Subject: Suicide attacks not rooted in fundamentalism Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 06:14:59 -0500 Message-ID: <B14120EE5C432443B21102F7925DAD0202E3F30C@COKE.uwec.edu> From: "Grossman, Zoltan C." <GROSSMZC@uwec.edu>
May 18, 2005
New York Times op-ed
Blowing Up an Assumption
By ROBERT A. PAPE
Chicago
Many Americans are mystified by the recent rise in the number and the
audacity of suicide attacks in Iraq. The lull in violence after
January's successful elections seemed to suggest that the march of
democracy was trampling the threat of terrorism. But as electoral
politics is taking root, the Iraqi insurgency and suicide terrorism are
actually gaining momentum. In the past two weeks, suicide attackers have
killed more than 420 Iraqis working with the United States and its
allies. There were 20 such incidents in 2003, nearly 50 in 2004, and
they are on pace to set a new record this year.
To make sense of this apparent contradiction, one has to understand the
strategic logic of suicide terrorism. Since Muslim terrorists professing
religious motives have perpetrated many of the attacks, it might seem
obvious that Islamic fundamentalism is the central cause, and thus the
wholesale transformation of Muslim societies into secular democracies,
even at the barrel of a gun, is the obvious solution. However, the
presumed connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism
is misleading, and it may spur American policies that are likely to
worsen the situation.
Over the past two years, I have compiled a database of every suicide
bombing and attack around the globe from 1980 through 2003 - 315 in all.
This includes every episode in which at least one terrorist killed
himself or herself while trying to kill others, but excludes attacks
authorized by a national government (like those by North Korean agents
against South Korea). The data show that there is far less of a
connection between suicide terrorism and religious fundamentalism than
most people think.
The leading instigator of suicide attacks is the Tamil Tigers in Sri
Lanka, a Marxist-Leninist group whose members are from Hindu families
but who are adamantly opposed to religion. This group committed 76 of
the 315 incidents, more than Hamas (54) or Islamic Jihad (27). Even
among Muslims, secular groups like the Kurdistan Workers' Party, the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Al Aksa Martyr
Brigades account for more than a third of suicide attacks.
What nearly all suicide terrorist attacks actually have in common is a
specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to
withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to
be their homeland. Religion is often used as a tool by terrorist
organizations in recruiting and in seeking aid from abroad, but is
rarely the root cause.
Three general patterns in the data support these conclusions. First,
nearly all suicide terrorist attacks - 301 of the 315 in the period I
studied - took place as part of organized political or military
campaigns. Second, democracies are uniquely vulnerable to suicide
terrorists; America, France, India, Israel, Russia, Sri Lanka and Turkey
have been the targets of almost every suicide attack of the past two
decades. Third, suicide terrorist campaigns are directed toward a
strategic objective: from Lebanon to Israel to Sri Lanka to Kashmir to
Chechnya, the sponsors of every campaign - 18 organizations in all - are
seeking to establish or maintain political self-determination.
Before Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, there was no Hezbollah
suicide terrorist campaign against Israel; indeed, Hezbollah came into
existence only after this event. Before the Sri Lankan military began
moving into the Tamil homelands of the island in 1987, the Tamil Tigers
did not use suicide attacks. Before the huge increase in Jewish settlers
on the West Bank in the 1980's, Palestinian groups did not use suicide
terrorism.
And, true to form, there had never been a documented suicide attack in
Iraq until after the American invasion in 2003. Much is made of the fact
that we aren't sure who the Iraqi suicide attackers are. This is not
unusual in the early years of a suicide terrorist campaