, I employ a methodology that combines the features of focused-comparison and
statistical-correlative analysis using the universe of foreign occupations, 1980–2003. Correlative
analysis of this universe enhances confidence that my theory can predict future events by showing that
the patterns predicted by the theory actually occur over a large class of cases. Detailed analysis of
historical cases enhances confidence that the correlations found in the larger universe are not spurious
—that is, that my theory accurately identifies the causal dynamics that determine outcomes.
Testing the theory requires three steps. First, relevant historical evidence must be identified.
Second, the theory must be put into operational terms to provide falsifiable predictions that can easily
be observed in historical cases. Third, the predictions of the theory must be compared with the
evidence.
This study investigates the universe of foreign occupations in which a democratic state controlled
the homeland of a distinct national community (other than the majority in the democratic state) for the
period 1980 to 2003, fifty-eight cases in all. The definition of “occupation” is deliberately broad,
including not only cases in which a democratic state moved military forces across an internationally
recognized boundary to govern the homeland of another community but also the far larger number of
cases in which a democratic state controlled the homeland of a distinct national minority within its
own borders.
Using this broad definition of “occupation” provides a strong test of the role of religious difference
in determining the degree of self-sacrifice by rebel groups. First, it enhances confidence that the
findings are not due to the effect of selecting a narrow class of cases, because it tests the theory
against all instances in which a local community could plausibly view itself as under foreign
occupation. Second, it allows the analysis to control for the effect of prior rebellion on the onset of
suicide terrorism. Since rebellion is common in response to a foreign occupation preceded by a
military invasion but less common when a distinct minority is ruled by a different majority community
within a state, including both situations enhances confidence that the study can determine whether the
presence or absence of a nationalist rebellion is a prior condition for suicide terrorism. Finally, the
broad definition of “occupation” enhances the robustness of my study by reducing the likelihood that
there are a great number of missing cases that would contradict my findings.
Cases were identified according to three criteria. First, cases are restricted to those in which the
foreign rulers had military or security forces operating on the ancestral homeland of a local
community that constitutes a majority in that area. Minority or diaspora communities, such as Jews
and Gypsies in Europe, would not be able to establish control of local communities under any
circumstances and so are excluded.
Second, cases are limited to the period 1980 to 2003. The early 1980s appear to be a watershed
with respect to suicide terrorism. Although one might expect to find instances in earlier conflicts, such
as the Algerian civil war in the 1950s, the Vietnam War in the 1960s, or even the Lebanese civil war
or Iranian Revolution in the 1970s, this is not the case. Hence, cases prior to 1980 have no variation
on the dependent variable, making it impossible to determine cause and effect.
Third, cases are restricted to occupations by states with a democratic political system, and
specifically those with a system of contested national elections, open to a substantial fraction of
citizens, for at least five continuous years during the period.39 As Chapter 4 shows, all suicide
terrorist campaigns have been targeted against democracies. My study uses a generous definition of
“democracy,” excluding only states whose experience with national elections is so limited that
terrorist groups could not reasonably hope to affect the policy of the occupying state through attacks
that punish its citizens in order to pressure elected officials.
The two independent variables in the study are the existence of a religious difference and the
existence of rebellion between the foreign occupier and the local community. Religious differences
are coded using standard lists of primary religions and major sectarian differences, which include
Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, Shinto, and Taoism as
well as tribalism and agnosticism. Some lists also include other religions, such as Baha’i, Jainism,
Shamanism, and Zoroastrianism, but adding these would not change the results of this study.40
“Rebellion” counts any organized resistance by a militant group beyond political protests or other
forms of non-violent civil disobedience.
The dependent variable is the presence or absence of a suicide terrorist campaign.
To select cases and code the independent variables, I relied mainly on the “Minorities at Risk”
database. This database already codes every country in the world for almost the entire period for the
concentration of distinct minorities within states, level of rebellion by the minorities, and existence of
religious difference between the minority and majority in the states.41 I supplemented this database
with a list of foreign occupations consequent on invasion during the period as well as with additional
material to bring the database up to the present.42
The key question in assessing the significance of correlations between independent and dependent
variables is how they compare with chance. There are two possible outcomes, a suicide terrorist
campaign and no suicide terrorist campaign, and four possible combinations of independent
variables: religious difference and rebellion; religious difference and no rebellion; no religious
difference and rebellion; and no religious difference and no rebellion. Accordingly, we can readily
determine whether the suicide terrorist campaigns did or did not occur along with these combinations
of independent variables and whether these results differ from what would be obtained by simply
flipping a coin.
The nationalist theory of suicide terrorism predicts that suicide terrorism would occur in tandem
with only one of the combinations of independent variables—that is, when there is both a religious
difference and rebellion. This theory correctly predicts 49 of 58 cases, a result that is statistically
significant at the highest common benchmark of .001, meaning that it could be achieved by chance less
than once in 1000 times.43
Further, the predictive value of the nationalist theory of suicide terrorism is even higher once we
consider the role of concessions in limiting the rise of suicide terrorism. In seven of the fourteen
cases involving a rebellion and a religious difference, the rebels were able to gain concessions
without resorting to suicide terrorism. In the other seven cases, prior concessions were either not
made or were quickly withdrawn, and the rebels went on to use suicide terrorism in an attempt to gain
concessions they otherwise could not get. This means that if we expand the conditions of suicide
terrorism from the initial three—foreign occupation, by a democratic state, with a religious difference
—to include the presence of concessions to rebellion alone, the nationalist theory of suicide terrorism
accounts for 14 of 14 cases (see Table 12) in which all four conditions were met and 56 of 58 cases
overall.
CONCLUSION
This chapter develops a theory of the causes of suicide terrorism, contending that nationalist rebellion
and religious difference between the rebels and a dominant democratic state are the main conditions
under which the foreign occupation of a community’s homeland is likely to lead to a campaign of
suicide terrorism as part of a national liberation strategy. Testing this theory in the relevant universe
of cases since suicide terrorism became prominent twenty-five years ago provides strong verification
for this proposition.
Since 1980, religious difference has accounted for much of the variance in the pattern of when
nationalist rebellions against occupation by a democratic state evolve into suicide terrorist
campaigns.
Although these findings give us confidence that future cases are likely to follow a similar pattern,
we should not overread the evidence. Suicide terrorism is a relatively recent phenomenon and it
generates significant coercive pressure against democratic states. Moreover, religious identity is
partly a subjective experience and so is vulnerable to manipulation by local elites as they seek ways
to mobilize support for nationalist causes. Accordingly, we cannot rule out the possibility that future
terrorist organizations would succeed in carrying out suicide campaigns even when the religious
difference between the foreign rulers and occupied community is narrower than in past cases. On the
basis of existing data, however, we would anticipate that suicide terrorism is more likely to spread
when there is a religious difference than when there is not.
We also want to know more about the relationship between religious difference and suicide
terrorism. Most important is further evidence that the results of this analysis are not spurious and that
the causal dynamics expected by the theory actually appear in individual cases. For these purposes,
the detailed case studies in the next chapters are required.
7
Demystifying al-Qaeda
AL-QAEDA’S SUICIDE TERRORIST campaign against the United States and its allies is a critical
test of my nationalist theory of suicide terrorism. In this case, the growing American military presence
on the Arabian Peninsula created a fear of an “alien” occupation in a number of countries that the
terrorists view as their homelands. That fear has encouraged popular support for martyrdom as a
strategy of national resistance to the presence of American troops in the region. However, there is an
important alternative explanation for al-Qaeda’s behavior—the religious commitment of individual
members of the organization, a commitment that could encourage Islamic fundamentalists from across
the world to pursue martyrdom as an end in itself. Of course, the fact that al-Qaeda does indeed
recruit Islamic fundamentalists from a number of countries lends plausibility to the religious
explanation.
Thus far, the main problem with understanding the root causes of al-Qaeda’s terrorism is that our
knowledge of the group’s membership and organizational structure has been woefully incomplete. The
first wave of knowledge about al-Qaeda appeared during the late 1990s and in the immediate
aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attack. Much of this literature provides valuable details on the
history of Osama bin Laden’s militant activities from his first guerrilla campaign against the Soviet
Union in Afghanistan through his rising militancy against the United States as he moved from Saudi
Arabia to Sudan to Afghanistan in the 1990s.1 Although there are brief references to al-Qaeda’s
recruitment, a major weakness in the first wave is the lack of good understanding of who joins and
how many there are. Estimates vary from many thousands to many hundreds.2
Our knowledge of al-Qaeda’s membership is now improving. Over the past several years, new
research has collected detailed information about the demographic characteristics of known al-Qaeda
terrorists. The most comprehensive assessment is by Marc Sageman, who collected the name,
nationality, and other demographic information of 172 al-Qaeda terrorists.3 Sageman’s work provides
important insight into the friendship bonds among al-Qaeda terrorists that appear to pre-date their
joining the movement; this suggests that pre-existing social networks may play an important role in
who becomes a terrorist and how cells are organized.4 However, the data are less valuable for
assessing patterns in the nationality of al-Qaeda terrorists, since the size of al-Qaeda membership
remains unknown. Without reliable information about the underlying distribution of those who join alQaeda,
we cannot know whether the counted terrorists represent a biased sample and, especially,
whether the count overrepresents or underrepresents important countries. This problem is especially
difficult because many “terrorists” may never engage in a violent operation and many who do may
avoid detection altogether.
The following study examines the universe of al-Qaeda’s suicide terrorists, collected as part of the
Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism. Because suicide terrorist attacks are so remarkable and well
reported, we can be highly confident that our count of al-Qaeda suicide terrorists is complete, which
avoids the problem of counting the group’s terrorists in general. Most important, we can explain the
crucial set of recruits that make al-Qaeda the highly lethal threat we face today.
Examination of al-Qaeda’s pool of suicide terrorists—the seventy-one individuals who actually
killed themselves on missions for al-Qaeda from 1995 to 2003—shows that the presence of American
military forces for combat operations on the homeland territory of the suicide terrorists is stronger
than Islamic fundamentalism in predicting whether individuals from that country will become alQaeda
suicide terrorists. Islamic fundamentalism may play a modest role in recruiting militants, since
al-Qaeda suicide terrorists are twice as likely to come from Muslim countries with Islamic
fundamentalist populations compared to Muslim countries with tiny or no Islamic fundamentalist
populations. However, al-Qaeda suicide terrorists are ten times more likely to come from Muslim
countries where there is an American military presence for combat operations than from other Muslim
countries. Further, al-Qaeda suicide terrorists are twenty times more likely to come from Muslim
countries with both American military presence for combat operations and Islamic fundamentalist
populations compared to other Muslim countries.
Overall, this means that American military policy in the Persian Gulf was most likely the pivotal
factor leading to September 11. Although Islamic fundamentalism mattered, the stationing of tens of
thousands of American combat troops on the Arabian Peninsula from 1990 to 2001 probably made alQaeda
suicide attacks against Americans, including the horrible crimes committed on September 11,
2001, from ten to twenty times more likely.
This finding also sheds new light on al-Qaeda’s mobilization appeals. Although many in the West
are tempted to discount the statements of Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders as empty
rhetoric or irrational images of reality, it is important to study the group’s mobilization appeals if we
are to understand what motivates recruits to join the cause.
Examination of al-Qaeda’s mobilization rhetoric suggests a picture of the organization that is at
variance with the conventional wisdom. Al-Qaeda is less a transnational network of like-minded
ideologues brought together from across the globe via the Internet than a cross-national military
alliance of national liberation movements working together against what they see as a common
imperial threat. For al-Qaeda, religion matters, but mainly in the context of national resistance to
foreign occupation. The fact that the United States and its allies are predominately non-Islamic
societies makes it easier for al-Qaeda’s leaders to exploit their own religion to justify the use of
martyrdom operations as the main weapon for national liberation.
Of course, we cannot say with certainty that this detailed argument is the main impetus for the
individuals who volunteered to carry out suicide missions. This would require not simply collecting
the last statements of these individuals, but subjecting them to cross-examination, obviously
impossible for dead terrorists. What we can say is that the pattern of who ultimately decides to die for
al-Qaeda’s cause is remarkably consistent with the argument that al-Qaeda leaders make. Above all,
this suggests that the United States can only bolster al-Qaeda’s appeal if it pursues military policies
that actually confirm the group’s portrayal of American intentions.
AMERICAN MILITARY PRESENCE VERSUS ISLAMIC
FUNDAMENTALISM
Al-Qaeda’s Islamic Beliefs
“Islamic fundamentalism” is commonly used for any Muslim movement that seeks to establish an
Islamic state, meaning a political system in which Islam is the official religion and the laws governing
society are based on Islamic texts as understood by Islamic clerics. Further, Islamic fundamentalists
are often portrayed in academic as well as popular circles as inherently militant. One scholar of the
Middle East writes:
[T]he modern Islamic movement is authoritarian, anti-democratic, anti-secular, and a protest movement of the economically
deprived. Islamic fundamentalism is an aggressive revolutionary movement as militant and violent as the Bolshevik, Fascist, and
Nazi movements of the past.5
This common conception of Islamic fundamentalism, however, paints with too broad a brush.
Islamic fundamentalism comprises a wide variety of movements that offer Islam as a total way of life
and adhere to an interpretation of certain Islamic scriptures that they view as infallible.6 Only a tiny
fraction of those who subscribe to these movements have engaged in acts of violence. Even if it were
the cause of Islamic militancy, defining Islamic fundamentalism as necessarily violent would collapse
the independent and dependent variables in a way that would turn our problem into a tautology—that
is, we would end up saying that Osama bin Laden is militant because he is militant.
Further, different Islamic fundamentalist movements do not accept each other as true Islamists and
are so ideologically separate from each other that they would have great difficulty working together.
The Muslim world is broadly divided between Sunnis and Shias, who disagree about the rightful
lineage of religious authority in the generations after the Prophet Mohammed, much the same way that
Catholics and Protestants disagree about the religious authority of the Pope.7 Shia Muslims live
mainly in Iran (63 million) and Iraq (15 million), while the overwhelming majority of other Muslims
are Sunni. Although many Shias as well as many Sunnis see a need for an Islamic revival in their
personal lives and in the governance of their societies, the two groups’ visions of just government are
not the same; Shia would not accept a Sunni Islamic state as truly Islamic, and vice versa.8
Osama bin Laden practices a Sunni form of Islamic fundamentalism called Salafism, and al-Qaeda
is a specifically Sunni movement.9 No follower of Iranian or Iraqi Shi’ism has ever become an alQaeda
suicide terrorist. Accordingly, broad interpretations of Islamic fundamentalism that elide the
Shia-Sunni split would lead to the result that Islamic fundamentalism does not cause al-Qaeda’s
terrorism, but in a trivial way. Moreover, collapsing all these movements together would confuse
policy makers about what they most want to know: whether the brand of Islamic fundamentalism
practiced by Osama bin Laden and other leaders of al-Qaeda is the main cause of their militant
terrorism against the United States.
Salafism is distinct from other forms of Sunni fundamentalism. Salaf is the Arabic word for
“ancient ones” and refers to the companions of the Prophet Muhammad. For a Salafi, Islamic authority
rests only in the scriptures of the Prophet (the Quran) and in the words and deeds of the Prophet as
documented by his companions (the texts called Sunna, a part of the Hadith), while all the more recent
interpretations are considered as suspect deviations, corrupted by non-Islamic influences, that dilute
the authentic message of God.10 Other Sunni fundamentalisms, such as Sufism, accommodate recent
interpretations, which can reflect tolerance for local non-Muslim practices and customs, and are
considered heretical by Salafis.11
Salafism is not monolithic, has no worldwide organization, and is not necessarily militant. Rather,
it defines a variety of movements that share a desire to create an Islamic revival that would privilege
ancient authority over modern interpretations of Islam. For instance, Wahhabism is the official
ideology of Saudi Arabia and serves as the basis of the state’s mandatory public education system.
Saudi Wahhabism focuses on bringing Muslims back to a strict and literal imitation of the Islam of the
Prophet and his companions, but discourages violence as a legitimate means for achieving this aim.12
In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 as a self-declared Salafi movement. Although
one of its most famous theologians, Sayyid Qutb, took the position in the 1950s and 1960s that
militancy against apostate Islamic regimes was a sacred duty, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has
distanced itself from Qutb since the 1970s and its official mission statement today emphasizes the
goal to bring about its Salafi ideals through peaceful political change.13 In Pakistan, the Deobandist
version of Salafism was espoused in the madrassas that educated the Taliban, but Deobandism itself
originated in India, where the movement stays out of politics and stresses strict adherence to ancient
texts as a personal responsibility.14
These movements do not agree on all basic religious tenets. For instance, they vary in their
understanding of how the Islamic concept of shura (consultation) should be applied, with different
movements varying the weight given to the views of ulama (Islamic clerics) and other matters.
Nonetheless, scholars of Islamic fundamentalism generally consider them as part of the puritanical
Salafi tradition in Sunni Islam. For instance, the widely respected scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr says:
There is an older puritanical and often rationalistic reform movement, or rather set of movements, that seeks to return to a strict
application of the Shar ’ah . . . in the name of an early puritanical Islam considered to have been lost by later generations. To this
category belongs the Wahh b movement . . . the Salafiyyah of Syria . . . and the Muhammadiyyah of Indonesia. . . . One can
also include the Ikhw n al-muslim n [Muslim Brotherhood], founded in Egypt, . . . a movement that is still strong in many Islamic
countries, especially Egypt and the Sudan, and the Jam ’at-i isl m of Pakistan.15
Recognizing the complexity of Salafism is important, because al-Qaeda leaders are not the product
of a single Salafi movement. Osama bin Laden was educated in Wahhabi schools while growing up in
Saudi Arabia, while Ayman al-Zawahiri joined the Muslim Brotherhood as a youth in Egypt. 16 Of
course, both are now militant Salafis, fully embrace the ideas of Qutb, and have sought to focus the
energies of Islamic militants against the United States. Important scholars and policy makers have
observed these facts and come to the conclusion that the ideology of Salafism is a principal cause of
al-Qaeda’s terrorism.17 The central question is whether this is true.
Standards for Measuring Salafism
Salafism could be said to cause al-Qaeda’s terrorism if exposure to Salafi beliefs predisposed
individuals to carry out acts of terrorism for the group. Al-Qaeda is a self-identified Salafi group, so
all of its members are necessarily at least tolerant of Salafism. Although we have little information
about the detailed religious beliefs of any of the seventy-one al-Qaeda suicide attackers, we should
assume that all were influenced by Salafism, barring new information to the contrary.
The important issue is whether pervasive exposure to Salafism prior to joining al-Qaeda
predisposes individuals to become terrorists in the first place. Pervasive exposure to any ideology
occurs when there are persistent efforts by committed believers of the creed to persuade others to
accept it. For a religious creed like Salafism, the intensity of persuasive efforts experienced by
typical individuals in a given community would depend on factors such as whether the state is openly
committed to promoting Salafism, prevalence of schools with Salafi curricula and mosques with
Salafi clerics, and public support for Salafi political parties. Salafi proponents often use well-known
identity markers, calling themselves “Salafi,” “People of Hadith,” and “those who follow the way of
Sunna and Jamma,” in addition to espousing specific tenets of the creed.18
Although these measures can assess the intensity of influence only roughly and are certainly not a
complete list of possible sources of religious influence, they can provide reasonably good estimates
of the size of “Salafi-influenced” populations in different Muslim countries. This, in turn, allows us to
judge whether al-Qaeda suicide terrorists are more likely to come from the most Salafi-influenced
societies than from other Muslim countries.
This approach will probably miss thin scatterings of Salafi institutions in the midst of
overwhelmingly non-Salafi countries, but finding tiny numbers of isolated Salafis is not the purpose.
What we want to know is whether Salafi-influenced individuals are more likely to join al-Qaeda. If
they are, then countries with large Salafi-influenced populations should yield more recruits than
countries with fewer Salafi-influenced people or with so few that our measures cannot even detect
them.
Standards for Measuring American Military Presence
My theory argues that foreign occupation by a democratic state, national resistance, and religious
difference are the main causal factors leading to the rise of suicide terrorist campaigns. In the case of
al-Qaeda versus the United States, there is no doubt that there is a religious difference between the
rivals and no doubt that the United States is a democracy. The main issue is the boundary for what
should count as foreign occupation by the United States.
The standard I use is American military presence, defined as heavy combat operations on the
homeland of Sunni Muslim majority countries for a sustained period prior to the onset of al-Qaeda’s
suicide terrorist campaign against the United States in 1995. If American military presence, so
defined, has expanded to include still more countries during the course of al-Qaeda’s suicide
campaign, then I include those new countries as well, since they could also serve as recruiting
grounds for al-Qaeda’s ongoing suicide campaign. “American military presence” includes cases
where American combat forces are based in the country or where the United States provides an
explicit or widely understood security guarantee that could be implemented using its forces in an
adjacent country. It does not include cases where American military advisers are present or where the
country’s military and the U.S. military conduct joint training exercises.
This standard comports with the meaning of “occupation” in Chapter 6, because it defines
American military presence from the perspective of the terrorists, who are likely to fear the
possibility that foreign control may be imposed by force and to suspect that security “guarantees”
actually indicate American intention to defend the regime against revolution. This is Osama bin
Laden’s view of the role of U.S. troops on the Arabian Peninsula; it is not the perspective of the
United States, which, in most of the relevant cases, would see itself as supporting an allied
government.
By this standard, Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and
Turkey all qualify, because the United States has stationed combat troops on the soil of each, or in
adjacent countries, continuously since 1990.19 Afghanistan and Uzbekistan also qualify, since the
United States has stationed combat troops on their soil since 2001. I do not count Jordan or Yemen,
because it is not clear that the United States would defend Jordan and it certainly does not guarantee
the integrity of Yemen. I also do not count Pakistan, Turkmenistan, or Tajikistan, since the United
States does not base combat forces in any of these countries nor does it guarantee their security.20
Since 1990, the United States has not stationed heavy combat forces in any other Sunni Muslim
country.
Al-Qaeda’s Suicide Terrorism
From 1995 to 2003, seventy-one al-Qaeda suicide terrorists actually completed their missions, killing
themselves in order to carry out operations to kill others. We know the nationality of sixty-seven. All
but one of these came from a Sunni Muslim country. The other was from Lebanon and his religion is
not known for certain.
An examination of the sixty-six al-Qaeda suicide terrorists who were known citizens of Sunnimajority
countries shows that American military presence is a stronger factor than Salafi
fundamentalism in predicting who dies for al-Qaeda’s cause.
Salafi influence probably does not matter much, because there is not a statistically significant
difference—odds better than random chance—between the proportion of Muslims from countries with
sizable Salafi-influenced populations who are al-Qaeda suicide terrorists and the proportion of
Muslims from other Sunni countries who are al-Qaeda suicide terrorists.
Table 13 reports the size of the Salafi-influenced population in every Sunni-majority country with a
population of 1 million or more (there were no al-Qaeda suicide terrorists from smaller countries) as
of about 2000. In countries with Salafi-influenced populations, there are 233 million Salafiinfluenced
people and 48 al-Qaeda suicide terrorists, or 1 suicide terrorist per 5 million Salafi. In
countries without Salafi-influenced populations, there are 205 Sunni Muslims and 18 al-Qaeda
suicide terrorists, or 1 per 12 million. Comparing the relative frequency of al-Qaeda suicide
terrorists in these two groups of countries, al-Qaeda suicide terrorists are twice as likely to come
from Salafi-influenced populations as from Sunni Muslims in other countries.
However, when we examine the effect of the absolute number of the Salafi-influenced population
on the absolute number of terrorists from any country, the effect is not statistically significant even at
the most generous confidence level of 0.1. On average, there are 3.5 million Salafi-influenced Sunnis
per al-Qaeda suicide terrorist, but this includes numerous extreme outliers. Pakistan produced far
fewer terrorists and Saudi Arabia and Morocco far more than would be consistent with a direct
relationship between Salafism and suicide terrorism. For the numbers to produce a significant
relationship, one would have to discount the majority of al-Qaeda suicide attackers.
We can test for alternative ways in which Salafism could cause suicide terrorism, but these also
fail to produce significant results. For instance, there is no significant relationship between the
percentage of the Salafi-influenced population and the percentage of terrorists from any country.
Further, if we look at the entire population of Sunnis in Salafi-influenced countries, any given Sunni is
less likely to be an al-Qaeda suicide terrorist than a Sunni in a non-Salafi-influenced country (1 per
15 million versus 1 per 12 million). Hence, there is also probably no spillover effect, where nonSalafis
become terrorists because they live in a Salafi-influenced country.21
This means that we can discount both of the two main mechanisms that might lead Salafism to cause
terrorism. Whether we think the odds of someone becoming an al-Qaeda suicide terrorist increases
directly with the size of the Salafi-influenced population or whether the odds increase as a spillover
effect of living in a country with a sizable Salafi-influenced population, the odds that someone from a
Salafi-influenced country will become an al-Qaeda suicide terrorist are not significantly better than
chance.
By contrast, the presence of American combat operations matters substantially. As Table 14 shows,
al-Qaeda suicide terrorists are ten times more likely to come from a Sunni country with American
military presence than from another Sunni country. These odds are far better than a coin flip,
statistically significant at the standard benchmark of .05. This means that the chances that the presence
of American combat troops does not increase the risk of someone from that country becoming an alQaeda
suicide terrorist are less than 5 in 100. Even if the effect of Salafi-influenced populations on
al-Qaeda suicide terrorism were assumed to be significant, American military presence would remain
five times as powerful as a predictor of al-Qaeda suicide terrorism.
Further, deploying American combat troops to a Salafi-influenced population matters
tremendously. As Table 15 shows, al-Qaeda suicide terrorists are twenty times more likely to come
from a Salafi-influenced population with American military presence than from another Sunni country,
a result that is statistically significant at the standard benchmark of .05. Moreover, statistical analysis
shows that this high level of risk is due simply to the addition of American military presence to
Salafi-influenced population, not to a special feature of the interaction of the two. Even if the effect of
Salafi-influenced populations on al-Qaeda suicide terrorism were assumed to be significant,
American military presence in a Salafi-influenced country would remain ten times as powerful as
Salafism alone as a predictor of al-Qaeda suicide terrorism.
Overall, examination of the nationalities of al-Qaeda’s suicide terrorists from 1995 to 2003 shows
that American military policy in the Persian Gulf was most likely the pivotal factor leading to
September 11. This is not to say that al-Qaeda is not committed to Islamic fundamentalism or that it
draws no important transnational support. The fact that we can assume that al-Qaeda’s suicide
attackers have been committed Islamists is sufficient reason to think that Islamic fundamentalism is at
least a weak force driving the movement, even if this is not borne out by the statistics. However, it is
important to recognize the fundamental role played by American military policy. Although there may
well have been excellent reasons for their presence, the stationing of tens of thousands of American
combat troops on the Arabian peninsula from 1990 to 2001 most likely made al-Qaeda suicide attacks
against Americans, including the atrocities committed on September 11, 2001, from ten to twenty
times more likely.22
U.S. Foreign Policy and al-Qaeda’s Transnational Suicide Terrorists American military presence
accounts for a large fraction of al-Qaeda suicide attackers—forty-three of sixty-seven overall
(including the one from Lebanon), or 64 percent. What accounts for the remaining attackers?
Examination of the pool of al-Qaeda’s suicide terrorists from Table 16 reveals an important
pattern: al-Qaeda’s transnational suicide terrorists have come overwhelmingly from America’s
closest allies in the Muslim world and not at all from the Muslim regimes that the U.S. State
Department considers “state sponsors of terrorism.” There are twenty-four al-Qaeda suicide terrorists
not associated with American combat presence. Of these, nineteen, or 79 percent, come from Muslim
regimes strongly allied with the United States and none from the Muslim regimes that the United
States considers most hostile.
This pattern gives us important information about the main sources of al-Qaeda’s transnational
appeal for suicide operations against the United States. However, it cannot be subjected to tests for
statistical significance. The number of transnational al-Qaeda suicide attackers is so small that a few
outliers could distort the results. Still, examining the extreme ends of the spectrum of American
foreign policy toward Muslim regimes is perfectly legitimate—this is done routinely in assessing
American voting behavior. While there may be substantial variation in the middle range of a causal
variable, we gain important information by looking at how a relationship performs when the factor is
extremely high or extremely low, which allows us to make judgments about the part of the relationship
that is easiest to define.
Although we cannot assess the strength of American support for all Muslim regimes, we can be
certain that support for all those listed on the U.S. Department of State’s list of state sponsors of
terrorism is at the extreme low end and that support for Egypt, Pakistan (post-2001), Indonesia, and
Morocco qualifies as at the high end. These four states have all received substantial American
military and economic assistance over the past two decades.
Egypt receives about $2 billion of America’s $14 billion annual foreign aid budget, in large part as
payment for making peace with Israel in 1978. Of that, about $1.3 billion goes to military assistance.
Only Israel receives more U.S. aid than Egypt. As for Morocco, the United States has been a staunch
supporter of its authoritarian government, providing more than $1 billion worth of arms as well as
$1.3 billion in security and economic assistance programs to the Kingdom in its fight with the
Polisario guerrillas in the Western Sahara from 1976 to 1991. The United States has also supported
the Kingdom’s decision to postpone indefinitely its promised popular referendum on the final status of
the area. With respect to Pakistan: the United States provided over $300 million in aid to Islamabad
in 2001 in return for its support in the war on terrorism and considers the current government among
its closest allies in that effort. In Indonesia, the American military provided important logistical
support for the Australian-led military intervention in 1999 that ended the violence and created a
Catholic majority state in East Timor.23
Further, al-Qaeda’s suicide terrorists from these four countries are associated either with efforts to
topple the national government or with national liberation movements to establish greater political
autonomy for local Muslim populations. In Egypt, Islamic militants—including the Islamic group
associated with Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s second in command—have used violence in attempts
to overthrow the local government more or less continuously since the late 1970s, including the
assassination of President Anwar al-Sadat in 1981 and the attempted assassination of President Hosni
Mubarak in 1995. In Pakistan, President Pervez Musharraf has faced numerous assassination attempts
since joining America’s war on terrorism in 2001. In Morocco, one of the survivors of the fourteenmember
al-Qaeda suicide bomb squad that attacked targets associated with American and other
Western citizens in Casablanca in May 2003 said during his trial that he “hoped to blow himself up”
during the strikes because he was “not happy with the political situation in Morocco.” From 1999 to
2001, Indonesian Muslim militias waged an intense campaign of indiscriminate violence to stop East
Timor, a predominately Catholic region, from gaining independence.24
The striking result from this analysis is that nineteen (79 percent) of al-Qaeda’s transnational
suicide terrorists—those not associated with American military presence—are from four Muslim
countries, all of which have regimes that are close allies of the United States and all of whose suicide
terrorists are associated with the cause of national liberation in their own countries. This suggests that
al-Qaeda’s truly transnational appeal for martyrdom is thin and springs mainly from nationalist
causes.
The data on al-Qaeda’s transnational suicide terrorists also casts doubt on the argument that the
group’s core support emanates from Islamic fundamentalism. The five countries with the largest
Salafi-influenced populations are Pakistan (43 million), Nigeria (37 million), Indonesia (26 million),
Egypt (23 million), and Sudan (21 million). Altogether, these countries account for 64 percent of the
world’s total Salafi-influenced population (150 million), but only 29 percent of al-Qaeda’s
transnational suicide terrorists (seven of twenty-four).
Overall, analysis of al-Qaeda’s suicide terrorists shows that its most lethal forces are best
understood as a coalition of nationalist groups seeking to achieve a local change in their home
countries, not as a truly transnational movement seeking to spread Islam or any other ideology to nonIslamic
populations. Religion matters, but mainly in the context of national resistance.
AL-QAEDA’S APPEAL: FOREIGN OCCUPATION AND RELIGIOUS
DIFFERENCE
Al-Qaeda’s recruitment rhetoric emphasizes alliance politics among separate national groups, not the
construction of a transnational network to spread Islamic fundamentalism or in opposition to
democracy in general. Over the years, Osama bin Laden’s main call has been for Islamic groups
reacting separately against American military presence or U.S. support for their local governments to
create, in essence, a cross-national military coalition against the United States. Indeed, bin Laden’s
principal organizational innovation has been to reorient various local resistance movements away
from their local grievances in the short term so as to bring an accumulation of violence against their
common enemy, the United States. Because there is a religious difference between the United States
and all these groups, and because none are militarily strong enough to stand up to American power on
their own, al-Qaeda leaders can portray the United States as a religiously motivated aggressor, posing
a common threat to occupy and transform their societies, and can appeal for collective martyrdom
operations as the only means of protecting the self-determination of the threatened communities.
“Veiled Colonialism”
The linchpin in al-Qaeda’s appeal for separate nationalist liberation movements to unify their efforts
against the United States is the idea of “veiled colonialism.” America’s ambitions, bin Laden and
other al-Qaeda leaders claim, are not limited to the Arabian Peninsula, but include the suppression
and control of other Muslim societies, especially those near Israel. These societies face not direct
military occupation, but “veiled colonialism” in which the United States supports repressive regimes
that serve the interests of the “Crusader-Zionist alliance.” One of al-Qaeda’s most detailed
documents, issued on the Internet to explain its attacks against the Saudi regime in May 2003, says:
The Muslim countries today are colonized. Colonialism is either direct or veiled. . . . masking colonialism . . . is exactly what
happened in Afghanistan when the United States occupied that country and installed an Afghan agent, Hamid Karzai. . . . There is
no difference between the Karzai of Yemen, the Karzai of Pakistan, the Karzai of Jordan, the Karzai of Qatar, the Karzai of
Kuwait, the Karzai of Egypt, and the long list of Karzai traitors ruling the Muslim countries.
The document also explains that “veiled colonialism” is tantamount to the occupation and political
control of the country:
The ruler of a country is the one that has the authority in it. . . . The real ruler is the Crusader United States. The subserviency of
[Muslim] rulers is no different from the subserviency of the amirs or governors of provinces to the king or the president. The rule
of the agent is the rule of the one who made him his agent.
Finally, it contends that “veiled colonialism” threatens full military occupation:
It is important to know that the colonialist enemy might give up veiled colonialism and establish, through its armies, colonialism
where there is little fear of resistance or the agent leadership could not achieve the interests of colonialism or had deviated—even
in a small way—from its hegemony. For this reason, the United States chose to invade Iraq militarily and might choose to invade
any Muslim country near or far from Iraq at any time. . . . [If the United States can run a country’s] radar equipment, the
AWACs reconnaissance aircraft, and the air, land and sea command and control centers, it can occupy a country whenever it
wants, and this is exactly what the United States is doing in Saudi Arabia.25
To see how al-Qaeda seeks to persuade the members of its coalition to rely on martyrdom
operations to meet this threat, it is helpful to understand more about the image of American motives
and strategy as portrayed by Osama bin Laden and his associates.
Religious Difference and al-Qaeda’s Case for Martyrdom
The politics of religious difference is central to al-Qaeda’s campaign of suicide terrorism against the
United States. Throughout virtually all the statements, interviews, sermons, and books by Osama bin
Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders over the past decade, the United States is portrayed as a religiously
motivated “Crusader” on an aggressive mission to subdue, occupy, and transform Muslim societies.
Although we in the West discount such statements as mere rhetoric, it is important to recognize that
the image of an offensive war waged by Christians against Muslims has great emotional and political
power. Establishing that the United States is on a Christian crusade to remake the Muslim world
enables bin Laden to claim that American foreign and military policies in a variety of countries are
part of a coherent plan, that American behavior will become aggressive over time, that national
groups in those target countries have a common basis to work together, and that those who die can
easily be defined as martyrs for Islam.
America, the “Crusader.” Osama bin Laden’s statements and interviews almost always begin with a
simple, overarching message: the United States is pursuing an offensive mission to control the
homelands of Islamic countries in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere, and Muslims in these countries
should use force to resist the occupation. In May 1998, when Frontline asked why he called for
strikes against the United States, bin Laden said:
The call to wage war against America was made because America has spearheaded the crusade against the Islamic nation,
sending tens of thousands of its troops to the land of the two Holy Mosques [Saudi Arabia] over and above its meddling in its
affairs and its politics, and its support of the oppressive, corrupt and tyrannical regime that is in control. These are the reasons
behind the singling out of America as a target.26
Although he also believes that the United States is interested in oil, bin Laden most strikingly
characterizes the United States as the leader of a Christian-Jewish alliance that is mainly motivated
by religious aims. He says, “Our enemy is the Crusader alliance led by America, Britain, and Israel.”
His famous 1998 call to kill Americans is entitled “Jihad against Jews and Crusaders.” He frequently
says that it is a mistake “to distinguish between America and Israel.”
The use of the word “crusader” is no accident. For many Muslims, the eleventh-century Crusades
were an attempt by Christians to achieve the key condition for the coming of the Messiah—the return
of Israel to the promised land.27 Bin Laden often recounts the history of the Crusades and then
identifies the American occupation of the Arabian Peninsula as the latest effort:
Our enemy is the Crusader alliance led by America, Britain, and Israel. . . . Our hostility is in the first place, and to the greatest
extent, leveled against these world infidels, and by necessity the regimes which have turned themselves into tools for this
occupation. . . . Jordan has American bases and American planes occupying it. Egypt also has a number of American bases. The
six Gulf states are all occupied by American bases.28
Bin Laden goes further, asserting that the same specific religious goal—the creation of Greater
Israel—is at the heart of today’s Christian-Zionist alliance:
One reason behind the symbolic participation of the Western forces . . . is to support the Jewish and Zionist plans for expansion of
what is called Greater Israel. . . . We believe that [the U.S.] administration represents Israel inside America. Take the sensitive
ministries such as the Ministry of Exterior and the Ministry of Defense and the CIA, you will find that the Jews have the upper
hand in them. They make use of America to further their plans for the world, especially the Islamic world. American presence in
the Gulf provides support to the Jews and protects their rear.29
Bin Laden’s rhetoric has powerful effects, not only on those specifically under his direction but
also on those who might seek to emulate him. In a letter to Osama bin Laden intercepted by U.S.
intelligence, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, the leader of suicide terrorist attacks in Iraq, also portrays the
United States as motivated by Christian goals:
The Americans, as you know well, entered Iraq on a contractual basis and to create the State of Greater Israel from the Nile to
the Euphrates and this Zionized American administration believes that accelerating the creation of the State of Greater Israel will
accelerate the emergence of the Messiah.30
America’s “World Design.” The attribution of religious motives to the United States allows bin
Laden to draw a key inference—that American military presence on the Arabian Peninsula is not
“temporary,” but part of a “world design” that is “aimed at re-dividing the Muslim world.” Although
some might think that bin Laden is merely using current events to his advantage, in fact he presented
his vision of America’s grand strategy long before America’s war to conquer Iraq in 2003. As early
as 1998, bin Laden said:
There is a [U.S.] plan to divide Iraq into three—one in the north for Muslim Kurds, a state in the middle, and a third in the south.
The same applies to the land of the two mosques [SaudiArabia] where there is a plan to divide it into a state for the two mosques,
another state for oil in the eastern region, and a state in the middle. This would make the people of the two mosques always busy
trying to earn a living, and would leave a few people in the oil region who can be easily controlled.31
In February 2003, bin Laden described the U.S. war against Iraq as the execution of the plan he had
already identified:
The preparations . . . for an attack upon Iraq are but one link in a chain of attacks . . . with the start of the [1991] Gulf War the
Americans established important and dangerous military bases which have spread throughout the Land of the Two Holy Places. . .
. One of the most important objectives of the new Crusader attack [in 2003] is to pave the way and prepare the region, after its
fragmentation, for the establishment of what is known as “the Greater State of Israel,” whose borders will include extensive areas
of Iraq, Egypt, through Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, all of Palestine and large parts of the Land of the Two Holy Places.32
Al-Qaeda’s Solution: A Strong Muslim State. Bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders stress that the
only solution to the common threat they face from a religiously motivated United States is a strong
Islamic state, one sufficiently powerful to prevent the United States from implementing its plans
involving a number of Muslim countries. This solution not only appeals to bin Laden himself, but is
also clearly reflected in detailed statements by other al-Qaeda leaders from countries outside of the
Persian Gulf. Consider the famous book Knights Under the Banner of the Prophet by al-Zawahiri, an
Egyptian who was part of Egypt’s Islamic Jihad before joining forces with al-Qaeda:
Victory for the Islamic movements against the Crusader alliance cannot be attained unless these movements possess an Islamic
base in the heart of the Arab region. . . . The jihad movement must adopt its plan on the basis of controlling a piece of land in the
heart of the Islamic world on which it could establish and protect the state of Islam. . . . If the successful operations against
Islam’s enemies and the severe damage inflicted upon them do not serve the ultimate goal of establishing the Muslim nation in the
heart of the Islamic world, they will be nothing more than disturbing acts. . . . The restoration of the caliphate and the dismissal of
the invaders from the land of Islam . . . must remain the basic objective of the Islamic jihad movement, regardless of the sacrifices
and the time involved.
Given the relative weakness of individual Muslim countries, this goal requires that regional groups
work together against the United States:
The struggle for the establishment of the Muslim state cannot be launched as a regional struggle. . . . the Jewish-Crusader
alliance, led by the United States, will not allow any Muslim force to reach power in any of the Islamic countries. . . . The struggle
against the external enemy [the United States] cannot be postponed. . . . The jihad movement must realize that half the road to
victory is attained through its unity . . . before the single enemy. . . . The movement must seek this unity as soon as possible if it is
serious in its quest for victory.33
American Society Is the Vulnerable Point. Although al-Qaeda depicts the U.S. government as a
religiously motivated aggressor, it does not ascribe religious motives to American or Western society
in general. In fact, Western society is described as corrupted by materialism, a fact that al-Qaeda
believes can be used to drive a wedge between Western publics and their governments. Thus, central
to al-Qaeda’s strategy is the use of coercion that would impose high costs on civilians in order to
compel them to pressure their governments to reverse course.
Bin Laden describes America as a paper tiger that can be coerced by inflicting modest costs on its
society:
America is a great power possessed of tremendous military might and a wide-ranging economy, but all this is built upon an
unstable foundation which can be targeted, with special attention to its obvious weak spots. If America is hit in one hundredth of
those spots, God willing, it will stumble, wither away and relinquish world leadership and its oppression. A small group of young
Islamic fighters managed . . . to provide people with proof of the fact that it is possible to wage war upon and fight against a socalled
“great power” . . . because they used Jihad . . . any means which brings victory is worthwhile.34
We believe that America is weaker than [Soviet] Russia and from what we have heard from our brothers who waged jihad in
Somalia, they found to their greatest surprise the weakness, frailness and cowardliness of the American soldier. When only eight
of them were killed they packed up in the darkness of night and escaped without looking back.35
[T]he Islamic nation today possesses tremendous forces sufficient to save Palestine and the rest of the Muslim lands. . . . I should
like to remind you of the defeats suffered by a number of the great powers at the hands of the Mujahideen. . . . [For example,] the
defeat of the American forces in the year 1402 of the Muslim calendar [1982] when the Israelis invaded Lebanon. The Lebanese
resistance sent a truck full of explosives to the American Marines’ center in Beirut and killed over 240 of them.36
Hence, the military objective is to impose costs that will compel the United States to withdraw
from Muslim countries. As al-Zawahiri states:
The masters in Washington and Tel Aviv are using the regimes to protect their interest and to fight the battle against the Muslims
on their behalf. If the shrapnel from the battle reaches their homes and their bodies . . . they will face one of two bitter choices:
Either [they] personally wage the battle against the Muslims, which means that the battle will turn into clear-cut jihad against
infidels, or they reconsider their plans after acknowledging the failure of the brute and violent confrontation against Muslims.
Therefore, we must move the battle to the enemy’s grounds to burn the hands of those who ignite fire in our countries.37
Martyrdom Operations Against Religious Persecution. Al-Qaeda’s statements emphasize that
“martyrdom operations” are the best tactics against the United States. Al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s
second in command, says:
To adjust to this new reality [the “Crusader alliance” led by the United States] we must prepare ourselves for a battle that is not
confined to a single region. . . . The mujahid Islamic movement must escalate its methods of strikes and tools of resisting the
enemies. . . . In this regard, we concentrate on the following:
1. The need to inflict the maximum casualties against the opponent, for this is the language
understood by the West, no matter how much time and effort such operations take.
2. The need to concentrate on the method of martyrdom operations as the most successful way of
inflicting damage against the opponent and the least costly to the Mujahedin in terms of
casualties.
3. The targets as well as the type and method of weapons used must be chosen to have an impact
on the structure of the enemy and deter it enough to stop its brutality, arrogance, and disregard
for all taboos and customs. It must restore the struggle to its real size.
4. To reemphasize what we have already explained, we reiterate that focusing on the domestic
enemy alone will not be feasible at this stage.38
Those who carry out suicide operations against the United States are considered martyrs for the
simple reason that they are fighting against religious oppression. Bin Laden says in his famous
“Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places” (1996):
Under [today’s] circumstances, to push the enemy—the greatest Kufr [infidel]—out of the country is a prime duty. . . . [D]ue to
the imbalance of power between our armed forces and the enemy forces, a suitable means of fighting must be adopted. . . . [Our]
youths know that their rewards in fighting you, the USA, are double their rewards in fighting someone else not from the people of
the book [i.e., the Bible]. They have no intention except to enter paradise by killing you. An infidel . . . cannot be in the same hell
with his righteous executioner. . . . These youths are commendable and praiseworthy. They stand up tall to defend the religion. . . .
It is a duty on every tribe in the Arab Peninsula to fight, Jihad, in the cause of Allah and to cleanse the land from those
occupiers.39
CONCLUSION
My theory of the origins of suicide terrorism captures the core features of al-Qaeda. The theory
contends that nationalism and religious difference between the rebels and a dominant democratic state
are the main conditions under which the “alien” occupation of a community’s homeland is likely to
lead to a campaign of suicide terrorism. Examination of al-Qaeda’s pool of suicide terrorists and of
its mobilization appeals shows that American military policy is stronger than Islamic fundamentalism
in recruiting individuals willing to carry out suicide terrorist operations against the United States.
Truly transnational al-Qaeda suicide terrorists are few, while the overwhelming majority emanate
from a narrow range of Muslim countries, those with American combat troops stationed on or
immediately adjacent to their soil and those that received substantial backing by the United States.
American military policy in the Persian Gulf was the pivotal factor leading to September 11.
Although Islamic fundamentalism mattered, the stationing of tens of thousands of American combat
troops on the Arabian Peninsula from 1990 to 2001 probably increased the risk of al-Qaeda suicide
attacks against Americans, including the events of September 11, 2001, ten to twenty times.
The main implication for the security of the United States is simple: if al-Qaeda’s truly
transnational support were to dry up tomorrow, the group would remain a robust threat to the United
States. However, if al-Qaeda no longer drew recruits from the Sunni Muslim countries where there is
a heavy American military presence or where the government receives strong U.S. support, the
remaining transnational network would pose a far smaller threat and might well simply collapse.
This finding also has important implications for American policy toward Iraq: the longer American
combat forces remain in the country, the greater the risk that the Iraqi suicide terrorists will seek to
mount operations to kill Americans in the United States. Although fostering democracy is important,
the United States should carefully reconsider the role of military power in its long-term policy toward
achieving this goal in Iraq.
We still want to know whether the causal dynamics predicted by my theory exist in a broad range
of other foreign occupations in which national resistance has escalated to suicide terrorism, and are
absent in foreign occupations that did not. This is the subject of the next chapter.
8
Suicide Terrorist Organizations
Around the Globe
MY THEORY ARGUES that national resistance to foreign occupation, a democratic political system
in the occupying power, and a religious difference between the occupied and occupying societies are
the main causal factors leading to the rise of suicide terrorist campaigns. Thus far, this book has
shown that modern suicide terrorism is best understood as a strategy used by groups seeking to
compel democratic states to withdraw military forces from territory that they consider their national
homelands. It also explains why a difference in the predominate religion of the two societies—not the
religion of the occupied nation, Muslim or otherwise—is a main cause for why some foreign
occupations by a democratic state escalate to suicide terrorism and others do not. This theory is
strongly supported by evidence from across the universe of nationalist rebellions since 1980 and by
the examination of al-Qaeda in the previous chapter.
Whether my theory is persuasive, however, depends on whether the dynamics that make religious
difference important are also present in other suicide terrorist campaigns. To show that this is the
case, I must demonstrate that the history of disputes that have escalated to suicide terrorism involves
primarily the clash of two religions. In other words, the evidence must show that a religious
difference routinely enabled terrorist leaders to gain significant public support for suicide terrorism
by painting the conflict in stark zero-sum terms, demonizing the opponent, and gaining legitimacy for
martyrdom. The evidence must also show that these dynamics were not the product of any one religion
or class of religions, and that they occur even when the terrorist group is not itself religious.
It is not easy to establish that religious difference is a key factor enabling suicide terrorism. Since
religious difference is a static phenomenon—it is either present or absent, but does not widen or
narrow during the lifetime of an occupation—we cannot compare a change in this factor with the
timing of a suicide terrorist campaign to demonstrate the relationship between cause and effect in any
individual case. Further, many differences normally exist between societies, while only a relatively
small number of occupations have resulted in suicide terrorism. As a result, comparisons between
cases where suicide terrorism did occur and cases where it did not will usually involve societies that
differ in so many basic ways that it is probably impossible to disentangle the effects of a religious
difference (or the lack thereof) from other possible causal factors.
However, these limits also suggest a research design. If we study a group of cases of suicide
terrorism that differ greatly in the number of different religions they involve, then we can gain
confidence—precisely because so many other cultural differences would also exist—that the effects
of religious difference, if they can be shown, have causal weight. Further, we can look to include
certain accidents of history that overcome the problem of cross-case comparison. If the same national
community finds its homeland occupied at different times by two different occupying powers, one of
which shares the occupied community’s religion and one of which does not, then comparison of these
two cases provides useful causal information. We do have one such pair, in Sri Lanka, and this study
includes it. Finally, we can examine the one case in which suicide terrorism occurred without a
religious difference (the Kurdish PKK versus Turkey) to see if the dynamics of this single case should
fundamentally alter our understanding of the origins of suicide terrorism in general.
Within each case, we can examine the discourse of terrorist organizations and other leaders of an
occupied community to see how much weight they put on religious difference, compared with other
factors, in explaining why the community should support suicide terrorism. If such appeals do yield
numerous recruits who are willing to commit acts of suicide terrorism, then this method can provide
important information about what leaders in an occupied community believe can best elicit mass
support for the purpose. If such appeals yield recruits from a range of secular and religious
backgrounds, then this approach can tell us that a common perception of the threat posed by the
occupying power, rather than ideological uniformity in the occupied community, is the more important
factor. When added to the information about the strong association between religious difference and
suicide terrorism from our examination of the universe of recent rebellions against democracies in
Chapter 6, this process-tracing approach can increase the number of observations relevant to the
causal logic and so increase our confidence in the theory as a whole.1 The more the discourse of
leaders and suicide terrorists centers around the specific mechanisms by which we expect religious
difference to matter, the more confidence we gain.
Which cases merit deep examination? Nine occupations led to suicide terrorism; of these, eight
involved a religious difference and one did not. Although it would naturally be helpful to study them
all, this is not practical given the depth of analysis required and the limits of information available for
some cases. Al-Qaeda, of course, has been studied in the previous chapter.
To make the inquiry manageable, this study selects four cases of suicide terrorism with a wide
range of religious differences, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Punjab, and Turkey. Overall, this study includes
the interplay of six different religions. Lebanon in the 1980s involved Shia Muslims versus Israeli
(Jewish) and Western (Christian) opponents; Sri Lanka in the 1980s and 1990s involved Tamils
(Hindu) versus the Sinhalese (Buddhist) government; and Punjab in the 1990s involved Sihks versus
the Indian (Hindu) government. This design can also easily incorporate the one paired comparison
that does offer relatively tight control on the effect of religious difference. During the course of the
Sinhalese-Tamil dispute, the Indian government (Hindu) sent thousands of troops to occupy the Tamil
community (Hindu) from 1987 to 1990, an interlude during which the Tamil resistance temporarily
abandoned the use of suicide terrorism. This study also includes the one occupation without a
religious difference that led to suicide terrorism, the Kurdish PKK (Sunni) versus the Turkish
government (Sunni).
All of the case studies are structured similarly to show the pattern of cause and effect both within
and across cases. Since the purpose is to identify the effect of foreign occupation on the popularity of
individual self-sacrifice and suicide terrorism within the local community, I organize each case
around three main issues: (1) the nature and extent of the foreign occupation; (2) the extent of
community support for self-sacrifice to end the occupation; and (3) how terrorist and other community
leaders exploited the existence of a religious difference to mobilize popular support for martyrdom.
SUICIDE TERRORISM IN LEBANON
Hezbollah, the loose federation of militant Shia groups that sprang up in Lebanon in the early 1980s,
is the first modern suicide terrorist organization. From 1982 to 1986, Hezbollah conducted thirty-six
suicide terrorist attacks involving a total of forty-one attackers against American, French, and Israeli
political and military targets in Lebanon. Among these was the spectacular attack on the U.S. Marine
barracks in Beirut on October 23, 1983. Altogether, these attacks killed 659 people, most of whom
were off-duty soldiers in no position to defend themselves, such as the 241 U.S. Marines who were
killed as they slept on that fateful day in Beirut. Even today, Hezbollah’s campaigns of suicide
terrorism continue to influence events. Although al-Qaeda, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in
Sri Lanka, and Palestinian suicide terrorist groups have killed more people, Hezbollah’s prominent
success in compelling the United States, France, and Israel to withdraw military forces from territory
that the terrorists view as their homeland has played a major role in encouraging today’s most deadly
suicide terrorists.
What caused the emergence of suicide terrorism in Lebanon? The most common explanation is
Islamic fundamentalism. Hezbollah, so the argument goes, was founded on the basis of radical Islamic
principles that gained ascendancy following the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, and extreme
devotion to radical Islam accounts for the willingness of its members to achieve personal salvation
through martyrdom operations.2 The tendency of most news stories at the time to stress the Islamic
identity of the attackers encouraged the perception that Islamic fundamentalism is the root cause of
suicide terrorism in Lebanon.
However, this is not the case. New information about the identity of the suicide attackers presents a
fresh picture that casts the role of Islamic fundamentalism in a new light. I spent a year leading a team
of researchers who collected detailed evidence on the ideological and other demographic
characteristics of suicide terrorists. The results show that at least thirty of the forty-one attackers do
not fit the description of Islamic fundamentalism. Twenty-seven were communists or socialists with
no commitment to religious extremism; three were Christians. Only eight suicide attackers were
affiliated with Islamic fundamentalism; the ideological affiliation of three cannot be identified.
Moreover, although Iran did provide money and other support to the Lebanese resistance fighters, the
rise of Hezbollah and large popular support for the movement were directly caused by a clear
external event, Israel’s massive occupation of southern Lebanon in 1982. Further, although religion
was a recruiting tool, examination of the logic of martyrdom articulated by Hezbollah and other
Lebanese political leaders overwhelmingly justified suicide terrorist acts, commonly called “selfmartyr”
operations, as an extreme measure necessary to end foreign occupation of the homeland,
while explicitly ruling out such acts as an end in themselves or for other, even religious, goals.
Contrary to the conventional wisdom, I argue that religious difference—not Islam—played the key
enabling role in causing suicide terrorism in Lebanon. Although foreign occupation created the
necessary basis for armed resistance, the religious schism between the occupiers’ societies and the
occupied society enabled resistance leaders to inflame nationalist sentiments to the point that the
occupied community supported and glorified suicide terrorism. Fear of a religiously motivated
occupier, more than anything in Islam, encouraged a significant level of community support for
extreme self-sacrifice to end the occupation.
Israel’s Occupation of Lebanon
Lebanon is on the Mediterranean coast, north of Israel and west of Syria. In the 1980s, it had a
population of approximately 2.6 million people, composed of about 40 percent Shia Muslims, 25
percent Sunni Muslims, 15 percent Maronite Christians, 8 percent Greek Orthodox and Catholics, and
7 percent Druze (a religion unique to Lebanon).3
Before the 1980s, there were no suicide terrorist attacks in Lebanon. This is true even though the
Shia community had long been politically and economically disadvantaged compared with other
groups in the country, even though a fierce civil war occurred in 1975–76, and even though many
Lebanese Islamic fundamentalists were heartened by the revolution in Iran in 1979. Indeed, before the
summer of 1982, Hezbollah did not exist.
In the 1970s, the most important Shia militant organization was Harakat Amal, a nationalist
movement founded in the Shia heartland of South Lebanon in 1975. Amal leaders advocated the
restructuring of the Lebanese political system to prevent the subordination of Shia interests to other
groups’ and, after 1975, organized militias to protect the security of villages in south Lebanon during
the civil war. The Amal political platform called for equality of all citizens, social justice, and a nonsectarian
commitment to national unity; it did not propose the creation of an Islamic state in Lebanon.
By early 1982, Amal was the most powerful organization within the Shia community and perhaps the
largest organization in the country, numbering in the tens of thousands.4
On June 6, 1982, Israel launched a major invasion of Lebanon. Within days, six and a half
divisions of the Israel Defense Forces, comprising 78,000 troops, 1,240 tanks, and 1,520 armored
personnel carriers, occupied large parts of the south of the country up to Beirut. Israel’s military
objectives were three: first, to destroy the PLO’s 15,000 troops, who had resided in the south of the
country since leaving Jordan in the early 1970s; second, to force the PLO leadership near Beirut to
abandon Lebanon; and third, to compel Syria’s 30,000 troops, 612 tanks, and 150 armored personnel
carriers, which had moved into the center and east during the 1975 civil war, to leave the country. By
September, Israel had succeeded in ousting the PLO to Tunisia and thereafter reduced IDF troop
strength to 20,000, promising to leave Lebanon only if Syrian troops did likewise (which there was
no reason to expect). From this point on, Israel began to implement a long-term plan to stabilize
Maronite Christian control over the government in Beirut, and appeared to settle in for a prolonged
occupation of Lebanon.5
Hezbollah came into being in the immediate aftermath of Israel’s invasion. In late June 1982,
Hussain Mussawi, a secular Shia leader who was second in command of Amal, and his followers
broke away from Amal, proclaiming that its collaboration with Israel’s program of expansion was
unacceptable. This group formed “Islamic Amal,” a movement that professed support for an Islamic
state on the model of Iran, and was soon joined by a contingent of 800 to 1,000 Pasdaran
(Revolutionary Guards) that Iran dispatched to Lebanon in July. As best we can tell, Mussawi and his
followers appear to have formed the core of what later became known as Hezbollah. This group
established a headquarters in the Bekaa Valley and, over the coming months, sought to inspire active
resistance among the Shia to the Israeli invaders.6
At first, Hezbollah appears to have had little popular support. In the summer of 1982, the Shia
supported Israel’s invasion even though Israel’s initial military operations probably killed 3,000 to
5,000 civilians and left 70,000 to 80,000 homeless in the Shia’s homeland in southern Lebanon.7
Although the Shia were broadly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, after a decade of increasing
tensions between the Shia and the PLO, many were more than willing to stand aside while Israel
ejected the Palestinians from their country.
However, the Shia community’s early reaction was not long-lived and fundamentally reversed as
Israeli troops remained in Lebanon. As Magnus Ranstrop says, “Although the Lebanese Shia
community initially welcomed Israel’s decision to eradicate the PLO presence, any Shia euphoria
soon developed into resentment and militancy following the realization that Israel would continue to
occupy southern Lebanon.”8 This sense of foreign occupation deepened as thousands of American,
French, and other Western troops arrived in the country in August 1982, even though their purpose
was to stabilize the country and reduce violence.
As more and more Shia came to resent and resist Israel’s occupation, Hezbollah—never tight-knit
—expanded into an umbrella organization coordinating the resistance operations of a loose collection
of groups with a variety of religious and secular aims. Lebanese militants grew from a handful in the
summer of 1982 to more than 7,000 members over the next few years. What made the rise of
Hezbollah so rapid was not its association with Iran or other sources of international support, but the
fact that it evolved from a reorientation of a number of pre-existing social groups in Lebanon.
Hezbollah’s main factions, such as the Mussawi faction within Amal, the Lebanese Da’wa Party, the
Association of Muslim Ulama in Lebanon, and the Association of Muslim Students, all existed in the
1970s.9 However, Israel’s invasion of Lebanon created new circumstances that allowed these groups
to form a new overarching purpose. As Hezbollah’s general secretary, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah,
explains:
This new group or new framework had the conditions for its formation before the Israeli invasion. But the invasion accelerated its
existence, and Hezbollah was born as a resistance force in the reaction to the occupation. . . . [C]ontrary to the accusations . . .
that it was Iranian—it was a Lebanese decision, founded by a group of Lebanese with a Lebanese leadership, Lebanese
grassroots, and the freedom fighters are Lebanese. . . . Hezbollah was at its inception centered on resisting the occupation, nothing
else. . . . Naturally, we asked for assistance. From any party. . . . From then on the relations began with Syria and Iran.10
The main impetus for the growth of Hezbollah was Israel’s increasingly deep control and
regulation of the local villages of the Shia community in southern Lebanon. Israel began arresting
local Shia leaders in the fall of 1982, and formalized this effort in January 1983 by creating the
“Organization for a United South,” which sought to supplant the existing Amal leaders in the thirty
largest villages in southern Lebanon with Israeli-backed village committees. These committees were
to mount local militias that would work alongside Israeli forces. Israel’s occupation thus dashed the
hopes of self-determination among many Shia. As Augustus Norton observes, “Having begun to throw
off the shackles of the PLO presence, the Shia community was not about to wrap itself in the chains of
Israel’s occupation.”11
The timing of Hezbollah’s suicide operations parallels the rise of Israel’s control of the Shia
community. Starting in November 1982, Hezbollah carried out the first of thirty-six suicide terrorist
attacks against American, French, and Israeli political and military targets in Lebanon through 1986.
As discussed more fully in Chapter 10, these attacks involved suicide terrorists from a wide range of
ideological commitments—communists, socialists, and even some Christians in addition to Islamists
—united in the purpose of ending Western and Israeli occupation of the country.
Community Support for Martyrdom
Community support for martyrdom played a key role in encouraging individuals to become suicide
terrorists. Although they varied in other ways, the individuals who carried out suicide terrorist attacks
in Lebanon attached tremendous importance to how the community would understand and remember
their actions. The overwhelming majority of these individuals left detailed statements, either in
writing or on video, that they expected to be made public after their death.12 Most of these testaments
did become public soon after the individual’s mission and circulated widely among the Shia
community, either in newspapers or as items available in local markets. Of course, we should assume
that the terrorist organization was instrumental in producing them; indeed, many are quite
professional. The key fact, however, is that they were created with the local community in mind.
Among ordinary suicides, less than 20 percent leave suicide notes and virtually none of these are
directed at the community at large.13
The prevalence of “martyr” testimonials indicates that the suicide terrorists and their organization
attach great importance to establishing themselves as martyrs in the eyes of their community. In many,
the individuals use the word “martyr,” either to describe those who went on similar missions in the
past or to name what they hoped to become. They also explain why their actions are directly related
to foreign occupation, often explicitly describing Israeli military forces as barbaric invaders who
must be ousted from the country at any price. Few, if any, suicide terrorists would bother making such
statements if they felt that community support for their actions was unimportant.
Compare two such statements. The first is by Sanaa Muhaidly, a seventeen-year-old Sunni girl
belonging to a secular political party who was one of the first to issue a videotape explaining her
motives. Although she mentions her hope of going to paradise, what is most prominent is her
association of self-sacrifice with the need to free her community from foreign occupation:
I have witnessed the calamity of my people under occupation. With total calmness I shall carry out an attack of my choice hoping
to kill the largest number of the Israeli army. I hope my soul will join the souls of the other martyrs. I have not died, but am moving
alive among you. . . . [D]o not cry for me, do not be sad for me, but be happy and smile. I am now planted in the earth of the
South irrigating and quenching her with my blood and my love for her.14
The second statement was made by the “Islamic Jihad”—a name clearly intended to evoke
religious commitment—shortly after the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut. However, it, too,
stresses nationalist resistance to a foreign occupation and seeks to encourage other Lebanese to
follow in this path:
We have carried out this operation against the fortresses of reactionary imperialism to prove to the world that their naval and
artillery firepower does not frighten us. We are soldiers of God and we are fond of death. We are neither Iranians nor Syrians nor
Palestinians. We are Lebanese Muslims who follow the principles of the Koran.15
These “martyr” statements did not fall on deaf ears in the Shia community. The trajectory of the
number of suicide terrorists increased markedly over time—from one in 1982, to eight in 1983 and
1984, to thirty-two in 1985 and 1986. Many Lebanese suicide terrorists were walk-ins, who had little
connection to terrorism before they carried out their suicide missions. All claimed in their final
statements to have been volunteers and none of the forty-one made an effort to surrender to Israeli
forces rather than carry out their mission.
There is also important evidence of public support for martyrdom. We cannot provide precise
figures, since no opinion surveys of the Shia community were taken during the period. However, there
were highly visible signs of pervasive public support for and commemoration of “martyrs” who
killed themselves to kill American, French, and Israeli troops. Major city streets were named in
honor of these fallen heroes; their pictures were widely used as positive symbols in political
discourse; and large public rallies were commonly held in their honor on annual public holidays and
at other special events.16 Such public commemoration continues to this day. Among the best sources
of information about Hezbollah leaders’ thinking are the speeches given on “Martyrs’ Day,” held
annually on November 11 to venerate Hezbollah’s first suicide attacker, who killed himself in an
attack on an Israeli military post on that date in 1982.
Even in the absense of opinion polls, these facts suggest that Lebanon’s suicide terrorists are
probably widely respected as “martyrs” by their local community. By contrast, there are no visible
signs of public disaffection with Hezbollah’s suicide operations. No community leader or movement
condemned Lebanon’s suicide attackers, either at the time or since.
The Importance of Religious Difference
Foreign occupation was a necessary condition for the Shia community to support national resistance
at all. However, the politics of religious difference likely played a key enabling role, functioning as
an important reason why Israel’s occupation in particular led to public support for suicide terrorism
to end it. Specifically, the Jewish-Muslim divide enabled Lebanese resistance leaders to portray
Israel’s occupation as an existential threat to the Shia community and thereby persuade large segments
to re-define suicide and murder as legitimate, even commendable, acts of martyrdom for the common
good. Under the conditions of occupation, a religious difference tends to harden the boundary between
“us” and “them,” amplifying tendencies to view the conflict in zero-sum terms, to demonize the
enemy, and to legitimate those who sacrifice to kill the enemy as martyrs.
Depicting Israel as a Religious Threat. To create the momentum for a protracted campaign,
Hezbollah and other Shia leaders encouraged public support for suicide operations. These leaders
gave literally hundreds of public speeches and interviews explaining the need for what they call
“self-martyr” operations; many of these texts have been translated into English. The main purpose of
this public discourse was to persuade the local community at large to accept that acts normally
qualifying as suicide and murder should be redefined as martyrdom and legitimate self-defense, and
to encourage some members to volunteer for these operations.
Although Islam plays a role, the main theme of the overwhelming number of these speeches is that
Israel is motivated by its own religion to seize Lebanon’s resources for use by Jews at the expense of
the Muslim inhabitants. From Hezbollah’s perspective, the state of Israel is a religious monolith,
characterized above all by a uniform commitment to Judaism and a doctrine of territorial expansion
with biblical justification. Although Israelis see themselves as distinguished by debate and division,
Hezbollah defines Israel as the one state in the world that grants citizenship strictly on the basis of
religious membership and so as based on inherently exclusionary political principles. Hezbollah
refers to Israel as a “Zionist” or “Jewish” entity, never as a secular state tolerant of all religions.17
“Greater Israel.” In Hezbollah’s view, Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon was merely the first
step in using Lebanon’s resources in the service of “Greater Israel.” This characterization of Israel’s
game plan is at the heart of Hezbollah’s famous “Open Letter” of February 1985. The “Open Letter”
was the official mission statement describing the purposes of the organization:
Israel . . . poses a great danger to our future generations and to the destiny of our nation, especially since it embraces a
settlement-oriented and expansionist idea . . . to build Greater Israel, from the Euphrates to the Nile. . . . [W]e view the recently
voiced Jewish call for settlement in south Lebanon . . . as part of the expansionist scheme.18
Hezbollah leaders describe the United States and the West in general as “European Christendom,”
and so as staunch allies in support of Israel’s religious mission. Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah,
often called Hezbollah’s spiritual leader, said:
We believe there is no difference between the United States and Israel; the latter is a mere extension of the former. The United
States is ready to fight the whole world to defend Israel’s existence and security. The two countries are working in complete
harmony, and the United States is certainly not inclined to exert pressure on Israel.19
Although the group appealed to history, Hezbollah’s main evidence for its analysis was simply the
course of recent events. In 1982, Israel remained in Lebanon after accomplishing its main objective of
ousting the PLO, was subsequently joined by the United States and other European forces, and was
already settling Jews on the West Bank and Gaza. From there, it was a short leap for Hezbollah to
assert that Israel’s main purpose in Lebanon was to seize control of the Litani River and to uproot
local Shia from the land so as to resettle Jews there in the future.20
Demonization. Hezbollah’s repeated reference to Israel as espousing a different religion also served
as the basis for portraying the Israeli state and society as evil incarnate, based on a moral code
fundamentally different and inferior to that of the Shia community. Israelis are not simply painted as
occupiers or settlers, but as barbarians willing to take the lives of Muslims without hesitation.
Hezbollah’s “Open Letter” says:
America, its Atlantic Pact allies, and the Zionist entity . . . invaded our country, destroyed our villages, slit the throats of our
children, violated our sanctuaries, and . . . committed the worst massacres against our nation. . . . In a single night the Israelis and
the Phalangists executed thousands of our sons, women and children in Sabra and Shatila . . . a massacre perpetrated with the
tacit accord of America’s European allies.21
Demonization encouraged community support not only for great self-sacrifice, but also for acts that
break normal community norms against killing innocents. From Hezbollah’s perspective, atrocities
committed by Israeli forces during the occupation are condoned by Israeli society as a whole, since
Israeli citizens pay taxes and provide other support to the occupation forces.22 By breaking down the
distinction between Israeli military forces and society, Hezbollah also broke down the distinction
between combatants and non-combatants, essentially holding all Israelis accountable for immoral acts
committed in Lebanon. In this way, acts that would normally count as murder—terrorism against
innocents—were redefined as legitimate self-defense for the common good.
Legitimacy for Martyrdom. The religious schism also facilitated Hezbollah’s claims that the
community should accord the status of martyr to those who committed suicide attacks against Israeli
and Western targets. Islam has a long history of martyrdom, defined as dying at the hands of a nonMuslim,
and many disputes with Jews and Christians. For Hezbollah, the main issue in qualifying its
suicide attackers as “martyrs” was overcoming the Islamic injunction against voluntary death. What is
striking is that the group achieved this goal without issuing a single official religious edict (fatwa)
sanctioning suicide as a method of attack but relied simply on public discourse to make the case for
martyrdom.
Hezbollah leaders argued that “self-martyrdom” operations qualified as part of religious conflict
on the basis of their instrumental value in ending the occupation, not by the individual’s desire for
personal salvation or as an end in themselves. Fadlallah made the fullest public case. First, he
justified these operations on the ground of the imbalance of power between the Shia and their
enemies: “If an oppressed people does not have the means to confront the United States and Israel
with the weapons in which they are superior, then they [can use] unfamiliar weapons.” Second, he
dismissed the special nature of a voluntary suicide attack: “Muslims believe that you struggle by
transforming yourself into a living bomb like you struggle with a gun in your hand. There is no
difference between dying with a gun in your hand or exploding yourself.” Third, the attacks must
provide significant leverage to defeat the enemy: “The self-martyring operation is not permitted
unless it can convulse the enemy”; otherwise, suicide attacks would be “mere acts of selfmartyrdom,”
which are forbidden. Only if these conditions are met, an individual’s “sacrifice can be
part of jihad, a religious war” against an enemy of a different religion.23
The suicide attackers themselves bolstered their claims to the status of “martyr.” Many, even those
with secular backgrounds, stressed in their final testimonials that they were motivated by the religious
identity of the enemy. Wajdi Sayegh, a nineteen-year-old member of the Syrian Socialist National
Party, said “we have no enemy who fights us to take our rights and homeland but the Jews”; Sana
Youssef Mhaydali, a sixteen-year-old member of the Communist Party who was the first female
suicide bomber, explained her motive as “to liberate the south from the occupation of the Zionist
terrorists . . . who are not like us”; Bilal Fahs, an eighteen-year-old member of the Communist Party,
spoke about “liberation from occupation as Jihad and obligation”; and Khaled al-Azrak, a twentyyear-old
member of the SSNP, said his “main motive” was “to liberate this land from the Jewish
enemies.”24
SUICIDE TERRORISM IN SRI LANKA
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam are the world’s leading suicide terrorist organization. From
1987 to 2001, the Tamil Tigers carried out 76 suicide terrorist attacks involving a total of 143 male
and female Black Tigers—many operating in teams—against a variety of political, economic, and
military targets in Sri Lanka. These figures represent more suicide attacks than any other terrorist
organization and more total suicide attackers than from all of the Palestinian suicide terrorist groups
combined. The Black Tigers achieved an extraordinary degree of tactical success, killing a total of
901 people, including two world leaders—India’s former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 and
Sri Lanka’s President Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993. The Tamil Tigers also achieved significant
coercive success, twice compelling the Sri Lankan government to engage in serious sovereignty
negotiations.
From the standpoint of explaining suicide terrorism, what matters is not the exact date that the
Tamil Tigers shifted from ordinary armed resistance organized around guerrilla warfare tactics to the
use of suicide operations. The key question is what enabled the Tigers to conduct protracted
campaigns of suicide terrorism involving a stream of many individuals who willingly accepted
certain death in order to carry out their missions.
Two main explanations have been offered thus far. The first argues that local competition between
the LTTE and other Tamil guerrilla groups encouraged the LTTE to use the extreme tactic of suicide
to distinguish itself from its rivals.25 The second explanation stresses the “cult-like” behavior of the
group in which the Tamil Tigers separate their fighters from the general population and brainwash
recruits to follow the leader’s orders without conscious choice.26
The principal implication of both these arguments is that the sources of the Tamil Tigers’ use of
suicide terrorism lay in the internal dynamics of the group and have little to do with the political
grievances of Tamil society or the relationship between the Tamils and their Sinhalese opponents.
Yet, neither explanation is consistent with the facts. The argument that rivalry with other Tamil
guerrilla groups accounts for the LTTE’s use of suicide terrorism fails because the Tigers had already
eliminated all of their major rivals and many of their smaller ones by 1987 and so had already
become the preeminent political and military power within the Tamil community before the onset of
suicide operations.27 The argument that the LTTE is a cult isolated from Tamil society is also off the
mark. Tiger recruits scoff at the idea that coercion determines their willingness to make extreme selfsacrifice.
As a woman cadre in the political and intelligence wing of the LTTE said:
It’s very hard to force anyone to make this kind of sacrifice. A lot of us know what we are getting into by joining. We’ve heard it
from friends and relatives who have joined. . . . And besides, if we forced people to join the LTTE and fight the Sri Lankan army,
how could we possibly trust our own cadres to carry out a mission in battle?28
As we see below, evidence shows that the Tamil community does support martyrdom as a means of
national resistance.
I argue that the logic of religious difference provides a more compelling explanation. Fear of
religious persecution, not internal dynamics within Tamil society or the LTTE, largely accounts for
the pervasive use of suicide terrorism in this case. In Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese majority are
predominately Buddhists, while the Tamil minority is overwhelmingly Hindu and Christian.
Especially after the new Sinhalese constitution took effect in 1972, the Tamil community has
increasingly come to believe that the Sinhalese government is deliberately pursuing policies that seek
to stamp out core attributes of Tamil national identity, and that Buddhist religious goals are the
driving force behind this program. In response, the Tamil community has supported higher and higher
intensities of armed resistance and individual self-sacrifice in order to preserve the ability to
perpetuate its national heritage without interference from others. Suicide attack became the signature
weapon of the LTTE’s national liberation strategy when all other means had failed.
Sinhalese Occupation of the Tamil Homeland
Sri Lanka is an island-state off the coast of India. In 1990, it had a population of about 17.2 million
people, composed of 74 percent Sinhalese (predominately Buddhists), 18 percent Tamils (mainly
Hindu), and 8 percent other (mostly Muslims). The Tamil minority are concentrated in the northern
and eastern regions and call this land “Tamil Eelam,” the term for their ancestral homeland since
Hindus first began migrating to the island in the sixth century B.C.29
Sri Lanka first experienced suicide terrorism in July 1987, in the form of a suicide truck bombing
carried out by the LTTE against a Sinhalese military barracks and modeled after the spectacular
suicide bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983. Before this point, there were no
suicide attacks in Sri Lanka, even though the Tamil community had been politically and economically
disadvantaged since the island achieved independence from British colonial rule in 1948 and became
a functioning democracy governed by the Sinhalese majority. Indeed, before the early 1970s, Tamil
militancy hardly existed.30
In the 1970s, Sinhalese and Tamil relations changed markedly. In 1972, the Sinhalese government
adopted a new constitution that accorded Buddhism “the foremost place” and directed the state “to
protect and foster” it. In the late 1970s, the government started a series of large agricultural projects
that asserted new, uncontested rights to Tamil lands. By 1989, these projects had resettled 163,000
people (92 percent Sinhalese and 7 percent Muslim) on Tamil lands; in other words, the settlers
constituted a group roughly 7 percent the size of the Tamil population living in the north and eastern
regions of the country (about 3 million people).31 A defining moment for Tamil perceptions of the
consequences of Sinhalese dominance occurred in July 1983. Following an LTTE assault on a Sri
Lankan army camp that killed thirteen soldiers, a major riot broke out against Tamils living in
Colombo. Hundreds of Tamils were killed, more than 100,000 fled the city, and—perhaps the most
significant event—the Sri Lankan government waited days before calling in security forces to restore
order.32
The rise of Tamil militancy parallels the increasing Sinhalese encroachment on Tamil culture and
resources. Numerous Tamil militant organizations sprang up during the debate over the new
constitution. The LTTE started as a handful of mainly college students in 1972 and formally took the
name in 1976, but was only one of dozens of new Tamil guerrilla groups.33 Following the 1983 riots,
the LTTE and a small number of other Tamil militant groups dramatically surged in size. The LTTE
grew from fewer than fifty armed militants engaged in minor acts of violence to an estimated 3,000
guerrillas who began conducting large-scale military operations against a variety of Sri Lankan
military and political targets. At the same time, the LTTE solidified its dominance as the main Tamil
insurgent organization, effectively coopting or destroying its Tamil rivals by late 1986. In response,
the Sri Lankan army began operations to root out the Tamil militants, culminating in a major offensive
against armed insurgents against the LTTE’s headquarters in the main Tamil town, Jaffna, in the first
half of 1987.34
The Tamil Tigers’ first suicide attack was carried out by a special unit devoted to this purpose
called the “Black Tigers.” This suicide attack was part of the effort to stymie the Sri Lankan military
offensive against Jaffna. On July 5, 1987, a Black Tiger named Captain Miller drove a truck full of
explosives into the Sri Lankan army camp in Vadamarachi and exploded the vehicle and himself near
a military barracks, reportedly killing seventy Sri Lankan soldiers. The inspiration for the attack came
from Lebanon. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Tamil Tigers had sent fighters to train with the
PLO and other terrorist groups in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. Prabhakaran was especially impressed by
Hezbollah’s 1983 suicide attack against the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon and concluded that the
same tactic could be employed to compel the Sri Lankan government to accept Tamil independence.35
Shortly thereafter, however, an external event changed the conflict. In August 1987, India sent
troops to Sri Lanka in an effort to broker a peace agreement called the Indo–Sri Lankan Accord.
Although initially supported by the Tamils, including the LTTE, the agreement collapsed when the
Tamil militants refused to surrender their weapons prior to the implementation of a popular
referendum over the ultimate status of the Tamil regions of the island. From October 1987 to April
1990, the Indian army sought to disarm the LTTE by force, but ultimately abandoned the mission when
both the LTTE and Sri Lankan government joined forces against it. Although the LTTE fought the
Indian army tenaciously, it did not launch a single suicide attack during the period of Indian
occupation.36 From 1990 onward, the civil war between the Tamils and Sri Lankan government
resumed with more force than ever.
Community Support for Martyrdom
The Tamil Tigers’ protracted and extensive use of suicide terrorism probably could not have
occurred without sustained popular support from the Tamil community. Indeed, the LTTE’s reliance
on suicide tactics goes far beyond the 143 Black Tigers who can be classified as suicide attackers
according to our narrow definition (individuals who killed themselves while trying to kill others).
Another 100 or so Black Tigers also carried out suicide missions in which they died at the hands of
Sinhalese troops but made no effort to escape and are recorded in the group’s commemorative albums
as individuals who knew they would surely die during the mission. Moreover, the Tamil Tigers
require something no other major militant group has ever required: that every member, male and
female, wear a vial of cyanide, refreshed every few months, on a leather thong around the neck. At the
moment when capture appears inevitable, a Tamil Tiger is obligated to bite down on the vial. The
shards of glass lacerate the gums and send the deadly poison directly into the bloodstream, causing
death in about two minutes. Over the past two decades, more than 600 Tamil Tigers have committed
suicide in this way. Only a few have ever been captured alive, many having their stomachs pumped
before the poison took effect.37
Expectation of community support is a key reason so many individuals are willing to commit
suicide for the Tamil Tigers. Those who carried out suicide attacks for the LTTE attached great
importance to how the community would interpret and remember their actions. Prior to their missions,
the Black Tigers keep their identity a closely guarded secret so as to avoid providing the Sinhalese
with useful intelligence. After their missions, however, their identities are revealed in highly public
displays of commemoration, their stories are published in Tamil newspapers and in special
commemorative albums circulated by the organization, and the individuals themselves take steps,
even during their actual missions, to ensure their identity will be publicized. Black Tigers routinely
carry on their missions a laminated identity card with their picture, name, and designation as a Black
Tiger; the information is often written in English and Sinhalese as well as Tamil. The card reads: “I
am filled with a huge explosive. If my journey is blocked I will explode it. Let me go.”38 This may
help their mission, but it almost guarantees identification and publicity afterward.
The importance LTTE cadres attach to community support for martyrdom is also evident in public
interviews. As Nandini, a female LTTE fighter, said in 1995:
As Black Tigers, they are a physical embodiment of self-determination and liberation. They employ their lives as missiles armed
with the kind of determination and purpose that is unmatched by any conventional weapon that the Sinhala forces may deploy.
There lies the strength and honor of our Black Tigers.
Nandini went on to explain her reasons for accepting as beneficial for the community the practice
of choosing death over capture:
If I am captured and I give up ten names of people in the movement, they’ll capture and torture those ten to get a hundred names,
and after capturing a hundred people they can capture a thousand people, and so on. In this way, a movement can be destroyed.
So if you ask me why I should give up my own life [by taking cyanide]? At the time when we are captured alive by the enemy,
when I die, as a single individual who gives up her life, I have the capacity to protect not only the lives of several other people but I
am also able to protect the movement and the liberation struggle as a whole.39
The leaders of the Tamil Tigers also attach great importance to establishing individuals who
commit suicide attacks as martyrs in the eyes of the Tamil community. In numerous speeches, Black
Tiger operations are centrally linked to the common welfare. Prabhakaran, the leader of the group, is
famous for saying, “Tamil Eelam can be achieved in 100 years. But if we conduct Black Tiger
operations, we can shorten the suffering of the people and achieve Tamil Eelam in a shorter period of
time.”40 Like other suicide terrorist groups, LTTE seeks to glorify suicide attackers immediately after
their death by displaying their pictures on posters and holding public processions with pomp and
pageantry (singing is common) in their honor. Since 1990, the LTTE has held annual public
ceremonies to venerate its “martyrs.” In Jaffna, July 5 is called “Heroes’ Day” in memory of the first
Black Tiger attack. On this day, Prabhakaran gives a speech commemorating the Black Tigers and
others who have made especially heroic sacrifices for the cause of Tamil independence. In 1993, he
said: “Our martyrs die in the arena of struggle with the intense passion for the freedom of their
people, for the liberation of their homeland and therefore the death of every martyr constitutes a brave
act of enunciation of freedom.”
However, the LTTE goes further. Black Tigers often have their own monuments, built near public
spaces in Tamil towns. The largest is the life-size statue of Captain Miller that sits near a welltraveled
intersection in Jaffna. Others are distinctive conical structures with memorabilia on a
platform, sometimes surrounded by a small pond or a park or fence to provide space for the
community to lay flowers in honor of the person.41
These displays are conscious efforts to cultivate broad public support for martyrdom. Peter Schalk,
who has closely studied the LTTE, observes:
A total mobilization of people and institutions for the bureaucratization and institutionalization of Tamil nationalism is evident in the
organization of hero veneration . . . an attempt to fortify and enforce resistance on an ideological level. . . . [V]eneration of heroes
promotes the idea of representational dying for civilians and . . . is mainly directed towards the future of armed resistance against
the enemy.42
Beyond participation in public ceremonies, there is evidence of broad Tamil public support for
martyrdom in the context of national resistance. Numerous journalists and scholars who have visited
Jaffna report that the local population supports suicide operations and commemorates LTTE martyrs.
As A. J. V. Chandrakanthan reports, “The suicide squads of the LTTE . . . I have seen hundreds of
shrines erected in Jaffna by the friends and relatives of those LTTE [suicide] cadres.”43
Further, although we do not have surveys on suicide terrorism per se, we do have surveys on Tamil
support for armed resistance and we know that the LTTE’s suicide terrorism was common knowledge
among the Tamil population. Indeed, the LTTE itself constituted a significant fraction of the total
Tamil population, numbering 10,000–15,000 during the 1990s, or some 1 in 100 fighting-age Tamils.
Hence, popular support for armed resistance should be read as sympathy, if not active support, for
suicide operations.
Surveys show that Tamil community support for the LTTE remained strong long after the Tigers
began to use suicide operations, with a near majority supporting the use of armed force for
independence even after more than a decade of protracted suicide operations.
Overall, these facts suggest that Tiger suicide terrorists are respected as martyrs by their local
community. By contrast, there are no visible signs of public disaffection with the Black Tigers or any
other Tigers who voluntarily died for the cause. Tamil leaders have publically disagreed with the
leader of the LTTE, but none have ever condemned Tiger suicide attackers.
The Importance of Religious Difference
Sinhalese occupation of Tamil lands created the core necessary condition for the Tamil community to
support national resistance at all. However, the politics of religious difference helped to intensify the
resistance and to encourage public support for suicide terrorism. Specifically, the Sinhalese-Hindu
divide enabled Tamil resistance leaders to portray the Sinhalese military presence in the Tamil
homeland as an existential threat to the Tamil community and thereby persuade large segments to
redefine suicide and murder as legitimate—even commendable—acts of martyrdom for the common
good.
Depicting the Sinhalese State as a Religious Threat. Although race, language, and Sinhalese
policies are important, the most prominent factor driving Tamil community support for individual
self-sacrifice is fear of Buddhist extremism. Especially since the establishment of the new state
constitution in 1972, prominent Tamil leaders have consistently claimed that the Sinhalese
government is motivated by the goal to extend Buddhism into the Tamil regions of the island, a
religious game plan that justifies treating the Tamil people harshly, which in turn justifies extreme
self-sacrifice as necessary to meet the threat.44 The link between Sinhala Buddhism and the
government’s policies toward the Tamil community is commonly made in speeches by Tamil leaders
and even by independent scholars.
At an international conference on the Tamil struggle in 1988, a variety of Tamil leaders spoke
about the origins, underlying motivations, and basic aims of the growing Sinhalese repression of the
Tamil community. Brian Senewiratne spoke on “Sinhala-Buddhist Chauvinism and the Buddist
Clergy”:
There is a deep-rooted perception among the Sinhalese that Sri Lanka is a Sinhalese-Buddhist country. . . . The strongest
advocates of this Sinhala chauvinism have been sections of the Buddhist clergy. These hardline extremists who can markedly
influence the Sinhalese-Buddhist majority have collaborated with the opposition of whatever political hue to prevent successive Sri
Lankan governments from implementing any realistic devolution of power to the Tamils. . . . Sinhalese-Buddhist ethno-religious
chauvinism and its strongest advocates, the Buddhist clergy, are the most important factors that prevent a solution to the Sri
Lankan ethnic conflict.45
Sarath Amunugama explained the religious origins of the Sinhalese Buddhist claims to the Tamil
homeland:
According to Sinhala-Buddhist tradition . . . Sri Lanka is the island consecrated by the Buddha himself as the land in which his
teachings would flourish. . . . [I]t was believed that the Buddha had visited the island thrice. One of these visits was to Nagadipa
in the northernmost part of the Jaffna peninsula. The north was thereby firmly established within the sacred geography of
Buddhists.46
Other speakers said that the view of the Sinhalese settlers as “alien” was due specifically to the
religious schism between the communities.47
Western scholars also attribute the main source of the Sri Lankan conflict to Sinhala Buddhism.
David Little of Harvard writes:
In reaction to colonialism and emerging nationalism, the factors of race, language, and historical origins gained prominence as
marks for distinguishing the Sinhala people from Tamils and others. But it was the religious factor—the sacred legends synthesized
by Buddhist monks into the Mahavamsa and the other chronicles—that gave special authority to the Sinhala as a “chosen people”
and thereby entitled them, from their point of view, to preserve and protect the special status, the proper preeminence, of the
Sinhala Buddhist tradition in Sri Lankan life.48
In Tamil discourse, the main evidence of Sinhalese religious motives comes from recent speeches
by prominent Sinhalese political leaders. One Sinhalese cabinet minister proclaimed in 1980:
Sri Lanka is inherently and rightfully a Sinhalese state. . . . This must be accepted as a fact and not a matter of opinion to be
debated. By attempting to challenge this premise, Tamils have brought the wrath of the Sinhalese on their own heads; they have
themselves to blame.49
Another Sinhalese leader said in 1981:
The link between the Sinhala race and Buddhism is so close and inseparable. . . . There is no Buddhism without the Sinhalese and
no Sinhalese without Buddhism. . . . [T]he culture of the Sinhalese is Buddhist culture . . . the flag of the Sinhalese is the Sinhalese
Buddhist flag.50
Sinhalese expressions of a commitment to Buddhism to the exclusion of Tamil culture continued
through the 1990s.51
Zero-Sum Conflict. Tamil discourse portrays the Sri Lankan government policy as based on a grand
plan to increase Sinhalese control over Tamil resources as a means to eradicate the core elements of
Tamil society. One LTTE publication states:
Successive Sri Lankan governments aimed at the annihilation of the national entity of the Tamils. . . .This oppression was not
simply an expression of racial prejudice, but a well-calculated genocidal plan aimed at the gradual and systematic destruction of
the essential foundations of national community. . . . The most vicious form of oppression calculated to destroy the national identity
of the Tamils was the state aided aggressive colonization which began soon after “independence” and has now swallowed nearly
three thousand square miles of Tamil Eelam. This planned occupation of Tamil lands by hundreds of thousands of Sinhala people
aided and abetted by the state was aimed to annihilate the geographical entity of the Tamil nation.52
In his “Heroes’ Day” speeches, Prabhakaran routinely emphasizes the zero-sum nature of the
conflict:
The strategic objective of [Sinhala chauvinism] is to annihilate the national identity of the Tamils by destroying their life and
property and their land and resources.53
Demonization. Tamil discourse portrays Sinhala Buddhism as a religion with a moral code
fundamentally different from the Tamils’. The discourse explicitly claims that this religious difference
is the underlying reason why Tamils should expect harsh treatment at the hands of the Sinhalese.
Implicit, of course, in this line of argument is a none-too-subtle message that Tamils should feel
justified in treating the Sinhalese harshly in return. One recent Tamil history reads:
To a Sinhalese, the word “Jathiya” means the Sinhala Nation [which] claims as its right, the domination of the whole island. This
concept also aspires to establish a Sinhala Buddhist country over the whole island and the use of the Sinhalese language and
Buddhist religion in all walks of state life. . . . The subscription of [the] average Sinhalese to the idea of exclusivity relieves him
from any compulsion and the need to seek out and subscribe to a value system that accommodates the mutual rights of all people
in a federally structured or any other type of polity. This situation is no different from the situation that prevailed in Nazi Germany
in the early thirties, and the term “Jathiya” shares a common experience with the German word Volk during the time of the
Nazis.54
Prabhakaran rarely passes up an opportunity to emphasize the moral differences that drive the
brutal treatment of Tamils by the Sinhalese:
The Sinhala-Buddhist racist ideology, with its roots buried in Sri Lankan Buddhism, has perversely spread throughout the Sinhala
social formation and penetrated deep into the Sinhala political system. . . . [T]he culprit behind the tyrannical oppression of the
Tamils is Sinhala Buddhist racism.55
Legitimation of Martyrdom. The LTTE is a secular group that disavows Tamil religious motivations
as a driving force behind national resistance. This makes it all the more important to recognize how
much even this secular group depends on religious notions of martyrdom to mobilize public support
for suicide operations.
Scholars have gone to Jaffna to study how the LTTE constructs the culture of martyrdom. While
these studies confirm that the Tamil Tigers see themselves as “beyond religion,” they also explain that
the LTTE’s notions of martyrdom are deeply rooted in traditional religion of the Tamil community. A.
J. V. Chandrakanthan writes about the shrines to the Black Tigers:
. . . Heroic death founded with the fire of Tamil nationalism has given birth to a new set of terms, almost all derived from the
ancient Tamil religion of Saivism; indeed within the North and East, Tamil nationalism has the appeal of a new religious movement.
. . . People bedeck these “shrines of Martyrs” with offerings of flowers and oil as they normally do in their temples or holy
shrines.56
Peter Schalk, a prolific scholar of LTTE martyrdom, writes:
The self-understanding of the LTTE is that it is beyond religion. . . . [However], the LTTE selectively revives religious concepts
relating to a martyr cult. . . . The LTTE sacralizes its aim, cutantiram (“independence”), by declaring it to be a punita ilatciyam
(“holy aim”). . . . They lean towards religion because religion has what they lack, tradition.57
Schalk goes on to explain that the LTTE word tiyakam (“abandonment”) for “martyrdom” is rooted
in the Hindu religion and means “the voluntary abandonment of life in the very act of taking life, in the
act of killing . . . a rather specific Indian form of martyrdom [with] roots in the last section of the
Bhagavadgita.”58
This is not to say that Hindu martyrdom is mainly militaristic. In fact, mainstream understandings of
Hindu martyrdom portray individuals who qualify for this status as personally nonviolent. Like most
religions, however, Hinduism contains examples of violent martyrs who lie on the margins of its
religious history, similar to the Christians who fought in the Crusades, and whose violence received
religious sanction from the Pope. Under the pressure of external threat, these marginal readings can be
brought into the mainstream of discourse by leaders searching for ways to motivate local populations
to support their activities.
How effective is Tamil martyrdom discourse? We do not have much independently corroborated
information about the motivations of individual LTTE fighters. However, what we do know is
consistent with the logic of religious difference as a central cause of the extraordinary willingness of
the Black Tigers to kill themselves to accomplish their missions. According to a major general of the
Sinhalese army:
A young female suicide cadre apprehended by the Security Forces revealed some fascinating details. Her knowledge was that
“Eelam” was a country with a Tamil majority and a Sinhala minority. Sinhala people were carrying out terrorist attacks on Tamils.
She had been shown the Nallur Kandasamy Temple in Jaffna and told that the Sinhala terrorists are planning to destroy the temple
and construct a Buddhist temple instead.59
In sum, there is good evidence that religious difference is a central component of the LTTE’s
concept of self-sacrifice for national resistance and that it plays a key role in Tamil popular support
for suicide terrorism. That suicide terrorism did not occur during the years of Indian occupation, and
that the element of religious difference was markedly absent from resistance discourse during this
period, adds further weight to this finding.
The Absence of Suicide Terrorism During India’s Occupation
The Indian intervention provides an important opportunity for within-case comparison. Although the
Tamil Tigers carried out suicide terrorist attacks against their Sinhalese opponents both before and
after the Indian intervention, there were no suicide attacks against the Indian troops by the LTTE or
any other group. Why not? As I argue, the main reason is not a difference in the severity of the
occupation or in the LTTE’s confidence in defeating it, but the absence of a religious difference
between the foreign occupier and local occupied community. While the Tamils (Hindu) fear that the
Sinhalese (Buddhists) are seeking to implement a religiously motivated program to transform the core
characteristics of their national community, the Tamils (Hindu) did not view the Indian army (Hindu)
as a religiously motivated occupier seeking to transform their society—and this is the most likely
reason why one case led to suicide terrorism but the other did not.
Although beginning as a small peacekeeping mission, the Indian military presence in Sri Lanka
soon escalated into a broad operation to occupy most of the territory that the Tamils considered their
homeland. The Indian forces inflicted significant civilian casualties in an effort to replace the leaders
of the Tamil resistance with more moderate leadership. Following the Indo–Sri Lankan Accord in
July 1987, the Indian government originally sent about 7,000 troops to the island for the purpose of
collecting weapons from the 3,000 or so Tamil Tigers and other militants, who initially seemed to
accept voluntary disarmament as a precursor to a political settlement. The Tamil militants, however,
refused to surrender their weapons. In October, the Indian army launched its first major offensive to
capture the LTTE stronghold of Jaffna.
By March 1988, the number of the Indian troops deployed to Sri Lanka had increased to more than
100,000, nearly three times the size of the entire Sinhalese army of 35,000. The mission of the Indian
forces was to occupy and destroy LTTE strongholds throughout Sri Lanka, which in practice meant
saturating the population centers across the Jaffna peninsula and other Tamil regions of the island in
order to confine the LTTE to the jungles. As an Indian general leading the operations said, “Our
strategy is to continuously occupy the LTTE bases and hide-outs, to keep them in a state of continuous
disruption and disorganization.”60
Especially during the first year, the vast size of the India military presence was a source of extreme
pessimism among Tamil militants. In comparing the LTTE’s military prospects against the Indian and
Sinhalese forces, one Tamil militant wrote in April 1988: “IPKF [the Indian Peacekeeping Force] is
more dangerous than the Sri Lankan Army. Our LTTE are capable enough, brave enough, potent
enough to defeat the Sri Lankan Army, but not the Indian Army.”61
At the same time, the Indian army inflicted significant casualties among Tamil civilians. To
minimize its own casualties, the Indian army made extensive use of air power and heavy artillery,
even in populated areas. Although estimates vary, Indian forces killed somewhere between 3,000 and
4,000 Tamil civilians, depopulated large areas, and raped untold numbers of Tamil women. These
numbers represent a level of civilian damage at least as great as during the worst periods of fighting
between the Tamils and Sri Lankan forces.62 One observer concluded that the Indian army “proved to
be much more heavy- handed in their treatment of the people than their Sri Lankan counterparts.”63
Civilian casualties also became a source of bitter hatred. One LTTE statement read:
What horrified the Tamil people was the brutal and ruthless manner the Indian troops conducted the military campaign in callous
disregard to human life and property. . . . Innocent civilians, including women and children were massacred in a most barbaric
manner. Houses were destroyed, temples desecrated, and shops looted. The worst crime committed by the Indian troops was the
rape of the Tamil women. Hundreds of Tamil women were raped brutally and most of them were done to death after sexual
violence. This brutality deeply wounded the sentiments of the people and the hate for the Indian army became widespread. The
IPKF received the motto as the Innocent People Killing Force.64
Indian occupation of the Tamil homeland failed to eradicate armed resistance. Although the Indian
army controlled most of the Tamil population centers, the LTTE grew from 3,000 cadres in the
summer of 1987 to more than 10,000 by the time the Indian forces abandoned the mission in early
1990. India’s prolonged and extensive occupation of large parts of Sri Lanka effectively alienated the
Sinhalese as well. A large fraction of the 1,155 Indian troops who died were killed by weapons
provided to the Tamil rebels by the government in Colombo following its decision in April 1989 to
compel the Indian army to leave the island.65
Yet the Indian occupation did not elicit suicide attacks. The same LTTE that had carried out its first
“Black Tiger” suicide operation against the Sinhalese in July 1987, and that would use such
operations extensively against the Sinhalese in the 1990s, did not launch a single suicide attack
against the Indian army.
The main reason appears to be the absence of religious difference between the Hindu Indian army
and the mainly Hindu Tamil population.66 At the same time that fighting between the Indian forces and
Tamil militants was at its peak, even the most militant Tamils continued to stress the inherent ability
of the Indians and the Tamils to work together toward a mutual understanding that would not challenge
the core goals of either.
In October 1987, just after India’s initial offensive against Jaffna, the LTTE stated:
Neither the Tamil people nor the LTTE anticipated, even in their wildest dreams, a war with India. For the Tamils, India was their
protector, guardian and saviour and the presence of the Indian troops was looked upon as an instrument of peace and love. For the
LTTE, India was their promoter, a friendly power who provided sanctuary and armed assistance, an ally who respected its role in
the liberation war and recognized its political importance. Therefore, the Indian decision to launch a war against the LTTE shook
the Tamil nation by surprise and anguish.67
In April 1988, the keynote speaker at a major international conference, who strongly condemned
Sinhalese aggression against the Tamils, said this about the Indian sympathies with the Tamil cause
reflected in the Indo–Sri Lankan Accord:
There is a refreshingly frank admission that the Tamil community has a distinct cultural and linguistic identity. . . . This is followed
by a critical confession that the northern and eastern provinces have been the historic home of the Tamil-speaking peoples. . . . Of
course, IPKF excesses, if continued, may make them a hated horde.68
In April 1990, following the departure of India’s troops from Sri Lanka, the leader of the LTTE,
Prabhakaran, spoke passionately of his desire to reestablish good relations between Tamil and Indian
peoples and leaders:
We are not a hostile force to the Indian government or to the Indian people. We opposed the misguided policies of the former
Indian administration and resisted the military intervention. We do not want the government of India to interfere, politically or
militarily, in our problems. The policy makers in Delhi should realize that the legitimate struggle of our oppressed people will not in
any way contravene the geo-political concerns of India nor will it undermine the internal stability of the Indian state. We fervently
hope that on the basis of this understanding the new Indian administration would make sincere efforts to restore friendly ties with
our organization.69
Although the absence of religious difference appears to have mitigated the threat the Tamils
perceived from the Indian intervention and so reduced the popular support for extreme self- sacrifice
that would lead to a protracted campaign of suicide terrorism, one piece of evidence from this case
does suggest that religious difference is not an inviolable threshold. On May 19, 1991, an LTTE
suicide attacker assassinated Rajiv Gandhi while he was campaigning for re-election as India’s prime
minister on a platform of returning the Indian army to Sri Lanka. The Indian army did not return and
the LTTE did not carry out any other instances of suicide attack against Indian targets.
THE SIKHS AFTER THE GOLDEN TEMPLE MASSACRE
On August 31, 1995, a suicide bomber leapt at Beant Singh, the chief minister of the state of Punjab in
India, as he was leaving his car outside of the secretariat building in the capital city of Chandigarh.
The attack killed Minister Singh, fifteen of his security guards and aides, and the bomber himself,
identified as Dilawar Singh, a young man in his early twenties who had left a note to his accomplices
saying that his act was “in memory of the martyrs.” This was the first successful suicide attack
associated with the Sikh terrorist group called the Babbar Khalsa International, which publicly
claimed the attack as a step toward the goal of Sikh independence in Punjab. The episode presaged a
number of attempted suicide attacks that continued through January 2000.70
This is a borderline case of a campaign of suicide terrorism. Although there was only one
successful attack, the fact that the same Sikh terrorist group carried out at least one other possible
(ambiguous) suicide attack and organized other follow-on suicide attacks that were foiled only as a
result of early detection by local police indicates that the lone successful attack was part of a
protracted effort. Moreover, if we look beyond our narrow definition of a suicide attack—the attacker
kills himself in order to kill others—there are other instances of suicidal violence by Sikh militants
precipitated by the virulent nationalism of the 1980s and 1990s. The key question is whether the
relatively low level of suicide terrorism by Sikh militants is due to substantially the same causes as
more ambitious suicide terrorist campaigns.
The answer is yes. Examination of this case shows that the rise of suicide terrorism among Sikh
militants is part of a national liberation movement that failed to achieve its aims through ordinary
means of armed resistance. During the 1980s, the Sikh community experienced increasing control by
the Indian government, including the prominent presence of the Indian army in Punjab. Militants
portrayed the situation as a military occupation that would lead to the transformation of the Sikh
national identity by an alien power, and this produced widespread community support for armed
resistance and self-sacrifice to return to the status quo ante. Precisely when ordinary armed resistance
seemed to have failed, Sikh militants turned to suicide terrorism as a last resort. They appear to have
abandoned that effort when it, too, failed to yield significant results for their cause.
Indian Military Presence in Sikh Homeland
The Sikh homeland is in the Punjab province of India, whose population in 1991 was approximately
20 million, 61 percent Sikh and 37 percent Hindu.71 Punjab ranks among the top three of India’s
twenty-five states in per capita income and is the lowest in percentage of population below the
poverty line. The Sikh religion was born in Punjab when its founder, Guru Nanak (1469–1539),
abandoned Hinduism’s polytheism, idol worship, and caste system in favor of a simple and strict
monotheism that propounded the oneness of God, rejected the worship of idols, and emphasized the
equality of all people. The distinctiveness of Sikhism grew during the hundred years of British
colonial rule in Punjab (1849–1947). The Sikhs remained loyal during the mutiny of the Indian army
in 1857, after which the British relied heavily on Sikh soldiers to maintain control in India, giving
special economic privileges to the Sikhs and creating companies and regiments that consisted entirely
of Sikhs.72
Although the Sikh nationalist party, the Akali Dal, often accused Hindus of discrimination, the
Congress Party included a sufficient number of Sikhs that the Akali Dal was unable to get more than
30 percent of the vote in the five elections for the Punjab legislative assembly from 1967 to 1980.73
From 1981 to 1984, there were a number of incidents involving violence against Sikhs, which led to
mass protests organized by the Akali Dal, which led to still more violence and agitation. In October
1983, following a wave of terrorist attacks against Hindus, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi dissolved
the Punjab legislative assembly and placed the province under the direct control of the central
government.
The Golden Temple Massacre and the Aftermath. On June 3, 1984, the Indian army launched
“Operation Blue Star,” a massive attack on the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the sacred heart of the
Sikh religion and the most important symbol of the Sikh homeland. The purpose of the attack was to
root out a group of Sikh militants led by Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. After a day-long battle, the
Indian army successfully took control of the temple, killing Bhindranwale and at least 492 other Sikhs
and destroying large parts of the main temple complex, including the Akal Takht, the principal shrine.
Immediately after Operation Blue Star, the Indian army conducted Operation Woodrose, a broad
effort to arrest militants. Woodrose involved forced entry into thousands of Sikh homes, most of
whose inhabitants had committed no crime.
Operation Blue Star outraged large numbers of Sikhs. Within days of the attack, whole units of Sikh
soldiers began to mutiny, creating the most serious crisis within the Indian army since independence.
Numerous armed Sikh groups demanding an independent homeland emerged either newly formed or
greatly invigorated, and widespread killings and guerrilla resistance followed. Overall, some 18,000
people died in Punjab as a result of communal violence from 1981 to 1993, the overwhelming
majority in the years after the Golden Temple massacre.74
Although the Sikh fighters did not immediately use suicide terrorism in the strict sense, there were
instances of suicidal violence directly related to the Golden Temple massacre. Bhindranwale was
widely celebrated as a martyr who had voluntarily died in defense of the Sikh community. His portrait
now hangs in Sikh homes alongside those of other famous Sikh martyrs, and the story of his last
moments closely associates him with them. Sihk nationalists know the story of Baba Deep Singh, who
is said to have carried his head, severed in battle against Afghans, to the Golden Temple as an act of
superhuman devotion. As the Indian army advanced on his position, Bhindranwale is reported to have
made no effort to escape, saying, “I am privileged to be able to give my head right here.”
On October 31, 1984, Indira Gandhi was assassinated in reprisal for ordering the attack on the
temple. The killers were two of her Sikh bodyguards, who were on what appears to have been a
suicide mission. After shooting Gandhi, the two assassins did not try to escape but instead dropped
their weapons, saying: “Whatever we had to do, we have done; now you can do what you like.” They
were then shot by other security personnel.75
Operation Blue Star and its aftermath led to a broad mobilization of the Sikh community that
substantially increased the size and violence of the Sikh insurgency. Prior to this point, the largest
pro-Khalistan (Sikh independence) demonstration was probably a rally in March 1981 involving 200
or so people. Although the Indian government made numerous small concessions to Sikh autonomy in
the aftermath of the Golden Temple massacre—including withdrawal of the standing orders giving the
Indian army special powers to act in Punjab; payment to relatives of innocents killed; rehabilitation of
army deserters; and release of political detainees—ordinary armed resistance did not subside until
the mid-1990s, and observers remain concerned that new acts of oppression could easily re-ignite
nationalist sentiments.76
Community Support for Martyrdom
From 1984 through the 1990s, thousands of young men and hundreds of women joined the Sikh
independence movement. This wave of recruits substantially increased the size of a number of
militant organizations, including the Babbar Khalsa International, the Khalistan Commando Force, the
Khalistan Liberation Force, the Bhindranwale Tiger Force of Khalistan, and radical factions of the
All-India Sikh Students Federation, all of which had been only tiny groups on the margins of the Sikh
community before this point. The reported number of those killed on both sides was 598 in 1986; the
toll rose to 3,788 in 1990, 4,768 in 1991, and 3,629 in 1992, before dropping sharply.77 After this
point, the Sikh militants appear to have changed tactics, with the first possible (but unconfirmed)
suicide attack in 1993, the first confirmed suicide attack in 1995, and at least two failed attempted
suicide attacks in 1999 and 2000.
Although religion was a powerful recruiting tool, the desire for personal salvation is less important
in Sikhism than the contribution an individual makes to the perpetuation of the Sikh community on
earth. Unlike Islam and some other religions, Sikh martyrs do not look forward to an eternal life in
paradise. The emphasis is on this world. G. S. Mansukhani, who wrote a popular primer on Sikhism,
instructs that “those who know the art of true living also know that of true dying. True living is dying
to the self, the ego, and living up to God. True dying is the privilege of the brave.”78
Sikh nationalists expressly called for the community to accept the necessity of individual selfsacrifice
in order to achieve the goal of political independence from India. Bhindranwale himself
proclaimed, “When they say the Sikhs are not separate, we’ll demand separate identity—even if it
demands sacrifice.”79 Just months after the Golden Temple massacre, the well-known Sikh nationalist
S. Dharam wrote:
The only option that can meet the aspirations of the Sikhs and that would be acceptable to them under the existing state of affairs
is to have an independent and sovereign State of their own so that they can live with self-respect and dignity and have freedom of
faith to practice their religion without interference and domination by others. . . . The Sikhs may have to pay a heavy price for it;
they may have to lay down the lives of thousands of brave young Sikhs. . . . It is any day better to fight and die a brave man’s
death than to be a slave of the communal and atrocious Hindu regime, which is already committing genocide of Sikhs and is bent
upon exterminating them from the face of India.80
In 1985, the Khalistan activist Ganga Singh Dhillon gave a prominent speech in which he
proclaimed:
We are not just looking for a piece of land. We are looking for a territory where Sikhs can protect their women and children.
Where a Sikh can become a master of his own destiny—where our religious shrines are not allowed to be run over by army tanks.
You can call it an independent Punjab, a sovereign state, or Khalistan. What we are asking for is a homeland for the Sikh
nation.81
Wassan Singh Zaffarwal, leader of the Khalistan Commando Force, said:
The worst thing was that we couldn’t bring to the attention of the world what had happened to us. There was no place for us to
go. . . . Prior to June 1984, we used to talk about the Anandpur Sahib resolution because it contained the right to self-determination
within India. After 1984 we needed our own independent home. The government that could kill hundreds, send thousands to
prison, rape our women and generally humiliate our people, there could never be a compromise with them! We now needed an
independent home for the Sikhs.82
These appeals for self-sacrifice to achieve self-determination for the Sikh nation met with
substantial community support. Even before the actual attack on the Golden Temple, the fear that
Indian security forces would defile the shrine by entering it in order to arrest Sikh militants provoked
strong responses from the community. From March to May 1983, more than 115,000 Sikhs took an
oath “to make any sacrifice in protection of the Golden Temple.”83
Sikh militants believed they enjoyed broad community support for their actions, and especially for
self-sacrifice to achieve independence for their community. Harpal Singh, a Sikh militant discussing
the death of his brother, who had been killed by Indian troops, said:
They were proud. Because when a boy or girl dies for Khalistan, dies for our religion, we say it’s a martyrdom. We celebrate
martyrdom and honor those who martyred for the cause. . . . [H]undreds of people came to remember my brother. My whole
village and my whole society honored him. You have to understand that even our enemies praise the way we sacrifice our lives if
necessary. Someone who offers his life for the people becomes part of them, strengthens them. A sincere martyrdom is a very
good thing, we think. That is why in the end we will succeed. Nobody can beat us for devotion.
A friend of Harpal Singh added: “That’s the price of getting your own country. If you can’t pay it,
you don’t deserve a country.”84
Guerrillas were often supported by ordinary villagers. The leader of the Khalistan Commando
Force said, “Wherever we went, people gave us beds to sleep on while they themselves slept on the
floor. . . . We felt that those who gave us shelter and food were our families. When our clothes were
torn or too dirty, they would give us their own.”85 Wassan Singh Zaffarwal of the Khalistan
Commando Force said:
What was positive was that wherever I went people wanted to do something. They did not want to sit back. Wherever we went,
villagers would give us money and beg us to go forward, not backwards. My family didn’t stop me in my activities. I had their full
support. When people saw us sticking together they thought we’re not finished yet.86
A key manifestation of community support for self-sacrifice by the Sikh militants was the
widespread practice of holding public ceremonies in celebration of the “heroic fighters” who died
fighting the Indian state. These ceremonies were typically advertised in local newspapers and drew
large audiences. According to Joyce Pettigrew, who spent months living in Sikh communities in
Punjab in 1989 and 1990, the relevant militant group would issue an announcement for “Martyrdom
Congregations” reading: “It is a wonderful thing for the brave to die in the cause of truth. . . . During
the present-day struggle . . . [name given] from [village given] became a martyr. . . . The last rites of
[name] will be performed at [time and place]. We appeal to all the Sikh congregations to participate
in the peace of the departed soul.”87 As a result of these public ceremonies, Sikh fighters were not
viewed as victims, social misfits, or dysfunctional individuals, but as honorable martyrs whose death
merited social appreciation, both for the individuals who die and their families.
The Importance of Religious Difference
The underlying religious difference between the Sikh and Hindu communities helps to explain why
Sikh resistance became so extreme in the aftermath of the Golden Temple massacre. For Sikh
nationalists, India’s attack was not simply the product of an overly aggressive army or an insensitive
political leader, but indicated the general willingness of Hindus to allow the more radical elements
within their society to perpetrate violence against the Sikh community.
The key difference between the two religions is that Sikhism is monotheistic, Hinduism
polytheistic. Hindus follow a strict caste system, which determines the standing of each person. The
caste one is born into is the result of the karma from his or her previous life. Sikhs believe in
samsara, karma, and reincarnation as Hindus do, but reject the caste system. They believe that
everyone has equal status in the eyes of God.
The best articulation of the Sikh nationalist view is S. Dharam’s explanation of the “root cause” of
the conflict between the Sikhs and the Hindus:
The Arya Samajis are the root cause of the present conflict between Hindus and Sikhs of Punjab and Haryana. Arya Samaj is
India’s most fanatical cult, which attacks and slanders almost all the religions, Sikhism [and others]. . . . Anti-Sikh policies and
activities of Arya Samaj are responsible for alienating the Sikhs from Hindu society and pushing more Sikhs into saying that they
are not Hindus. . . . The Arya Samaj’s doctrine of fanaticism and their slandering of the Sikhs’ Gurus naturally infected the minds
of certain sections of the Punjabi Hindus who started opposing various rightful demands put up by the Sikhs for the welfare of
Punjab. Thus even though on the surface there would appear to be various causes leading to the present state of tension between
the Hindus and Sikhs, yet the fact is that the basis of all further causes leading to the present state of conflict is the hostile attitude
of the Punjabi Hindu against Sikhs as a result of influence of the Arya Samaj on them.88
In the end, the logic of martyrdom is a response to the perceived willingness of the occupier to
allow extremists to transform the local community. The main argument of Sikh nationalists is not that
they have an inherent right to their own state. Rather, it is that Hindu extremists, protected by a Hindu
state, will dominate the Sikhs unless the community achieves independence:
The Sikhs today stand at the cross-roads of their history where they face the danger of being over-run by the fanatic and barbaric
forces of Hinduism. . . . The state is in the tight grip of the Indian Army . . . and every Sikh living in it is a suspect in the eyes of
security forces. . . . Big Brother has classified these Sikhs as “dangerous people” who . . . need to be “subjugated.” For achieving
this subjugation, Big Brother permits its forces to use any methods howsoever heinous or horrid they may be.89
In 1996, the leading Khalistan leader, Simranjit Singh Mann, stressed that the Sikh rebellion was
not merely based in religion, but was a struggle to “protect the Sikh community” from the influences
of Hindu activists. Other activists in the Khalistan movement frequently declare their desire to
“protect the Sikh faith from Brahminical tyranny.”90
Wassan Singh Zaffarwal, leader of the Khalistan Commando Force:
Our ideology is clearly intended to bring about our liberation as individuals and as a people. There is no need to follow any other
alien system of thought. We have our own values. Our history and bani [scripture] inspires us.91
Jasvinder Singh, a member of the KCF:
We were, ourselves, aware of our shahidi [martyrdom] and sacrifices but we always thought India to be our country. We never
questioned it! . . . At the time of Operation Blue Star, I was 16. . . . Suddenly all our villages were surrounded by the army. . . .
We started realizing we are not safe—neither ourselves nor our religion. Later, when we went to the [Golden Temple], we saw
the marks of the bullets. Bloodstains were still visible. . . . [The Indian government] ruined them [the temple buildings] in order to
rid the Sikh mind of the notion that they are a nation. Many buildings were destroyed simply to destroy the culture. I and many
other young people began to think, on seeing this, that neither we nor our religion could be safe in a country that did this. . . .
Everyone understood that if it means saving Sikhism, one had to sacrifice.92
Jarnail Singh Hoshiarpur, a senior leader of the KCF:
Ours is a national struggle. It is simply that people want to be free. We want to get rid of Brahmanic imperialism. They eat our
Punjab.93
Dr. Gurmit Singh Aulakh, president of the Council of Khalistan:
The Hindu government of India, whether run by the Congress Party or by the BJP [Bhartiya Janta Party], wants minorities either
subservient to Hinduism or completely wiped out. The Indian government and its allies have tried to weaken the Sikh religion by
saying that Sikhism is part of Hinduism. If that is true, why have they murdered so many Sikhs? . . . Guru Nanak was born Hindu,
so they proclaim Sikhism to be part of Hinduism. Yet Guru Nanak said that he was “neither Hindu nor Muslim.” Jesus was born
Jewish. Does that mean that Christianity is merely part of Judaism?94
THE PKK’S SUICIDE TERRORISM IN TURKEY
From 1996 to 1999, the Parti Karkaren Kurdistan, or Kurdish Workers Party, carried out fourteen
suicide attacks, each with one attacker, against government buildings and Turkish military targets,
killing twenty-two people in addition to the attackers themselves. The PKK’s suicide terrorism is
remarkable in three respects. First, it qualifies as the least aggressive modern suicide terrorist
campaign, killing on average fewer than two persons per attack, compared with the average of twelve
in the universe of suicide terrorist attacks since 1980. Second, the individual PKK suicide terrorists
sought remarkably little publicity, leaving no final testimonials in writing or on video, and the
organization rarely promoted the life stories of the attackers. Third, few if any of the suicide attackers
appear to have been walk-ins. Although suicide terrorist organizations almost always replenish their
ranks as the suicide campaign unfolds, the PKK’s suicide attackers were long-serving members of the
organization and their number was not augmented by grassroots volunteers.
From the perspective of explaining suicide terrorism, the important question in the case of the PKK
is less why it occurred than why it remained so limited. Although the PKK’s suicide terrorism
occurred while the Kurdish homeland was under Turkish military occupation, the origins of the
PKK’s suicide terrorism, more so than any other case, are most likely due to a narrow commitment to
the group’s leader, Abdullah Ocalan. While in jail, Ocalan called for his followers to conduct suicide
attacks as a means to compel the Turkish government to release him. Coercion failed and the attacks
stopped when Ocalan asked his followers to abandon the effort. He remains in custody.
The interesting question is why suicide terrorism did not escalate in the Kurdish case. Some have
thought that suicide terrorism occurs mainly as a product of internal group dynamics. Once started, so
the argument goes, suicide terrorism can feed on itself, fomenting a wider rebellion or an escalation
in suicide attacks.95 If so, then the sources of suicide terrorism are mainly inside the group and are
only slightly related to external circumstances such as foreign occupation or religious difference. To
be sure, the PKK’s suicide terrorism shows that internal group dynamics can cause some suicide
terrorist attacks. However, there is a more important observation. Even if internal dynamics account
for the PKK’s suicide terrorism, these attacks did not precipitate a groundswell of national resistance
and in fact mark the tail end of the Kurdish national rebellion, which lasted from 1984 to 1999. Why
is this so?
The limits of suicide terrorism among the Kurds are likely due to the absence of a religious
difference in this case. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Turkish military occupied large parts of the
Kurdish homeland and used harsh measures to suppress the PKK. However, this was far from
intensifying Kurdish support for the nationalist rebellion. Indeed, the vast majority of the Kurdish
population appear to have sided with the Turkish government, while support for the rebellion actually
declined over time. A key reason appears to be the commonality of religion across the two
communities. Although Kurds and Turks speak different languages, both are predominately Sunni
Muslims. This religious similarity forms the basis of significant cross-community assimilation, which
continues even now.
Turkey’s Military Occupation
The Kurds are a predominately Sunni Muslim people with a distinct family of languages, numbering
some 20 million to 25 million as of 1995. Their homeland, “Kurdistan,” spans southeastern Turkey,
northeastern Iraq, and parts of Syria and Iran. Approximately 6 million to 9 million Kurds reside in
Turkey, where they make up about 15 to 20 percent of the total population and constitute a large
majority in the southeast.96
The Kurds have a long history of violence in the Middle East. The 1984 civil war in Turkey started
when the PKK, based at the time in northern Iraq, launched a series of raids across the border and
sought to control various Kurdish rural towns.97 The Turkish government responded with heavyhanded
counterinsurgency tactics including large military operations (some involving up to 35,000
troops) in the Kurdish areas of the country. The Turkish government claims that from 1984 to 1999,
some 5,000 Kurdish civilians died during its military operations to suppress the PKK; independent
observers estimate that the number is probably closer to 35,000.98 The government also forcibly
“resettled” at least 362,000 Kurds, reducing the rural population of the southeast by 12 percent during
the period.99 Although the Turkish army withdrew from many rural Kurdish towns in the early 1990s,
it continued counterinsurgency operations against the PKK in the region through late 1998.100
Community Support for Independence
The PKK’s main goal was to establish an independent Kurdish state. At its peak, the PKK appears to
have numbered from 5,000 to 10,000 armed guerrillas and may have had passive support from tens of
thousands more.101 Although this represents deep support by a small fraction of Kurds, there is good
reason to doubt that the PKK, or the Kurdish independence movement as a whole, had much popular
support.
An extensive analysis of Kurdish public opinion on independence has been conducted by Matthew
Kocher. Since public opinion surveys were not taken during the conflict, he analyzes vote returns for
Kurdish parties in Turkey’s three parliamentary elections in the 1990s. These elections, which are
generally considered to have been free and fair, show only a modest absolute level of support for
Kurdish parties associated with independence, and that level declines over time. Although this is not
direct information on popular support for the PKK, it is highly unlikely that the general Kurdish
population would more strongly support armed insurgency to achieve independence than it would the
goal of independence itself.
The Absence of Religious Difference
Although foreign occupation had the effect of hardening communal identities in Lebanon, Sri Lanka,
and Punjab, this did not happen in the Kurdish case. During the civil war, millions of Kurds continued
to live in the cities of eastern Turkey and to attend public schools in which Turkish is the mandatory
language, while hundreds of thousands of Kurdish males continued to accept conscription in the
Turkish army.102 Turkey has erected few barriers to the advancement of Kurds in the state
bureaucracy, business, and politics; individuals of Kurdish descent have been mayors of major cities
(including Istanbul) and parliamentarians (the foreign minister in 1995).103 In a 2001 survey, 12
percent of Turkish citizens identified Kurdish as their mother tongue, but only 4 percent identified
themselves as “primarily Kurds” rather than “primarily Turks.”104 Although ethnic mobilization
surely occurred, there is a pattern of successful integration of Kurds into Turkish society, a pattern
absent from foreign occupations that led to suicide terrorism.
The reason is not that Turkey’s occupation policies were especially benign. In fact, the rate of
occupation-related civilian deaths and disruption to the occupied community is higher in Turkey’s
Kurdish regions than in Punjab and only moderately lower, given the high absolute level of damage,
than in Lebanon and Sri Lanka.105
Rather, the main reason that the Kurds did not mount an aggressive campaign of suicide terrorism is
probably that the linguistic difference that defines the Kurdish nation does not lend itself to the sharp
boundary between “us” and “them” that can occur when rivals are divided by religion. Turkey’s
Kurds are predominately bilingual, speaking their mother tongue at home and on social occasions but
using Turkish for business, in school, and to follow the news. Indeed, Kurdish is primarily spoken;
few textbooks or other literature is available in the language.106 Since the adoption of Turkish as a
second language does not require Kurds to abandon their mother tongue, the categories of “Kurd” and
“Turk” are not mutually exclusive.
Moreover, the fact that the Kurdish nation spans a variety of ethnic groups—Arabs in Syria,
Persians in Iran, and tribal clans in Turkey—tends to blur the boundaries of the nation. To be sure,
Kurdish historians seek to draw a stark definition between “us,” the Kurds, who are the oldest people
in the region and who speak a distinct language, and “them,” outsiders like the Ottomans (Turks) who
came later. They also stress that the Kurds are endowed with certain special characteristics (mainly,
language). However, Kurdish historians also emphasize that the Kurdish nation is the product of
reciprocal influence with other peoples, especially Arabs and Persians. Weakening the lines that
demarcate the nation is especially important, since many Kurds are not Sunni Muslims but Shia,
including about 30 percent in Turkey (the Alevi). As one scholar of Kurdish nationalist discourse
explains, “The Other and the Self are defined without actually considering the question of where the
limits of these categories are.”107
Overall, this analysis confirms that the absence of a religious difference tends to limit suicide
terrorism. Although the PKK was still able to carry out a series of suicide terrorist attacks, support
for Kurdish independence and for the PKK’s resistance movement remained limited to a small
fraction of the Kurdish population and the phenomenon of mass support for martyrdom did not occur.
CONCLUSION
Religion plays a role in suicide terrorism, but mainly in the context of national resistance. Moreover,
the effects of religion that matter do not lie mainly in Islam or in any other single religion or culture.
Rather, they lie mainly in the dynamics of religious difference. In Lebanon, Sri Lanka, and Punjab the
presence of a religious schism—different in each case—between the occupying power and the
occupied community produced a common set of mechanisms that enabled resistance leaders to
mobilize significant levels of popular support for “martyrs” who carried out suicide terrorist attacks.
By contrast, the absence of a religious clash in Turkey limited Kurdish support for the PKK’s suicide
terrorism. This does not mean that religious difference is a hard, necessary condition for suicide
terrorism. The growing coercive power of suicide terrorist attacks to compel modern democracies to
alter their policies may tempt many kinds of national resistance movements to use suicide terrorism in
the future. However, the important role of religious difference in the campaigns of suicide terrorism
over the past two decades suggests that the risk of suicide terrorism is higher when a foreign
occupation by a democratic state also involves a religious difference.
PART III
THE
INDIVIDUAL
LOGIC
OF
SUICIDE
TERRORISM
9
Altruism and Terrorism
WHAT MOTIVATES INDIVIDUAL suicide terrorists? Are suicide attackers driven by economic
helplessness, social anomie, religious indoctrination, or something else?
The individual logic of suicide terrorism has been hard to grasp, because many are looking at it
through the wrong lens—the lens of ordinary suicide. For the past two decades, journalists, scholars,
and other researchers have written a multitude of accounts that seek to explain the individual logic of
suicide terrorism by assembling the life narratives of specific suicide bombers. These life narratives
follow a familiar pattern. Typically, the writer begins by interviewing the suicide bomber’s
immediate family, friends, and other close associates, asking detailed questions about the personal
history and psychological condition of the individual. From these interviews, the suicide attacker’s
life story is stitched together, often with painstaking effort to identify the key moments of transition
that “caused” the person to wish to die and so to willingly accept a suicide terrorist mission. Finally,
there is a summary statement—often to the effect that, much to the writer’s surprise, no clear “moment
of transition” could be found.1
One can quibble about the method or complain about its thoroughness of execution in hard-to-study
areas of the world. However, this method, which experts call psychological autopsy—is exactly the
one used to explain the many cases of ordinary suicide that we read about every day.2 Moreover, the
life narratives of many suicide terrorists are quite complete, some more complete than accounts of
everyday suicides. Although we do want more information, and surely want the best experts to
analyze it, this chapter argues that there is a conceptual gap that confounds efforts to explain what
motivates individual suicide terrorists.
An important obstacle to resolving the puzzle of the individual logic of suicide terrorism is the
tendency to think that all suicides arise from similar causes. In our everyday lives, we have come to
expect that “suicide” carries a particular set of meanings. People who “commit suicide” are people
“seeking to die,” often because they wish to “escape emotional pain.” Our personal experience tends
to reinforce this common understanding. Every day, ordinary suicides are reported in the newspapers.
These reports commonly include some account of why the person committed suicide, and the answer
is often linked to an identifiable personal trauma or mental illness, usually reported by a family
member or close associate. When the occasional suicide occurs that does not fit this pattern, it is easy
to think that we just have not learned enough about the case, and also easy not to think about it at all.
Our experience with ordinary suicide leads to a common misunderstanding about suicide terrorists:
that many are seeking to end their lives in any case and are merely taking an opportunity to die in an
especially theatrical way. This presumption is a mistake. Many suicide terrorists are acting on the
basis of motives fundamentally different from those that underlie ordinary suicide and would
probably not commit suicide absent the special circumstances that create these motives.
Using Emile Durkheim’s famous study of suicide in nineteenth-century Europe, this chapter
broadens our understanding of suicide to include circumstances that we do not encounter every day
but that are closely relevant to suicide terrorism (and other forms of suicide). It also applies this
broader conceptual framework to elucidate the motives of actual suicide terrorists.
Suicide can take multiple forms. The most common, “egoistic suicide,” occurs when an individual
is excessively isolated from society, cannot cope with intense psychological trauma, and chooses
voluntary death as a means to escape this painful existence. The less common and fundamentally
different “altruistic suicide” occurs when high levels of social integration and respect for community
values cause otherwise normal individuals to commit suicide out of a sense of duty. The extremely
rare “fatalistic suicide” happens when individuals are confined under conditions of such excessive
regulation, oppressive discipline, and seclusion from society that they can be made to carry out
extreme acts through what lay people call brainwashing.
This new conceptual lens helps us to see the distinctive qualities of suicide terrorism. Many
suicide terrorists are acting out of altruistic motives, not the egoistic motives that are typical of almost
all other suicides. Numerous suicide terrorists are acting at least partly to serve their community’s
interest in fighting the national enemy. These individuals are rarely brainwashed into accepting such
missions through the heavy indoctrination associated with the recent mass suicides by religious cults,
but accept the task much like a soldier who accepts a “suicide mission” in an ordinary war.
THE INDIVIDUAL LOGIC OF SUICIDE
Suicide occurs when an individual deliberately acts to kill himself. Although it is common to assume
that the supreme motive of the individual in committing suicide is to seek death as an end in itself,
there are other motives for voluntary death. A mother sacrificing her life to save her child, a soldier
jumping on a hand grenade to protect his buddies, or a shipwrecked sailor giving his last pint of water
to others—these individuals may not wish to die, but they are the cause of their own death as surely as
Ernest Hemingway when he put a shotgun to his head. The common quality in these cases is not
motive, but a conscious choice to take an action that the individual knows, at the moment of acting,
will result in certain death. These instances of voluntary death are clearly distinct from other
individual behaviors and other categories of death (involuntary, unexpected, and so on) and so are
properly considered under the same discrete category of individual behavior commonly called
suicide.
In general, suicide can take one of three forms. These are distinguished by the type of motive as
well as by the degree of an individual’s integration into society.
Egoistic suicide occurs when individuals simultaneously experience a high degree of personal
trauma and a low degree of attachment to society.3 Life is full of personal traumas and major
disappointments—painful personal illness, ugly public disclosures of private matters, distressful
divorces, anguishing career failures—and the number of these commonly mounts with age. As
Durkheim explains, individuals normally weather personal strains with the help of family members,
close personal friends, or involvement in community activities, all of which create important reasons
to endure personal pain for the benefit of others and also reduce the sense that one must suffer alone.
However, the more detached individuals are from society, the less intense is their sense of duty to
others and the more likely they are to see no reason to endure life’s sufferings. The root cause of
egoistic suicide is not found in the specific suffering the individual faces, but in the fact that the
individual confronts this suffering alone. Accordingly, egoistic suicide is usually a private act.4
Social detachment can sometimes occur abruptly, causing even individuals with a long history of
dense social bonds to commit suicide. The sudden loss of a job, death of a close friend, loss of a
fortune, or gush of wealth can leave a person estranged from his accustomed social ties and devoid of
a sense of purpose. In the aftermath of sudden social isolation, the present can seem valueless and the
future to offer no hope of greater satisfaction. The shock of life without purpose leaves one vulnerable
to impulsive decisions for voluntary death, which is why suicide so often rises with personal
bankruptcy, divorce, widowhood, and instant wealth.
Durkheim thought abrupt change of circumstances was so important that he created a special
category for such suicides, “anomic suicide.” However, the mechanisms leading to voluntary death
for anomic and egoistic suicide are the same, personal trauma combined with social isolation. They
differ only in the duration of detachment—chronic in egoistic suicide, acute in anomic. Hence, I will
often use the single term “egoistic” to refer to both phenomena and “anomic suicide” only when
assessing whether an abrupt change of circumstance can account for suicide terrorism.
If egoistic suicide originates from extreme personal detachment, the second basic type—altruistic
suicide—emanates from nearly the opposite condition: excessive integration of the individual into
society. Sometimes, individuals are intensely attached to their community. Parents want their families
to survive. Soldiers value the success of their units. Citizens are devoted to their countries. In such
situations, society can exert pressure on the individual to make personal sacrifices, including the
sacrifice of one’s life, for purely collective goals. The mother who insists on living when her death
would have saved her child, the soldier who runs out on buddies under fire, the citizen who will not
make the supreme sacrifice for his country—these individuals lose public respect and are therefore
discouraged from doing so. By contrast, individuals who kill themselves rather than allow harm to
members of their community gain social prestige and receive encouragement by this fact. Unlike
egoistic suicide, altruistic suicide is likely to be a public act. Accordingly, the more a person values
his community, the more likely he is to kill himself for the sake of the community, as Durkheim wrote,
“because it is his duty.”5
Although Durkheim found numerous examples of altruistic suicide among the customs of various
societies, the paradigmatic case was suicide among military servicemen.6 In general, during the
nineteenth century, suicide rates in European militaries were much higher than for the civilian
population of the same age. This fact was difficult to explain by social isolation, since military
institutions are highly cohesive and often respected by the surrounding society. Hardship also
accounted poorly for military suicides, since the rate tended to accelerate with prolonged service,
when individuals should be most accustomed to the rigors of a soldier’s life. Rather, the main cause
was simply a close attachment of the individual to the group. As Durkheim wrote:
Influenced by this predisposition, the soldier kills himself at the least disappointment, for the most futile reasons, for a refusal of
leave, a reprimand, an unjust punishment, a delay in promotion, a question of honor, a flush of momentary jealousy or even simply
because other suicides have occurred before his eyes or to his knowledge.7
The third form of suicide is fatalistic suicide.8 This occurs when the individual is subjected to such
oppressive regulation of personal beliefs that suicide (or any behavior) is the result of “ineluctable
and inflexible” pressure to carry out the act. Today, we might reasonably call this brainwashing—the
use of excessive regulation and oppressive discipline to strip individuals of the capacity for
independent thought and so leave them vulnerable to following directions against their self-interest.
To sap an individual’s capacity for free will, intensive thought reform or “reeducation” programs
generally require that the members of a small group be kept in extreme isolation from the surrounding
society for prolonged periods of time. In this situation, an individual can lose all concern for the
wider society and value conformity with the small group above all else.9 “Suicide pacts” are a
common instance of fatalistic suicide, because they generally occur among individuals who are
almost exclusively bonded to each other.
Fatalistic suicide differs fundamentally from altruistic suicide, which does not require either heavy
indoctrination to change pre-existing beliefs or exclusive bonds to a small group. Although altruistic
suicide involves social pressure, the individual retains a significant capacity for choice in the
personal decision to accept or reject a social obligation and is not secluded from the surrounding
society. Indeed, the condition of sustained isolation from wider society would contradict the logic of
altruistic suicide, which depends on mass approval, not oppressive discipline, as the main factor
guiding an individual’s actions. In the end, the core difference between altruistic suicide and fatalistic
suicide is the attitude of the surrounding society to the act. In altruistic suicide, society venerates the
person who commits the act as a martyr or hero that others should emulate. In fatalistic suicide,
society treats the individuals as lost souls and condemns the act as something repulsive and bizarre
that should never happen again.
“Egoistic,” “altruistic,” and “fatalistic” suicide are logically separate classes of behavior. They
also correspond to distinct manifestations of suicide in the world today. The ordinary suicides that we
encounter in our daily lives are mainly egoistic. The recent famous mass suicides among various
religious cults are examples of fatalistic suicide. Many suicide terrorists are committing altruistic
suicide.
Ordinary Suicide. Our understanding of ordinary suicide helps to explain why so many investigators
search the life narratives of suicide terrorists for evidence of major depression, personal trauma, and
social isolation. Most of the suicides familiar to us are indeed egoistic. The misunderstanding is not
to do with the facts of ordinary suicide, but with the presumption that suicide terrorists are basically
the same as ordinary suicides.
The overwhelming feature of ordinary suicides is that the victims were chronically or abruptly
detached from society. Ordinary suicide is most often a private, lonely act. Publicity is rarely sought
and commonly shunned. Overall, suicide typically accounts for just over 1 percent of all deaths in the
United States and other countries. The great majority occur in the victim’s home, in prisons, and in
hospitals, places in which the victim can predict periods of privacy that reduce the risk of public
disclosure before the act is complete. Only a minority (15–20 percent) of completed suicides leave
notes, and these are usually intended for family rather than for the wider public.10
The primary risk factors for ordinary suicide are conditions that would lead individuals to become
shut off or to shut themselves off from society. Some 95 percent of ordinary suicides are accompanied
by one or more risk factors that are related to depression, physical disease, low levels of social
contact, alcohol dependency, past suicide attempts, and gender:
• 80 percent of all suicides are males
• 45–66 percent suffer major depression; often recently hospitalized for mental disorders
• 49 percent have no close friends and belong to no social organizations
• 30 percent have a severe physical illness
• 30 percent have a history of attempted suicide
• 30 percent have a history of attempted suicide
• 25 percent are alcoholics, often with prolonged dependence11
This is not to say that there are no still deeper antecedent conditions that lead individuals to
become shut off or to shut themselves off from society.12 It is to say, however, that unconnected
individuals—especially elderly men who have recently lost their wives—kill themselves vastly more
often than do people who are anchored to church, family, or community networks.13
Cult Suicide. The dynamics of fatalistic suicide provide an excellent account for the well-known
recent instances of mass suicides among religious cults and other small messianic movements. On
November 18, 1978, more than 900 followers of Jim Jones committed suicide by drinking cyanidelaced
Kool-Aid in the jungle of Guyana, an event that may be the largest mass suicide in history. On
April 19, 1993, David Koresh and seventy-six followers took their own lives at their compound ten
miles outside Waco, Texas, rather than submit to arrest by the FBI. In October 1994, December 1995,
and March 1997, a total of seventy-four members of the Order of the Solar Temple killed themselves
in separate incidents in Switzerland and Quebec. On March 26, 1997, thirty-nine members of the
religious cult Heaven’s Gate killed themselves in a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, outside San Diego.
On March 18, 2000, some 230 members of a Ugandan doomsday cult called the Movement for the
Restoration for the Ten Commandments of God sang hymns while dousing themselves with gasoline
and setting themselves on fire.
These groups all had charismatic leaders. However, charismatic leadership alone is far too
common among the numerous political, economic, religious, social, and other groups that exist in
every community to provide a sufficient explanation for such extreme willingness of individuals to
follow a leader’s direction to destroy themselves. Moreover, most people in any society are subject
to the influence of multiple charismatic and persuasive leaders; often they are exposed to the influence
of a number of such leaders—in schools, churches, and workplaces, and in their families—within the
span of a few weeks. Hence, the simple fact of charismatic leadership does not explain why
particular people followed a specific leader at a given moment to such an extreme.
The groups mentioned above also were all religious. However, religious belief and intense
religious faith are pervasive elements in most societies and so cannot alone account for the
willingness of certain individuals to completely surrender their independent judgment to the decisions
of a given leader. Moreover, these groups had a great variety of complex, idiosyncratic belief
systems, a fact that casts significant doubt on the idea that particular religious beliefs lead to mass
suicidal behavior. Further, to the extent that these groups shared any specific religious beliefs in
common, it is a distant association to Christianity that can be found in the backgrounds of many of
their leaders and members.14 Given Christianity’s strict prohibition against suicide, this should have
militated against the mass suicides rather than encouraged them.15
Instead, the key factor that these mass suicides have in common is that the members of the groups
lived in physical isolation from the surrounding society. Sociologists tell us that the key feature of a
cult is not the content of its belief system or the presence of persuasive leaders, but the existence of a
hard boundary separating a self-contained group from the society at large. A hard boundary is
important because it enables highly intrusive control. In this situation, leaders can observe and
regulate the behavior of their followers across the full range of cognitive, emotional, sexual, and other
personal experiences in the rigid manner necessary to maintain a system of shared beliefs that is
markedly at variance with the surrounding culture. The boundary separating the group from the wider
society typically becomes the key defining feature of the group and so is highly valued by its
members. This is why there is often an aggressive or self-destructive response when outsiders seek to
breach it.16
All of the groups whose members committed mass suicide in the past thirty years lived under highly
restrictive conditions that established a hard boundary between the group and the surrounding society.
The members of Jim Jones’s People’s Temple, the Branch Davidians, Heaven’s Gate, the Solar
Temple, and the Uganda doomsday cult all were required to transfer all their personal wealth to the
group, to live for years in dormitories or other communal settings that were physically separate—
often remote—from wider society, and to engage in bizarre and eccentric practices that marked them
as members of the group, reinforced its social isolation, and the group’s progressively undermined
individual autonomy. These practices included castration, vows of silence, polygamy, public
confession, and communal punishment of transgressions. The timing of the mass suicide commonly
corresponded to an imminent threat of intrusion by outsiders.17
Although produced more than a hundred years ago, Durkheim’s models of suicide remain most
useful in studying ordinary suicide and cult suicide today. They are also highly illuminating with
respect to suicide terrorism.
SUICIDE TERRORISM IN THE WORLD
Many acts of suicide terrorism are a murderous form of what Durkheim called altruistic suicide.
Although one might object to using the term “altruistic” to describe a behavior clearly intended to kill
others, it is important to remember that our purpose is to explain what causes a suicide attacker to
willingly kill himself in order to complete the mission. The murder of innocents is surely evil.
Explaining it hardly justifies it. However, the homicidal dimension of the act should not cause us to
overlook an important cause leading to it—that many suicide terrorists are killing themselves to
advance what they see as the common good.
The circumstances of numerous suicide attackers support this finding. In contrast to persons who
commit egoistic suicide, numerous suicide attackers are integrated into society, espouse collective
goals for their missions in highly public ceremonies, and raise their social status and their families’
by executing the act. Further, suicide terrorist groups exhibit few of the defining features of the
religious cults whose members have committed recent mass suicides. Far from creating hard
boundaries between the groups and surrounding society, the groups generally make strenuous efforts
to integrate into the community, and the surrounding society often approves of the group’s behavior.
This is not to say that there are no instances of egoistic suicide among suicide terrorists. Some do
exist and more may not yet have been detected. However, the data we have show that suicide
terrorism is (1) surely not predominantly egoistic; (2) not likely fatalistic; and (3) probably mostly
committed by people who are anchored to community or friendship networks.
Standards of Assessment
It is not easy to evaluate the role of egoism and altruism in suicide terrorist attacks. Given the
impossibility of interviewing suicide terrorists who actually completed their missions, psychological
autopsies based on reconstruction of life narratives are a logical substitute. But these are likely to
remain open to charges of intentional or inadvertent bias even if professionals trained in survey
methods had far greater access than they do to the families and associates of suicide terrorists.
However, we can approach the problem another way. Since we know the circumstances of ordinary
suicide, it is possible to compare them to conditions related to suicide terrorism. If the rate of
ordinary suicide is not markedly higher in the countries most associated with suicide terrorism, and if
the circumstances of suicide terrorist attacks differ significantly from ordinary suicide, this provides
strong evidence that suicide terrorism is not overwhelmingly egoistic, because it could not be
explained simply by the base rate of ordinary suicide in that particular society. Further, if the
circumstances of suicide terrorism closely approximate key measures of altruistic behavior, then this
provides positive evidence for the existence of altruistic suicide terrorism.
The analysis below follows this comparative method. It identifies four patterns that, together,
demonstrate that altruistic motives likely account for a substantial portion of suicide terrorism. First,
the rate of ordinary suicide is not normally high in countries most associated with suicide terrorism;
this undermines the notion that a cultural predisposition for egoistic suicide accounts for this
phenomenon. Second, although ordinary suicide sometimes increases abruptly during violent
nationalist rebellions associated with suicide terrorism, an important counterexample—Palestinian
suicide terrorism since 2000, which has not been accompanied by a rise in ordinary suicide—
indicates that even the anomic variant of egoistic suicide does not account overwhelmingly for
suicide terrorism. Third, there is a particular method of suicide terrorism—the team attack—that is
more likely associated with altruistic than with egoistic motives. Fourth, the social construction of the
“altruistic motive” in suicide terrorism is not mainly a product of the separation of the group from
society, as is common in recent mass suicides by religious cults, but is typically the result of a close
integration of suicide terrorist groups with the surrounding society. The following sections present the
evidence for each of these assessments.
Suicide Terrorism Is Not Overwhelmingly Egoistic
Ordinary, egoistic suicide could account for suicide terrorism if the societies most associated with
this form of violence were culturally predisposed to tolerate voluntary death. This, however, is not
the case. Whether understood as social practices or as the tenet of a specific religion, cultural
tolerance for ordinary suicide does little to account for suicide terrorism. Over the past two decades,
suicide terrorism has occurred among Muslims in a variety of countries, among Tamils in Sri Lanka,
and among Sikhs in India. With the exception of Sri Lanka, the incidence of suicide terrorism is
highest where ordinary suicide rates are low. In Sri Lanka, the higher rate of ordinary suicide is more
likely due to the protracted civil war than to cultural factors.
Muslim suicide terrorism is the most important case. Whether secular or religious, Muslims are
associated with a majority of suicide terrorist attacks. However, Muslims are not especially likely to
commit suicide. If anything, there are strong data that suggest Islam reduces the likelihood of suicide.
Suicide rates in Muslim societies are among the lowest in the world, significantly below those in
Christian and even Jewish societies. Since the 1950s, the World Health Organization has tracked
suicide rates for its member states, of which there are now more than 100. While suicide terrorism
has grown over the past twenty years, rates of ordinary suicide among Muslims have remained
relatively flat. During this period, the global average rate for suicide ranged from 11 to 15 per
100,000, with the highest rates in Eastern Europe, from an average of 24 per 100,000 in Poland to
more than 70 per 100,000 in Russia and Lithuania. Muslim countries had consistently far lower
annual suicide rates, with Jordan, Egypt, Iran, and Syria typically experiencing less than 1 suicide per
100,000 population and Kuwait, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Albania, and Bahrain fewer than 5.18
There is good reason to think these data are reliable.19 Muslim suicide rates are based on official
death certificates from states with a wide range of political systems and are commonly confirmed by
independent scholarship.20 Moreover, Western countries and Israel, whose coroners would have little
reason to under-report suicide rates among Muslims, also consistently report lower suicide rates for
this community. In 2000, Israel counted deaths due to “intentional self-harm” for Muslims at a rate of
3 per 100,000, compared with 8 for Jews.21
Among Sikhs in Punjab, ordinary suicide is also rare. During the 1980s and 1990s, the highest
suicide rate in Punjab was 2.77 per 100,000 in 1997, following a spate of suicides by destitute
farmers, a figure that is lower than the world average of 11 and also lower than India’s average of
8.48.22
Tamils in Sri Lanka are the one case in which high rates of ordinary suicide dovetail with suicide
terrorism. During the 1980s and 1990s, suicide rates in Sri Lanka were typically among the ten
highest in the world, ranging from 35 to 48 per 100,000. Tamils committed ordinary suicide at least
as frequently as the national average, according to independent studies of specific villages in the
Tamil regions of the island.23
Culture, however, is probably not the main explanation for the high rates of Tamil suicide over the
past two decades. Sometimes the harsh conditions associated with heavy-handed military occupation
and violence can lead to a rise in anomic suicide, and indeed, conflict-induced anomic suicide
probably accounts for high Tamil suicide rates. As the chart below shows, Sri Lankan suicide rates
were relatively low for decades following World War II and only shot up after 1983, the year of the
famous riots against Tamils in Colombo that led to a vast expansion of civil violence across the
island. During this violence, hundreds of thousands of Tamils and Sinhalese were displaced, often
into wretched camps, and many regions were plunged into extreme poverty. Surveys by the World
Health Organization have found high rates of depression, anxiety, and other psychological disorders
in these destitute areas, and academic studies have found both Sinhalese and Tamil rural villages to
have especially high rates of ordinary suicide.24
CHART 4. SUICIDE RATES IN SRI LANKA, 1880–1997
Source: Sri Lanka, Department of Police, Division of Statistics, as reported in Neil Thalagala, “Attempted Suicides” (Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, 2000), p. 42.
Limits of Anomic Suicide
Foreign occupation and violent nationalist rebellions can create the conditions for anomic suicide.
Forced displacement, extreme brutalization, and death of family members or friends can cause
individuals to suddenly lose purpose and opt for voluntary death. Thus, it is possible that suicide
terrorism could be mainly a side effect of an underlying rise in the rate of anomic suicide in the
occupied society.
Conditions of personal anomie may well have influenced some individuals to carry out suicide
terrorist attacks. In the next chapter, we will survey the demographic characteristics and backgrounds
of the more than 460 suicide terrorist attackers who actually completed their missions. Of these, we
can document that at least sixteen were individuals who had a family member or close friend killed
by the foreign enemy. There are probably more. The Chechens make such great use of female suicide
attackers who have lost husbands or children that there is a colloquial name for them—the Black
Widows.
Anomic suicide, however, is probably not the principal basis for individual suicide terrorism, for
three reasons. First, some suicide terrorist campaigns target an enemy who is not inflicting heavy
violence on the terrorists’ homeland territory. For instance, U.S. forces stationed on the Arabian
Peninsula during the 1990s did not kill any citizens of Saudi Arabia or other states in the Persian
Gulf, but more than half of all al-Qaeda suicide attackers, from the first such mission in 1995 through
2003, came from these countries.
Second, some suicide terrorist campaigns begin and escalate after the damage inflicted by the
foreign forces has peaked and then waned to much lower levels. When Israel invaded Lebanon in
June 1982, most of the damage that its forces inflicted on the local Shia community (forced
displacement, civilian casualties, and so on) took place in the following several months. However,
the first Hezbollah suicide terrorist attack against the Israelis did not occur until November 1982, and
the vast majority of attacks did not occur for years after that. Revenge could have motivated some
Lebanese attackers, but our usual understanding of anomie would seem to predict the opposite
trajectory—a high incidence of suicide attack during 1982, followed by a decline as Israeli violence
against the Shia waned.
Third and most important, there is at least one case in which the rate of suicide attacks rose so far
and so quickly that it cannot be accounted for by an increase in anomic suicide. From late 2000
through 2003, Palestinian terrorist groups carried out more than thirty suicide attacks per year,
compared to an average of fewer than four per year during the 1990s. At the same time, the number of
ordinary suicides among the Palestinians hardly changed; it actually declined slightly, from thirty-six
in 2000 to twenty-nine in 2003.25 For a rise in anomic suicide to account for Palestinian suicide
terrorism in these years, one would have to assume that terrorist groups were able to identify and
recruit every new case of an individual willing to commit suicide anyway. Given how difficult it is
for family members to anticipate suicides, and given that ordinary suicides generally occur in private,
this is highly implausible.
Overall, egoistic and anomic motives are insufficient to account for the individual logic of suicide
terrorism. Altruistic motives, either alone or in conjunction with others, likely play an important role.
Significantly Altruistic Suicide
A striking fact about suicide terrorism is that it often occurs in teams. In fact, many suicide attacks
involve multiple individuals working together for weeks, sometimes even months, to gather
intelligence, plan, and rehearse a joint mission. Team suicide attacks, by their nature, are based on
extensive social interaction and require unity of purpose, features that are more likely associated with
altruistic than egoistic motives.
Team suicides or “suicide pacts” are extremely rare among ordinary suicides. Virtually all of the
suicides we encounter every day involve individuals acting alone, often withdrawing from social
contact altogether to die a private death. The act of suicide is rarely witnessed. Suicide pacts account
for less than 1 percent of all suicides in the United States, Western Europe, and elsewhere. The great
majority are pairs of individuals with a long-standing romantic relationship, typically either married
couples one of whom is in failing health, or young lovers unable to marry.26
By contrast, suicide terrorists commonly operate in squads. Over the past twenty-five years, there
have been at least 462 suicide terrorist attackers who actually completed the mission, killing
themselves. Of these, 212, or 46 percent, carried out suicide attacks in which they were part of a joint
mission against the same target or targets in close proximity. Some groups use team attacks more than
others. Al-Qaeda has deployed 89 percent of its suicide attackers in teams, the Chechens 73 percent,
the Tamil Tigers
64 percent, the Palestinians 21 percent, the Lebanese 20 percent, and the PKK none.27 Although more
work is needed to examine the variation, the groups that must deploy attackers over the greatest
distances or against the hardest targets also rely the most on team attacks (al-Qaeda, Chechens, and
Tamil Tigers). This suggests that operational considerations may influence how these organizations
deploy their attackers.
CHART 5. TEAM VERSUS SINGLE SUICIDE ATTACKERS
Percentage by Mode of Attack
The prevalence of team suicide attacks strongly indicates the presence of altruistic motives among
a significant number of suicide attackers. Even if all suicide attackers had some personal motive to
die, suicide attackers who work together as a team must also be motivated, at least partly, to achieve
a collective purpose, the completion of a group mission that serves a cause beyond their own
personal death.
Egoistic and anomic motives are insufficient to account for team suicide attacks, for two reasons.
First, few resemble ordinary suicide pacts. Some team suicides involve individuals with pre-existing
social bonds, such as school mates, friends living together, and members of the same civic
organization.28 However, many appear to have had little, if any, social interaction before they began
to prepare for the mission. Romantic bonds appear to play little role. Only about 25 percent of all
team attacks involved exactly two suicide attackers, and less than 5 percent were male-female pairs.
There are no reports of a romantic connection between any team attackers.
Second, team attackers are unlikely to be collections of individuals who were spurred by purely
egoistic or anomic motives, people who would have committed suicide anyway without also sharing
an altruistic motive for the act. Our understanding of ordinary suicide largely rules out the notion that
a large fraction of suicidal individuals would expend considerable energy forming teams, or
coordinating their actions, or directing their actions at a particular object. Ordinary suicides are so
often lethargic and consumed with their own personal problems that a great number would abandon
the team attack at an early stage, if they could come together as a group at all.
The existence of team suicide attacks does not mean that all members of a squad were motivated
purely by altruism. Mixed motives surely exist among the hundreds of suicide attackers. However, a
significant degree of altruism is probably a necessary condition. If many suicide terrorists attack
under conditions rarely possible for ordinary, egoistic suicide, and if individual commitment to a
collective goal characterizes those conditions, then altruistic motives are probably necessary for at
least one important category of suicide terrorism.
Of course, suicide terrorists who attack in single-person missions may also have altruistic motives.
In fact, suicide terrorists often claim, in martyr videos and other last testaments, to be motivated by
altruism. Absent extensive psychological autopsies, it is impossible to verify these individual claims
of altruistic motives. However, the widespread existence of team suicide attacks suggests that many,
possibly most, suicide terrorists are motivated, crucially if not wholly, by a collective purpose.
If not for the presence of an altruistic motive, numerous suicide attacks would probably not occur.
This raises the question: what gives rise to the altruistic motive?
The Social Construction of Altruistic Martyrdom
Altruistic motives are heavily influenced by social approval. Although one could believe that an
action would benefit others even if those others did not agree with the judgment, an individual is more
likely to conclude that an act is beneficial if society actually supports and honors it. In fact, social
approval is central to the logic of altruistic suicide as Durkheim conceived it. Whereas an egoistic
suicide seeks to escape pain that society would normally expect a person to endure, the altruistic
suicide willingly accepts a voluntary death precisely because society supports and honors the act.29
The altruistic motive in suicide terrorism also depends on social approval. Suicide terrorist
organizations are commonly thought of as “religious cults,” as if they consisted of individuals
separated from their surrounding communities and with aspirations fundamentally different from those
of society at large. This is a mistake. A suicide terrorist organization is generally an integral part of
society rather than a separate entity. Indeed, members of the group typically go to great lengths to
deepen their social ties, to participate actively in social institutions, and to adopt customs that display
communal devotion. For its part, the local society commonly honors individuals who carry out
suicide terrorist attacks. As a result, it is impossible to understand the conduct, motivation, and selfperception
of individual suicide attackers without considering the importance of the intimate ties that
generally exist between suicide terrorist organizations and their communities.30
Suicide terrorist organizations are bound to their societies by virtue of pursuing political goals
viewed as legitimate by the society at large, by their participation in local charities and other
institutions that benefit society, and by the use of elaborate ceremonies and other rituals that identify
the death of a suicide attacker with the good of the community. These close social bonds do not create
altruistic individuals. However, they do create the conditions under which individuals who wish to
sacrifice for their community can be confident that their self-sacrifice will be viewed as altruistic.
Hezbollah in Lebanon Although we do not have precise figures, there is broad agreement among
those who have studied Hezbollah closely that “within a matter of months, this small group had
become a mass movement” with broad community support.31 From 1982 to 1986, Hezbollah grew
from a handful to more than 7,000 members. During the 1980s and even up through the present day,
large segments of the Shia community in Lebanon engage in highly visible rituals and ceremonies that
commemorate “martyrs” who have committed acts of suicide terrorism against American, Israeli, and
other international targets. Major city streets are named in honor of these fallen heroes, their pictures
are widely used as positive symbols in political discourse, and large public rallies are commonly
associated with yearly public holidays and other special events that are held in their honor.
Far from being an isolated cult, Hezbollah devotes considerable effort to social services for the
community as a whole. Practically from the beginning of its first resistance operations against Israeli
and Western troops occupying Lebanon, the leaders of Hezbollah started cultural centers, orphanages,
clinics, and welfare centers in Beirut and numerous villages in southern Lebanon. In 1982, Hezbollah
started a Financial Assistance Committee, an organization that granted 130,000 scholarships and
aided 135,000 needy families with interest-free loans over the next several years. In 1985, secretarial
and sewing courses were set up to provide the handicapped with a means of subsistence. In 1986, the
Islamic Health Organization, a Hezbollah offshoot, built two major hospitals to care for the local
community. As Judith Harik puts it, “by the mid-1980s social services and welfare foundations were
de rigueur.”32
Provision of social services substantially enhances the legitimacy of Hezbollah as a movement
devoted to the collective welfare of the Lebanese population; this work is probably second in
importance only to resistance against the occupation itself. Indeed, Hezbollah’s legitimacy seems to
have rested more on the establishment of social services than on religious affinity. According to a
poll conducted in the late 1980s, only 36 percent of southern Lebanese believed in the inevitability of
Islamic unity, but 53 percent took advantage of social services provided by Hezbollah and 67 percent
viewed this group as more legitimate than the national government.33
To create the momentum for a protracted campaign, Hezbollah and other Shia leaders encouraged
altruistic support for suicide operations. These leaders gave literally hundreds of public speeches and
interviews explaining the need for what they call self-martyr operations. The main purpose of this
public discourse by leaders of Hezbollah and other Shia groups is to persuade the local community at
large to accept that acts normally qualifying as suicide and murder should be re-defined as martyrdom
and legitimate self-defense, and to encourage some community members to volunteer for these
operations.
Although religion plays a role, the main theme of these speeches is that martyrdom operations are a
justifiable response to the specific circumstance of a foreign occupation. In speech after speech, by
leader after leader, it is the real-world circumstances of foreign occupation that define how religious
norms should be interpreted, not an individual’s desire for personal salvation independent of this
context. The argument is often made at considerable length, and for good reason. Islamic societies
have strong norms that strictly prohibit suicide, so Lebanese leaders must work hard to create broad
support for suicide terrorism. This is reflected in the volume and length of their discourse on the
subject.
The main argument is that martyrdom is justified by its instrumental value in protecting the local
community from a foreign occupation and not as an end itself. An individual, the argument goes, has a
purpose on earth and so should end that purpose only for another legitimate purpose. Ending a foreign
occupation that would oppress the local community is viewed as a possible legitimate purpose, but
only if the self-sacrifice would in fact contribute toward that end.
Hezbollah’s discourse on martyrdom relies on three themes that jointly work to make this argument:
(1) the purpose of martyrdom operations is to end the foreign occupation of the Shia homeland; (2)
martyrdom operations are needed for this purpose because of the imbalance of conventional military
power between the occupiers and the occupied community; and (3) martyrdom operations are in fact
likely to achieve this goal because the target society is susceptible to coercive pressure.
1. Response to Occupation The first theme is that the central purpose of martyrdom operations—
and the principal reason for the armed resistance generally—is to end the occupation of the Shia
homeland by American, Israeli, and other Western military forces.
In 1985, Hezbollah’s famous “Open Letter” declared:
America and its allies and the Zionist entity . . . have attacked our country, destroyed our villages, massacred our children, violated
our sanctities, and installed over our heads criminal henchmen. . . . We have risen to liberate our country, to drive the imperialists
and the invaders out of it, and to determine our fate by our own hands.34
2. Conventional Inferiority Mandates Self-Sacrifice The second major theme in the discourse on
martyrdom emphasizes that suicide operations are justified as a last resort made necessary by the Shia
community’s inferiority in conventional weapons compared to Israel and Western military power. As
the secretary general of Hezbollah explained:
Speaking about the experience . . . in Lebanon, in order to carry out an operation with an outcome of 8 or 9 dead soldiers, it would
need training, equipping, observations, frontier groups, rockets, explosives. . . . After all these preparations, the outcome would
only be 3 or 4 deaths due to the strong fortifications of the enemy. On the other hand, one single [martyr] without any training or
experience, driving a bus without any military backups or supporting groups, was able to kill 8 or 9, wound 21, and scare the entire
“Israeli” entity.35
3. The Enemy Is Vulnerable to Coercive Pressure The third theme in Hezbollah’s discourse on
martyrdom underscores the expectation that Israel and other Western enemies occupying Lebanon
would be susceptible to coercive pressure through suicide attack. Hezbollah’s “Open Letter” states:
With the blood of its martyrs and the struggle of its heroes, the Islamic resistance has been able to force the enemy for the first
time in the history of the conflict against it to make a decision to retreat and withdraw from Lebanon without any American or
other influence.
Fadlallah, Hezbollah’s spiritual leader, said:
The self-martyring operation is not permitted unless it can convulse the enemy. The believer cannot blow himself up unless the
results will equal or exceed the loss of the believer’s soul. Self-martyring operations are not fatal accidents but legal obligations
governed by rules.36
Finally, Hezbollah has gone to great lengths to ensure that the local community identifies specific
suicide terrorist attackers with altruistic motives. In Lebanon, dozens of suicide attackers left
testimonials in the form of martyr videos and other last statements. These are widely distributed and
strongly reflect altruistic motives. Bilal Fahs wrote before his suicide attack on June 16, 1984, that he
sought Lebanon’s “liberation from occupation.” Wajdi Sayegh wrote before his March 10, 1985,
attack that it was “a national and patriotic obligation to fight the occupation.” Sana Youssef Mhaydali,
probably the first female suicide attacker, explained the motive for her April 9, 1985, attack as “to
liberate the south from the occupation of the Zionist terrorists.” Before his team suicide attack on July
9, 1985, Khaled al-Azrak said that his “main motive is to liberate this land from the Jewish
enemies.”37
Given Hezbollah’s deep commitment to the welfare of Lebanese society and strong association of
suicide terrorism with ending a foreign occupation, it is hardly surprising that some individuals
willing to sacrifice for their community would voluntarily carry out suicide attacks for this purpose.
These circumstances do not create altruistic individuals, but they do create the opportunity for an
altruistic individual to contribute to society and to be honored for it.
Hamas Social construction of altruistic martyrdom is also evidenced in popular support for the
Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas. Since the mid-1990s, numerous surveys of
Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza have shown remarkably high levels of popular support
for suicide terrorist attacks against Israel—virtually always above a third of respondents and often as
high as 70 percent.38 Moreover, widespread posters, graffiti, and public ceremonies routinely
commemorate individual suicide attackers and show that respect for suicide bombing in Palestine
goes far beyond a tiny fringe.39
Like Hezbollah, Hamas is deeply embedded in the surrounding society, supporting an extensive
network of more than forty social welfare organizations. Most were established by Sheik Ahmed
Yassin, the founder of Hamas, with a combination of local tithing (zakat) and financial support from
Muslims abroad. Charitable institutions provide financial subsidies, food, clothing, and shelter.
Service organizations provide education, vocational training, libraries, neighborhood sport clubs, and
medical relief. In 1997, an estimated 22,615 families received assistance from Hamas-affiliated
social welfare organizations, while in 1999 such organizations made up as many as 40 percent of all
the social welfare institutions in the West Bank and Gaza. Beneficiaries include orphans, widows,
families headed by women whose husbands are imprisoned or permanently disabled, and
schoolchildren. Although many are small, some of these organizations are quite large. The Zakat
Committee in Gaza has more than fifty employees and provides more than 5,000 people with cash
assistance, food, free health care, and interest-free loans for housing and university education.40
In an important study, the economist Eli Berman finds that Hamas’s network of social service
organizations makes an essential contribution to the legitimacy of suicide terrorism among
Palestinians. By providing collective goods that are otherwise unavailable, Hamas sends a credible
signal that the sacrifices it demands of its members actually benefit the community as a whole. This
increases the willingness of individuals who do want to sacrifice for the community to act on this
motivation, because they are now confident that their self-sacrifice will in fact be viewed as they
intend it.41
Hamas’s discourse on martyrdom strongly reinforces the altruistic purpose of the group. Like
Hezbollah, the main argument is that martyrdom is justified by its instrumental value in protecting the
local community from a foreign occupation and not as an end in itself. Statements by the Hamas
Political Bureau routinely follow the three-part logic that suicide operations are a response to
occupation, mandated by weakness in conventional force, and justified by Israel’s vulnerability to
coercive pressure.
1. Response to Occupation
The quickened pace of jihad and heroic operations by our mujahidin in al-Qassam Battalions [suicide squads] fits with the
Movement’s game plan of resistance until occupation is routed and our sacred land liberated.42
2. Conventional Inferiority Mandates Self-Sacrifice
INTERVIEWER: “Why not plant a bomb and run?”
HAMAS SPOKESMAN: “There are more fatalities in a suicide attack.”43
3. The Enemy Is Vulnerable to Coercive Pressure
The Zionist enemy does not understand the language of begging and submission, which only increase its aggressiveness and
arrogance. It only understands the language of Jihad, resistance and martyrdom, that was the language that led to its blatant defeat
in South Lebanon and it will be the language that will defeat it on the land of Palestine.44
Individual suicide bombers routinely leave martyr videos testifying to the altruistic motive for the
suicide attack as a means to end Israeli occupation. Although one might doubt the sincerity of these
claims, it is important to recognize that there is a strong material basis for why the Palestinian
community would find them credible: since 1998, Israel has systematically demolished the homes of
suicide bombers’ families. Although many reportedly receive cash compensation from Hamas and
other groups worth approximately $10,000, the loss of a home worth many times this value is a strong
signal that the motive for the attack was indeed to promote the communal good.45 To this day,
Palestinian suicide bombers continue to reveal their identities although it is common knowledge that
their families will suffer harsh consequences.
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam Social construction of altruistic martyrdom is closely associated
with the popular support for the Tamil Tigers among the Tamil population of Sri Lanka. Since the
mid-1990s, numerous journalists and scholars who have visited Jaffna, the LTTE’s stronghold in the
northern region of the country, report that the local population supports suicide operations and
commemorates the LTTE martyrs, called “Black Tigers.” Each year on July 5, thousands attend the
“Heroes’ Day” celebration, commemorating the first Black Tiger, whose mission occurred on July 5,
1987, and others since. There are also hundreds of shrines to individual suicide attackers, kept with
flowers and with special trees planted to represent the martyrs who “planted” their lives for the
land.46
The Tamil Tigers also contribute to the social and economic life of the local society by devoting
some of the group’s limited resources to social services. In 1987, the LTTE founded the Tamils
Rehabilitation Organization near Jaffna, which has provided thousands of families and individuals
with food, water, resettlement housing, health services, and interest-free loans. In 1991, the Center for
Women’s Development was opened, delivering humanitarian relief, vocational training,
psychological counseling, and child care to women and children in a series of centers that has
expanded over time. In 1992, the Tigers established a police and judicial system in the areas under its
control, recruiting female police officers and administrators in a move that expanded the roles of
women in Tamil society. In 1993, the Tamil Eelam Bank was established, providing low-interest
loans to stimulate small business from salt production to prawn farming.47
The LTTE’s discourse on martyrdom emphasizes the altruistic motives and instrumental value of
self-sacrifice to liberate the local community from Sinhalese occupation.
1. Response to Occupation Prabhakaran, the LTTE leader:
Our martyrs die in the arena of struggle with the intense passion for the freedom of their people, for the liberation of their
homeland and therefore the death of every martyr constitutes a brave act of enunciation of freedom.48
2. Conventional Inferiority Mandates Self-Sacrifice Nandini, a female LTTE fighter:
As Black Tigers, they are a physical embodiment of self-determination and liberation. They employ their lives as missiles armed
with the kind of determination and purpose that is unmatched by any conventional weapon that the Sinhala forces may deploy.
There lies the strength and honor of our Black Tigers.49
3. The Enemy Is Vulnerable to Coercive Pressure Prabhakaran:
Tamil Eelam can be achieved in 100 years. But if we conduct Black Tiger operations, we can shorten the suffering of the people
and achieve Tamil Eelam in a shorter period of time.50
To identify the motives of individual Black Tigers with the Tamil community, the LTTE publishes
periodicals with profiles of and tributes to the numerous Black Tigers who have carried out suicide
attacks over the past twenty years. The broadsheets Kalathil and Erimalai, printed in the native Tamil
language, are widely distributed within the Tamil regions of Sri Lanka. They are difficult to obtain in
the West, but here are several translations.
• Tribute to Captain Miller, the first Black Tiger: “His intention was always to rescue the
motherland.” His mother is quoted: “I am sad that my son has died. But he has died for his
country. When I think of that, it is pride I feel.”
• Black Tigress Major Santhana (June 26, 2000): “Major Santhana . . . joined the Movement to
fight and liberate the Tamils from Sinhalese dominance.”
• Black Tiger Vasantharaja (December 2000): “This is the most supreme sacrifice I can make.
The only way we can get our eelam [homeland] is through arms . . . even if we die.”51
In these ways, the LTTE breaks down the boundaries between the group and the local Tamil
community, creating the opportunity for individuals willing to sacrifice for the community to do so
through suicide attack. As a study of the LTTE’s popular support explains:
Why does the LTTE have so much support among the population? [It] is the only group that is accepted by the population as “one
of our own,” “our boys,” even “our sons.” . . . The LTTE are the one militant group that has managed to build up grassroots
support and loyalty among the population for reasons of both ideology and organization and got a grip on the political and social
structure of Jaffna.52
Al-Qaeda Social construction of altruistic martyrdom plays an important role in al-Qaeda’s popular
support. To be sure, there is a major debate among Islamists over the morality of suicide attacks, but
within Saudi Arabia there is little debate over al-Qaeda’s objection to American forces in the region:
over 95 percent of Saudi society reportedly agrees with Osama bin Laden on this matter. Recent
international opinion polls show that bin Laden enjoys high levels of popular support in other Muslim
countries.53
Osama bin Laden has been deeply involved with several Islamic social service organizations and
al-Qaeda funds have been used to support their growth. Among the organizations that bin Laden
founded or that his associates have worked for are Human Concern International, the Third World
Relief Agency, Mercy International, and the Islamic International Relief Organization. These
organizations are not merely shells or fronts to finance terrorist operations (although they do this).
They also carry out significant humanitarian work, providing resources to Muslim refugees, widows,
orphans, and the elderly around the world.54
Two Islamic charities based in the United States illustrate al-Qaeda’s support for Islamic
humanitarian efforts. After September 11, 2001, the U.S. government shut down the Global Relief
Foundation and the Benevo-lence International Foundation because of accusations that these
organizations provided substantial financing to al-Qaeda. Subsequently, the 9/11 Commission
throughly investigated these cases. There is no doubt that the charities provided millions of dollars
for humanitarian relief services to aid Muslims in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Chechnya,
including a tuberculosis hospital for children in Tajikistan and a women’s hospital in Daghestan.
There is also no doubt that al-Qaeda supported the charities. GRF’s founders were intimately
associated with Osama bin Laden’s “Human Services Office,” the precursor to al-Qaeda in
Afghanistan. The leader of BIF allegedly also had personal ties to bin Laden in the 1980s and 1990s,
and the organization received substantial funds from wealthy Saudi donors who are under scrutiny for
funding al-Qaeda military operations. However, as the 9/11 Commission concluded: “Despite these
troubling links, the investigation of BIF and GRF revealed little compelling evidence that either of
these charities actually provided financial support to Al Qaeda.”55
Al-Qaeda’s discourse on martyrdom emphasizes the altruistic motives and instrumental value of
self-sacrifice to liberate the local community from U.S. occupation.
1. Response to Occupation In May 1998, Osama bin Laden said:
The call to wage war against America was made because America has spearheaded the crusade against the Islamic nation,
sending tens of thousands of its troops to the land of the two Holy Mosques [Saudi Arabia] over and above its meddling in its
affairs and its politics, and its support of the oppressive, corrupt and tyrannical regime that is in control. These are the reasons
behind the singling out of America as a target.56
2. Conventional Inferiority Mandates Self-Sacrifice In December 2001, al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s
second in command, underscored:
the need to concentrate on the method of martyrdom operations as the most successful way of inflicting damage against the
opponent and the least costly to the Mujahedin in terms of casualties.57
3. The Enemy Is Vulnerable to Coercive Pressure In March 2003, bin Laden said:
The Islamic nation today possesses tremendous forces sufficient to save Palestine and the rest of the Muslim lands. . . . I should
like to remind you of the defeats suffered by a number of the great powers at the hands of the Mujahideen. . . . [For example,] the
defeat of the American forces in the year 1402 of the Muslim calendar [1982] when the Israelis invaded Lebanon. The Lebanese
resistance sent a truck full of explosives to the American Marines’ center in Beirut and killed over 240 of them.58
CONCLUSION
Altruistic motives are significant in the individual logic of suicide terrorism. Many suicide attackers
may also wish to escape personal problems, but the egoistic motives that account for ordinary
suicides are insufficient, on their own, to explain why many individuals voluntarily carry out suicide
terrorist attacks. This is especially true for one category of suicide terrorism—the team suicide attack
—that by its nature involves multiple individuals working together for a collective purpose.
Moreover, suicide terrorist organizations are not socially isolated groups with socially unacceptable
goals, but go to great lengths to embed themselves in their surrounding communities and to pursue
socially acceptable political objectives. Although this social construction of altruistic martyrdom
does not create altruistic individuals, it does produce the circumstances under which an individual
who wishes to sacrifice for the community can be confident that the act is understood in this way. As
a result, the altruistic motive is often a necessary if not sufficient condition for suicide terrorism.
Absent the altruistic motive, many suicide attacks would probably not occur and many suicide
attackers might well seek other opportunities to contribute to their community.
This finding has important implications. First, it suggests that the number of people who would
engage in suicide terrorism is potentially much greater than the number of those who are suicidal in
the ordinary sense. Far from the common stereotype of a poor, socially isolated, uneducated religious
fanatic, we should expect that suicide attackers are likely to come from a broad cross section of
society. As the next chapter shows, a remarkable portion of suicide attackers are indeed secular,
employed, reasonably well-educated, and otherwise contributing members of their societies.
Although many of us would like to believe that suicide terrorism is limited to a tiny fringe, the fact is
that there may be no upper bound on the potential number of suicide terrorists.
Second, the role of altruism in suicide terrorism suggests that there may be a geometric multiplier
built into the process of suicide terrorism. Unlike suicides following a stock market crash or mass
suicides of a religious cult, the trajectory of suicide terrorism is often an upward slope. From
Lebanon in the 1980s to the Palestinians in the second intafada in 2000–2003 to al-Qaeda’s attacks in
2002–2003, suicide terrorist campaigns tend to gather pace—and attract more walk-in volunteers—
over time. Given the dynamics of altruism, this trajectory is something we should expect in future
suicide campaigns.
Finally, the role of altruism means that any attempt to profile suicide terrorists that is based on the
known profiles of ordinary suicides is likely to miss a substantial portion. Indeed, since the pool of
individuals potentially available in suicide terrorist campaigns is probably not limited to those who
would commit suicide anyway, nations under fire may have little choice but to deal with the root
causes of suicide terrorism.
10
The Demographic Profile
of Suicide Terrorists
THE MOST COMMON stereotype of a suicide bomber is that of a young man or teenage boy who has
no job, no education, no prospects, and no hope. Exactly why such a person becomes a suicide
terrorist has been the subject of wide speculation. Some suggest religious fanaticism: a young,
impulsive, and inexperienced teenage boy would seem to be easily gulled into believing that if he
straps a few sticks of dynamite around his waist and presses a button, he will stroll through the Gates
of Paradise, where he will be bedded by virgins. Others suggest social alienation presumed common
among criminals: a young man living with the dregs of society might enjoy a variety of deviant
pleasures, including the self-satisfaction of a sensational, almost theatrical death during a suicide
terrorist attack. Still others suggest mental illness: a demented loner is caught in the throes of a
depressive nightmare, possibly besieged by demonic illusions, which makes escape through selfkilling
a desirable end in itself, especially if it is possible to take out some imaginary tormentors at
the same time.1
Until now, the main problem in evaluating these competing explanations is that our information
about the actual demographic characteristics of suicide attackers has been woefully incomplete. Our
information is improving. There is a growing number of new books and articles that detail the life
histories of individual suicide terrorists,2 collect broad data on the backgrounds of terrorists in
general and certain groups of suicide terrorists in particular,3 and present the results of interviewing
jailed suicide terrorists or their families.4 In general, these studies find that poverty is not as closely
associated with terrorism as many have thought and that suicide terrorists are exposed to only thin
indoctrination; they are generally walk-in volunteers who receive little training prior to their
missions. However, we need to know more.
The key to improving our knowledge about the demographic characteristics of suicide terrorists is
to gather information about attackers from across a broad range of suicide terrorist campaigns and
regions of the world. Only such a broad examination of suicide terrorists can provide the necessary
information to evaluate the still dominant perception that suicide terrorists are essentially society’s
losers—those who have little to live for and so are easily duped into abandoning their lives.
To evaluate this profile, this chapter surveys the available information on the social, religious,
educational, and other demographic characteristics of all suicide terrorist attackers around the world
from 1980 through 2003. Overall, this survey shows that the profile of suicide attackers is nearly the
opposite of what many now assume. Suicide terrorists are not primarily from religious cults whose
members are uneducated, isolated from society, and easily brainwashed into pursuing delusional
aspirations. Nor are suicide terrorists mainly from criminal gangs whose members are motivated by
youthful impulsiveness, personal satisfaction in harming others, or the anti-social habits of a life of
crime. Nor are suicide terrorists drawn from the ranks of the mentally ill, individuals so depressed
that they cannot hold a job, enjoy life, or otherwise lead productive lives and thus seek to die as an
end in itself.
In general, suicide attackers are rarely socially isolated, clinically insane, or economically
destitute individuals, but are most often educated, socially integrated, and highly capable people who
could be expected to have a good future. The profile of a suicide terrorist resembles that of a
politically conscious individual who might join a grassroots movement more than it does the
stereotypical murderer, religious cult member, or everyday suicide.
These findings have an important implication for our understanding of what motivates an individual
to become a suicide bomber. Although there are important exceptions, these data support the finding
in Chapter 9 that suicide terrorism is not usually an act of egoistic suicide by which the individual
seeks relief from a painful existence. Rather, it is commonly a form of altruistic suicide, in which high
levels of social integration and respect for community values can lead successful individuals to
commit suicide out of a sense of duty.
GATHERING THE FACTS
To advance our understanding of what motivates individuals to become suicide terrorists, we must
gather information about the demographic characteristics of past suicide terrorists and we must
collect these data systematically. The information we want is relatively straightforward. We want
biographical data on the suicide attackers themselves, especially detailed information about their age,
gender, ideological and religious affiliation, employment, income, education, and reports of mental
illness. The main obstacle is that, although some information can be gathered from English-language
sources, much is likely to be available only in native-language newspapers, journal articles, public
statements, and other local media. Native-language sources are the venues in which terrorist groups
communicate to their most supportive audiences and so they are likely to have the most extensive
information about the demographic and general biographical characteristics of suicide attackers.
Thus, a survey of native-language sources is likely to shed important light on the extent to which
suicide attacks are spontaneous or organized in campaigns, and related to nationalist causes rather
than to religious or psychological motives.
To gather these data, I assembled a team of advanced graduate students associated with the
University of Chicago who are fluent in the main relevant languages—Arabic, Hebrew, Russian,
Tamil—for an intensive survey of regional newspapers, broadcast transcripts, and other materials not
currently translated into English. This project also gathered literature documenting individual martyrs
from the main suicide terrorist groups themselves—such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Tamil Tigers
—as well as all publicly available lists of suicide attacks from the main organizations in target
countries that collect such data (such as the Israel Defense Forces, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, and the U.S. Department of State). In addition, this project also amassed all the relevant data
that could be found in English, for example in translations by the Foreign Broadcast Information
Service and in online collections of English-language newspapers, such as the Lexis database. All
information is based on public sources and the raw data are available at the archive for the Chicago
Project on Suicide Terrorism housed at the University of Chicago. Although not perfect, these data are
more than a “list of lists” and probably represent the most comprehensive and reliable survey now
available of the demographic characteristics of suicide terrorists over the past two decades from
multiple regions around the world.
This survey defines a suicide terrorist attack in the classic sense of an individual killing himself (or
herself) in order to kill others. This counting rule is followed strictly and only those individuals who
actually completed the mission and killed themselves are included, because this is the best way to
ensure that the individuals surely had the intent to die. The survey therefore does not count high-risk
attacks that are sometimes called suicide missions (such as shooting sprees in well-defended areas),
suicides to avoid capture (such as taking cyanide to prevent capture by defense forces following an
ordinary attack), preemptive kills of suspected suicide terrorists by defense forces, or any mission
explicitly authorized by a state (such as North Korean suicide commandos attacking South Korean
targets).
Conducting this survey reveals the importance of independent verification and multiple sources of
information. Lists assembled by the terrorist groups and by organizations within target countries use
loose and sometimes inconsistent counting rules that may make sense for some purposes but that
would create confusing results if not corroborated by independent sources. For example, Hamas
routinely publishes lists of “martyrs” online. These include many leaders and other members of the
organization killed by Israeli security forces in retaliation for their attacks, as well as individuals
who committed suicide attacks in the classic sense.
Lists made by target countries are also subject to important inaccuracies. The famous list on the
Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, “Suicide and Other Bombings,” is a case in point. As of
September 2003, this list counted some 130 events and many of the world’s leading journalists and
scholars routinely count all of them as suicide attacks. However, the list cites only seventy-three
actual suicide attacks—the rest are attempts, captures, preemptive kills, and remote-controlled bombs
—and misses nineteen suicide attacks that did occur. (Most likely these were not counted because
they did not ultimately succeed in killing Israelis.)
If consistently applied, these loose standards would increase the count of suicide attacks against
Israel by 30 percent, would more or less double the count in some important cases such as in Sri
Lanka, and would probably make the universe of suicide attacks and attackers uncountable since
many, many more cases around the world would have to be included.
CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN SUICIDE TERRORISTS
Overview
This survey collected the universe of suicide terrorist attackers from 1980 to the end of 2003, a total
of 462 suicide attackers in all. Using the methods described above, it was possible to find a wealth of
primary demographic data for the overwhelming majority of these attackers, including the names of
333 (72 percent of the total), the ideological affiliation of 384 (83 percent), the sex of 381 (82
percent), and the age of 278 (60 percent). In addition, it was possible to ascertain the principal
socioeconomic characteristics of a significant portion of Arab attackers considered as a group.
Altogether, there were a total of 232 Arab suicide attackers in the suicide terrorist campaigns in
Lebanon, in Palestine, and by al-Qaeda from 1980 to 2003. Of these, the survey identified the
education level for 67 and income level for 77.
Although one would always like more, these data provide a strong foundation to supply fresh
insight into the types of people involved in important past suicide terrorist campaigns, to assess the
basic demographic characteristics of the population of suicide attackers as a whole, and to ascertain
the socioeconomic features of Arab suicide attackers, both for the group as a whole and in
comparison to baselines in the relevant societies.
Fresh Insight: Hezbollah in Lebanon
Hezbollah has long been the paradigmatic case of Islamic fundamentalism driving suicide terrorism,
in the view of experts and the public at large. Although we have also known that Hezbollah was an
umbrella organization comprising a variety of disparate sub-groups in a loose working relationship,
the complexities of the organization have remained insufficiently clear to challenge the conventional
understanding of the case.5 Indeed, the standard stereotype of a suicide bomber as a poor, uneducated
religious fanatic largely derived from writings about Hezbollah in the 1980s and 1990s, which
overwhelmingly describe Lebanese suicide attackers in this way.6
The survey of native-language and other sources, however, provides strong new information that
paints a far different image of the individuals who carried out suicide attacks against American,
French, and Israeli forces in Lebanon from 1982 to 1986. During this period, there were 36 suicide
terrorist attacks in Lebanon, involving a total of 41 suicide attackers. For this group, the survey
identified the names and sex of 37 (90 percent; 6 were women); the age of 38 (93 percent; 21 years on
average); the marital status of 37 (90 percent overall, of whom 97 percent were single or not
engaged); the ideological affiliation of 38 (93 percent); the education level of 12 (29 percent overall,
of whom 75 percent had secondary or postsecondary schooling); and the income level of 7 (17
percent).
The most important new information concerns the ideological affiliation of the suicide terrorists.
Hezbollah, its related groups, and the individual attackers themselves were supremely proud of their
willingness to launch suicide attacks to compel Israeli and Western forces to leave their country. The
attackers made numerous martyr videos and left many written statements that were widely distributed
and prominently displayed in their local communities and even collected in commemorative albums.
These local sources provide extensive demographic information on the attackers, including pictures.
They also contain reliable information about the ideological affiliations of the individuals, since one
purpose of these documents was to encourage those with similar ideological affiliations to join the
cause.
The survey ascertained the ideological affiliation of 38 of the 41 attackers. Of these, 30 were
affiliated with groups opposed to Islamic fundamentalism. Twenty-seven were from communist or
socialist groups such as the Lebanese Communist Party, the Lebanese National Resistance Front, the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Amal, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, the Arab
Socialist Union, the Arab Egyptian League, and the Baath Party—secular groups with no commitment
to religious extremism of any kind. Three of the suicide attackers were Christians, including a female
Christian high school teacher (Norma Hassan), a Christian factory worker (Elias Harb), and one
person from a group called the Vanguard of Arab Christians. Only 8 of the 41 suicide attackers were
affiliated with Islamic fundamentalism; all these were from a group called Islamic Jihad. Three were
not clearly associated with any ideology. All 38 were native Lebanese.
The following chart summarizes the ideological composition of the Lebanese attackers.
CHART 6. IDEOLOGY OF LEBANESE SUICIDE ATTACKERS
1980s LEBANESE SUICIDE ATTACKERS
Pictures of the suicide attackers are commonplace in the native sources. Many are dressed in
Western clothes, with stylish haircuts and even makeup, hardly projecting an image of Islamic
fundamentalism. Above are pictures of four of the six female suicide terrorists, including the Christian
high school teacher, Norma Hassan, at lower right.
Perhaps the most striking finding is that Lebanese suicide attackers were associated with a wide
variety of different ideologies and not the product of a single religious or secular mind-set. Some
were longtime members of political groups that existed prior to Israel’s occupation of Lebanon in
1982. Some joined such groups only weeks before their mission. Still others were members of groups
with no documented history prior to Israel’s invasion.
In the end, what Lebanon’s suicide attackers share is not ideology or organizational indoctrination,
but simply a common commitment to resist a foreign occupation. Alliances among such disparate
groups and individuals are common in nationalist rebellions.
Primary Demographic Characteristics
The survey also provides important information about the age, sex, and ideological orientation of
hundreds of individuals who have committed suicide terrorist attacks over the past two decades. Until
now, most people have thought that suicide terrorists are overwhelmingly teenage boys who, because
of their inexperience and youthful impulsiveness, are easily brought under the spell of a charismatic
leader with a religious message. The facts present a different picture.
The survey identified the ages of 278 suicide terrorists, who ranged from 15 (the youngest, a male
attacker in Lebanon) to 52 (the oldest, a female attacker in Chechnya), with an average age of 22.7
years. Of these, only 13 percent were between the ages of 15 and 18, while 55 percent were between
19 and 23, and 32 percent—nearly a third—were 24 or older.
CHART 7. AGE OF SUICIDE ATTACKERS, 1980–2003
Percentage by Age Cohort
The average age of suicide attackers also varies notably across terrorist groups. Lebanese suicide
terrorists were the youngest, averaging 21.1 years old, followed by the Tamil Tigers at 21.9 years,
Palestinians at 22.5 years, PKK at 23.6 years, al-Qaeda at 26.7 years, and Chechen rebels at 29.8
years. What accounts for the variation in age across groups is not clear. However, it is unlikely that
culture alone does, since the groups with the youngest and oldest average are both from Muslim
societies.
CHART 8. AVERAGE AGE OF SUICIDE ATTACKERS
ACROSS GROUPS
The sex of suicide attackers also varies significantly across suicide terrorist groups. The survey
identified the sex of 381 suicide terrorists, of whom 59, or 15 percent, were female. However, some
groups use female suicide attackers much more than others. As a proportion of all suicide attackers
whose sex could be ascertained during the period 1980 to 2003, al-Qaeda employed no female
suicide attackers; the Palestinians used 6 female attackers, or 5 percent; the Lebanese used 6, or 16
percent; the Tamil Tigers used 23, or 20 percent; the Chechens used 14, or 60 percent; and the PKK
used 10 female attackers, or 71 percent. Although more work is needed to examine this variation, the
groups that used the fewest female suicide attackers (al-Qaeda and the Palestinians) are also the most
associated with Islamic fundamentalism (which frowns on female warriors in general). This suggests
an interesting hypothesis: Islamic fundamentalism may actually reduce the number of suicide terrorists
by discouraging certain categories of individuals from undertaking the act.
CHART 9. PERCENTAGE OF FEMALE SUICIDE
ATTACKERS ACROSS GROUPS
Another important finding about female suicide terrorists concerns their age. Chart 10 compares the
ages of groups with both male and female suicide attackers—Hezbollah, the Palestinians, the Tamil
Tigers, the Chechens, and the PKK—and shows that women tend to be significantly more mature than
their male counterparts. Altogether, the survey identified both the age and the sex of 261 individuals
from these five groups. Although the proportion of males and females aged 15 to 18 years was almost
identical (13 percent and 14 percent, respectively), female attackers were significantly less likely to
be in their late teens and early twenties and more likely to be in their mid-twenties and older. An
obvious hypothesis that bears further research is that this age difference reflects the declining
marriage prospects for mature women in traditional societies.
Perhaps the most important finding concerns the ideological affiliation of suicide attackers.
Altogether, the survey ascertained the religious or ideological affiliation of 384 of the 462 suicide
terrorists, accounting for 83 percent of all suicide terrorists worldwide from 1980 to 2003.
Comparing the number of suicide attackers who carried out attacks for secular terrorist groups and for
religious terrorist groups, it is clear that the attackers are much more secular than many would expect.
Of the 384 attackers for whom we have data, 166, or 43 percent, were religious, while 218, or 57
percent, were secular. Even if we assume that all unaccounted-for attackers (77) were religious, the
results would still be a nearly even split—52 percent religious versus 48 percent secular. Suicide
terrorism is not overwhelmingly a religious phenomenon.
CHART 10. AGE OF SUICIDE ATTACKERS
Percentage by Sex
In addition, consider the dogs that did not bark. Although the absence of evidence cannot rule out
the presence of hard-to-measure factors such as mental illness, major criminal behavior, or other
abnormalities, it is highly suggestive to note what was not found among the hundreds of journalistic
and other accounts covering the suicide attacks, many of which draw on interviews with family and
friends of the suicide attackers. Although there are numerous reports of attackers who were agitated
during the execution of the mission, the survey found no documented mental illness, such as
depression, psychosis, or past suicide attempts. The survey also found no evidence of major criminal
behavior, such as murder, beyond the petty crime normally associated with terrorist groups, such as
money laundering (of tiny sums) and theft. The survey found not a single report that a suicide attacker
was gay, an adulterer, or otherwise living in a way that would bring shame in a traditional society. In
the entire sample, there was a single case of probable mental retardation (a “feeble-minded” Chechen
female bomber).
CHART 11. RELIGIOUS VERSUS SECULAR
SUICIDE ATTACKERS
The absence of documented evidence of mental illness does not mean that none of the suicide
terrorists experienced personal trauma before undertaking their missions. As shown in Table 22, we
know that at least 16 of the 462 did have a family member or close friend killed by enemy military
forces and, as I mentioned earlier, the Chechen female suicide attackers are commonly referred to as
the Black Widows to make the point that they are seeking revenge for the loss of their family members
to Russian military action. In our lexicon of types of suicide, these instances would qualify as
possible instances of anomic suicide terrorism. However, even assuming the existence of many others
with similar experiences not found in our survey, it would be surprising if as many as a third of
suicide terrorists fit this description.
Overall, this survey of the primary demographic characteristics of suicide terrorists casts strong
doubt on the prevailing assumptions that individuals who carry out these attacks are primarily
religious fanatics, irresponsible adolescents, or sexually frustrated males. Nearly all were well
beyond adolescence, most were secular, and many—the overwhelming majority in some groups—
were women. None had the pathognomonic characteristic of a suicidal personality: past history of
suicide attempts. Rather, the uncomfortable fact is that suicide terrorists are far more normal than
many of us would like to believe.
Socioeconomic Status of Arab Attackers
Suicide terrorism is commonly ascribed to poverty; the underlying logic is usually that suicide
attackers come from among society’s losers, individuals who are so poor now and so unlikely to
prosper in the future that they have little to live for and so are more likely to sacrifice a pathetic
existence for some illusory blessing. If this explanation were correct, one would expect suicide
terrorists to score low on the main indicators of socioeconomic status—education and income level
—both in absolute terms and by comparison with their society. However, the socioeconomic facts for
an important pool of suicide terrorists—Arab suicide attackers—present a different picture.
Although reliable data on education and income level are difficult to find even in native-language
sources, the survey included information about them for a large portion of the 232 total Arab suicide
attackers associated with Lebanon, Palestine, and al-Qaeda from 1980 to 2003. This pool of suicide
terrorists is especially important, both because it includes the threat immediately facing the United
States and some of its key allies and because the conventional stereotype of the suicide bomber as a
social loser was largely derived from this context.
Specifically, the survey ascertained the education level of 67 and the income level of 77 Arab
suicide terrorists. Education level was divided into three categories: less than secondary school
education (that is, no more than an eighth-grade education); secondary education (ninth grade through
a secondary degree, in high school or technical school); and postsecondary education (enrollment in
any educational institution after secondary school). Income level was also divided into three
categories: low-class (unemployed or identified as poor, without a clear source of income);
working/middle-class (employed in an identified job that is not normally considered white-collar;
such as technician, electrician, security guard, waiter, primary or secondary school teacher, etc.); and
professional/high class (employed in an identified job that is normally considered white-collar, such
as lawyer or doctor, or identified as a member of a wealthy family). These measures of education and
income were selected because they are directly comparable to the common measures used by
reputable organizations to assess these factors in the relevant countries.7
Overall, Arab suicide attackers are much better educated than the conventional profile would lead
one to expect. Chart 12 on the following page compares Arab suicide attackers with their peer groups
in Lebanon and Palestine. Ten percent of the attackers in our sample had only a primary school
education or less, compared with nearly half in their societies as a whole. Fifty-four percent had
some post-secondary education, compared with only a small fraction of their societies.
CHART 12. EDUCATION OF ARAB SUICIDE ATTACKERS VERSUS PEER
GROUPS
Percentage by Income Level
As shown in Chart 13 regarding income, Arab suicide attackers are typically from the working and
middle classes and seldom unemployed or poor. Seventeen percent of the attackers in our sample
were at the bottom income rung or unemployed, compared to roughly a third in their societies as a
whole. Seventy-six percent had working-class or middle-class jobs—technicians, mechanics,
waiters, policemen, and teachers, for example—compared to lower levels for these groups in their
societies as a whole. It is useful to note that a number of attackers were reported to have left their
jobs days or weeks prior to their attacks to carry out the mission, which could explain why they might
appear to have been unemployed.
Finally, secular and religious Arab suicide attackers have remarkably similar socioeconomic
status, which suggests that religious suicide attackers are not especially uneducated or poor. Chart 14
compares the income and education levels of secular and religious suicide attackers in Lebanon and
Palestine. The secular and religious attackers have virtually the same income distribution. Religious
attackers are highly educated, although the difference is not statistically significant.
CHART 13. INCOME OF ARAB SUICIDE ATTACKERS VERSUS PEER
GROUPS
Percentage by Income Level
CHART 14. SECULAR VERSUS RELIGIOUS SUICIDE ATTACKERS IN
LEBANON AND PALESTINE
The bottom line, then, is that suicide attackers are not mainly poor, uneducated, immature religious
zealots or social losers. Instead, suicide attackers are normally well-educated workers from both
religious and secular backgrounds. Especially given their education, they resemble the kind of
politically conscious individuals who might join a grassroots movement more than they do wayward
adolescents or religious fanatics.
11
Portraits of Three
Suicide Terrorists
WE LIKE OUR villains to be wild-eyed monsters. The more the crime violates our sense of humanity,
the more we expect the perpetrators to be deviant, repulsive, antipathetic, mentally ill, or deficient in
normal human feeling. Of course, associating inhuman acts with inhuman villains does not bring the
victims back. It does, however, at least seem to offer an explanation for how horrible atrocities could
occur in the first place.
Sometimes this intuition is right. Serial killers such as Charles Manson, Theodore Kaczynski,
Jeffrey Dahmer, and Ted Bundy are described by those who know them well as alienated from
society, unable to function well in social settings, from dysfunctional backgrounds, and as engaging in
highly repulsive acts even apart from murder.1
Sometimes, however, those who commit the worst crimes turn out to be quite ordinary in every
other respect. The philosopher Hannah Arendt found Adolf Eichmann, the chief administrator of the
Nazis’ campaign to exterminate the Jews, less a bloodthirsty sadist than a dutiful bureaucrat who was
remarkable mainly for his emotional disengagement from the genocide he planned and executed. What
stood out was the “banality” of Eichmann’s evil, leaving the startling impression that many ordinary
Germans could have filled his shoes.2
Murderous suicide terrorism is an especially atrocious act, since it violates two of society’s
primary taboos, the prohibition against killing innocent men, women, and children, and the ban against
killing oneself. Suicide terrorism is therefore a double crime against humanity. We also cannot forget
the gruesome nature of the injuries and pain that suicide terrorists inflict. These things make it seem
all the more sensible that suicide terrorists must be truly deviant human beings.
Academic work on suicide terrorism in the 1980s and 1990s largely supported the view that
suicide terrorists are irrational individuals who seek death primarily as an end in itself. Ariel Merari,
an Israeli psychologist who has been one of the leading students of suicide terrorism since the early
1980s, characterized the phenomenon as follows: “Terrorist suicide, like any other suicide, is
basically an individual act rather than a group phenomenon: it is done by people who wish to die for
personal reasons.”3 Jerrold Post, another leading scholar of suicide terrorism and of political
psychology, views suicide terrorism as the result of paranoia with psychological roots that can be
“traced back to the cradle”:
Some individuals remain fixed in the paranoid position . . . locked in the depressive position—under attack by the internal
persecutor, guilt-ridden, and vulnerable to depression. . . . A solution for this “intolerable burden” is to disown the internal
persecutor. . . . If he does commit suicide, it is to escape his projected internal prosecutor, his hidden executioner.4
Both Merari and Post have characterized suicide terrorists as overwhelmingly uneducated,
unemployed, socially isolated single men in their late teens or early twenties. They are the principal
authorities whose work underpins the profile of a suicide attacker that is commonly used by law
enforcement officials and that is so pervasive in journalistic accounts of this phenomenon.
As we saw in Chapter 10, this demographic profile may fit the relatively few instances of suicide
terrorism in the 1980s fairly well. However, examination of the much larger number of suicide
attackers during the 1990s and since shows that suicide terrorism does not have a single demographic
profile. We now know that suicide terrorists can be college educated or uneducated, married or
single, male or female, socially isolated or integrated, as young as fifteen or as old as fifty-two. The
individuals who carry out suicide terrorist attacks are typically mentally normal, with good prospects
for employment or other advancement in their society, and they enjoy good standing in their
communities. They are, in other words, much like ordinary soldiers with a strong sense of duty and a
willingness to sacrifice all for the common good of their community.
This chapter examines the individual logic of suicide terrorism and shows that even the worst
suicide terrorists are surprisingly ordinary people, motivated not by the desire to seek their own death
as an end in itself, but by what they see as their duty to kill significant numbers of the enemy even at
the cost of their own lives.
To really understand what makes suicide terrorists do what they do, we would like more than basic
demographic information about these individuals; we would like to have detailed biographies and
personality studies of each suicide terrorist. However, such comprehensive study is not possible
because the detailed information we would need is not available in sufficient detail for most suicide
attackers. It is usually available only for the most deadly or famous suicide terrorists—those who
killed the most people or who attacked in the most spectacular circumstances—because these are the
ones whose acts generate the most investigation, especially press coverage, including news stories in
which journalists often interview family members, co-workers, and police officials, asking, “Why
was this person willing to die to kill others?”
Accordingly, this chapter focuses on the personal histories of three of the most deadly suicide
terrorists over the past two decades:
• Mohammed Atta, who organized and led the September 11, 2001, suicide attacks, the deadliest
in history;
• Dhanu, who assassinated Rajiv Gandhi for the Tamil Tigers, the highest-ranking political
leader ever killed by a suicide terrorist; and
• Saeed Hotari, a member of Hamas who blew up himself and twenty-one Israelis outside a
discotheque in Tel Aviv, one of the worst suicide bombings in Israel.
Focusing on these famous individuals does not bias the analysis in favor of my argument. Just the
opposite. To the extent that there is bias in the news accounts of these cases, it is in the other
direction, because so many of the investigating journalists, like everyone else, were predisposed to
find that such terrible criminals must be irrational, abnormal, or anti-social. Commonly, the news
stories are organized to create a psychological portrait that would identify the emotional, delusional,
or psychotic factors that drove the person to become a suicide terrorist. However, surprisingly few
accounts actually find confirmation of such deviant psychological factors; many of the investigators
end by forthrightly admitting that they cannot find the moment of psychological trauma or depression
that “changed” the individual into a suicide attacker.5
Instead, what stands out is that, to a striking degree, the most deadly suicide terrorists have been
almost ordinary people. Atta, Dhanu, and Hotari were not from especially impoverished families.
They were not highly impulsive, not subject to delusions, not readily characterized as depressed, not
unable to enjoy life, not detached from friends and society. They were also not brought up with a
religious fundamentalist education that justified terrorism. Rather, they had friends, observed ordinary
norms of social and other behavior in their communities, and generally approached their task with a
soldier-like sense of mission. They devoted months to detailed planning for their mission, carried out
dress rehearsals, and studied similar missions by others in order to work out the kinks in their own
plan. In this, they worked closely with others, either as part of suicide squads or in training regimens
that would enhance the effectiveness of their attacks. For them, suicide attack was not an escape—it
was a duty. From smiles to statements of satisfaction in their final moments on earth, the world’s most
deadly suicide terrorists took evident pride in what they saw not as crimes but as sacrifices for their
communities.
MOHAMMED ATTA, LEADER OF THE SEPTEMBER 11 HIJACKERS
Mohammed Atta in no way matches the stereotype of the pathetic creature who seeks death and
chooses suicide attack as a convenient means of escape. He did not come from a poor family; he was
the son of a lawyer. His family lives, to this day, in a Cairo apartment filled with ornate furniture, and
has a vacation home on the Mediterranean coast. His two sisters are university professors. Atta
himself earned a bachelor’s degree in Cairo in 1990 and went to Germany for graduate work in urban
studies at Hamburg Technical University, where his professors describe him as a good student.
Nor was he brainwashed into fundamentalist beliefs as a child. By all accounts, Atta was only
moderately religious in his youth, as was typical for children of his class growing up in the 1970s and
1980s in Egypt.
As Atta saw it, his motive was his duty to help end the West’s “humiliation” of the Islamic world.
Atta became an Islamic fundamentalist in Germany in 1995, after he was already well educated and,
as far as we can tell, he did not make the turn out of despair. At the time he became committed to the
cause, he was steadily making progress toward his professional goals and had the support of his
family. He showed no obvious signs of major depression around this time, nor did he suffer any
profound trauma that we know of.
The Attack
Together with two friends from Hamburg, Atta organized and led the four hijackings on September
11, 2001, that ended with airliners slamming into the two World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon,
and a field in Pennsylvania, killing almost 3,000 people. He flew the first plane personally, as well
as coordinating the training and planning for the teams involved in the other attacks (the original
concept for the attack was a variant of an older al-Qaeda plan). Although in the immediate aftermath
many details were murky, American and German investigators have now assembled a great deal of
new information on the origins of the plot from interviews with al-Qaeda operatives captured in
Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere.
Intelligence officials knew that terrorists associated with al-Qaeda had a similar plan for quite
some time before the September 11 attacks. In 1995, Philippine police raided the bomb-making
laboratory of Ramzi Yousef, who coordinated the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and who is
known to have had some activities financed by Osama bin Laden. Although Yousef escaped, the
police captured one of his associates, Abdul Hakim Murad, and computer files for an operation
called Bojinka (“Loud Bang ” in Serbo-Croatian), a plan to blow up eleven U.S. airliners over the
Pacific Ocean with remote-controlled bombs and to have a suicide pilot crash one into CIA
headquarters at Langley, Virginia. Murad, who had recently earned his pilot’s license, confessed that
he was preparing for the suicide mission. According to a January 20, 1995, briefing report written by
the Manila police, Murad said he came up with the idea during a conversation with Ramzi Yousef.
The report states that Murad intended to
board any American commercial aircraft pretending to be an ordinary passenger. . . . Then he will hijack said aircraft, control its
cockpit and dive it at the C.I.A. headquarters. . . . There will be no bomb or any explosive that he will use in its execution. It is
simply a suicidal mission that he is very much willing to execute.
Murad also said that the plan included secondary targets, including the U.S. Congress, the White
House, the Pentagon, and possibly some skyscrapers. The only problem, he said, was that they needed
more trained pilots to hit all the targets.6
What intelligence officials did not realize was the extent to which al-Qaeda had made progress in
training such pilots. In November 1999, Atta and several other Muslims from Hamburg traveled to
Afghanistan for several months of training, including an audience with Osama bin Laden, a privilege
reserved for those on important missions. It was during this visit, intelligence officials believe, that
Atta was presented with a plan inspired by Bojinka. The presenter was probably Khalid Shaik
Mohammed, the uncle of Ramzi Yousef, who was an important member of al-Qaeda and who was in
Afghanistan at the time. After returning to Germany in February 2000, the Hamburg men took their
first concrete steps toward executing the mission, e-mailing thirty-one flight schools in the United
States for admission information. Starting in the spring of 2000, Atta and the other pilots involved in
the September 11 attacks attended flight schools in California, Arizona, and Florida. They completed
their training a year later.
After Atta returned from a short visit to Spain in July 2001, the final phase of the plot began. Over
the next several weeks, fifteen Saudis arrived in the United States to provide the “muscle” that would
restrain the hijacked jets’ crew and passengers while the newly trained pilots flew the airliners into
their targets. According to a videotape by bin Laden, these men did not know they were on a suicide
mission before they arrived in the United States. On the last night, however, the hijackers appear to
have been given handwritten instructions, distributed by Atta, that would have left no doubt as to their
purpose. The instructions told the men to shave excess hair from their bodies, to read certain passages
of the Quran, and to be happy that “you are on your way to everlasting paradise.”7
On September 11, the plan went into action. Between 7:58 A.M. and 8:10 A.M., four airliners took
off—two from Boston, one from Newark, and one from Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C. An hour
later, all four had been hijacked; two were flown into the towers of the World Trade Center, one into
the Pentagon, and one into a field in Pennsylvania. Atta and his eighteen accomplices had brought
Operation Bojinka into our world.
Atta’s Training
Like many other al-Qaeda operatives, Atta spent several months training in Afghanistan, most likely
from late 1998 to early 1999. Beyond his meeting with bin Laden and the likelihood that he received
instructions on the basic scheme for the September 11 attacks, we do not know the details of his stay.
However, the numerous al-Qaeda operatives captured in the recent past have provided extensive
information about al-Qaeda’s training camps in Afghanistan. Much of the training regimen—the
curriculum—was standardized. Accordingly, understanding how al-Qaeda’s training camps were run
gives us an excellent window into Atta’s terrorist training.
Al-Qaeda ran a dozen training camps in Afghanistan, most located in Paktia Province near the
border with Pakistan. Camps varied in size. The smallest accommodated some fifteen fighters at a
time, and had only one mud brick mosque and fabric tents. The largest trained as many as 300 fighters
at once and had numerous permanent buildings plus the wherewithal to support thirty to forty families;
these camps even generated their own electrical power.8
The most common estimates of the number of fighters who were trained in al-Qaeda’s camps
between the time bin Laden first went to Afghanistan in 1996 and the time the United States toppled
the Taliban regime in November 2001 range from 5,000 to 8,000 individuals. However, even the best
estimates are based on interviews with captured al-Qaeda leaders and not on hard records of
attendance, so precise counts are unobtainable.
The main purpose of the camps was military training. Although one might suspect that religious
indoctrination was a core feature of bin Laden’s camps, this was not the case. Recruits were not
admitted to the camps unless they were already devout. Most, including Atta, went through a twomonth
“basic” course with only two weeks devoted to religious education. Like all major religions,
Islam prohibits the killing of innocents, a principle that Islamic fundamentalists have “reinterpreted”
in order to justify precisely such acts. The purpose of the two weeks of religious lectures was to
ensure that the recruits had a common justification rooted in Islam for the acts they were already intent
on committing. Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-’Owhali, a defendant tried in the United States for his role
in the Kenya and Tanzania bombings in 1998, said that the religious teaching he received in
Afghanistan taught him that an individual (not necessarily Muslim) who helped to enact laws against
Islam had committed blasphemy and that “it was your right and duty to kill him.”9
The rest of al-Qaeda’s basic training was devoted to the tactical military skills necessary for small
numbers of fighters to kill others—effectively, efficiently, and, if possible, spectacularly. Although
the length of each phase varied, recruits commonly went through three stages of military training. In
the first, lasting about a month, recruits were taught how to use an impressive array of light weapons,
such as pistols, sniper rifles, and machine guns. Recruits began the day with morning prayers,
devoting the rest of their mornings to rigorous physical exercise and the afternoons to small-arms
training and target practice. Next was a two-week course in explosives, teaching fighters how to use
plastic explosives, dynamite, and electronic detonators to build bombs, how to use different types of
mines, such as anti-personnel and anti-tank mines, and how to conduct reconnaissance and prepare
plans for specific attacks. The final several weeks were devoted to the use of heavier weapons, such
as mortars, grenade launchers, and anti-aircraft weapons. Some fighters then stayed an additional
month for advanced training for specific operations—surveillance techniques for stadiums, bridges,
and various buildings, and the use of chemical weapons, with dogs and other animals as subjects.10
Atta’s State of Mind
Born in 1968 in the town of Kar el Sheikh, Mohammed Atta was the son of a middle-class lawyer and
lived much of his youth in the genteel Abdein neighborhood of Cairo. Atta’s family would be
considered professional by Western standards. His father encouraged all three of his children to
pursue advanced secular and professional careers. All three did well in school and showed signs of a
strong work ethic and socially commendable ambitions. Mohammed was the youngest. His two older
sisters grew up to be a botany professor and a medical doctor, while from a young age Mohammed
aimed to become an engineer.
As a boy, Mohammed was encouraged by his family to be moderately religious, observing basic
Islamic practices such as daily prayers from the age of twelve or thirteen on. Hundreds of millions of
Muslims follow a similar lifestyle. This is normal for Westernized, educated Muslims in Egypt and
elsewhere and is hardly the mark of an extremist. In fact, as a teenager, Atta refused to join a
basketball league because it was organized by the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s main Islamic
fundamentalist organization. The Muslim Brotherhood also recruited actively in Atta’s engineering
department at the University of Cairo, but there is no record that Atta showed any interest. Atta earned
respectable, if not outstanding, grades, and graduated in 1990. His father rewarded him with a 1974
Fiat 128 coupe as a graduation present.
In 1992, Atta left Egypt to study for an advanced degree in town planning at Hamburg Technical
University in Germany. Like a great many college graduates, he had not been able to find a job in his
field in the weak Egyptian economy. His father persuaded him that only a graduate degree from
Europe or the United States would allow him to prosper in Egypt.
Within months of his arrival in Hamburg, Atta was able to supplement his studies with a part-time
job with Plankontor, a respectable urban planning firm in an upscale section of the city. Although he
quietly prayed at the office, often kneeling at midday beside his desk, his co-workers saw him as no
different from the millions of other devout and peaceful Muslims in Germany. In these years, Atta
seemed to have things going his way. He was accepted at work and school. He spoke to his
colleagues about his hopes of eventually returning to Egypt to help build neighborhoods where people
could live better lives.
If there was any single point of change, it may have come in 1995, when Atta made his haj to
Mecca in Saudi Arabia, a pilgrimage that Muslims are commanded to make at least once in their
lives. When he returned to Hamburg in early 1996, Atta wrote a will, dated March 6, 1996, which
was found in a suitcase that he left behind when he hijacked American Airlines flight 512 out of
Boston years later. The will leaves little doubt that he had become a committed fundamentalist. It
dedicates his life and death to Allah and forbids women to visit his grave. Atta’s co-workers also
report that at about this time he began to grow his beard in the distinctive pattern—around the chin but
not over the upper lip—that, at least in North African cultures, is usually the sign of a fundamentalist.
In June 1997, Atta lost his job at Plankontor, partly because of declining business at the firm and
partly because the firm had purchased a new computer system that made his drafting work redundant.
Atta then left school and Hamburg for fifteen months with little explanation—he said for “family
reasons.” When he reappeared in October 1998, Atta’s mustache-less beard had become thick and
long; he founded an Islamic prayer group and moved into an apartment with two other Muslims who
would later go on to join him in the September 11 plot. Atta also showed renewed interest in
completing his degree, interest he had not shown since beginning his studies in 1992. A year later, in
October 1999, Atta formally presented his 152-page thesis on urban planning, earning a top grade. He
then traveled to Cairo, degree in hand, for what became his last visit with his family. A month later,
he and his roommates headed for Afghanistan to begin dedicated preparations for the September 11
attacks.
Since September 11, perhaps a dozen journalists have conducted several dozens of interviews with
Atta’s family, his fellow high school students, and his co-workers and professors in Germany. What
stands out is not an impulsive, erratic, warped, or pessimistic person with low self-esteem and no
social conscience, but almost the opposite. By all accounts, Atta was responsible, industrious,
respectful, and willing to uphold rules and regulations. Above all, those who knew Atta best report
that he had an emotional steadiness that one might describe as mild or unassuming, and a strong sense
of duty as evidenced by his plans at the time he began his studies to use his educational advantages to
improve the lot of less well-off urban dwellers back in Egypt. He was principled and meticulous,
conscientious and rational.
The only thing that makes Atta unusual is that he eventually decided that his highest duty was to
advance the Muslim cause in its struggle with the West by killing Americans even at the expense of
his own life. Atta saw himself as a self-sacrificing soldier, and indeed, his psychological history,
motivations, and behavior do not appear terribly different from those of the kamikazes or of many
soldiers from many cultures who saw their societies as engaged in desperate struggles for survival.11
DHANU, TAMIL TIGERS
Dhanu, the single name of a young woman from Jaffna, is the most famous Tamil Tiger suicide
bomber. On May 21, 1991, she hid a girdle of grenades beneath her gown, presented a garland to
Rajiv Gandhi, India’s top political figure, and exploded, instantly killing them both. Dhanu has
become a heroine to the women of Sri Lanka’s Hindu Tamil minority. The Tigers targeted Gandhi
because they feared that, if the Congress under Gandhi were to win the upcoming election, the new
government would order the recently withdrawn Indian Peacekeeping Force to return to Sri Lanka to
suppress the Tigers’ insurgency. For the Tigers, the assassination was a strategic victory. For Dhanu,
a remarkably beautiful woman in her late twenties, motivation probably came directly from revenge:
reportedly her home in Jaffna was looted by Indian soldiers, she was gang-raped, and her four
brothers were killed.
The Attack
Dhanu was the first attacker to use a “suicide belt,” and this novelty determined the operational plan
of attack. It is not known how the Tigers hit upon the idea. A suicide belt is an undergarment with
specially made pockets to hold explosives and triggering devices so that they closely conform to the
contours of the human bomb’s body. However, there is a close match between Dhanu’s suicide belt
and one described in a dramatic scene in a Frederick Forsyth best-seller published in 1989, The
Negotiator. In the novel, kidnappers use a belt bomb to kill the son of the U.S. president. The
fictitious belt bomb is virtually identical to the belt worn by Dhanu, which investigators pieced
together after the attack. Both belts are three inches wide, made from leather and denim, with a Velcro
closure, and with explosives inserted to lie across the backbone. The main difference is the
detonation mechanism. The belt in the novel is set off by a remote-control device hidden in the
buckle, while the woman assassin had no such device and triggered the bomb herself with a manual
switch.12
The plan was simple. According to accomplices and messages captured after the attack, the LTTE
sent a squad of four assassins to Madras, the largest city in the southern Tamil Nadu region of India,
about three weeks before Rajiv Gandhi was scheduled to speak at a major political rally. Dhanu was
the designated assassin. It was her job to wear the belt bomb, carry a garland for Gandhi,
“accidentally” drop it at his feet, bend over to pick it up, and explode the bomb at the precise moment
when Gandhi (and she) would receive its full force. Two members of the squad were to ensure that
Dhanu would reach her target. The last served as a cameraman, taking live footage of the attack so
that LTTE leaders, cadre, and future recruits could view the mission as it actually happened.13
The assassination went off according to plan. However, the cameraman was too close. He died in
the blast, and the tape fell into the hands of the Indian police, providing an unusually vivid account
that helped elucidate the assassination plot.
On page 228 are two of the ten surviving still frames of the actual attack. The first shows Dhanu at
the far left smiling, garland in hand, waiting for the approaching Gandhi. The second shows the last
moments of Gandhi’s life.
Dhanu’s Training
Dhanu belonged to the female suicide bomber unit of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam that goes
by the name Black Tigresses. Since the early 1980s, the Tamil population has fought a civil war for
independence from the Sinhalese Buddhist majority of Sri Lanka. The Tamil leader Velupillai
Prabhakaran formed the LTTE with support and arms from India, and began a terror campaign against
the Sinhalese government in which more than 60,000 people have died. Although precise numbers are
hard to come by, the LTTE is estimated to number well over 10,000 guerrillas and has had as many as
14,000 during the 1990s. Of these, as many as 4,000 are women.14
LTTE guerrillas all manifest a high degree of personal commitment to the cause of independence
for their Tamil homeland. The most evident sign is the small cyanide capsule that hangs around the
neck of each guerrilla, and that puts him or her only seconds from death. Literally hundreds have died
at their own hands, biting through their capsules and consuming the deadly contents rather than
accepting capture by the Sinhalese authorities.
The Black Tigresses (and Black Tigers) are different. These units of the LTTE are trained
especially for suicide terrorist operations. For them, it is not a matter of committing suicide rather
than accepting the humiliation and possible torture that comes with capture. Rather, suicide is an
inextricable part of their mission. They are trained to kill others while killing themselves in order to
maximize the chances of a successful mission—typically, the assassination of a prominent political
leader or the infliction of the most possible casualties on Sinhalese civilians or unsuspecting soldiers.
Members of the LTTE’s suicide squads perform only one mission. Their selection and training are
dedicated to ensuring that this single mission achieves results—not simply their own death, but the
deaths of others.
Dhanu, alias Anbu alias Kalaivani, was from Jaffna, the principal town in the Tamil region of Sri
Lanka. She appears to have been a member of the LTTE since the mid-1980s and to have gone through
the typical process of becoming a Black Tigress in the late 1980s, possibly after her personal trauma
at the hands of Indian troops.
Joining the LTTE’s suicide squads involves a number of steps. First, the suicide attackers are
carefully selected. Although every LTTE guerrilla is given the option to join these groups, many more
are rejected than accepted. At any given point, of the 10,000 or so cadres, there are probably 150 to
200 who are Black Tigresses and Tigers. The main selection criterion is a high level of motivation to
complete the mission, a criterion that puts a premium on mental stability over tactical military
competence.
Second, the suicide attackers are trained in special camps. They are segregated from the regulars
and trained only for suicide missions. The training involves daily physical exercises, arms training,
and political classes that all emphasize results. According to reliable reports, the Black Tigresses and
Tigers have a simple motto: “You die only once.”
Third, LTTE suicide attackers routinely conduct dress rehearsals near the intended location of an
attack. They also devote considerable effort to the study of past operations, going so far as to film the
actual execution of many suicide missions and to use these films to motivate and train future suicide
attackers. The LTTE’s videotape of its first suicide attacker—a truck bomber who killed eighteen
Sinhalese soldiers on July 5, 1987—reportedly shows the truck rolling through the military camp,
exploding, and strewing the limbs of soldiers for hundreds of yards. These films are shown to all
members of the suicide squads. They leave little doubt that the LTTE reveres the Black Tigresses and
Tigers as heroes and that these individuals know full well what is expected of them.
How committed are the LTTE suicide commandos? From 1980 to 2001, Black Tigresses and
Tigers conducted a total of seventy-six suicide terrorist attacks. These missions routinely involved
backup suicide attackers ready to strike if the primary attacker withdrew at the last minute. However,
there is only one known example of a Black Tiger withdrawing from a mission.15
Dhanu’s State of Mind
Although detailed information on her mental state is not available, Dhanu’s behavior during the weeks
before the assassination does not display signs of depression or personal trauma. Indeed, what we
know about her activities suggests a person enjoying the good things in life. For Dhanu, her trip to
Madras was the first time she had traveled beyond the Tamil areas of Sri Lanka. Even though much of
the three weeks prior to the attack was devoted to preparations and rehearsals for the mission, she
took advantage of her new surroundings. With money and encouragement from the LTTE, she went to
the market, the beach, and restaurants every day, enjoying many luxuries rarely found in the jungles of
Jaffna. She bought dresses, jewelry, cosmetics, and even her first pair of glasses. In the last twenty
days of her life, she took in six movies at a local cinema.
Dhanu clearly had nerves of steel. She clearly understood the consequences of her actions and
worked hard to ensure that her mission would surely succeed. Some of the female suicide bombers in
Sri Lanka are believed to be victims of rape at the hands of Sinhalese or Indian soldiers, a stigma that
destroys their prospects for marriage and rules out procreation as a means of contributing to the
community. “Acting as a human bomb,” a Tamil woman told Ana Cutter, the former editor of
Columbia University’s Journal of International Affairs, “is an understood and accepted offering for
a woman who will never be a mother.”16
SAEED HOTARI, HAMAS
Saeed Hotari is well known in the West Bank. On June 1, 2001, this Hamas terrorist blew himself up
outside a disco in Tel Aviv, killing twenty-one Israelis in what remains one of Israel’s worst suicide
bombings ever. Although many Palestinians support suicide bombings, the interviews given by
Hotari’s father after his son’s mission are especially revealing. Far from lamenting the loss of his son,
Hotari’s father threw a party to celebrate his son’s heroic act to help end Israel’s occupation of
Palestine. He also had no hesitation in proclaiming that he hoped his other sons would do the same
and that he felt “jealous” because he wished he had done the attack.
The Attack
On the night of Friday, June 1, 2001, Saeed Hotari took a taxi for the thirty-minute ride from his home
in Qaliqilya in the West Bank to the Dolphinarium, a popular discotheque in Tel Aviv. When he got
out of the car, Hotari warned the Palestinian driver to leave the area quickly. Although the driver
became suspicious, and was in fact an informer for Israeli police intelligence, events unfolded too
rapidly for him to act. Hotari immediately walked into the crowd at the entrance to the disco, stopped
next to a group of teenage girls, and triggered the deadly mix of explosives and steel ball bearings that
he had strapped to his chest. Within seconds, Hotari and twenty-one Israelis were dead.17
Hotari’s Training
Hotari was recruited by Hamas for his suicide mission in the usual way. At any one time, Hamas has
from five to twenty individuals, between eighteen and twenty-three years old, ready to carry out
suicide attacks, according to Israeli officials. Although one might think that Hamas’s recruitment
methods would be a closely guarded secret, Hamas recruiters are quite open about the broad outlines
of how the organization identifies, selects, and prepares suicide terrorist attackers.
Mosques are a common recruitment ground. Hamas’s leaders say that they routinely mingle with
those who attend regular services and look for three qualities in a potential bomber: an intense
interest in Islam; a clean criminal record, so as not to raise the suspicions of Israel’s secret police;
and a strong nerve, to carry out the mission successfully. When the need arises, Hamas leaders initiate
a discussion of dying for Allah with small groups of young people and invite those who seem
particularly interested to join a special Hamas-led class on Islamic study. After just several weeks,
many in such classes willingly volunteer to be suicide bombers, at which point Hamas inquires into
the past criminal behavior of the volunteers.18
In these classes, the recruits usually spend between two and four hours a day reading and
discussing various parts of the Quran. The passages emphasize the birth of the nation of Islam, the
importance of faith, the duty of jihad, and Allah’s favors for those deemed most faithful.19
In most cases, a suicide terrorist in waiting is assigned to his mission only days before it is to
occur. As the mission nears, the volunteers are tested for their strength of nerve and their commitment
to completing their assigned task. The recruit, sometimes alone and sometimes with several others, is
taken to a cemetery. He is told to prepare for death by lying between grave sites for several hours and
to wear a white, hooded shroud normally used to cover bodies for burial.20 Those who remain calm
pass the test and are selected for the final preparations.
As part of the preparation, the would-be suicide bomber returns to the cemetery, spending a dozen
or more hours in a grave while reciting passages of the Koran. Meanwhile, separate Hamas groups
select the target, construct the bomb or the suicide vest, and make preparations to take the bomber to
the target. Once at the target site, the recruit is told to remain calm, blend in as much as possible, and,
when surrounded by Israelis, press a switch to explode the bomb.21
From what we know, Hotari’s recruitment followed this path. He fit all of Hamas’s criteria.
According to his father, Hotari was “a devout Muslim who used to pray, observed fasting and
performed all his religious obligations to the letter and spirit.” He had no criminal history. In
Qaliqilya, Hotari and two other Palestinians attended a mosque where a Hamas leader persuaded
them to attend a special class on Islamic study. Hotari and the other two Palestinians carried out their
attacks within weeks of each other. Reportedly, Hotari himself watched as his friend Mahmoud
Marmash blew himself up on May 18, 2001, in a shopping mall in Netanya.22
Hotari’s State of Mind
Saeed Hotari, twenty-two, was one of nine children from a poor Palestinian family living in Zarqa,
Jordan. He was an observant Muslim who moved to the West Bank two years before the attack in
search of a better job.23
Although few details of Hotari’s life in the West Bank are available, we can gain important insight
into the circumstances of his decision from the detailed interviews his father gave to the media after
his son’s suicide attack.
A month after the attack, the bomber’s father, Hassan Hotari, threw a party to celebrate his son’s
mission. Neighbors hung pictures on their trees of Saeed Hotari holding seven sticks of dynamite.
Others put up a sign: “Martyr Saeed Hotari.” Still others expressed satisfaction with what the mission
accomplished, spray-painting “21 and counting” on a stone wall.
Mr. Hotari was elated by his son’s act, eagerly proclaiming: “I am very happy and proud of what
my son did and, frankly, am a bit jealous. I wish I had done [the bombing]. My son has fulfilled the
Prophet’s wishes. He has become a hero! Tell me, what more could a father ask? . . . I hope I have
many sons to carry out the same act.”24
Two years later, the bomber’s father lamented the loss of his son. However, he offered no
apologies, saying, “There are no apologies from Israelis when our people die.”25 He said that the
popular Israeli view that the suicide bombers kill themselves because they are promised seventy-two
virgins in the afterlife is a means to avoid considering their real motivations:
Before they ask me how my son could do something like that, they should ask what the conditions were that led him to do it. Why
do people kill themselves? Are they fond of death? Is it a fashion? Since 1948, the Jews have taken more and more of our land.
My son wasn’t a radical person, he was radicalized by the anger, by the humiliation. Look before your eyes. We are living in a jail.
I would be a liar to say I feel sorry for the people who are oppressing us day by day.26
In his final statement, Hotari explained why concern about Israeli retaliation does not deter
community support for suicide terrorism against Israelis, “If we don’t fight, we will suffer. If we do
fight, we will suffer, but so will they.”27
To hear a father so strongly support his own son’s suicide in public may be startling and is not the
norm among the families of suicide terrorists, but Hassan Hotari is not a lone exception. Palestinian
suicide terrorists often make videos describing their motives, but the one by Mahmoud al-Obeid, a
college student, age twenty-three, from Gaza, was different. Unusually, the young man’s mother,
Naima, appeared in the video and was clearly fully aware of what he planned to do. She says to her
son: “God willing, you will succeed. May every bullet hit its target, and may God give you
martyrdom. This is the best day of my life.” Mahmoud replies, “Thank you for raising me.” The video
was released in early June 2002. Days later, the man died carrying out a suicide attack on a Jewish
settlement. After her son’s death, Naima told a journalist: “Nobody wants their son to be killed. I
always wanted him to have a good life. But our land is occupied by the Israelis. We’re sacrificing our
sons to get our freedom.” She also said that she has nine more children, each of whom has a duty to
fight.28
CONCLUSION
12
A New Strategy
for Victory
UNDERSTANDING THAT SUICIDE terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation rather
than the product of Islamic fundamentalism has important implications for how the United States and
its allies should conduct the war on terrorism. Since the root cause of suicide terrorism does not lie in
an ideology, even among Muslims, spreading democracy across the Persian Gulf is not likely to be a
panacea so long as foreign combat troops remain on the Arabian Peninsula. If not for the world’s
interest in Persian Gulf oil, the obvious solution—just as it was for Ronald Reagan when the United
States faced suicide terrorism in Lebanon—might well be simply to abandon the region altogether.
This, however, is not possible, certainly not for the foreseeable future. Thus, the question is: can we
find a lasting solution to suicide terrorism that does not compromise our core interest in maintaining
access to one of the world’s key oil-producing regions?
The answer is a qualified yes. Although isolated suicide attacks may still occur, America and its
allies can pursue a strategy for victory that promises to substantially reduce the likelihood of
sustained campaigns of suicide terrorism without compromising our core international security
interests. To do this, we must recognize the limits both of offensive military action and of
concessions, as well as the value (and limits) of enhanced homeland security efforts. Most of all, we
need to recall the virtues of our traditional policy of “offshore balancing” in the Persian Gulf and
return to that strategy. Offshore balancing is the best way to secure our interests in the world’s key
oil-producing region without provoking more terrorism.
DEFINING VICTORY
Winning the war on terrorism requires a clear conception of victory. The enemy is not “terrorism” per
se. This is a tactic that has existed throughout history and that will continue to exist long after the
threat to the United States and its allies comes to an end. The enemy that matters is also not the
existence of one or a handful of anti-American terrorists, because isolated individual terrorist attacks
remain a relatively minor threat to American security. Rather, the threat that can and must be defeated
is campaigns of anti-American terrorism—especially suicide terrorism—a sustained sequence of
attacks designed to kill large numbers of innocent people by numerous individuals willing to die to
achieve this evil purpose.
Two main features distinguish today’s anti-American suicide terrorist campaigns. The individual
terrorists are most often shadowy, hard-to-find creatures whose existence is rarely known until they
strike. They are also most often walk-in volunteers, with little connection to terrorism or any other
form of violence until just before they sign up for their missions. Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker
on September 11, was not a member of al-Qaeda prior to going to Afghanistan in order to volunteer
for a mission on behalf of the group. Similarly, many al-Qaeda suicide terrorists who carried out their
attacks after September 11 were not associated with al-Qaeda until just months prior to their mission,
had never been to Afghanistan, and never met Osama bin Laden. These facts have an important
implication: even if we could miraculously root out every terrorist now planning to give up his or her
life to kill Americans, this would provide little lasting security—so long as more took their place.
Accordingly, the United States must achieve two goals to win the war on terrorism: (1) we must
defeat the current pool of terrorists now actively planning to kill Americans; and (2) we must prevent
a new, potentially larger generation from rising up. Both are necessary and each must be considered
independently, for success in one does not necessarily mean success in the other. Although some have
thought that a demonstration of American power would not only root out today’s terrorists but make
others think twice before joining them, the rise in anti-American suicide terrorism by al-Qaeda since
2002 and in Iraq since 2003 shows that heavy military force does not automatically solve our
problems and can make them worse. The trade-off between our two objectives exists because the use
of heavy offensive force to defeat the existing generation of terrorists is the most likely stimulus to the
rise of the next. For a lasting solution to anti-American terrorism, therefore, America’s strategy must
defeat the existing pool of terrorists while not encouraging more to take their place.
DEFEATING THE CURRENT GENERATION
While defeating the active generation of suicide terrorists seems daunting, there are important policy
lessons to learn from our experience.
The first key point is that offensive military action rarely works. Although military action can
disrupt a terrorist group’s operations temporarily, it rarely ends the threat. Of the thirteen major
suicide terrorist campaigns that had ended as of 2004, only one—the PKK versus Turkey—did so as
a result of leadership decapitation, when the leader, in Turkish custody, asked his followers to stop.
Depriving al-Qaeda of its Afghan bases was well worth doing, as are our efforts to keep Osama bin
Laden on the run and to capture him if we can. Gains from offensive military action, however, must be
weighed against costs. Although few, even in the Muslim world, objected to our actions in
Afghanistan, our invasion of Iraq has generated new support for anti-American terrorism and given
al-Qaeda a new lease on life, especially in Iraq itself and in Saudi Arabia.
The second is that, like offensive action, attempts to resolve threats through concessions must also
be handled very carefully, and also may not work. Concessions to the nationalist grievances of the
terrorists’ community can make it more difficult for the terrorists to recruit new suicide attackers and
strengthen the standing of more moderate elites. Partial or gradual, incremental concessions that are
dragged out over time, however, are likely to fail. Incremental compromises are often proposed as a
way of “building confidence,” but they also provide time for spoilers—the terrorists—to commit
more violence, undermining support for compromise on both sides. This is what happened to the
Israeli-Palestinian Oslo Accords, leading to the second intifada. Hence, concessions make sense only
if they actually satisfy most of the national community that the terrorists come from, and are then made
all at once in a single step. The issue is not whom to bargain with or how, or even whether any formal
agreement is necessary, but careful consideration by the state targeted by terrorism of what stakes it is
willing to relinquish, combined with good judgment about the real grievances of the opposing
community. Advocates of concessions should also recognize that even genuine resolution of the main
dispute will not end terrorism immediately, since any concessions will almost always strengthen the
terrorist leaders’ belief in their own coercive effectiveness. Denied further popular support,
however, the terrorist threat will gradually fade.
Third, even though attaining perfect security against suicide attackers is usually impossible,
homeland security must be a part of any solution. Ethnic civil wars can often be stopped by
demographic separation because this reduces both means and incentives for the sides to attack each
other.1 This logic applies with even more force to suicide terrorism, since gaining physical access to
the target area is the only genuinely demanding part of a suicide operation. Recent evidence from
Israel supports the value of separation. In August 2003, Israel completed the first major section of a
dense “security fence”—three barriers with other defensive measures—along its border with the
West Bank. Palestinian terrorist groups had carried out an average of more than twenty successful
suicide attacks over the previous three years, but only six in the following year. The fence probably
accounts for much of this decline, since it appears that no suicide attackers got through the barrier,
only through still unfinished sections. Hence, Israel now has an optimum strategy combining
concessions with defense: abandoning much of the territory it occupies in the West Bank and Gaza,
along with erecting physical barriers that prevent access to areas Israel is determined to retain.
The United States must step up border and immigration controls. We have substantially increased
background checks of immigrants and visa seekers, and these policies should be maintained. The
United States should also take stronger measures to control illegal immigration, especially across its
most porous border, with Mexico. In 1996 the United States began building a National Border Fence,
comparable to the Israeli barriers, covering a fourteen-mile stretch near San Diego. Extending the
fence to cover the entire 1,951-mile border with Mexico would cost about $6 billion, or about the
same as one month of U.S. operations in Iraq.2 Such measures would make it more difficult for alQaeda
to continue attacks inside the United States.
THE WRONG STRATEGY AGAINST THE NEXT GENERATION
Since September 11, 2001, the United States has responded to the growing threat of suicide terrorism
by embarking on a policy to conquer Muslim countries—not simply rooting out existing havens for
terrorists in Afghanistan but going further, to remake Muslim societies in the Persian Gulf. Proponents
claim that Islamic fundamentalism is the principal cause of suicide terrorism and that this radical
ideology is spreading through Muslim societies, dramatically increasing the prospects for a new,
larger generation of anti-American terrorists in the future. Hence, the United States should install new
governments in Muslim countries in order to transform and diminish the role of radical Islam in their
societies. This logic led to widespread support for the conquest of Iraq and is promoted as the
principal reason for regime change in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other Persian Gulf states in the future.
The goal of this strategy is correct, but its premise is faulty. American security depends critically
on diminishing the next generation of anti-American Muslim terrorists. However, Islamic
fundamentalism is not the main cause of suicide terrorism, and conquering Muslim countries to
transform their societies is likely to increase the number coming at us.
Spokesmen for the “Muslim transformation” strategy present a sweeping case. Although these
arguments are sometimes vague and incomplete, they all center on the presumption that Islamic
fundamentalism is the driving force behind the growing threat of suicide terrorism. According to
David Frum and Richard Perle, “The terrorists kill and will accept death for a cause with which no
accommodation is possible. That cause is militant Islam.” Moreover, these beliefs are not really
confined to a radical fringe, but infect even ordinary Muslims: “And though it is comforting to deny it,
all the available evidence indicates that militant Islam commands wide support, and even wider
sympathy, among Muslims worldwide, including Muslim minorities in the West.” For Frum and Perle,
“the roots of Muslim rage are to be found in Islam itself. . . . The Islamic world has lagged further and
further behind the Christian West.” While there are multiple terrorist groups, the common element of
Islam makes the threat monolithic: “The distinction between Islamic terrorism against Israel, on the
one hand, and Islamic terrorism against the United States and Europe, on the other, cannot be
sustained. . . . Worse, the ideology that justifies the terrible crimes of Hamas and Hezbollah is the
same ideology that justifies the crimes of al-Qaeda.” The result is an unlimited threat to dominate the
world: “This strain seeks to overthrow our civilization and remake the nations of the West into
Islamic societies, imposing on the whole world its religion and its law.” The solution, Perle and
Frum contend, is regime change: “We must move boldly against [Iran] and against all the other
sponsors of terrorism as well: Syria, Libya, and Saudi Arabia.”3
This argument is fatally flawed. First, al-Qaeda’s suicide terrorists have not come from the most
populous Islamic fundamentalist populations in the world, but mainly from the Muslim countries with
heavy American combat presence. From 1995 through 2003, there have been a total of seventy-one alQaeda
suicide terrorists. Only 6 percent (4 of 71) have come from the five countries with the world’s
largest Islamic fundamentalist populations—Pakistan (149 million), Bangladesh (114 million), Iran
(63 million), Egypt (62 million), and Nigeria (37 million). By contrast, 55 percent of al-Qaeda’s
suicide terrorists (39 of 71) have come from Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries, a region
whose population totals less than 30 million, but where the United States has stationed heavy combat
troops more or less continuously since 1990.
This comparison of the relative weight of American military presence and Islamic fundamentalism
is important. If Islamic fundamentalism is driving al-Qaeda’s suicide terrorism, then we would expect
a close relationship between the world’s largest Islamic fundamentalist populations and the
nationality of al-Qaeda’s suicide terrorists. However, this is not the case. The world’s five largest
Islamic fundamentalist populations without American military presence have produced al-Qaeda
suicide terrorists on the order of 1 per 71 million people, while the Persian Gulf countries with
American military presence have produced al-Qaeda suicide terrorists at a rate of 1 per million, or
70 times more often. Further, even if we narrow our definition of Islamic fundamentalism to Salafism,
the specific form associated with Osama bin Laden but not with Iran or even many Sunnis, American
military presence remains the pivotal factor driving al-Qaeda’s suicide terrorists. As Chapter 7
shows, the stationing of tens of thousands of American combat troops on the Arabian Peninsula from
1990 to 2001 probably made al-Qaeda suicide attacks against Americans, including the horrible
crimes committed on September 11, 2001, from five to twenty times more likely. Hence, the longer
American troops remain in Iraq and in the Persian Gulf in general, the greater the risk of the next
September 11.
Second, Islamic fundamentalism has not created a monolithic terrorism threat against the United
States or other Western countries. Islamic fundamentalism does not lead suicide terrorist
organizations to cooperate with each other in the ways that matter most—the sharing of suicide
terrorists across groups, or one group conducting a suicide terrorist campaign on behalf of another.
Hezbollah and Hamas have each waged numerous suicide terrorist campaigns against Israel, but
never for each other and never at the same time. Al-Qaeda has never attacked Israel at all, while
Hamas has never attacked the United States, and Hezbollah has attacked only Americans in Lebanon.
When one studies the various suicide terrorist campaigns by Hezbollah, Hamas, and al-Qaeda what
stands out is not that these groups share military resources or act in concert, like a monolithic
movement. Instead, what stands out is that each is driven by essentially nationalist goals to compel
target democracies to withdraw military forces from their particular homeland.
Third, the idea that all Muslims around the world are quietly anti-American because Islam
encourages hatred for American values for democracy and free markets does not square with the
facts. Indeed, robust evidence shows that American military policies, not revulsion against Western
political and economic values, are driving anti-Americanism among Muslims.
Our best information on Muslim attitudes comes from the Pew Global Attitudes surveys. Since
2000, approval of the United States has been declining sharply among Muslims from across a broad
cross section of countries—among both Muslims who were initially highly favorable to the United
States and those who were not. Even with the slight rise in 2004, America’s image even among our
closest Muslim allies is now a pale reflection of where it was four years ago.
The underlying reason is not discontent with Western political or economic values, which are
supported by majorities or near majorities in these countries.
Rather, the taproot is American military policy. Overwhelming majorities across a range of
Muslim countries believe that the United States conquered Iraq to control its oil or to help Israel
rather than to end terrorism or promote democracy, and fear that their country might be next.4
Fourth, the idea that Islamic fundamentalism is on the verge of world domination and poses a
realistic threat to impose Islamic laws in the United States and Europe is pure fantasy. Some radicals
may harbor such delusions. Some fearmongers may use such delusions to whip up hysteria. But these
are delusions nonetheless. The United States and Europe are overwhelmingly Christian countries and,
short of physical conquest, will remain so.5
Fifth, and most important, an attempt to transform Muslim societies through regime change is likely
to dramatically increase the threat we face. The root cause of suicide terrorism is foreign occupation
and the threat that foreign military presence poses to the local community’s way of life. Hence, any
policy that seeks to conquer Muslim societies in order, deliberately, to transform their culture is folly.
Even if our intentions are good, anti-American terrorism would likely grow, and grow rapidly.
Consider Iraq. Proponents of Muslim transformation were staunch advocates of the invasion of Iraq
in March 2003, fully expecting that American forces would be greeted as liberators rather than as
conquerors. The projected resistance was thought to be so light that the number of American troops
would be reduced to 30,000 just six months later. Muslims around the world would come to support
this policy, because the war would demonstrate America’s commitment to democracy and freedom.
Two years later, things have not turned out this way.
The resistance to American occupation has grown steadily from April 2003 to the present. Even
though the United States kills an average of 2,000 insurgents every month, the size of the insurgency
has grown from approximately 5,000 fighters in April 2003 to 18,000 in January 2005. The
overwhelming number of these fighters are local Iraqis and their numbers have risen along with
popular support for American withdrawal. Foreign fighters make up less than 5 percent, as estimated
by U.S. intelligence.
Moreover, suicide terrorism has been a prime weapon. Prior to April 2003, Iraq had never
experienced even a single suicide terrorist attack in its history. Since then, the trajectory has been
rising, with twenty suicide terrorist attacks in 2003 and more than fifty in 2004. The number is on
pace in the first months of 2005 to set a new record for the year. The main targets have been
American troops, Iraqi troops, and political leaders thought to be working with the Americans.
The identities of the Iraqi suicide attackers are now murky. This is not unusual in the early years of
a suicide terrorist campaign. Hezbollah did not publish many of the biographies and last testaments of
its suicide attackers until after the suicide operations had ended, a pattern adopted by the Tamil
Tigers in Sri Lanka as well. At the moment, our best information is that the attackers are from two
main sources, Sunni Iraqis and foreign fighters, principally from Saudi Arabia. If so, this would mean
that the two main sources of suicide terrorists in Iraq—Iraqis and Saudis—are from the countries
whose societies are most vulnerable to transformation by the presence of American combat troops.
This picture is fully consistent with the theory of suicide terrorism presented in this book.
Democracy is a source of peace. However, spreading democracy at the barrel of a gun in the
Persian Gulf is not likely to lead to a lasting solution against suicide terrorism. Just as al-Qaeda’s
suicide terrorism campaign began against American troops on the Arabian Peninsula and then
escalated to the United States, we should recognize that the longer that American forces remain in
Iraq, the greater the threat of the next September 11 from groups who have not targeted us before.
Even if our intentions are good, the United States cannot depend on democratic governments in the
region to dampen the risk of suicide terrorism so long as American forces are stationed there.
DEFEATING SUICIDE TERRORISM
To win the war on terrorism, the United States and other democracies under fire must seek to prevent
the rise of a new, larger generation of anti-American terrorists. Given the close association of foreign
occupation and suicide terrorism, this goal can be achieved only if the United States substantially
alters its military policy toward the Persian Gulf.
The present realities in the region create an important opportunity to develop a new strategy for
victory in the war on terrorism. Saddam Hussein’s control of Iraq was the core reason that the United
States has stationed tens of thousands of combat forces in multiple countries on the Arabian Peninsula
since 1990. Republican and Democratic administrations both supported this policy, believing that
Saddam’s regime posed a threat to Persian Gulf oil and to our allies in the region. Today, this is no
longer true. With Saddam Hussein out of power, Iraq is poised to become an American ally. Whether
one supported the war in Iraq or not, we should acknowledge that the emergence of Iraq as an
American ally creates an opening for the United States to fundamentally recast its military policy
toward the region as a whole.
Historically, American strategy for the Persian Gulf rested on the concept of “off-shore”
balancing.6 For decades prior to 1990, the United States recognized that access to Persian Gulf oil
was crucial to the world’s economy and that threats could emerge from multiple directions, including
domestic instability in the region. To meet these challenges, U.S. administrations from Harry
Truman’s to Ronald Reagan’s used foreign assistance to build strong alliances with key local states,
while developing the capability to rapidly deploy American combat forces into the region should a
crisis emerge. During the 1980s, the United States formed an alliance with Iraq and Saudi Arabia,
which not only helped contain the threat from Iran but also built the critical infrastructure that allowed
for the rapid deployment of American power to defeat Iraq’s aggression against Kuwait in 1990.
Off-shore balancing is again America’s best strategy for the Persian Gulf. Now that the United
States has removed Saddam Hussein from power and shepherded Iraq through the foundational phases
of a democratic transition, American combat presence in the Persian Gulf provides diminishing
returns to U.S. security. Whether the transition to democracy in Iraq goes well or not, the mere
presence of tens of thousands of U.S. troops in the region is likely to fuel continued fear of foreign
occupation that will encourage anti-American terrorism in the future. Hence, our objective should be
to withdraw all American combat forces from the region expeditiously, while working with Iraq,
Saudi Arabia, and other Persian Gulf states to ensure that they maintain the critical infrastructure for a
rapid return of U.S. forces should that prove necessary.
The purpose of off-shore balancing is to preserve access to Persian Gulf oil, not to manage the
internal politics of states in the region. To achieve this goal, it is important to have the friendliest
possible relations with all three of the major states—Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran—or with at least
two of them, if their behavior toward one another makes cooperative relations with all three
impossible. This means refraining from the use of military coercion unless one of these countries
actually attacks another or otherwise immediately threatens the balance of power in the Persian Gulf.
This also means stationing no American combat troops on the ground, but maintaining permanent
readiness to intervene massively and rapidly if necessary, including maintaining the current
infrastructure of military bases in the region.
The United States may or may not have to fight another Gulf War someday. If we do, the cardinal
purpose should be the same as for the first Gulf War in 1991—protecting oil—not the same as the
purpose of the second in 2003—regime change. Democratization is the long-run future of states in the
Persian Gulf.7 The United States can play an important role in facilitating democratic transitions at
arm’s length, just as it did in Eastern Europe in the 1990s and just as it is doing in Egypt and on the
West Bank today. However, seeking to impose democracy on Iran or Saudi Arabia by force can
trigger nationalist sentiments that encourage anti-American terrorism and large-scale internal turmoil
—which, ultimately, threaten America’s core interests. Together, Iran and Saudi Arabia have 100
million Muslims—four times the population of Iraq. While we can topple their regimes, postwar
reconstruction would be even more complex and debilitating than it has been in Iraq, and preventing
chaos from breaking out across the region may become impossible for America’s already
overstretched army.
Conquest is also not the best policy for dealing with the possibility that Iran may acquire nuclear
weapons. Since Tehran could conceal major nuclear facilities, air strikes, the seizure of chunks of
territory, or other limited military options cannot guarantee to set back the country’s nuclear
development. Only a massive invasion to occupy the entire country—three times the size of Iraq—
would suffice. Further, the United States should expect Iranian retaliation, either in the region or at
home, because the fires that drove the popular revolution against America’s ally, the Shah of Iran, in
1979 could be re-ignited with even greater force against an actual invasion. Most important, Iran’s
political leaders from the Ayatollah Khomeini to today’s clerics have never demonstrated a reckless
disregard for America’s capacity to retaliate for unprovoked aggression against it, and so we have no
actual basis to doubt that we could live with a nuclear Iran. In this case, the risks of action outweigh
the risks of deterrence. To limit the danger, the United States should join Europe’s current effort to
encourage Iran to abide by the limits of the Non-Proliferation Treaty by using access to trade as a
means of strengthening the moderates in the regime.
Off-shore balancing is America’s best strategy, but it is not perfect and has risks. The balance of
power among Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia as well as internal instability in these states is likely to
pose important challenges for decades to come. However, the United States has powerful economic
and diplomatic tools to manage the local balance of power, while removal of American combat
forces from the region is likely to diminish the main source of instability to the Saudi regime. Further,
American naval power would remain a formidable military instrument for influence in the region,
should immediate uses of power prove necessary. Above all, a return to off-shore balancing will send
an unmistakable signal that the United States is not in the business of empire, and will thus suck the
oxygen out of the atmosphere that breeds anti-American suicide terrorism.
Sometimes the right policy is to sacrifice nonessentials to get the best deal on core interests—in
this case, oil—while maintaining the power to enforce that deal. This is what off-shore balancing
does. By assuring the local populations in the Persian Gulf that the United States has no imperial
designs, it reduces al-Qaeda’s power to mobilize popular support, while safeguarding America’s
core interests in the region. Al-Qaeda leaders could try to tout this as “appeasement,” but fewer and
fewer will bother to listen.
Ultimately, energy independence would be an even better alternative to off-shore balancing, since
it would reduce our stake in the Persian Gulf altogether. To do this, the United States must reduce our
dependence on imported oil. Since nearly all American oil fields have passed their peak and are now
in decline, energy independence must mean greater reliance on alternative energy sources and
conservation—something that is completely up to us.
Victory will take time. The threat of suicide terrorism against Americans has been building for
over a decade, and we cannot reverse the underlying causes quickly. For this reason, it is crucial to
immediately tighten border and immigration controls, while continuing to use offensive military action
against al-Qaeda terrorists whom we locate. At the same time, the United States should lay the
groundwork for withdrawing all American troops from the Persian Gulf and should adopt the strategy
of off-shore balancing to secure our interests in the region. In the long term, the United States should
work toward energy independence, thus reducing the need for heavy involvement in the region as a
whole. These measures will not provide a perfect solution, but they can make it substantially more
difficult for al-Qaeda to carry out future attacks in the United States, and, ultimately, make it harder to
explain to Muslims why they should attack America at all.
For nearly ten years, al-Qaeda suicide terrorists have been dying to win. With the right strategy,
however, it is the United States that is poised for victory.
APPENDIX I
SUICIDE TERRORIST CAMPAIGNS, 1980–2003
APPENDIX II
Occupations by Democratic States, 1980-2003
APPENDIX III
Salafism in Major Sunni Muslim
Majority Countries
THIS APPENDIX EXPLAINS my estimates of the size of the Salafi-influenced populations in the
thirty-four Sunni-majority Muslim countries with populations of 1 million or more. With the exception
of one attacker from Lebanon, all al-Qaeda suicide terrorists from 1995 to 2003 were nationals from
among these thirty-four countries.
All Islamic fundamentalists believe that society should be organized according to Islamic law
(Sharia), which is derived from the acts, statements, and ways of life of Muhammad. All accept the
authority of the Quran, the holy book of Islam containing the words of God revealed to Muhammad
during his lifetime. They differ on the authority of other sources. The Sunna are the body of sayings
and deeds of Muhammad as collected by his companions and written down about sixty years after his
death. The Sunna is part of the Hadith, the collection of all laws and stories about Muhammad’s way
of life as well as later interpretations of apparent contradictions in the early texts, including
commentary on appropriate behavior in subsequent events, such as when Muslims lived under other
laws.
Salafism is the belief that society should be organized according to the Quran and Sunna only. It is
separate from other forms of Islamic fundamentalism, such as Sufism, which are open to more recent
sources of Islamic jurisprudence. It is also separate from militant Salafism, which advocates the use
of force to achieve Salafi aims.
The category of Salafi-influenced people includes not only committed Salafis but also the
population that would be exposed to Salafi beliefs by living in a community with a Salafi ideology.
The intensity of exposure to Salafism as experienced by typical individuals in a given community
would depend on such factors as whether the government is openly committed to promoting Salafism;
the prevalence of schools with Salafi curricula and mosques with Salafi clerics; and public support
for Salafi political parties. Hence, these indicators serve as rough measures to estimate the existence
of sizable Salafi-influenced populations. The estimates below are for 2000, unless otherwise stated.
Sunni Countries with Salafi-Influenced Populations
Afghanistan: Afghanistan has 25 million Muslims and was governed by the Taliban, with a Salafi
ideology, from 1996 to 2001. I count the 10 million Pushtuns, who supported the Taliban, as Salafiinfluenced.
Source: Kristin Mendoza, “Islam and Islamism in Afghanistan” (Harvard Law School,
Afghan Legal History Project, 2004).
Algeria: Algeria has 31 million Sunni Muslims. I count 19 million, or 60 percent of the
population, as Salafi-influenced, on the basis of the Islamic Salvation Front
(FIS) gain of 60 percent of the vote in provincial elections in 1991, after
which military suppression prevented a national FIS victory and triggered the
Algerian civil war. Scholars of Algerian Islamism say that the FIS is mainly
Salafi. According to an ICG Middle East Report, “The FIS was largely
constituted by elements drawn from the dissident wing of the Salafiyya and the
local variants of the Muslim Brotherhood.” Similarly, Hugh Roberts says,
“Most of the Islamist groups that developed in Algeria in the 1980s belonged
in one sense or another to the Salafi trend. . . . By 1990, Salafism . . . was
openly oriented and linked to Wahhabism. . . . The founders of the FIS came
overwhelmingly from the Salafi trend.” Sources: “Islamism, Violence, and
Reform in Algeria” (Brussels: ICG Middle East Report, #29), p. 3; Hugh
Roberts, “North African Islamism” (London: Development Research Centre,
London School of Economics, October 2003), p. 25; and Quintan
Wiktorowicz, “Centrifugal Tendencies in the Algerian Civil War,” Arab
Studies Quarterly, vol. 23, no. 3 (Summer 2001), pp. 65–82.
Bangladesh: Bangladesh has 114 million Sunni Muslims and an elected parliament. I count 14
million as Salafi-influenced, which is the percentage of the vote for two selfproclaimed
Salafi parties in 2001, Jamaat-i-Islami with 7.5 percent and Islami
Oikyo Jote with 4.5 percent. Sources: Bertil Lintner, “Religious Extremism
and Nationalism in Bangladesh,” The Bangladesh Observer (September 3,
2002); M. Rashdiuzzaman, “The Election and a New Political Reality in
Bangladesh in 2001,” Asian Survey (January/February 2002), vol. 42, no. 1,
pp. 183–91; and Sudha Ramachandran, “Behind the Harkat-ul Jihad al-Islami
in Bangladesh,” Asia Times (December 1, 2004).
Egypt: Egypt has 62 million Sunni Muslims and an authoritarian government with a parliament
where 10 percent of the seats are openly contested. I count 23 million as
Salafi-influenced, since the Salafi Muslim Brotherhood regularly wins half of
the open seats in parliamentary elections and experts generally predict that the
Muslim Brotherhood would win over a third in an open election. Hasan alBanna,
the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928, portrayed his
purpose as a “Salafi mission” and said his society “follows the way of the
noble Quran, takes the path of the Great Prophet, does not deviate from what
has come down to us in God’s Book, his Messenger’s Sunna [companions],
and the conduct of the venerable forefathers.” In the 1950s and 1960s, Sayyid
Qutb developed an explicitly militant version of the Brotherhood’s philosophy
that Muslim Brotherhood leaders publicly rejected in the 1970s. However,
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood did not reject the call that all Muslims should
behave according to the Quran and Sunna over national laws. The 2005
mission statement of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood declares that it is “a salafi
mission” and calls for “the return to Islam, to its pure meanings, to the book of
God and the Sunna of his Prophet,” seeking “to apply the purified Sunna in all
actions.” It also says, “The principles that are stated in the book of God and
the Sunna of his Prophet . . . [are those] that the Muslim person, Muslim
household, Muslim society, Muslim state and Muslim nation must adhere to.”
Sources: Abdel Azim Ramadan, “Fundamentalist Influence in Egypt,” in Marty
and Appleby, Fundamentalism and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1993), pp. 152–83; Ruth M. Beitler and Cindy R. Jebb, “Egypt as a
Failing State,” (Colorado Springs: USAF Academy, Institute for National
Security Studies, July 2003); ICG Middle East Briefing, Islamism in North
Africa II (April 20, 2004); and www.ikhwanonline.net.
Indonesia: Indonesia has 185 million Sunni Muslims. I count 26 million as Salafi-influenced,
which is the vote percentage for self-proclaimed Salafi parties (14 percent) in
2004. The oldest Salafi movement, called Muhammadiyah, was based
“exclusively on study of the Quran and the Hadith” and is “committed to
purifying Islam and Islamic practices from innovation and idolatrous
practices.” It was represented by the National Mandate Party, led by the head
of Muhammadiyah, which received 6.44 percent of the 2004 vote. A newer
Salafi party, the Prosperous Justice Party, which rejects “tolerating deviants”
who are “undermining the principles of aqidah [faith]” also gained 7.34
percent of the 2004 vote. Sources: “Indonesia Backgrounder: Why Salafism
and Terrorism Mostly Don’t Mix,” Asia Report, no. 43 (September 13, 2004);
and James J. Fox, “Currents in Contemporary Islam in Indonesia” (Research
School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, April
2004), p. 18.
Jordan: Jordan is virtually all Sunni, with 6 million Muslims and an elected parliament. I count a
third, or 2 million, as Salafi-influenced, because Salafis are the dominant
clerics, are widespread in every major city, and actively recruit from the
Muslim Brotherhood, a moderate movement in Jordan that received 25 to 40
percent of the vote in recent elections. The leading scholar of Salafism in
Jordan says, “The Salafi movement is at least as large as the Muslim
Brotherhood.” Source: Quintan Wiktorowicz, The Management of Islamic
Activism: Salafis, the Muslim Brotherhood, and State Power in Jordan
(Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2001), p. 145.
Nigeria: Nigeria has 68 million Sunni Muslims. I count 37 million as Salafi-influenced. This is
the population of the twelve northern provinces, all Muslim, which adopted
Salafi courts in 1999. Paul Lubeck says, “Among Muslims in the northern
states, the Izala, or Society for the Eradication of Innovation and the
Establishment of the Sunna, constitute the most influential revival movement. .
. . The inspiration for Izala was Abubakar Gummi . . . principal beneficiary of
Saudi and Gulf state patronage in Nigeria. . . . In step with Wahhabi and
Islamist reforms in the Muslim world, Gummi declared the practices of Sufi
brotherhoods to be innovations that lacked roots in the Quran or the practices
(Sunna) of the Prophet and his immediate companions (Salafi).” Sources: Paul
Lubeck, et al., “The Globality of Islam: Sharia in Nigeria” (Santa Cruz, Calif.:
Center for Global, International and Regional Studies, University of
California–Santa Cruz, May 2003), p. 17; “Nigeria: Country Report” (Vienna:
ACCORD/UNHCR, 2002); and Ousamane Kane, Muslim Modernity in
Postcolonial Nigeria: A Study of the Society for the Reinstatement of
Tradition (Boston: Brill, 2003).
Oman: Oman has 2 million Sunni Muslims. I count all as Salafi-influenced, since Islam is the
official religion, Sharia is the basis for legislation, and judgments are made
according to the tenets of the first century of Islam. “Oman’s religious culture
has remained loyal to the precepts of the first century of Islam and is ingrained
in Omanis today: conservativism, purity. . . .” Sources: “Oman: Political
Development” (Washington, D.C.: International Republican Institute, July
1995), p. 10; and Sayed Hassan Amin, Middle East Legal Systems (Glasgow,
U.K.: Royston, 1985).
Pakistan: Pakistan has 149 million Sunni Muslims and an elected parliament. I count 43 million
as Salafi-influenced. This is the total of the populations of the North-West
Frontier Province and Baluchistan, governed by the self-proclaimed Salafi
Jamaat-i-Islami, which won control of these provincial governments in 2002,
and the fraction of the populations that correspond to the voting percentages
for the JI in Punjab (3 percent) and Sind (6 percent). Source: European Union
Election Observation Mission, “Pakistan National and Provincial Assembly
Elections 10 October 2002, Final Report.”
Saudi Arabia: Saudi Arabia has 18 million Sunni Muslims and Salafism is the official ideology
of the Saudi state. Commonly called Wahhabism, it is reflected in the
textbooks used in the mandatory state-run education system. Sources:
Christopher M. Blanchard, “The Islamic Traditions of Wahhabism and
Salafiyya” (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, RS21695,
August 9, 2004); and Saudi Arabia Handbook (Washington, D.C.: Library of
Congress, Federal Research Division, 2000).
Somalia: Somalia has a virtually all-Sunni population of 10 million and lacked a central
government in the 1990s. I count half of the population as Salafi-influenced,
on the basis of the Salafi courts that emerged in Mogadishu and across the
country in the mid-1990s, the leaders of which formed a “transitional”
national government in 2000. The Islamist movement that serves as the guide
for these courts is al-Islah, which borrows its vision from the Egyptian
Muslim Brotherhood, receives Saudi funds, and calls for an Islamic state
based on a return to the original sources of Islam at the time of the Prophet.
Sources: “Somalia: Countering Terrorism in a Failed State” (Brussels:
International Crisis Group African Report No. 45, May 23, 2002), p. 18; Ted
Dagne, “Africa and the War on Terrorism” (Washington, D.C.: CRS, January
2002); and Abdurahaman Abdullah, “Recovering Somali State: The Islamic
Factor” (Montreal: McGill University, Islamic Institute, 2002).
Sudan: Sudan has 21 million Sunnis. I count all as Salafi-influenced, since the ruling National
Islamic Front (NIS) is a Muslim Brotherhood–inspired political party
committed to Salafi beliefs. The NIS came to power in 1989 to return Sudan
to rule by “the Sharia, as embodied in the Quran and Sunna.” Official NIS
statements say, “The teachings of the Quran as embodied in the political
practice of the Prophet Mohammad constitute an eternal model that Muslims
are bound to adopt as a perfect standard for all time.” According to Abdullah
Ali Ibrahim, the leader of NIS, Hasan al-Turbi “has no place for Sufism and
Mahism in his enterprise of Islamic revival” and believes that “religion is the
eternal and legitimate heritage of Islam comprising the Quran and traditions of
the Prophet, the Sunna.” Sources: Aharon Layish and Gabriel R. Warburg, The
Reinstatement of Islamic Law in Sudan (Boston: Brill, 2002), p. 82; and
Adullah Ali Ibrahim, “A Theology of Modernity: Hasan al-Turbi and Islamic
Renewal in Sudan,” Africa Today, pp. 195–222.
Tunisia: Tunisia is an all-Sunni state of 10 million with an authoritarian government. I count half
of the population as Salafi-influenced, on the basis of the popularity of
Ennahada, widely viewed by scholars as the most popular political movement
in Tunisia today, even though the government cracked down on it in 1990.
Ennahada adheres to Salafi principles, calling for “the rejection of doctrinal
or jurisprudential taqlid (imitation) and for a return to the original sources,
that is the Quran, the Sunna, and the experience of the first three generations of
Muslims.” Rachid Ghannouchi, the leader, was educated in Salafi schools and
said in 1989: “The Quran and the Sunna are the ultimate law that governs the
behavior of rulers as well as all Muslims. They are also above any invented
law.” Sources: Azzam Tamimi, Rachid Ghannouchi (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2001), p. 42; and Mohamed Elhachmi Hamdi, The
Politicisation of Islam: A Case Study of Tunisia (Boulder, Colo.: Westview
Press, 1998), p. 109.
Yemen: Yemen has a population of 18 million Muslims, of whom 11 million are Sunni and 7
million Shia. I count the 8 million Sunnis in the north as Salafi-influenced,
since there are many Salafi institutions and charitable organizations as well as
prominent Salafi clerics there. The Shia would not be expected to support
Sunni beliefs, while the Sunnis in the south could be expected to resist beliefs
of the north following the war that led to unity with the north in 1990. Bernard
Haykel says that the “Yemeni government has since the early 1970s adopted
and promoted a Salafi understanding of Islam and this has been supported
financially by the Saudi government through the so-called Scientific Institutes
that have been established throughout the north. . . . [V]irtually every student
who was born post-1970 would have been exposed to Salafi teachings of
Islam.” The government did close some Salafi institutions in the wake of
September 11. Sources: Hiroshi Matsumoto, “Yemen Between
Democratization and Prolonged Power” (Tokyo: Japan Institute of
International Affairs, 2003); Bernard Haykel, Revival and Reform in Islam
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003); and Bernard A. Haykel,
personal communication, January 24, 2005.
Non-Salafi Sunni Countries
Albania: The population is 70 percent Sunni. Albania is a secular democratic state with no
Salafi political or social movements. Source: Albania: A Country Study
(Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, Federal Research Division, 1992).
Burkina Faso: Burkina Faso has a population that is 50 percent Sunni, a working secular
democratic government as of 2000, and no significant Salafi political or
social movements. Sources: Country Review: Burkina Faso (Houston:
Commercial Data International, 1999); and “Burkina Faso: International
Religious Freedom Report” (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of State,
2002).
Chad: Chad’s population is 51 percent Sunni Muslim, 35 percent Christian, and 14 percent other
religions. Some 10 percent of Muslims in Chad are considered Islamic
fundamentalists, who overwhelmingly follow the Tijaniyyah Sufi order.
Source: Abdelkerim Ousman, “The Potential of Islamic Terrorism in SubSaharan
Africa,” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society,
vol. 18, nos. 1–2 (December 2004), pp. 87–88.
Guinea: Guinea has a population that is 85 percent Sunni, a secular authoritarian government,
and no significant Salafi political or social movements. Sources: J. D. Fage
with William Tordoff, A History of Africa (New York: Routledge, 2002); and
“Guinea: International Religious Freedom Report” (Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Department of State, 2003).
Kuwait: The population is 60 percent Sunni, 25 percent Shia, and 15 percent other religions.
Kuwait has a secular authoritarian government that experimented with
parliamentary elections in the 1990s. The self-identified Salafi party, Islamic
Popular Alliance, won less than 10 percent of the vote, representing far fewer
than 1 million people. Source: Nadia Akil Zaman, “Kuwait’s Islamist
Movement and Its Role in Contemporary Politics,” CSIS Briefing Notes on
Islam, Society, and Politics, vol. 2, no. 1 (May 1999).
Kyrgyzstan: Kyrgyzstan is a secular authoritarian state. The population is 75 percent Sunni.
About half pray only rarely or not at all and those who do identify with Sufi
orders. Sources: ICG, “Is Radical Islam Inevitable in Central Asia?”; and
Angel M. Rabasa, et al., The Muslim World After 9/11 (Washington, D.C.:
RAND Corporation, 2004).
Libya: Libya has an almost completely Sunni population and an authoritarian government.
Muammar al-Qadhafi came to power in 1969 on the basis of his own ideology
blending socialism and Islam, which has put his regime at odds with Salafi
movements ever since. His government has actively suppressed such
movements. Sources: Dirk Vandewalle, Libya Since Independence (Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998); and Obeidi Amal, Political Culture in
Libya (Richmond, Surrey, U.K.: Curzon, 2001).
Malaysia: The population is 60 percent Muslim and 40 percent Chinese and Indian. Although
Islam is the official religion, there are strong constitutional guarantees for
freedom of religion. Parti Islam Se-Malaysia, a Salafi political party calling
for the establishment of an Islamic state with the Quran and Sunna as the
constitutional guide for Islamic law, has existed since 1951, but won only 3
percent of the national vote in 2004, representing fewer than 1 million
Muslims. Sources: CIA World Fact Book (Washington, D.C.: Central
Intelligence Agency, 2005); and Rabasa, The Muslim World After 9/11.
Mali: The population is 90 percent Sunni. The state is a secular democracy and has no
significant Salafi political or social movements. Source: Country Profile:
Mali (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, Federal Research Division,
January 2005).
Mauritania: The population is almost entirely Sunni. Islam is the state religion and Sharia the
law of the land. Although various Islamic doctrines are prominent (such as
Qadiriya and the Tijaniya), these are all based on Sufism or other non-Salafi
forms of Islamic fundamentalism. Sources: A Country Study: Mauritania
(Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1988); and Carlos Echeverria Jesus,
“Radical Islam in the Maghreb,” Orbis (Spring 2004), 1–13.
Morocco: Morocco has an almost entirely Sunni population, an authoritarian government, and a
legal system based on a combination of French and Islamic law. King Hassan
II suppressed a small Salafi movement in the early 1960s. Since then, Sufism
has been the dominant form of Sunni fundamentalism and only a handful of
small Salafi schools operate today. Source: Henry Munson, Religion and
Power in Morocco (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).
Niger: Niger has a population that is 80 percent Sunni, a working secular democracy as of 2001,
and no significant Salafi political or social movements. Sources: Country
Review: Niger (Houston: Commercial Data International, 1999); and “Niger:
International Religious Freedom Report” (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department
of State, 2002).
Senegal: Senegal has an almost completely Sunni population. Islam is predominately represented
by various Sufi orders, mainly the Tijaniya and the Muridiya, and the legal
system is a mixture of secular and Islamic law, in which Sharia is applied in
matters of marriage, divorce, property, and inheritance. Source: Leonardo A.
Villalon, Islamic Society and State Power in Senegal (Cambridge, U.K.:
Cambridge University Press, 1995).
Sierra Leone: Sierra Leone has a population that is 60 percent Sunni, a working secular
democratic government as of 2002, and no significant Salafi political or
social movements. Sources: Bankole Thompson, The Constitutional History
and Law of Sierra Leone, 1961–1995 (Lanham, Md.: University Press of
America, 1997); and “Sierra Leone: International Religious Freedom Report”
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of State, 2002).
Syria: The population is 75 percent Sunni. Syria is a secular authoritarian state. The government
suppressed a small Salafi movement in the early 1980s, massacring 20,000
following an uprising in the city of Hama in 1982. Since then, Islamic
fundamentalist groups have been largely dormant. Source: Rabasa, The
Muslim World After 9/11.
Tajikistan: Tajikistan is a secular authoritarian state. The population is 85 percent Sunni. Fewer
than half pray regularly and those who do identify with Sufi orders. Sources:
ICG, “Is Radical Islam Inevitable in Central Asia?”; and Rabasa, The Muslim
World After 9/11.
Turkey: Turkey is a secular democracy with no Salafi political parties. Its population is almost
completely Sunni. Since the 1970s, Turkey has experienced many popular
Islamic movements. Yavuz Hakan states that “Turkish Islam is rooted in
Sufism, particularly Naksibendi Sufi orders”; Necmettin Erbakan, the first
Islamic prime minister, in 1996–97, emerged from this tradition. Sources:
Yavuz M. Hakan, Islamic Political Identity in Turkey (London: Oxford
University Press, 2003), p. 274; and Yildiz Atasoy, “Islamic Revivalism and
the Nation-State Project,” Social Compass, vol. 44, no. 1 (1997).
Turkmenistan: Turkmenistan’s population is 90 percent Sunni. The country has a secular
authoritarian government, a long tradition of Sufism, and several important
Sufi religious sites. Sources: ICG, “Is Radical Islam Inevitable in Central
Asia?”; and Rabasa, The Muslim World After 9/11.
United Arab UAE has 2 million Sunni Muslims and an authoritarian governEmirates:
ment. Although Islam is the official religion and Sharia is the basis for legislation,
judgments are made according to traditional opinions and analogical
reasoning, instead of strict adherence to Sunna or Hadith. Source: Country
Study: United Arab Emirates (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress,
Federal Research Division, 1993).
Uzbekistan: Uzbekistan is an authoritarian state that outlaws Islamic political parties. The
population is 90 percent Sunni, the majority of whom do not pray or attend
religious services. Virtually all of the most religious, perhaps 30 percent of
the population, identify with Sufi orders. The Islamic Movement of
Uzbekistan, a Salafi militant group with possibly several thousand members,
arose in the 1990s and was soon repressed by the government. Sources: “Is
Radical Islam Inevitable in Central Asia?”; and Rabasa, The Muslim World
After 9/11.
Notes
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1: THE GROWING THREAT
1. Specifically, the data on suicide terrorism in this book are from the period beginning January 1, 1980, and ending December 31, 2003.
Data collection continues and the raw data are available at the archive for the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism, housed at the
University of Chicago.
2. “Final Instructions to the Hijackers of September 11,” reprinted in Bruce Lincoln, Holy Terrors: Thinking About Religion After
September 11 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp. 93–98.
3. If September 11 is counted, suicide attack accounts for 73 percent of total deaths.
CHAPTER 2: EXPLAINING SUICIDE TERRORISM
1. The word “terrorism” dates from the Jacobin government’s “Reign of Terror” (1793–94) to eliminate opposition to the French
Revolution, but did not come into common usage until the late nineteenth century, when a group of Russian revolutionaries adopted the
term to describe their violent struggle against the tsar’s rule. Since then, governments have sometimes been accused of terrorism, either
against their own people, to suppress dissent (Soviet show trials in the 1930s), or against enemy states, to compel their surrender in war
(British fire-bombing of German cities in World War II). However, “terrorism” still signifies, principally, violent acts against innocents that
are committed by nongovernmental actors—such as revolutionaries, nationalists, or ethnic groups—and are intended to challenge the
existing political order.
2. On the definition and goals of terrorism, see Alex P. Schmid and Albert J. Jongman, Political Terrorism (New Brunswick, N.J.:
Transaction Books, 1988); and U.S. Department of State, Patterns of Global Terrorism (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 2001). Although one could broaden the definition of “terrorism” to include the actions of a national government intended to cause
terror among an opposing population, use of such a broad definition would distract attention from what policy makers would most like to
know: how to combat the threat posed by non-state actors to the national security of the United States and our allies. Further, it could
also create analytic confusion. Terrorist organizations and state governments have different levels of resources, face different kinds of
incentives, and are susceptible to different types of pressures. Accordingly, the determinants of their behavior are not likely to be the
same, and thus the two require separate theoretical investigations.
3. Carol Edler Baumann, Diplomatic Kidnapings: A Revolutionary Tactic of Urban Terrorism (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1973); Richard
Clutterbuck, Living with Terrorism (London: Faber & Faber, 1975); Peter St. John, Air Piracy, Airport Security, and International
Terrorism (New York: Quorum Books, 1991).
4. Brian N. Jenkins, “Will Terrorists Go Nuclear?” Rand Report P-5541 (Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand Corporation, 1975), p. 4.
5. For discussions of destructive terrorism, see David C. Rapoport, Assassination and Terrorism (Toronto: CBC Merchandising, 1971);
Paul Elliott, Brotherhoods of Fear (London: Blandford, 1998); and Barbara W. Tuchman, The Proud Tower (New York: Macmillan,
1966). Some popular lists count the Anarchists as suicide terrorists, but the characterization is inaccurate. From 1870 through World War
I, Anarchist terrorists assassinated a number of heads of state and attacked institutions associated with bourgeois government and
society, using a variety of destructive tactics such as throwing bombs into crowded markets and music halls. Although a number of
terrorists were subsequently captured, executed, and touted as martyrs, none carried out attacks in which they killed themselves and few
of the attacks would even appear to qualify as suicide missions, since the vast majority of attackers tried to escape. Good accounts
include James Joll, The Anarchists (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979); David Miller, Anarchism (London: J. M. Dent,
1984); and George Woodcock, Anarchism (Cleveland, Ohio: Meridian Books, 1962).
6. Hunger strikes and self-immolation are not ordinarily considered acts of terrorism, because their main purpose is to evoke
understanding and sympathy from the target audience, not to cause terror. For a valuable discussion of moral coercion, see Reinhold
Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society (New York: Scribners, 1960).
7. A probable additional instance is the Forty-seven Ronin in late sixteenth-century Japan. For the events, see John Allyn, The Fortyseven
Ronin Story (Rutland, VT: Charles Tuttle, 1970).
8. The two groups were not identical—the Zealots generally attacked Roman elites, while the Sicarii killed prominent Jews collaborating
with Rome—and neither was monolithic, being more a loose movement than a tightly knit network.
9. Prominent examples of the extensive literature on the Zealots and Sicarii include Martin Hengel, The Zealots (Edinburgh: T. & T.
Clark, 1989); David C. Rapoport, “Fear and Trembling: Terrorism in Three Religious Traditions,” American Political Science Review,
vol. 78, no. 3 (Sept. 1984), pp. 658–77; K. Kohler, “The Zealots,” The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1905); S.
Zeitlin, “The Sicarii and the Zealots,” Jewish Quarterly Review, vol. 57 (1967), pp. 251–70; and Richard A. Horsley, “The Sicarii:
Ancient Jewish ‘Terrorists,’ ” Journal of Religion, vol. 59, no. 4 (1979), pp. 435–58.
10. Josephus, Antiquities, vol. 15, p. 288. Quoted in Hengel, The Zealots, p. 257, who also provides a general discussion of martyrdom in
the group, pp. 256–69.
11. Bernard Lewis, The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), quote from p. 47. See also
Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Order of Assassins: The Struggle of the Early Nizari Ismailis Against the Islamic World (The Hague:
Mouton & Co., 1955); and W. B. Bartlett, The Assassins: The Story of Medieval Islam’s Secret Sect (Stroud, Eng.: Sutton, 2001).
12. For excellent coverage of the kamikazes, see Richard O’Neill, Suicide Squads (New York: Ballantine Books, 1981); Albert Axell
and Hideaki Kase, Kamikaze: Japan’s Suicide Gods (London: Longmans, 2002); and Rikihei Inoguchi and Tadashi Nakajima, The
Divine Wind (New York: Bantam Books, 1960). On estimates for the total number of the various kamikaze strikes, see Emiko OhnukiTierney,
Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), p. 167. On American
casualties, see Hatsuho Naito, Thunder Gods (New York: Kodansha International/USA, 1989), p. 25.
13. Tim Pat Coogan, On the Blanket: The Inside Story of the IRA Prisoners’‘Dirty’Protest (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997);
Jonathan Steele, “Ultimate Sacrifice,” The Guardian (London), January 20, 1999; Scott Anderson, “The Hunger Warriors,” New York
Times (October 21, 2001).
14. For example, Brian N. Jenkins, International Terrorism (Washington, D.C.: Rand Corporation, 1985); Walter Laqueur, The Age of
Terrorism (Boston: Little, Brown, 1987); and Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).
15. Jerrold M. Post, “Terrorist Psycho-Logic: Terrorist Behavior as a Product of Psychological Forces,” Martin Kramer, “The Moral
Logic of Hizballah,” and Ariel Merari, “The Readiness to Kill and Die: Suicidal Terrorism in the Middle East,” all in Walter Reich, ed.,
Origins of Terrorism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
16. Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT), Countering Suicide Terrorism (Herzliya, Israel: International Policy Institute for Counter-
Terrorism, 2001).
17. For earlier studies that question the relationship between Islamic fundamentalism and suicide terrorism, see Merari, “Readiness to Kill
and Die,” and Ehud Sprinzak, “Rational Fanatics,” Foreign Policy, no. 120 (Sept.–Oct. 2000), pp. 66–73.
18. Post, “Terrorist Psycho-Logic,” and Merari, “Readiness to Kill and Die.”
19. Sprinzak, “Rational Fanatics.” For a comprehensive review of the deficiencies of efforts to profile terrorists, see Rex A. Hudson, The
Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why? (Washington, D.C.: Federal Research Division,
Library of Congress, September 1999).
20. Alan B. Krueger and Jitka Maleckova, “Education, Poverty, Political Violence, and Terrorism,” BNER Working Paper 9074
(Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2002).
21. Mia M. Bloom, “Palestinian Suicide Bombing: Public Support, Market Share, and Ethnic Outbidding,” Political Science Quarterly,
vol. 119, no. 1 (Spring 2004), pp. 61–89.
22. The fraction of Palestinians who supported suicide terrorism against Israeli targets was 24 percent in 1994 and remained in a narrow
range near 30 percent until it suddenly rose sharply to 73 percent just as the second intifada began in fall 2000. Jerusalem Media and
Communication Centre poll, April 2002. See www.jmcc.org/publicpoll/opinion.htm.
23. Most theories in political science focus on causes at one level of analysis and assert that other levels are relatively unimportant.
However, suicide terrorism cannot usefully be examined this way, since the phenomenon mainly occurs as part of protracted campaigns
that involve interactions among the terrorist organizations, local communities associated with the terrorist organizations, and the individual
suicide terrorists themselves. As a result, variation in outcomes cannot be explained without understanding processes at three distinct
levels of analysis that must operate in a coherent manner for suicide terrorist campaigns to occur.
PART I: THE STRATEGIC LOGIC OF SUICIDE TERRORISM
CHAPTER 3: A STRATEGY FOR WEAK ACTORS
1. The best source for statistics on terrorism is the U.S. Department of State, “Patterns of Global Terrorism” (Washington, D.C.: 1983–
2003), although these reports do not distinguish suicide from nonsuicide attacks.
2. Peter Schalk, “Resistance and Martyrdom in the Process of State Formation of Tamililam,” in Joyce Pettigrew, ed., Martyrdom and
Political Resistance (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1997), pp. 61–83.
3. Robert A. Pape, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996); “Debating
Robert A. Pape’s Bombing to Win,” Security Studies, vol. 7, no. 1 (Winter 1997–98), pp. 93–214.
4. Martha Crenshaw, “The Causes of Terrorism,” Comparative Politics, vol. 13 (July 1981), pp. 379–99.
5. Hezbollah’s “Open Letter” to the “disinherited of Lebanon and the world” first appeared as a pamphlet in Beirut on February 16, 1985.
An English translation appears in Augustus Richard Norton, Amal and the Shi’a: Struggle for the Soul of Lebanon (Austin: University
of Texas Press, 1987), pp. 176–87.
6. Interview with Fadlallah, Monday Morning (December 16, 1985), quoted in Martin Kramer, “The Moral Logic of Hizballah,” in
Walter Reich, ed., Origins of Terrorism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 148.
7. Quoted in Khaled Hroub, Hamas: Political Thought and Practice (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2000), pp. 265–
66, 274.
8. Quoted in Joel Greenberg, “Suicide Planner Expresses Joy over His Missions,” New York Times (May 9, 2002).
9. Velupillai Prabhakaran, “Heroes’ Day” speech, 1997, available at www.eelamweb.com.
10. “Commander Says Chechnya War to Spread to Rest of Russia,” BBC Monitoring International Reports (November 19, 2003).
11. Statement by World Islamic Front, 1998. Available at www.bas.org.
12. Deborah Sontag, “The Palestinian Conversation,” New York Times Magazine (February 3, 2002), p. 41.
13. Fathi al-Shaqaqi, secretary general of Islamic Jihad, Al-Quds (April 11, 1995), in FBIS-NES-95-70 (April 12, 1995). The Foreign
Broadcast Information Service is a public resource provided by the U.S. government that monitors and translates information from
foreign news media, and is available in most libraries.
14. Amy Waldman, “Masters of Suicide Bombing: Tamil Guerrillas of Sri Lanka,” New York Times (January 14, 2003).
15. “LTTE Leader on Sri Lanka’s Military Campaign,” speech released by International Secretariat of LTTE, London, United Kingdom,
May 13, 1998. Available at eelamweb.com.
16. Laurinda Keys, “Tamil Tiger Rebels Well-Equipped for Sri Lankan Civil War,” Associated Press (June 7, 2000).
17. David C. Rapoport, “Fear and Trembling in Terrorism in Three Religious Traditions,” American Political Science Review, vol. 78,
no. 3 (September 1984), p. 672.
18. On the role of the Zealots and Sicarii in precipitating the Jewish revolts against Rome, see Moshe Aberback and David Aberback,
The Roman-Jewish Wars and Hebrew Cultural Nationalism (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), pp. 28–48.
19. Josephus, Jewish War, vol. 7, pp. 334, 344, 351. Quoted in Hengel, The Zealots, p. 264.
20. Bernard Lewis, The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 45.
21. Ibid., p. 58.
22. Albert Axell and Hideaki Kase, Kamikaze: Japan’s Suicide Gods (London: Longmans, 2002), p. 115
23. Bernard Millot, Divine Thunder: The Life and Death of the Kamikazes (New York: McCall Publishing Co., 1971), p. 32.
24. Richard O’Neill, Suicide Squads (New York: Ballantine Books, 1981), p. 139.
25. Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), p. 204.
26. Ibid., p. 228.
27. Quoted in Richard O’Neill, Suicide Squads (New York: Ballantine Books, 1981), p.144.
28. Quoted in ibid., p. 144.
CHAPTER 4: TARGETING DEMOCRACIES
1. Richard Perle and David Frum, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror (New York: Random House, 2003).
2. The data for the survey are available from the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism, University of Chicago. The survey is reliable. A
majority of the incidents were openly claimed by the sponsoring terrorist organizations. For almost every incident, we have multiple
reports in regional news media or other sources, even though many were not reported in U.S. media. To probe for additional cases, I
interviewed experts and officials involved in what some might consider conflicts especially prone to suicide attacks, such as Afghanistan
in the 1980s, but this did not yield more incidents. According to the CIA station chief for Pakistan from 1986 to 1988 (Milton Bearden,
personal communication, May 23, 2002), “I cannot recall a single incident where an Afghan launched himself against a Soviet target with
the intention of dying in the process. I don’t think these things ever happened, though some of their attacks were a little harebrained and
could have been considered suicidal. I think it’s important that Afghans never even took their war outside their borders—for example,
they never tried to blow up the Soviet embassy in Pakistan.”
3. In August 1993, a BKI terrorist was killed by his own bomb while struggling with security guard in a theater; it is uncertain whether he
intended this as a suicide attack. In 1999, the four members of a BKI suicide squad were all killed while attacking the Punjab
headquarters of the RSS, a Hindu nationalist group. In January 2000, Indian police captured BKI terrorists who were preparing suicide
bomb attacks.
4. Shaul Mishal and Avraham Sela, The Palestinian Hamas (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), p. 71.
5. Elaine Sciolino, “Saudi Warns Bush,” New York Times (January 27, 2002). Although support for Osama bin Laden himself is lower
than for al-Qaeda’s goals to reduce America’s role on the Arabian Peninsula, almost half of all Saudis said in a poll conducted after the
May 2003 suicide attacks in Riyadh that they had a favorable view of bin Laden’s sermons and public statements. The poll surveyed
more than 15,000 Saudis from August to November 2003, and was overseen by Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi national security consultant.
Reported on CNN.com, June 9, 2004.
6. Khaled Hroub, Hamas: Political Thought and Practice (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2000); Andrea Nusse,
Muslim Palestine: The Ideology of Hamas (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 1998).
7. Michael Horowitz and Dan Reiter, “When Does Aerial Bombing Work? Quantitative Empirical Tests, 1917–1999,” Journal of
Conflict Resolution, vol. 45 (April 2001), pp. 147–73.
8. Alexander B. Downes, “Targeting Civilians in War” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2004).
9. Adam Przeworski, Michael E. Alvarez, Jose Antonio Cheibub, and Fernando Limongi, Democracy and Development: Political
Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950–1990 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Charles Boix and
Sebastian Rosato, “A Complete Dataset of Regimes, 1850–1999” (manuscript, the University of Chicago, 2001); Samuel P. Huntington,
The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).
10. Eric Carlton, Occupation: The Policies and Practices of Military Conquerors (New York: Routledge, 1992); Gerhard von Glahn,
The Occupation of Enemy Territory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1957); Eyal Benvenisti, The International Law of
Occupation (Princeton, N.J.: University of Princeton Press, 1993); and David M. Edelstein, “Occupational Hazards: Why Military
Occupations Succeed or Fail,” International Security, vol. 29, no. 1 (Summer 2004), pp. 49–91.
11. Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–2001 (New York: Vintage Books, 2001), pp.
329–43; Baruch Kimmerling and Joel Migdal, Palestinians: The Making of a People (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1994); and Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1997).
12. These numbers do not count the additional several hundred thousand Israelis who moved into East Jerusalem during the period.
13. Hamas, founded in December 1987, is an Islamic fundamentalist religious, social-services, guerrilla, and terrorist organization that was
started by Palestinian followers of the Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood. The goals of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas include
stopping Western imperialism in the Middle East and establishing Islamic states in the region. Palestinian Islamic Jihad is a second,
smaller Islamist terrorist organization that stems from the Shi’ite Muslim religious tradition—a minority among Palestinians, who are
mainly Sunni.
14. Jerusalem Media and Communication Centre Poll, April 2002, available at www.jmcc.org.
15. Prominent works among the fast-growing literature on al-Qaeda include Anonymous, Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama Bin
Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America (Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 2002); Peter L. Bergen, Holy War, Inc.: Inside the
Secret World of Osama bin Laden (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002); Rohan Gunaratna, Inside al-Qaeda (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2002); and Daniel L. Byman, “Al-Qa’ida as an Adversary,” World Politics (2004).
16. George W. Bush, “Address to the Nation on the War on Terrorism,” November 8, 2001.
17. Osama bin Laden, “Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying the Two Holy Places,” August 23,1996.
18. World Islamic Front Statement, “Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders,” February 23, 1998.
19. “Jihadi Iraq, Hopes and Dangers,” a document dedicated to Yusuf al-Ayiri, a key al-Qaeda ideologist and media coordinator killed in
the May 2003 attack in Riyadh, posted originally on a web page called “Global Islamic Media,” and later posted on the web page of the
Forsvarets Forskningsinstitutt, the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment. Translated from the Arabic by the Chicago Project on
Suicide Terrorism.
20. Excerpts from bin Laden tape, USA Today (April 15, 2004).
21. Two other operations attacked a disused synagogue (in Tunisia in April 2002) and Jewish-owned restaurants (in Morocco in May
2003), but no Jews were killed in either instance.
CHAPTER 5: LEARNING TERRORISM PAYS
1. Jerrold M. Post, “Terrorist Psycho-Logic: Terrorist Behavior as a Product of Psychological Forces,” and Ariel Merari, “The Readiness
to Kill and Die: Suicidal Terrorism in the Middle East,” both in Walter Reich, ed., Origins of Terrorism (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1990).
2. Alexander George, et al., Limits of Coercive Diplomacy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972); Robert A. Pape, Bombing to Win: Air Power
and Coercion in War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996).
3. Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976); Richard
Ned Lebow, Between Peace and War: The Nature of International Crisis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981).
4. Martin Kramer, “Fundamentalist Islam at Large: Drive for Power,” Middle East Quarterly, vol. 3 (June 1996), pp. 37–49.
5. Robert J. Art and Patrick M. Cronin, The United States and Coercive Diplomacy (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of
Peace, 2003).
6. Ronald Reagan, An American Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), p. 465.
7. Philippe Sauvagnargues, “Opposition Candidate,” Agence France-Presse (August 14, 1994); “Sri Lanka Opposition Leader Promises
Talks with Rebels,” Japan Economic Newswire (August 11, 1994).
8. Rui De Figueredo and Barry R. Weingast, “Vicious Cycles: Endogenous Political Extremism and Political Violence,” paper presented
at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association (September 1998); Andrew Kydd and Barbara F. Walter,
“Sabotaging the Peace: The Politics of Extremist Violence,” International Organization, vol. 56, no. 2 (2002), pp. 263–96; and Mia
Bloom, “Palestinian Suicide Bombing: Public Support, Market Share, and Ethnic Outbidding,” Political Science Quarterly, vol. 119, no.
1 (Spring 2004), pp. 61–89.
9. There were no suicide attacks from April to October 1994.
10. Kydd and Walter, “Sabotaging the Peace.”
11. David Makovsky and Alon Pinkas, “Rabin: Killing Civilians Won’t Kill the Negotiations,” Jerusalem Post (April 13, 2004).
12. Yitzhak Rabin, speech to Knesset, BBC Summary of World Broadcasts (April 20, 1994).
13. Efraim Inbar, Rabin and Israel’s National Security (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), pp. 141–42.
14. “Hamas Operations Against Israel Said to Continue,” Al-Dustur (Amman, Jordan), April 14, 1994. FBIS-NES-94-072, April 14,
1994.
15. Ahmed Bakr, “Interview,” The Independent (London) (March 14, 1995); “Hamas Leader Discusses Goals,” Frankfurter
Rundschau (May 3, 1995). FBIS-NES-95-086, May 4, 1995.
16. Fathi al-Shaqaqi, quoted in “Interview,” Al-Quds (April 11, 1995), in FBIS-NES-95-70, April 12, 1995.
17. There were no suicide attacks from August 1995 to February 1996. There were four suicide attacks, in response to an Israeli
assassination, from February 25 to March 4, 1996, and then none until March 1997.
18. Yitzhak Rabin interview, BBC Summary of World Broadcasts (September 8, 1995).
19. “Bus Attack Said to Spur Rabin to Speed Talks,” Yediot Aharonot (July 25,1995), FBIS-NES-95-142, July 25, 1995.
20. Michael Theodoulou, “New Attacks Feared,” The Times (London) (August 21, 1995), FBIS-NES-95-165, August 25, 1995.
21. Hamas Communiqué no. 125, Filastin al-Muslimah (London) (August 1995), FBIS-NES-95-152, August 8, 1995.
22. When Israeli forces invaded Lebanon in 1982, they found three Tamil Tigers training in Palestinian camps. On Tamil-Lebanese
connections, see G. P. V. Somaratne, “Sri Lanka’s Relations with Israel,” in Shelton U. Kodikara, ed., External Compulsions of South
Asian Politics (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1993), p. 205; M. R. Narayan Swamy, Tigers of Lanka: From Boys to Guerrillas (3rd
ed.; Delhi: Konark Publishers, 2002), pp. 97–101, 241; Bruce Hoffman and Gordon H. McCormick, “Terrorism, Signaling, and Suicide
Attack,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, vol. 27 (2004), p. 259. Prabhakaran quoted in Rohan Gunaratna, “The LTTE and Suicide
Terrorism,” Frontline (India), vol. 17, no. 3 (February 5–8, 2000).
23. Ramadan Shallah interview, BBC Summary of World Broadcasts (November 3, 2001).
24. “Hamas Statement,” BBC Summary of World Broadcasts (July 23, 2000).
25. “Bin Laden’s Sermon for the Feast of the Sacrifice,” Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch Series, no. 476
(March 5, 2003).
26. Robert A. Pape, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996).
27. Of course, the concept of “homeland” territory can be socially constructed. In most of the societies that have been targeted by
suicide terrorists, the consensus on the boundaries of the national homeland is so broad and deep as to be essentially fixed. The major
exception is Israel, whose citizens are engaged in debate over whether the West Bank and East Jerusalem should be considered
inalienable parts of the national homeland.
PART II: THE SOCIAL LOGIC OF SUICIDE TERRORISM
CHAPTER 6: OCCUPATION AND RELIGIOUS DIFFERENCE
1. Although there are several competing theories of the formation of national identity, scholars broadly agree that national identity
includes the idea that the nation should govern itself because it has a unique set of characteristics that only the community itself can
perpetuate. For example, see Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983); Benedict
Anderson, Imagined Communities (New York: Verso, 1991); and Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1996).
2. Kurds and Turks are both mainly Sunni Muslims.
3. See Chapter 9.
4. Even if the terrorists’ main base of support is a certain subpopulation, social boundaries within a national community are rarely so
sharp that they could prevent information from leaking both ways. In any case, drawing only on a completely separate subpopulation
would be undesirable because it would simplify the enemy security forces’ problem in suppressing the threat.
5. If important segments of the community were unwilling to accept the equation of suicide attack with martyrdom, the terrorists might
find that funerals drew few people, martyr videos went unsold, or murals were painted over.
6. Jerusalem Media and Communication Centre polls, 1995 to 2003.
7. Elaine Sciolino, “Saudi Warns Bush,” New York Times (January 27, 2002).
8. Mia Bloom, Dying to Kill (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), Chapter 3.
9. “Iraq Battling More Than 100,000 Insurgents,” Agence France-Presse (January 3, 2005); the RAND Corporation’s terrorism expert
Bruce Hoffman called the Iraqi government’s estimate of active full-time and part-time supporters a “valid” one. As is normal in
insurgencies, passive sympathy is almost surely higher.
10. Kurdish parties in the Turkish parliament received 29 percent of the Kurdish vote in 1991, dropping to 16 percent in 1995 and 1999.
Matthew Kocher, “The Decline of PKK and the Viability of a One-State Solution in Turkey,” International Journal on Multicultural
Societies, vol. 4, no. 1 (2002), pp. 131–50.
11. Eric Carlton, Occupation: The Policies and Practices of Military Conquerors (New York: Routledge, 1992); Gerhard von Glahn,
The Occupation of Enemy Territory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1957); Eyal Benvenisti, The International Law of
Occupation (Princeton, N.J.: University of Princeton Press, 1993); and David M. Edelstein, “Occupational Hazards: Why Military
Occupations Succeed or Fail,” International Security, vol. 29, no. 1 (Summer 2004), pp. 49–91.
12. By this standard, the United States’ liberation and occupation of Italy, Germany, and Japan in and after World War II qualifies as
occupation, but American military deployments to Great Britain and France during the conflict count as military alliances.
13. Anthony Smith, “Culture, Community and Territory,” International Affairs, vol. 72, no. 3, pp. 445–58; Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and
Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977); Walker Conner, “Homelands in a World of
States,” in M. Guibernau and J. Hutchinson, eds., Understanding Nationalism (Oxford: Polity Press/Blackwell, 2001), pp. 53–73.
14. Guntram H. Herb, “National Identity and Territory,” in Guntram H. Herb and David H. Kaplan, eds., Nested Identities:
Nationalism, Territory, and Scale (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), p. 17. See also James Anderson, “Nationalism and
Geography,” in James Anderson, ed., The Rise of the Modern State (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press International, 1986),
pp. 115–42; Jean Gottmann, The Significance of Territory (Charlottesville, Va.: University Press of Virginia, 1973); A. Burghardt, “The
Bases of Territorial Claims,” The Geographical Review, vol. 63 (1973), pp. 225–45; Peter Marden, “Geographies of Dissent:
Globalization, Identity, and the Nation,” Political Geography 16 (1997), pp. 37–64; and David B. Knight, “Identity and Territory,”
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 72 (1982), pp. 514–31.
15. For an excellent discussion of the ideal of dying for one’s country in the age of nationalism, see Ernest H. Kantorowiz, The King’s
Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 232–72.
16. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1963), p. 38. Some scholars argue that nationalism plays little
role in supposedly “nationalist” rebellions, and that these actually comprise mainly local score-settling that takes advantage of the general
disorder of the country. Stathis Kalyvas, “ ‘New’ and ‘Old’ Civil Wars: A Valid Distinction?” World Politics, vol. 54, no. 1 (2001), 99–
118, and “The Ontology of ‘Political Violence’: Action and Identity in Civil Wars,” Perspectives on Politics, vol. 1, no. 3 (2003), 475–94.
However, if local score-settling generally dominated communal loyalties, we should see significant cross-ethnic recruiting for armies,
militias, and criminal gangs and as many people killed by co-ethnics as by members of enemy communities. In fact, both conditions are
rare. Colonial powers are often so wealthy compared with the local society that they can recruit indigenous troops, but these often prove
unreliable when ordered to fight their own community. Chaim Kaufmann, “Rational Choice and Progress in the Study of Ethnic Conflict,”
Security Studies, vol. 14, no. 2 (Jan.–Mar. 2005), forthcoming. Of the nine occupied communities that have produced suicide terrorism,
three—the Palestinians, the Tamils, and Kurds—did engage in some internecine fighting during the occupation, but in every case the
scale was small compared with the violence between the occupiers and the occupied.
17. Edelstein, “Occupational Hazards.”
18. Samuel P. Huntington suggests that people may share a “civilization identity” that encourages conflict regardless of other
circumstances. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).
However, such broad identities are not driving suicide terrorism and most on his list of civilizations are not using this strategy.
19. In other words, under the conditions of a foreign occupation, the initial causes of the effects of religious difference operate not from
the inside of the dominated group, but from the outside—either as what the dominating group uses to put the dominated group in a
category of a less than human Other, or what the dominated group finds as what can help bind them in resistance, along with a sense of
ethnic or regional identity.
20. Buddhism and modern Shintoism are exceptions to this rule; most interpretations of both do not prohibit a person from engaging in
Buddhist or Shinto practice at the same time as practice of another religion. Indeed, substantial numbers of Japanese practice both to
some degree. There are also limited exceptions involving simultaneous Hindu and Buddhist practice in Nepal and among Sinhalese in Sri
Lanka. None of the relevant societies, however, have produced suicide terrorist campaigns. Although Japan used suicide attacks to try to
ward off occupation by a predominantly Christian country, the version of Shintoism that was dominant at the time—State Shinto—was
more exclusive than most interpretations either earlier or later. See Klaus Antoni, et al., eds., Religion and National Identity in the
Japanese Context (Munster: Lit, 2002); Helen Hardacre, Shinto and the State, 1868–1988 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1989); and David N. Gellner, The Anthropology of Buddhism and Hinduism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
21. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, and David D. Laitin, Identity in Formation: The Russian-Speaking Populations in the Near
Abroad (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998). There is some tendency for state boundaries to conform to linguistic boundaries,
although this is by no means universal. There is also some tendency to conform to religious boundaries even when there is no linguistic
difference.
22. War generally hardens national identities. See Chaim Kaufmann, “Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars,”
International Security, vol. 20, no. 4 (Spring 1996).
23. The incentives for conversion to an occupier’s religion are not similar to those for learning its language. The value of language
competency is mainly economic, as for Palestinian workers who picked up some Hebrew while commuting to jobs in Israel. Conversion
would be a more fundamentally political act, one viewed as changing sides in the dispute—if the occupier will allow it, which often it does
not.
24. Ron E. Hassner, “To Have and to Hold: Conflicts over Sacred Space and the Problem of Indivisibility,” Security Studies, vol. 12, no.
4 (Summer 2003), pp. 1–33.
25. Demonization is sometimes called “hypernationalism” in inter-state conflict. See John J. Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future: Instability
in Europe After the Cold War,” International Security, vol. 15, no. 4 (Summer 1990), p. 21.
26. The English meaning of the Greek word “martyr” is “witness.” The word “martyr” first became prominent to describe Christians
who voluntarily died as they “witnessed” their faith in front of Roman persecutors in the third and fourth centuries. The origins of the
concept, however, are older still. See Arthur J. Droge and James D. Tabor, A Noble Death: Suicide and Martyrdom Among
Christians and Jews in Antiquity (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1992).
27. Margaret Cormack, ed., Sacrificing the Self: Perspectives on Martyrdom and Religion (New York: Oxford University Press,
2002); Arthur J. Droge and James D. Tabor, A Noble Death: Suicide and Martyrdom Among Christians and Jews in Antiquity (San
Francisco: HarperCollins, 1992); and Fred Rosner, “Suicide in Jewish Law,” in Kalman J. Kaplan and Matthew B. Schwartz, Jewish
Approaches to Suicide, Martyrdom, and Euthanasia (Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1998), pp. 61–62.
28. On qualifications for martyrdom, see Anna L. Peterson, Martyrdom and the Politics of Religion (Albany, N.Y.: State University of
New York Press, 1997); Louis E. Fenech, Martyrdom in the Sikh Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Karl Rahner,
On the Theology of Death (New York: Herder and Herder, 1965); Eugene Weiner and Anita Weiner, The Martyr’s Conviction: A
Sociological Analysis (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1990); and Teresa Okure, et al., Rethinking Martyrdom (London: SCM Press,
2003).
29. In May 1945, more than 3 million American and British troops occupied zones in Germany totaling approximately 40 million people
and quickly imposed tight controls on the population that rendered even low levels of resistance virtually impossible. James Dobbins, Seth
Jones, et al., “America’s Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq” (Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand, 2003); and U.S. Department of
State, Occupation of Germany: Policy and Progress, 1945–46 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1947).
30. Andrew T. Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), pp. 3–10; David Galula,
Counterinsurgency Warfare (New York: Praeger, 1964); and Douglas S. Blaufarb, The Counterinsurgency Era (New York: Free
Press, 1977).
31. The organizational profile of suicide terrorist groups is developed at length in Chapter 8.
32. Although authoritarian states have carried out the most extreme cases of civilian victimization, analysis of the universe of such cases
shows that democracies are not less likely than authoritarian states to harm civilians. See Alexander B. Downes, “Targeting Civilians in
War” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2004).
33. In a few cases, such as the Kurds of Turkey and the Palestinians, national identities may have been hardened in part by earlier
rebellions long before 1980.
34. Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1997).
35. It is possible that the identity that is most important to different al-Qaeda members varies. Although these are matters of degree, if
one can judge by their statements, Osama bin Laden seems to be most tightly attached to Arabian identity, while Ayman al-Zawahiri
seems most concerned about pan-Muslim interests.
36. Although pan-Muslim identity is demarcated by religion, al-Qaeda’s conception of it—which centers on a demand for selfdetermination
for the community in all the territories inhabited by its members—matches our ordinary understanding of nationalism. Some
scholars argue that language is the single most important marker separating different national identities. See Laitin, Identity in
Formation. However, instances where nations share a language and are demarcated principally by religion are also common, for
example Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland; Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians in the former Yugoslavia.
37. By providing encouragement that the occupier can be hurt, by provoking the occupier to retaliate in a manner that enrages many in
the terrorists’ community, or through other mechanisms.
38. It is important to distinguish situations in which suicide terrorism plays a key part in causing a rebellion—which has not happened—
from the role of suicide attacks in demonstrating that important harm can be inflicted on the enemy. The latter can increase the popularity
not only of suicide terrorism itself but also of an ongoing rebellion, and it has happened in several cases.
39. For specific criteria to determine regime type, I relied on Adam Przeworski, Michael E. Alvarez, Jose Antonio Cheibub, and
Frenando Limongi, Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950–1990 (Cambridge,
U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2000), and Carles Boix and Sebastian Rosato, “A Complete Dataset of Regimes, 1850–1999,”
typescript (University of Chicago, 2001). The five-year rule eliminated two cases, Nigeria and Uganda.
40. Recent surveys show that over 80 percent of the world’s population self-identifies with one of the dozen classic primary religions. Of
the world’s 6 billion people in 2000, some 2 billion identified as Christian, 1.3 billion as Muslim, 786 million as Hindu, 362 million as
Buddhist, and 18 million as Jews, while some 900 million identified as agnostics or cited various forms of tribal religions. David Barrett et
al., eds., World Christian Encyclopedia: A Comparative Survey of Churches and Religions, A.D. 30 to 2000 (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2001). This survey counts nineteen major world religions, which are subdivided into a total of 270 large religious groups
and many smaller ones.
41. MAR does not include minorities that are not considered “at risk” of conflict with the state. Omitting such minorities makes no
difference to the study of suicide terrorism, since no theory would expect them to become involved in rebellions, let alone terrorism. See
Ted Robert Gurr, et al., Minorities at Risk: A Global View of Ethnopolitical Conflict (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of
Peace Press, 1993), as updated at www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/mar/.
42. I also cross-checked the data with other well-known databases, such as James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, “Ethnicity,
Insurgency, and Civil War,” American Political Science Review, vol. 97, no. 1 (February 2003), pp. 75–90, but these revealed no
discrepancies with the information in this study.
43. The statistical analysis of suicide terrorism is based on a logit regression, which included religious difference, prior rebellion, and an
interaction term between the two as independent variables. Religious difference and prior rebellion were both significant at the .05 level,
and the interaction term was significant at the .001 level, demonstrating that the interaction of religious difference and prior rebellion has
an effect beyond the independent effect of each.
By comparison, the same data show that the combination of a linguistic difference and rebellion accounts for 43 of 58 cases. However,
this interaction term is not significant. Linguistic difference occurs in 53 of the 58 cases, and is too constant to have much explanatory
power. In a logit regression of this relationship, linguistic differences drop out of the equation due to the lack of variation.
CHAPTER 7: DEMYSTIFYING AL-QAEDA
1. Among the best are Peter L. Bergen, Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama Bin Laden (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 2001); Rohan Gunaratna, Inside Al-Qaeda (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002); Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon,
The Age of Sacred Terror (New York: Random House, 2002); and Anonymous, Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama bin Laden,
Radical Islam, and the Future of America (Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 2002).
2. For instance, Daniel Byman, who has tracked Islamic terrorism for the U.S. government, says that Rohan Gunaratna’s estimate of alQaeda
as having 3,000 members “may be something of an overstatement. . . . The al-Qa’ida core devoted to terrorism or skilled
operations beyond simple participation in guerrilla war may be far smaller than is generally realized. . . . probably numbers in the
hundreds” (Daniel Byman, “Al-Qa’ida as an Adversary: Do We Understand Our Enemy,” World Politics, vol. 56, no. 1 [October 2003],
pp. 148–49).
3. Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 61.
4. This finding supports a similar analysis of socialist terrorist groups in the 1970s and 1980s. See Leonard Weinberg and William Lee
Eubank, “Italian Women Terrorists,” Terrorism, vol. 9, no. 3 (1987), pp. 241–62.
5. Amos Perlmutter, “Wishful Thinking About Islamic Fundamentalism,” Washington Post (January 19, 1992).
6. On the meaning of Islamic fundamentalism, see Roxanne L. Euben, Enemy in the Mirror: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Limits
of Modern Rationalism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 3–19; and Mansoor Moaddel and Kamran Talattof,
Modern and Fundamentalist Debates in Islam (New York: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 1–22.
7. For sectarian differences in the Muslim world, see Febe Armanios, “Islam: Sunnis and Shiites” (Washington, D.C.: Congressional
Research Service, RS21745, February 23, 2004).
8. Said Amir Arjomand, “Shi’ite Jurisprudence and Constitution Making in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” in Martin E. Marty and R. Scott
Appleby, eds., Fundamentalism and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 88–109.
9. Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks, pp. 1–60, and Jason Burke, Al Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam (London: I. B.
Tauris, 2003).
10. As Daniel Brown writes: “The guiding principle of Salafi reformism was the conviction that Muslims must emulate the first generation
of Muslims, the Salaf al-Salih, and recapture the pure Islam of the Prophet. This could be done only by returning to the basic sources of
authority, the Qur’an and the Sunna, for only in these sources can the true essence of Islam be found. . . . It is in rejecting the way the
Qur’an and Sunna have traditionally been interpreted and in cutting through the interpretive accretions that classical scholarship had built
up around these basic texts that the Salifiyya set themselves apart.” Brown, Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 31.
11. Muhammad al-Jibali, Allah’s Rights upon His Servants: Tawhid vs. Shirk (Cincinnati, Oh.: Al-Quran Was-Sunnahh Society of
North America, 1995).
12. On Wahhabism as a form of Salafism, see John L. Esposito, Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2002), pp. 105–7; Christopher M. Blanchard, “The Islamic Traditions of Wahhibism and Salafiyya” (Washington, D.C.:
Congressional Research Service, RS21695, August 9, 2004).
13. The 2005 mission statement of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood declares that it is “a salafi mission” and calls for “the return to Islam, to
its pure meanings, to the book of God and the sunna of his Prophet” seeking “to apply the purified Sunna in all actions.” It also says, “The
principles that are stated in the book of God and the sunna of his Prophet . . . [are those] that the Muslim person, Muslim household,
Muslim society, Muslim state and Muslim nation must adhere to” (www.ikhwanonline.net). Translated from Arabic by the Chicago
Project on Suicide Terrorism. For the Salafi roots of the movement, see Abdel Azim Ramadan, “Fundamentalist Influence in Egypt,” in
Marty and Appleby, Fundamentalism and the State, pp. 152–83.
14. Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), p.
88; Muhammad Qasim Zaman, The Ulema in Contemporary Islam (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 11.
15. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islam: Religion, History, and Civilization (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), p. 180. Similarly, Daniel Brown
writes: “The argument that the Sunna should be re-evaluated in light of the Quran is by no means unprecedented in Egypt. . . . The
argument survived among . . . the Ikhwan al-muslimin [Muslim Brotherhood]. . . . It is clear that many of the Ikhwan tended to favor the
Quran over the Hadith. In other words, they tended to extend the salafi skepticism about the classical madhabs to the Hadith literature
itself.” Daniel W. Brown, Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 120–
21.
16. Esposito, Unholy War, pp. 5, 18.
17. Quintan Wiktorowicz, “The New Global Threat: Transnational Salafis and Jihad,” Middle East Policy, vol. 8, no. 4 (December
2001), pp. 18–38; Reuven Paz, “The Brotherhood of Global Jihad” (Herzliya, Israel: Project for the Research of Islamic Movements,
October 2001).
18. Wiktorowicz, “The New Global Threat,” p. 21.
19. For instance, in 2001–2002, America approved $2.7 billion in foreign military sales to Saudi Arabia, a sum equaling approximately 10
percent of Saudi Arabia’s defense budget, and the main American command center for the conquest of Iraq in 2003 was Prince Sultan
Air Base near Riyadh.
20. Pakistan has allowed U.S. military over-flights and occasional operations of small contingents of American ground forces in
combination with Pakistani forces.
21. These results are extremely robust. Even if we assume that there are no Salafi-influenced populations in Egypt, Algeria, and Nigeria,
and assume that half of the populations of Morocco and Turkey are Salafi-influenced—assumptions that are individually highly unlikely,
as the appendix on Salafism demonstrates, to say nothing of the odds against them collectively—Salafi-influenced population still has no
significant effects on the odds of someone from that country becoming an al-Qaeda suicide terrorist.
For these results to be overturned, Pakistan would have to have virtually no Salafi-influenced population. The number I estimate, 43
million, includes the populations of the North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan, which elected provincial governments in October
2002 ruled by the self-proclaimed Salafi party called Jamaat-i-Islami and in which Osama bin Laden is presumed to have been hiding
since he left Afghanistan in 2001.
22. To be clear: At most, al-Qaeda suicide terrorists are twice as likely among Sunni Muslim populations that have been influenced by
Salafism than from other Sunni populations. However, they are ten times more likely among Sunni Muslim populations from countries
with an American combat presence and twenty times more likely among Salafi-influenced Sunni Muslim populations from countries with
an American combat presence than among Sunni Muslim populations in other countries. This means that American combat presence on
the Arabian Peninsula increased the expected number of individuals willing to carry out an al-Qaeda suicide attack against Americans,
such as the September 11 attack, from ten to twenty times. Assuming that the number of suicide attacks is directly proportional to the
number of individuals willing to execute them—a reasonable assumption, since the number of suicide terrorists per al-Qaeda attack has
varied only within a narrow range and has been as small as one—then increasing the number of suicide terrorists by a given factor (ten
to twenty times) will increase the number of expected suicide attacks by that same factor (ten to twenty times).
23. For statistics on U.S. assistance to Muslim countries, see U.S. Agency for International Development, “U.S. Overseas Loans and
Grants,” 2005.
24. Nachman Tal, “Islamic Terrorism in Egypt,” Strategic Assessment (Tel Aviv), vol. 1, no. 1 (March 1998); “Four to Die for
Casablanca Bombings,” www.aljazeerah.info (August 20, 2003); “Pakistan: Country Report” (London: Immigration and Nationality
Directorate, Home Office, United Kingdom, October 2004); Amy Chew, “The Roots of Jemaah Islamiyah” (CNN, February 26, 2004).
25. Quoted from Center for Islamic Studies and Research, “The East Riyadh Operation and Our War with the United States and Its
Agents,” August 1, 2003, available at www.cybcity.com/newss and translated by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service. The Center
for Islamic Studies and Research is an organization known to be part of al-Qaeda and its documents are sanctioned by Osama bin Laden.
26. “Interview with Osama bin Laden,” Frontline (May 1998).
27. Amin Maalouf, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (London: Zed Books, 1984).
28. “Interview with Osama bin Laden,” ABC News (December 24, 1998).
29. “Interview with Osama bin Laden,” Frontline (May 1998).
30. “Intercepted Letter from Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi to Osama bin Laden” (February 2004) at
www.jimmarshall.house.gov/Zarqawi.htm.
31. ABC News, December 1998.
32. “Bin Laden’s Sermon for the Feast of the Sacrifice,” Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch Series, no. 476
(March 5, 2003).
33. Ayman al-Zawahiri, “Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner” (December 2, 2001), part 11. Available at www.fas.org.
34. “Bin Laden’s Sermon,” Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) (March 5, 2003), available at www.memri.org.
35. “Interview Usama bin Laden,” Al-Jazeera (February 23, 1998).
36. “Bin Laden’s Sermon,” MEMRI (March 5, 2003).
37. Al-Zawahiri, “Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner,” part 11.
38. Ibid.
39. “Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places,” Al-Quds Al-Arabi (London) (August
1996), trans. at www.pbs.org/newshour.
CHAPTER 8:SUICIDE TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS AROUND THE GLOBE
1. On qualitative methods in social science, see Gary King, Robert O. Keohane, and Sidney Verba, Designing Social Inquiry:
Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), and Stephen Van Evera, Guide to
Methods for Students of Political Science (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997).
2. The principal statement of this position remains Robin Wright, Sacred Rage: The Crusade of Modern Islam (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1986).
3. The Central Intelligence Agency estimated in 1986 that the religious distribution of the population was 41 percent Shia Muslims, 27
percent Sunni Muslims, 16 percent Maronite Christians, 7 percent Druze, and 8 percent Greek Orthodox and Catholics. On population
estimates for Lebanon, see Lebanon: A Country Study (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1987), pp. 48–57.
4. On the rise of Amal, see Augustus Richard Norton, Amal and the Shi’a: Struggle for the Soul of Lebanon (Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1987); Helena Cobban, The Shia Community and the Future of Lebanon (Washington, D.C.: American Institute of
Islamic Affairs, American University, 1984); and Juan R. I. Cole and Nikki R. Keddie, eds., Shi’ism and Social Protest (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1986).
5. Richard A. Gabriel, Operation Peace for Galilee: The Israeli-PLO War in Lebanon (New York: Hill & Wang, 1984), pp. 68–81.
6. Interviews with Hussain Mussawi and the former vice president of Amal, Hasan Hashim, August 1985, in As’ad AbuKhalil, “Ideology
and Practice of Hizballah in Lebanon,” Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 27, no. 3 (July 1991), pp. 391–92, 403.
7. Gabriel, Operation Peace for Galilee, pp. 121–25.
8. Magnus Ranstrop, Hizb’allah in Lebanon (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), p. 30.
9. Shimon Shapira, “The Origins of Hizballah,” The Jerusalem Quarterly, vol. 46 (Spring 1988), pp. 115–130, at p. 124.
10. Interview with General Secretary Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Middle East Insight (May–August 1996), pp. 38–39. The Iranian
revolution in 1979 evoked broad sympathy among the Lebanese Shia community. However, this did not translate into active political
support for either Islamic fundamentalism or Iranian goals. Indeed, some radical Islamic groups lost ground after the Iranian revolution. In
1980, the Lebanese Islamic Da’wa Party, the leading group calling for an Islamic state, ceased to exist as a separate organization and its
members joined the more popular Amal movement. Shapira, “Origins of Hezbollah,” p. 118.
11. Norton, Amal and the Shi’a, p. 114. Norton describes the Organization for a United South on p. 111. For the details of Israel’s
occupation policies, see Chris Mowles, “The Israeli Occupation of South Lebanon,” Third World Quarterly, vol. 8, no. 4 (October
1986), pp. 1351–66.
12. At least thirty-one of the forty-one Lebanese suicide terrorists left public testimonials. See Lebanese Resistance Movement,
“Martyrdom Operations” (Beirut, no date).
13. See Chapter 9.
14. Quoted in Hala Jaber, Hezbollah: Born with a Vengeance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), pp. 91–92.
15. Quoted in Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 490.
16. For contemporary reports, see “Resistance Swells in Southern Lebanon,” Financial Times (July 19, 1984); “Shiite Radicals Throng to
Sidon for a Big Rally,” New York Times (February 19, 1985); “Young Lebanese Seek New Martyrdom: Suicide Bombers Emerge as
Martyrs,” Washington Post (May 12, 1985); “Lebanon’s Poster King Says ‘I Fight with My Paintings,’ ‘’ Associated Press (September
4, 1985); and “Shiites Posthumously Honor Teen-ager as Suicide Bomber,” Associated Press (December 19, 1985).
17. Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, Hizbu’llah: Politics and Religion (London: Pluto Press, 2002), pp. 138–40.
18. Norton, Amal and the Shia, p. 179.
19. Interview in July 1985, quoted in Martin Kramer, “The Oracle of Hizbullah: Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah, Part II,” in
Spokesmen for the Despised: Fundamentalist Leaders of the Middle East, ed. R. Scott Appleby (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1997), p. 8
20. Saad-Ghorayeb, Hizbu’llah, pp. 140–41.
21. Norton, Amal and the Shia, pp. 170–71.
22. Saad-Ghorayeb, Hizbu’llah, pp. 144–45.
23. Interviews in 1985 are quoted in Martin Kramer, “The Moral Logic of Hizballah,” in Walter Reich, ed., Origins of Terrorism
(Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1990), pp. 144–45.
24. These statements are collected in Lebanese Resistance Movement, “Martyrdom Operations” (Beirut, no date); translation by
Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism.
25. Mia Bloom, Dying to Kill (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), Chapter 3.
26. Christoph Reuter, My Life Is a Weapon (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), pp. 157–60.
27. “One by one their rivals and opponents among the Tamil separatist groups succumbed to the relentless violence of the LTTE . . .
[which] systematically eliminated all rival groups, culminating in the brutal massacre of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization and the
killing of its leader, Sri Sabaratnam, between 1 and 3 May, 1986.” K. M. De Silva, ed., Conflict and Violence in South Asia (Kandy, Sri
Lanka: International Center for Ethnic Studies, 2000), pp. 407–8. See also Dagmar Hellmann-Rajanayagam, The Tamil Tigers: Armed
Struggle for Identity (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1994), pp. 142–45.
28. Quoted in Yamuna Sangarasivam, “Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Cultural Production of Nationalism and Violence”
(Ph.D. diss., Graduate School of Syracuse University, May 2000), p. 283. The woman, Nandini, was interviewed in 1994–95 in Jaffna.
29. “Sri Lanka” (Geneva: World Health Organization Global Status Report, 1997). According to the Sri Lankan census of 1981, the
country’s total population of 14,850,000 comprised 10,985,000 Sinhalese, 2,687,000 Tamil, 1,057,000 Muslim, and 59,000 others. Starting in
1990, the Tamils have encouraged Muslims to leave the areas they consider their homeland, with the result that a majority of Tamils are
from Hindu families, while a minority are Christians (mainly Catholics, from the days when Ceylon was a Portugese colony). S. J.
Tambiah, Sri Lanka: Ethnic Fratricide and the Dismantling of Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), p. 4.
30. On the history of discrimination against Tamils, see Sinnappah Arasaratnam, Sri Lanka After Independence (Madras: University of
Madras, 1986); V. Navaratnam, The Rise and Fall of Tamil Nation (Madras: 1991); and A. Jeyaratnam Wilson, The Break-up of Sri
Lanka (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988).
31. Arasaratnam, Sri Lanka After Independence, p. 74.
32. T.D.S.A. Dissanayaka, The Agony of Sri Lanka (Colombo: Swastika Pvt. Ltd., 1984), esp. pp. 80–90. The Sri Lankan government
reported that 350 Tamils died in the July 1983 riots, which many observers consider a low estimate. Tambiah, Sri Lanka, p. 22.
33. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was officially formed in 1976 when its leader, V. Prabhakaran, split off from an earlier militant
group, the Tamil New Tigers.
34. On the rise of the LTTE, see D. Hellmann-Rajanayagam, The Tamil Tigers—Armed Struggle for Identity (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner
Verlag, 1994).
35. When Israeli forces invaded Lebanon in 1982, they found three Tamil Tigers training in Palestinian camps. On Tamil-Lebanese
connections, see G. P. V. Somaratne, “Sri Lanka’s Relations with Israel,” in Shelton U. Kodikara, ed., External Compulsions of South
Asian Politics (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1993), p. 205; M. R. Narayan Swamy, Tigers of Lanka: From Boys to Guerrillas (3rd
ed.; Delhi: Konark Publishers, 2002), pp. 97–101, 241; Bruce Hoffman and Gordon H. McCormick, “Terrorism, Signaling, and Suicide
Attack,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, vol. 27 (2004), p. 259.
36. Rohan Gunaratna, Indian Intervention in Sri Lanka (Colombo: South Asian Network on Conflict Research, 1993), pp. 161–316.
37. Sumantra Bose, States, Nations, Sovereignty: Sri Lanka, India and the Tamil Eelam Movement (New Delhi: Sage, 1994), p. 118.
Writing five years earlier, O’Ballance similarly estimates that more than 300 Tamil Tigers (or 10 percent of the Tamil Tiger forces) have
probably committed suicide in this manner. Edgar O’Ballance, The Cyanide War: Tamil Insurrection in Sri Lanka, 1973–1988
(London: Brassey’s, 1989), p. 126.
38. Hoffman and McCormick, “Terrorism, Signaling, and Suicide Attack,” p. 260.
39. Quoted in Yamuna Sangarasivam, “Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Cultural Production of Nationalism and Violence”
(Ph.D. diss., Syracuse University, May 2000), pp. 310, 330.
40. Quoted in Rohan Gunaratna, “The LTTE and Suicide Terrorism,” Frontline (India), vol. 17, no. 3 (February 5–8, 2000).
41. “Northeast Prepares to Celebrate Black Tigers Day,” www.tamil.net (June 24, 2004); Peter Schalk, “Revival of Martyr Cults Among
Ilavar,” Temenos, vol. 33 (1997), pp. 151–52. The Tigers’ “Heroes’ Day” speeches are commonly published during “Heroes’ Week” in
November.
42. Peter Schalk, “Resistance and Martyrdom in the Process of State Formation of Tamil Eelam,” in Joyce Pettigrew, ed., Martyrdom
and Political Resistance (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1997), p. 82.
43. A. J. V. Chandrakanthan, “Eelam Tamil Nationalism: An Inside View,” in A. Jeyaratnam Wilson, Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism
(Vancouver: UBC Press, 2000), p. 132.
44. For detailed examination of Tamil fears of cultural transformation, see Bryan Pfaffenberger, “The Cultural Dimension of Tamil
Separatism in Sri Lanka,” Asian Survey, vol. 21, no. 11 (November 1981), pp. 1145–57, and id., “The Kataragama Pilgrimage: HinduBuddhist
Interaction and Its Significance in Sri Lanka’s Polyethnic Social System,” Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 38 (Feb. 1979), pp.
253–70.
45. Brian Senewiratne, “An Evaluation of Solutions to the Sri Lankan Ethnic Conflict and Sinhala-Buddhist Chauvinism and the Buddhist
Clergy.” Paper presented at the International Conference on the Tamil National Struggle (London, April 30, 1988). In N. Seevaratnam,
The Tamil National Question and the Indo–Sri Lanka Accord (Delhi: World Federation of Tamils, 1989), pp. 28, 35.
46. Sarath Amunugama, “Buddhaputra and Bhumiputra? Dilemmas of Modern Sinhala Buddhist Monks in Relation to Ethnic and Political
Conflict,” Religion, vol. 21 (1991), pp. 115–39.
47. “The Sinhalese settlers [in Tamil lands] have come to view the Tamils as alien. Generation upon generation of Sinhalese people have
been systematically indoctrinated of the so-called enemy within. The active participation of the Buddhist clergy in the process of
identification of the Dravidian enemy has had significant impact. . . . The Tamils have consequently earned the dubious reputation of
Buddhism’s natural enemy.” Sebastian Pillai, “Sinhala Nationalism, the Native Physician, Buddhist Chauvinism and the So-called
Enemy,” paper presented at the International Conference on the Tamil National Struggle (London, April 30, 1988). In Seevaratnam,
Tamil National Question, p. 45.
48. David Little, Sri Lanka: The Invention of Enmity (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1994), p. 105. For
other analyses of the role of Sinhala Buddhism in the Sri Lankan civil war, see Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah, Buddhism Betrayed:
Religion, Politics, and Violence in Sri Lanka (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), and K. N. O. Dharmadasa, Language,
Religion, and Ethnic Assertiveness: The Growth of Sinhalese Nationalism in Sri Lanka (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1992).
49. Nissan, Sri Lanka: In Change and Crisis (New York: John Wiley, 1984), p. 176.
50. Bertram Bastiam Pillai, Survey of Conflicts Among Communities in Sri Lanka in Modern Times (Madras: Center for South and
Southeast Asian Studies, University of Madras, 1995), p. 9.
51. “They refuse to accept the fact that the Sinhalese are the majority of the country. . . . They do not accept that at least the written
history of the country and its identity is Sinhala Buddhist. . . . Tamil racism considers the Tamils to be a separate nation in their so-called
homeland.” Nalin de Silva, An Introduction to Tamil Racism in Sri Lanka (Maharagama, Sri Lanka: Chintana Prashadaya, 1997), p. 2.
52. LTTE, “Tamils Fight for National Freedom,” memorandum to the seventh summit meeting of nonaligned nations, New Delhi, March
1–15, 1983. In Towards Liberation: Selected Political Documents of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Sri Lanka: LTTE
Publications, 1984).
53. Prabhakaran, “Heroes’ Day” speech (Jaffna, July 5, 1995). Available at www.eelamweb.com.
54. A. R. Arudpragasam, The Traditional Homeland of the Tamils (Kotte, Sri Lanka: Kanal Publications, 1996), p. 3.
55. Prabhakaran, “Heroes’ Day” speech (Jaffna, July 5, 2000). Available at www.eelamweb.com.
56. A. J. V. Chandrakanthan, “Eelam Tamil Nationalism: An Inside View,” in A. Jeyaratnam Wilson, Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism
(Vancouver: UBC Press, 2000), p. 132.
57. Peter Schalk, “The Revival of Martyr Cults Among Ilavar,” Temenos, vol. 33 (1997), p. 151.
58. Ibid., pp. 154–55.
59. Major General Sarath Munasinghe, A Soldier’s Version: An Account of the On-going Conflict and the Origin of Terrorism in
Sri Lanka (Colombo: Market Information Systems, 2000), p. 178.
60. For the history of India’s deployment, see Gunaratna, Indian Intervention in Sri Lanka, pp. 161–316; quote at p. 258.
61. Aladi Aruna, “Disarming the LTTE Is Harmful to Our Interests,” in Seevaratnam, Tamil National Question, p. 117.
62. From 1981 to 1995, the total death toll for the Sri Lankan conflict, including Sinhalese, Tamil, and Indian losses, is estimated at 26,000.
Of these, 6,000 occurred from 1981 to 1987, 8,000 from 1987 to 1990, and 12,000 from 1990 to 1995. Gunaratna, Indian Intervention in
Sri Lanka, p. 481.
63. De Silva, Conflict and Violence in South Asia, p. 247.
64. You Too India (Madras, India: Political Wing of the LTTE, 1988).
65. Gunaratna, Indian Intervention in Sri Lanka, pp. 237–316.
66. The absence of suicide attacks cannot be explained as due to the character of the Indian political system, since India is also a
democracy and has been subjected to suicide terrorism by militants in Kashir, where there is also a religious difference.
67. Gunaratna, Indian Intervention in Sri Lanka, p. 240.
68. Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer, “The Sri Lankan Accord,” in Seevaratnam, Tamil National Question, p. 102.
69. Gunaratna, Indian Intervention in Sri Lanka, p. 392.
70. In August 1993, a BKI terrorist was killed by his own bomb while struggling with a security guard in a theater; it is uncertain whether
he intended a suicide attack. In 1999, the four members of a BKI suicide squad were all killed while attacking the Punjab headquarters of
the RSS, a Hindu nationalist group. In January 2000, Indian police captured BKI terrorists who were preparing suicide bomb attacks. The
Babbar Khalsa International also committed numerous acts of non-suicidal terrorism, such as the bombing of the Kanishka aircraft of Air
India off the Irish coast in June 1985, killing nearly 200 passengers, and an unsuccessful attempt the same day to blow up another Air
India plane originating from Tokyo. B. Raman, “Counter-Terrorism: The Indian Experience,” South India Analysis Group, no. 649. See
www.saq.org.
71. Arjun Adlakha, “Population Trends: India” (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1997); and
Sharda Jain, Politics of Terrorism in India: The Case of Punjab (New Delhi: Deep & Deep Publications, 1995), p. 118.
72. Peter van der Veer thus concludes, “The Sikh case is an excellent example of the influence of British colonial policies on the
development of communal identity.” Van der Veer, Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1994), p. 55. On the history of Sikh identity, see Khushwant Singh, A History of the Sikhs: 1839–1964 (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966), esp. vol. 2; Ram Swarup, “Concept of a Sikh Nation,” in Abida Samiuddin, The Punjab Crisis:
Challenge and Response (New Delhi: Mittal Publications, 1985), esp. pp. 435–36; and Rajiv Kapur, Sikh Separatism: The Politics of
Faith (Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1987).
73. Kapur, Sikh Separatism, p. 217
74. P. Wallace, “Political Violence and Terrorism in India,” in Martha Crenshaw, ed., Terrorism in Context (University Park, Penn.:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), p. 394; Joyce Pettigrew, “Martyrdom and Guerrilla Organization in Punjab,” Journal of
Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, vol. 30, no 3 (November 1992), p. 394; and Cynthia Keppley Mahmood, Fighting for Faith
and Nation: Dialogues with Sikh Militants (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), p. 137.
75. S. Anandaram, Assassination of a Prime Minister (New Delhi: Vision Books, 1994), p. 16.
76. Devinder Singh, Akali Politics in Punjab, 1964–1985 (New Delhi: National Book Organization, 1993), p. 202; Gurharpal Singh,
“The Punjab Crisis Since 1984,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 18, no. 3 (July 1995), pp. 476–93; Judget S. Chima, “Back to the Future
in 2002: A Model of Sikh Separatism in Punjab,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, vol. 25 (2002), pp. 19–39.
77. Harish K. Puri, Paramjit Singh Judge, and Jagrup Singh Sekhon, Terrorism in Punjab: Understanding Grassroots Reality (New
Delhi: Har-Anand Publications, 1999), pp. 9–12.
78. G. S. Mansukhani, Introduction to Sikhism (New Delhi: Hemkunt Press, 1977), p. 51.
79. Quoted in Joyce Pettigrew, “In Search of a New Kingdom of Lahore,” Pacific Affairs, vol. 60, no. 1 (1987), pp. 1–25.
80. S. S. Dharam, The Only Option for Sikhs (Jaipur, India: published by the author, 1984), p. 183.
81. Quoted in Therese Suhashini Gunawardena, “Contesting Khalistan: The Sikh Diaspora and the Politics of Separatism” (Ph.D. diss.,
University of Texas at Austin, May 2001), p. 65.
82. Interviewed December 1989. In Pettigrew, Sikhs of the Punjab, p. 149.
83. Melissa Ann Fuller, “Explaining Ethnic Conflict: The Sikh Insurgency in Punjab, 1978–1995” (Ph. D. diss., University of California–
Los Angeles, 1999), p. 153.
84. Interviewed in Punjab in 1993; quoted in Mahmood, Fighting for Faith and Nation, p. 132.
85. Interviewed in December 1989. In Pettigrew, Sikhs of the Punjab, p. 141.
86. Interviewed December 1989. In Pettigrew, Sikhs of the Punjab, pp. 148–49.
87. Pettigrew, “Martyrdom and Guerrilla Organization in Punjab,” pp. 390–91.
88. Dharam, The Only Option for Sikhs, pp. 4–8.
89. Ibid., p. 188.
90. Quoted in Therese Suhashini Gunawardena, “Contesting Khalistan: The Sikh Diaspora and the Politics of Separatism” (Ph.D. diss.,
University of Texas at Austin, May 2001), p. 66.
91. Interviewed December 1989. In Pettigrew, Sikhs of the Punjab, p. 154.
92. Interviewed December 1989. In Pettigrew, Sikhs of the Punjab, pp. 168–69.
93. Interviewed December 1989. In Pettigrew, Sikhs of the Punjab, p. 182.
94. Dr. Gurmit Singh Aulakh, president, Council of Khalistan, “Vaisakhi Day Message to the Sikh Nation,” April 6, 2004. Available at
www.Khalistan.com.
95. Robert S. Robins and Jerrold M. Post, Political Paranoia: The Psychopolitics of Hatred (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1997).
96. There are no precise figures for Kurds in Turkey, since the government does not count this group separately from others. Estimates
range from 6 million to 12 million, with most analysts using lower to middle figures. Turkey: A Country Study (Washington, D.C.:
Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, 1995); Servet Mutlu, “Ethnic Kurds in Turkey: A Demographic Study,” International
Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 28 (1996), pp. 517–41.
97. On the origins of the civil war, see Kemal Kirisci and Gareth Winrow, The Kurdish Question and Turkey: An Example of TransState
Conflict (London: Frank Cass, 1997); and Henri J. Barkey and Graham E. Fuller, Turkey’s Kurdish Question (Lanham, Md.:
Rowman & Littlefield, 1998).
98. David McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2000), p. 442.
99. Matthew Kocher, “The Decline of PKK and the Viability of a One-State Solution in Turkey,” International Journal on
Multicultural Societies, vol. 4, no. 1 (2002), pp. 133, 136.
100. Ely Karmon, “The Showdown Between the PKK and Turkey,” (Herzliya, Israel: International Policy Institute for CounterTerrorism,
November 1998).
101. Barkey and Fuller, Turkey’s Kurdish Question, p. 47.
102. Svante E. Cornell, “The Kurdish Question in Turkish Politics,” Orbis, vol. 45, no. 1 (Winter 2001), pp. 31–47.
103. Barkey and Fuller, Turkey’s Kurdish Question, pp. 81–85.
104. Murat Somer, “Ethnic Kurds, Endogenous Identities, and Turkey’s Democratization and Integration with Europe,” Global Review
of Ethnopolitics, vol. 1, no 4 (June 2002), pp. 86–88.
105. Kurdish deaths averaged 4 per 1,000 compared to 1, 15, and 19 per 1,000 for the Sikhs in Punjab, Tamils in Sri Lanka, and Shia in
Lebanon, respectively. See Chapter 4.
106. Barkey and Fuller, Turkey’s Kurdish Question, pp. 61–65.
107. Konrad Hirschler, “Defining the Nation: Kurdish Historiography in Turkey in the 1990s,” Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 37, no. 3
(July 2001), p. 156.
PART III: THE INDIVIDUAL LOGIC OF SUICIDE TERRORISM
CHAPTER 9: ALTRUISM AND TERRORISM
1. As the New York Times’s Steven Erlanger wrote shortly after September 11, 2001, “the forces that transformed Mohammed Atta are
not clear.” Steven Erlanger, “An Unobtrusive Man’s Odyssey: Polite Student to Suicide Hijacker,” New York Times (September 15,
2001). Even the best efforts to present the biographies of suicide attackers share a similar tendency to look for deviant psychological
factors only to find they are weakly present if at all. See Joyce M. Davis, Martyrs: Innocence, Vengeance, and Despair in the
Middle East (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); and Barbara Victor, Army of Roses: Inside the World of Palestinian Women
Suicide Bombers (Rodale, 2003).
2. D. C. Clark and S. L. Horton-Deutsch, “The Value of the PsychologicalAutopsy Method for Studying Antecedents of Suicide,” in R.
W. Maris, et al., The Assessment and Prediction of Suicide (New York: Guilford Press, 1992), pp. 144–82; and K. Hawton, et al.,
“The Psychological Autopsy Approach to Studying Suicide: A Review of Methodological Issues,” Journal of Affective Disorders, vol.
50 (1998), pp. 269–76.
3. Emile Durkheim, Suicide: A Study in Sociology, trans. John A. Spaulding and George Simson (New York: Free Press, 1951), pp.
210, 215.
4. As evidence for the existence of egoistic suicide, Durkheim showed that suicide rates vary significantly with the degree of social
integration. With respect to religious society, he found that the suicide rate is highest among Protestants, whose religion promotes a high
degree of individualism, lower among Catholics, whose individual beliefs are more bound by collective authority, and lowest among Jews,
whose minority status encourages highly cohesive communities. With respect to political society, he found that suicide rates fall markedly
during times of great military conflicts and national emergencies as individuals actively close ranks to confront a common danger.
Although drawn from nineteenth-century Europe, these basic patterns in the inverse relationship between suicide rates and social
integration are routinely confirmed by contemporary studies of suicide in the United States, Western Europe, and other parts of the world.
See Ronald W. Maris, Pathways to Suicide: A Survey of Self-Destructive Behaviors (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1981); W. S. F. Pickering and Geoffrey Walford, eds., Durkheim’s Suicide: A Century of Research and Debate (New York:
Routledge, 2000).
5. Durkheim, Suicide, p. 219. Emphasis in original.
6. The old Indian custom known as suttee obligated widows to throw themselves onto their husbands’ funeral pyres, while North
American Indian and other traditional societies commonly required the aged to kill themselves rather than await a natural death.
7. Durkheim, Suicide, p. 239. Since Durkheim’s day, aggressive suicide prevention programs have reduced the incidence of suicide
among the American, British, and other major military forces. Although the level of military suicide is now commonly near the civilian
average for the civilian population of the same age, occasional spikes occur, which are often curtailed by aggressive preventive
measures. U.S. Centers for Disease Control, “Suicide Prevention Among Active Duty Air Force Personnel—United States, 1990–1999,”
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, vol. 48, no. 46 (November 26, 1999). The fact that military suicide appears to be highly
responsive to institutional intervention supports the basic logic of altruistic suicide. If the community encouraging personal sacrifice for the
group actually opposes it, then we would expect altruistic suicide to decline.
8. Durkheim, Suicide, p. 276.
9. On the conditions for brainwashing and other forms of heavy indoctrination, see Robert Jay Lifton, Thought Reform and the
Psychology of Totalism (New York: W. W. Norton, 1961); Margaret O. Hyde, Brainwashing and Other Forms of Mind Control
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1977); and Denise Winn, The Manipulated Mind: Brainwashing, Conditioning, and Indoctrination
(Cambridge, Mass.: Malor Books, 2000).
10. Ronald W. Maris, Alan L. Berman, and Morton M. Silverman, Comprehensive Textbook of Suicidology (New York: Guilford
Press, 2000), pp. 284–310; Antoon A. Leenaars, Suicide Notes: Predictive Clues and Patterns (New York: Human Sciences Press,
1988).
11. Social scientists have identified these risk factors on the basis of voluminous studies of suicide in the United States and other
countries. For prominent reviews, see Maris et al., Comprehensive Textbook; Ronald Maris, Assessment and Prediction of Suicide
(New York: Guilford Press, 1992); and Keith Hawton and Kees van Heeringen, The International Handbook of Suicide and
Attempted Suicide (New York: Wiley, 2000).
12. Prominent among the large literature that seeks to identify deeper psychological and other causes for social detachment leading to
suicide are Karl Menninger, Man Against Himself (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1938); Norman Farberow and Edwin S. Shneidman,
eds., Cry for Help (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961); and Maris, Pathways to Suicide.
13. S. Stack, “New Micro Level Data on the Impact of Divorce on Suicide,” Journal of Marriage and the Family, vol. 52 (1990), pp.
119–27; and J. Slater and R. A. Depue, “The Contribution of Environmental Events and Social Support to Serious Suicide Attempts in
Primary Depressive Disorder,” Journal of Abnormal Psychiatry, vol. 40 (1981), pp. 275–85. The preponderance of suicide among
males may also be due to greater access to firearms, the method of choice in about 60 percent of ordinary suicides.
14. Jim Jones, originally a Methodist minister, combined elements of Pentecostalism with aspects of socialism and communism. David
Koresh’s Branch Davidians drew from Seventh Day Adventism. Heaven’s Gate and the Order of the Solar Temple mixed elements of
Protestantism and Catholicism, respectively, with beliefs taken from modern science fiction. The Ugandan doomsday cult was founded
by excommunicated Roman Catholics who believed they could predict the end of the world.
15. The Christian prohibition against suicide does not rest on a biblical injunction, but derives from Augustine’s interpretation of scripture
in the fourth century A.D. Augustine’s views have since been taken as authoritative by Catholics and Protestants alike. Arthur J. Droge
and James D. Tabor, A Noble Death: Suicide and Martyrdom Among Christains and Jews in Antiquity (San Francisco:
HarperCollins, 1992).
16. On the importance of boundary control, see Marc Galanter, Cults: Faith, Healing, and Coercion (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1999); and Janja Lalich, Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2004).
17. For detailed histories of the groups, see Lalich, Bounded Choice; Thomas W. Keiser and Jacqueline L. Keiser, The Anatomy of
Illusion: Religious Cults and Destructive Persuasion (Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1987); Robert Jay Lifton, Destroying the
World to Save It (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1999), ch. 13; and Micha Popper, Hypnotic Leadership: Leaders, Followers, and
the Loss of Self (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2001).
18. World Health Organization, World Health Statistics Annual (Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization, 1999).
19. In general, there is reason to question the reliability of data collected on the socially sensitive topic of suicide. Although scholars have
found that official statistics tend to under-report suicide, they have not found that this bias is related to religion; all religions prohibit the
practice. Unlike counts of some under-reported events, such as rape, suicide counts do not depend on self-reports, but on identification by
coroners, who are required to review suspicious and violent deaths. Family meetings with coroners appear to reduce the incidence of
reported suicide, a fact that may be related to insurance claims or other factors unrelated to religion. For an exhaustive review of the
reliability of suicide rates, finding “no evidence” that “misclassification invalidates the use of societal suicide rates in sociological
research,” see David Lester, Why People Kill Themselves: A 1990s Summary of Research Findings on Suicidal Behavior
(Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1992), p. 88.
20. For example, David Lester, “Islam and Suicide,” Psychological Reports, vol. 87, no. 2 (October 2000), pp. 692–98; and T. K.
Daradkeh and N. Al-Zayer, “Parasuicide in an Arab Industrial Community,” Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavia, vol. 77 (1988), pp. 707–
71.
21. In Canada during the 1990s, immigrant Muslims committed suicide at a rate of 6.3 per 100,000, compared with about 13 per 100,000
for the nation as a whole, according to official Canadian government statistics. “Immigrants Less Prone to Suicide,” The Gazette
(Montreal) (March 30, 2004); “Deaths and Mortality Rates by Cause and Population Groups,” Statistical Abstract of Israel (Tel Aviv:
Central Bureau of Statistics, 2004).
22. K. Gopal Iyer and Mehar Singh, Indebtedness, Impoverishment and Suicides in Rural Punjab (Delhi: Indian Publishers
Distributors, 2000); Institute for Development and Communication, Suicides in Rural Punjab (Chandigarh, Punjab: Himalia Press,
1998).
23. Kaz de Jong, et al., “Assessing Trauma in Sri Lanka” (Amsterdam: Médecins sans Frontières, 2001); and P. De Silva, Suicides in
Sri Lanka (Kandy, Sri Lanka: Institute of Fundamental Studies, 1996).
24. L. Rathanayeke, “Suicides in Sri Lanka,” in Robert Koskey, et al., eds., Suicide Prevention: The Global Context (New York:
Plenum Press, 1998); and Neil Thalagala, “Attempted Suicides” (Ph.D. diss., University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, 2000).
25. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, ordinary Palestinian suicides totaled 36 in 2000, 39 in 2001, 31 in 2002, and 29 in
2003. Palestinian National Authority, Health Status in Palestine (Ramallah: Ministry of Health, 2000–2003), mortality appendices.
26. Matthew Nock and Peter Marzuk, “Suicide and Violence,” in Keith Hawton and Kees van Heeringen, eds., The International
Handbook of Suicide and Attempted Suicide (New York: John Wiley, 2000), pp. 449–50.
27. Although some suicide attacks in Iraq appear to be coordinated team attacks, I have left these out of the team attack analysis until
more data become available.
28. For extensive documentation of pre-existing social bonds among many al-Qaeda terrorists, see Marc Sageman, Understanding
Terror Networks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).
29. For a study of altruistic suicide among the Yuit Eskimos, see A. H. Leighton and C. C. Hughes, “Notes on Eskimo Patterns of
Suicide,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, vol. 11 (1955), pp. 327–38.
30. Is there a cultural predisposition toward altruistic behavior among Muslims, Tamils, and Sikhs? Although Western notions of
individualism would seem to discourage altruistic behavior, in fact the history of martyrdom is replete with examples of Christian and
Jewish martyrs from ancient times through the Protestant Reformation and, some would argue, up to the present day (e.g., evangelical
Christians who have died for their religion in Latin America). Hence, a cultural predisposition toward altruism seems no more likely than
a cultural predisposition toward suicide to account for suicide terrorism.
31. Shimon Shapira, “Origins of Hizbollah,” The Jerusalem Quarterly, vol. 46 (Spring 1988), p. 124.
32. Judith Harik, The Public and Social Services of the Lebanese Militias (Oxford: Centre for Lebanese Studies, 1994), p. 34. See
also Magnus Ranstrop, Hizb’allah in Lebanon (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), pp. 82–84.
33. Hilal Khashan, “The Developmental Programs of Islamic Fundamentalist Groups in Lebanon as a Source of Popular Legitimation,”
Indian Journal of Politics, vol. 27, no. 3 (1993), pp. 1–13.
34. August R. Norton, Amal and the Shia (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987), p. 170.
35. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, secretary general of Hezbollah, speech “In Memory of His Eminence Martyr Sayyed Abbas al-Musawi”
(February 16, 2001). Available at www.nasrollah.org.
36. Interview in fall 1985, quoted in Martin Krammer, “The Oracle of Hizbullah: Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah, Part II,” in R.
Scott Appleby, ed., Spokesmen for the Despised: Fundamentalist Leaders of the Middle East (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1997), p. 12.
37. These statements are collected in Lebanese Resistance Movement, “Martyrdom Operations” (Beirut, no date); translation by
Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism.
38. Jerusalem Media and Communication Centre polls 1995 to 2003. Available at www.jmcc.org.
39. For a recent account of these symbols, see Annemarie Oliver and Paul F. Steinberg, The Road to Martyr’s Square (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2004).
40. Sara Roy, “The Transformation of Islamic IGOs in Palestine,” Middle East Report, 214 (Spring 2000); Riccardo Bocco, et al.,
“International and Local Aid During the Second Intifada” (Geneva, Switzerland, 2001); and “Islamic Social Welfare Activism in the
Occupied Palestinian Territories,” Middle East Report, no. 13 (April 2003).
41. Eli Berman, “Hamas, Taliban, and the Jewish Underground,” NBER Working Paper 10004 (Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of
Economic Research, 2004).
42. Hamas Political Bureau Statement, Al-Sabil (Amman, Jordan), April 19, 1994, in FBIS-NES-94-075 (April 19, 1994).
43. “Standing in Line to Commit Suicide” (interview with Hamas official), Ma’ariv (December 30, 1994), FBIS-NES-95-007 (Jan. 11,
1995).
44. Statement issued by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas—Palestine), Sunday, July 23, 2000.
45. From 2000 through 2004, Israel demolished the homes of 675 suicide and other terrorists’ families. See Greg Myre, “Israel Halts
Decades-Old Practice of Demolishing Militants’ Homes,” New York Times (February 18, 2005).
46. A. J. V. Chandrakanthan, “Eelam Tamil Nationalism: An Inside View,” in A. Jeyaratnam Wilson, Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism
(Vancouver: UBC Press, 2000); Mia Bloom, Dying to Kill (New York: Columbia University Press, forthcoming), Chapter 3.
47. On the LTTE’s social services, see Sarath Munasinghe, A Soldier’s Version: An Account of the On-going Conflict and Origin of
Terrorism in Sri Lanka (Colombo, Sri Lanka: Market Information, 2000), pp. 184–87; Adele Balasingham, The Will to Freedom: An
Inside View of Tamil Resistance (Mitcham, U.K.: Fairmax Publishing, 2001), pp. 269–89; Jaffna District Report (Jaffna: Consortium of
Humanitarian Agencies, 2004).
48. Prabhakaran,”Heroes’ Day” speech (Jaffna, July 5, 1993). Available at www.eelamweb.com.
49. Quoted in Yamuna Sangarasivam, “Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Cultural Production of Nationalism and Violence”
(Ph.D. diss., Graduate School of Syracuse University, May 2000), p. 310.
50. See Chapter 8, note 41.
51. Collected and translated by the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism.
52. Dagmar Hellmann-Rajanayagam, The Tamil Tigers: Armed Struggle for Identity (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1994), pp. 136,
144.
53. Elaine Sciolino, “Saudi Warns Bush,” New York Times (January 27, 2002).
54. Anonymous, Through Our Enemy’s Eyes (Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 2002), pp. 39–41.
55. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, “Monograph on Terrorist Financing,” (Washington, D.C.: HouseSenate
Joint Inquiry Report on 9/11, 2004), p. 111.
56. Osama bin Laden, Frontline interview, May 1998.
57. Al-Zawahiri, “Knights Under the Banner of the Prophet” (December 2001), part 11. Available at www.fas.org.
58. Osama bin Laden, sermon, March 5, 2003. Available at www.memri.org.
CHAPTER 10:THE DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE OF SUICIDE TERRORISTS
1. For an excellent review of the literature on these existing explanations, see Rex A. Hudson, The Sociology and Psychology of
Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why? (Washington, D.C.: Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, September
1999).
2. Valuable recent case histories of suicide terrorists include Joyce M. Davis, Martyrs: Innocence, Vengeance, and Despair in the
Middle East (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); and Barbara Victor, Army of Roses: Inside the World of Palestinian Women
Suicide Bombers (Emmaus, Penna.: Rodale, 2003).
3. Important new surveys of demographic data on terrorists include Marc Sageman, Understanding Terror Networks (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Claude Berrebi, “Evidence About the Link Between Education, Poverty, and Terrorism among
Palestinians,” Princeton University Industrial Relations Section Working Paper 477 (September 2003); and Alan B. Krueger and Jitka
Maleckova, “Education, Poverty, Political Violence, and Terrorism,” BNER Working Paper 9074 (Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of
Economic Research, July 2002).
4. Nicole Argo, “Understanding and Defusing Human Bombs: The Palestinian Case,” paper presented at the International Studies
Association Annual Convention, Montreal (March 2004); Nasra Hassan, “An Arsenal of Believers: Talking to Human Bombs,” The New
Yorker (November 19, 2001), pp. 36–41; and Ariel Merari, “Social, Organizational, and Psychological Factors in Suicide Terrorism,” in
T. Bjorgo, ed., Root Causes of Terrorism (London: Routledge, forthcoming).
5. Merari identified many different groups in one of the first detailed surveys. Ariel Merari, “The Readiness to Kill and Die: Suicidal
Terrorism in the Middle East,” in Origins of Terrorism, Walter Reich, ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), pp. 192–
210.
6. Martin Kramer, “Sacrifice and Fratricide in Shiite Lebanon,” in Violence and the Sacred in the Modern World, Mark
Juergensmeyer, ed. (London: Frank Cass, 1991), pp. 71–89.
7. For example, the most reliable statistics on Palestinian income, from the Israel Social Science Data Center and the Hanf survey
“Attitudes and Opinions of Economically Active Lebanese 1981–1987,” both divide the data into four categories (poor/low, average,
above average, high). I reduce this to a three-point scale by collapsing the two middle categories to diminish the most likely measurement
error across the surveys. (Israeli Social Sciences Data Center [ISCD], “Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics: Labor Force Survey in
Judea, Samaria and Gaza, 1981–1995,” issued by the ISCD and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1995; Theodor Hanf, “Attitudes
and Opinions of Economically Active Lebanese 1981–1987,” in Hanf, Coexistence in Wartime Lebanon [London: I. B. Tauris, 1993].)
CHAPTER 11: PORTRAITS OF THREE SUICIDE TERRORISTS
1. Robert D. McFadden, “Prisoner of Rage: From a Child of Promise to the Unabomber Suspect,” New York Times (May 26, 1996);
“Anatomy of a Serial Killer,” The Observer Magazine (London) (December 12, 1993); Steven A. Egger, The Killers Among Us: An
Examination of Serial Murder and Its Investigation (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 2002); and Richard Tithecott, Of Men
and Monsters: Jeffrey Dahmer and the Construction of a Serial Killer (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997).
2. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Viking Press, 1963).
3. Ariel Merari, “The Readiness to Kill and Die: Suicide Terrorism in the Middle East,” in Walter Reich, ed., Origins of Terrorism (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 206.
4. Robert S. Robins and Jerrold M. Post, Political Paranoia: The Psychopolitics of Hatred (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1997), pp. 78–79.
5. See Chapter 9, note 1.
6. Matthew Brzezinski, “Six Years Before the September 11 Attacks,” Washington Post (December 30, 2001); Judith Miller and Don
Van Natta, Jr., “In Years of Plots and Clues, Scope of al-Qaeda Eluded US, “ New York Times (June 9, 2002).
7. For the most recent information on the origins of the September 11 attacks, see Douglas Frantz, et al., “On Plotters’ Path to US, a
Stop at bin Laden Camp,” New York Times (September 10, 2002). “Final Instructions to the Hijackers of September 11,” reprinted in
Bruce Lincoln, Holy Terrors: Thinking About Religion After September 11 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp. 93–98.
8. Scott Baldauf, “Portrait of an Al Qaeda Camp,” Christian Science Monitor (January 17, 2003).
9 . “USA vs. Osama Bin Laden, et al.,” Findlaw (January 8, 2001), at
http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/binladen/binladen030701tt.pdf.
10. On the military training in al-Qaeda’s camps, see “US Embassy Bombing Transcript Day 8,” International Policy Institute for
Counter-Terrorism (February 21, 2001); Aukai Collins, My Jihad (Guilford, Conn.: Lyons Press, 2002), pp. 25–34; and “United States
vs. Mokhtar Haouari (LAX Millenium Bombing Case),” Findlaw (July 5, 2001), in
http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/haouari/ushaouari070501rassamtt.pdf.
11. For good accounts of Atta’s life, see Erlanger, “Unobtrusive Man’s Odyssey”; Peter Finn, “A Fanatic’s Quiet Path to Terror,”
Washington Post (September 22, 2001); John Hooper, “The Shy, Caring, Deadly Fanatic,” Observer (September 23, 2001); John Cloud,
“Atta’s Odyssey,” Time (October 8, 2001); and Jim Yardley et al., “Portrait of the Terrorist,” New York Times (October 10, 2001). For a
psychological assessment, see Aubrey Immelman, “The Personality Profile of September 11 Hijack Ringleader Mohamed Atta”
(unpublished manuscript, Saint John’s University, October 11, 2001).
12. Rajeev Sharma, Beyond the Tigers: Tracking Rajiv Gandhi’s Assassination (New Delhi: Kaveri Books, 1998), pp. 44–46.
13. In addition to Sharma, Beyond the Tigers, see Subramanian Swamy, The Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi (New Delhi, 2000), pp.
111–41, and ShashiAhluwalia and MeenakshiAhluwalia, Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi (New Delhi: Mittal Publications, 1991), pp. 1–
26.
14. On the LTTE and the Sri Lankan civil war, see V. Navaratnam, The Rise and Fall of the Tamil Nation (Madras, 1991); A.
Jeyaratnam Wilson, The Break-up of Sri Lanka: The Sinhalese-Tamil Conflict (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988); Rohan
Gunaratna, Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Crisis and National Security (Columbo, Sri Lanka: South Asia Network on Conflict Research, 1998);
and Shyamon Jayasinghe, “The Undertones of the Sri Lankan Conflict,” Contemporary Review, vol. 277, no. 1617 (October 2000), pp.
216–20.
15. On LTTE training for suicide operations, see Sharma, Beyond the Tigers, pp. 119–24; Amy Waldman, “Masters of Suicide Bombing:
Tamil Guerrillas of Sri Lanka,” New York Times (January 14, 2003); Rohan Gunaratna, “The LTTE and Suicide Terrorism” ( Frontline,
February 5–8, 2000); and Manoj Joshi, “On the Razor’s Edge: The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam,” Studies in Conflict and
Terrorism, vol. 19 (January–March 1996), pp. 19–42.
16. Ana Cutter, “Tamil Tigresses,” Slant (Spring 1998), www.columbia.edu/cu/sipa/pubs/slant.
17. “Informer Drove Bomber to Disco,” Ha’aretz (June 25, 2001).
18. Harvey Kushner, “Suicide Bombers: Business as Usual,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, vol. 19, no. 4 (October–December
1996), pp. 329–38; Hala Jaber, “Inside the World of the Palestinian Suicide Bomber,” Sunday Times (London) (March 24, 2002); and
Assaf Moghadam, “Suicide Bombings in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, vol. 26, no. 2 (March–
April 2003), pp. 65–92.
19. Nasra Hassan, “An Arsenal of Believers: Talking to ‘Human Bombs,’ ” New Yorker (November 19, 2001), p. 41.
20. Jack Kelly, “Devotion, Desire Drives Youths to ‘Martyrdom,’ ” USA Today (August 9, 2001); Jeffrey Bartholet, “A Guaranteed Trip
to Heaven,” Newsweek (April 24, 1995).
21. Kelly, “Devotion, Desire.”
22. Ibid.
23. Jamal Halaby, “Bomber Went to West Bank for a Better Life,” The Guardian (London) (June 4, 2001).
24. Jack Kelly, “Devotion, Desire”; Nat Hentoff, “Differing Reactions to Death in Israel,” Village Voice (August 6, 2001).
25. Mitch Potter, “Three Years of Blood,” Toronto Star (September 28, 2003).
26. Chris McGreal, “The Bomber’s Father,” The Guardian (London) (September 29, 2003).
27. Potter, “Three Years of Blood.”
28. Andrew Silke, “Ultimate Outrage,” The Times (London) (May 5, 2003).
CONCLUSION
CHAPTER 12: A NEW STRATEGY FOR VICTORY
1. Chaim D. Kaufmann, “Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars,” International Security, vol. 20, no. 4 (Spring 1996),
pp. 136–75; and idem, “When All Else Fails: Ethnic Population Transfers and Partitions in the Twentieth Century,” International
Security, vol. 23, no. 2 (Fall 1998), pp. 120–56.
2. This calculation is based on $3 million per mile, the cost of the National Border Fence—with triple barriers and cameras—that now
extends over fourteen miles on the California-Mexico border near San Diego, which is also the same cost as the Israeli security fence.
Blas Nuñez-Neto and Stephen R. Vina, “Border Security: Fences Along the U.S. International Border” (Washington, D.C.:
Congressional Research Service, January 13, 2005).
3. David Frum and Richard Perle, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror (New York: Random House, 2003), pp. 34, 35, 40,
83, and 106. Frum and Perle also call for regime change in North Korea, although how this is related to their definition of the threat as
Islamic fundamentalism is unclear.
4. For extensive evaluation of the growing resentment of American policies in numerous areas around the world, see Stephen M. Walt,
Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005). For analysis of the consequences
of U.S. policy toward Israel, see Stephen Van Evera, “Why the U.S. Needs Mideast Peace,” The American Conservative (March 14,
2005), pp. 7–10.
5. On the similarity with myths guiding past empires, see Jack Snyder, “Imperial Temptations,” National Interest, no. 71 (Spring 2003),
pp. 29–41; and idem, Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991).
6. On off-shore balancing in American foreign policy, see John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.
W. Norton, 2001); Robert J. Art, A Grand Strategy for America (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003); Barry R. Posen and
Andrew L. Ross, “Competing Visions for U.S. Grand Strategy,” International Security, vol. 21, no. 3 (Winter 1996–97), pp. 5–53; and
Christopher Layne, “From Preponderance to Off-Shore Balancing,” International Security, vol. 22, no. 1 (Summer 1997), pp. 86–124.
7. Samuel Huntington writes, “The overwhelming bulk of the countries where economic conditions supportive of democratization were
emerging in the 1990s were in the Middle East and North Africa,” and lists Iran and Saudi Arabia among them. Samuel P. Huntington,
The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), p. 314.
Acknowledgments
THIS BOOK HAS benefited from the advice and support of a host of people and institutions. Chaim
Kaufmann encouraged me to study suicide terrorism and, more important, was relentless in his
demand for analytic clarity and endless in his generosity in helping my manuscript approach his
uncompromising standards. Ken Feldman inspired me to produce the best analysis I could both
through the sharpness of his comments and the counsel he gave at every stage of this project. More
than twenty years ago, John Mearsheimer stimulated my desire to use social science to contribute to
our world, and he pushes me to improve my work to this day. For their encouragement and
contributions to this book, I am forever grateful.
The following people offered valuable comments on substantial parts of the manuscript: Bethany
Albertson, Robert Art, Mia Bloom, John Brehm, Alexander Downes, Daniel Drezner, Charles Glaser,
Jeffrey Grynaviski, Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Carol Kaufmann, Adria Lawrence, Charles Lipson,
Sean Lynn-Jones, Michael O’Connor, Sebastian Rosato, Bernard Silberman, Jack Snyder, Ronald
Suny, Lisa Wedeen, and Iris Young. I am grateful to all of them, who often interrupted their own work
in order to sharpen mine.
I would also like to thank the research assistants who worked with me as part of the Chicago
Project on Suicide Terrorism. They include Mohammad Abel Azeez, Sean Anthony, Omar Cheta,
Stephen Cicala, Edward Cohen, Rani Fedson, Heather Felton, Greg Gasiewski, Emily Hauser, Sevag
Kechichian, Joshua Laikin, Negeen Pegahi, John Schuessler, Amir Wielinski, and Rochdi Younsi.
Special thanks goes to Jenna Jordan, who superbly coordinated numerous research efforts and also
made valuable comments on the manuscript.
The University of Chicago contributed profoundly to this project, both by providing a stimulating
intellectual environment and through generous financial support. I would especially like to thank John
Mark Hanson, the dean of the social sciences, and the students and faculty of the Program on
International Security Policy. Many thanks are also owed to the office staff in the Political Science
Department—Kathy Anderson, Heidi Parker, and Mimi Walsh—and to my financial administrator,
Fione Dukes, for all the help they have given me over the years.
Several other institutions provided important support to the writing and research of this book. They
include Argonne National Laboratory and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency of the U.S.
Department of Defense and the Social Science Division at the University of Chicago. I would also
like to acknowledge encouragement from the committee for the Carnegie Corporation of New York,
which selected me as a Carnegie Scholar in 2004, and from the committee for the Combating Political
Violence paper competition sponsored by the Institute for War and Peace Studies at Columbia
University, which selected an earlier version of Part I of this book as a winning paper.
David Ebershoff, my editor at Random House, played an indispensable role in this project. His
generous encouragement, penetrating comments, and uncommon judgment immensely improved the
entire book. Julia Cheiffetz did a splendid job of shepherding the editorial process for the book.
Jolanta Benal, my copy editor, clarified and brightened my prose, while Benjamin Dreyer, Steve
Messina, Maralee Youngs, and Richard Elman did an excellent job of managing the production of the
book. The intriguing cover was designed by Allison Saltzman and the easy-to-follow interior layout
was designed by Jo Metsch. I would especially like to thank Scott Mendel, my agent, who approached
me about writing this book and whose patience and wisdom contributed significantly to the final
product that is before you.
Those who deserve the most credit are those I hold the most dear. I thank my wife, Lisa. Her love,
patience, and confidence make me all that I can be. I also thank my children, Jonathan, Elizabeth, and
Anne. They bring me joy each day.
My highest appreciation is for my mother, Marlene. Her love, sacrifice, and values have nourished
and guided my life. The older I get, the more grateful I am. I dedicate this book to her.
About the Author
ROBERT A. PAPE is associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago, where
he teaches international politics and is the director of the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism.
A distinguished scholar of national security affairs, he writes widely on coercive airpower,
economic sanctions, international moral action, and the politics of unipolarity and has taught
international relations at Dartmouth College and air strategy for the U.S. Air Force’s School of
Advanced Airpower Studies. He is a contributor to The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, The
New Republic, and The Washington Post and has appeared on ABC’s World News Tonight and
Nightline, National Public Radio, and other national television and radio programs.
Copyright © 2005 by Robert A. Pape
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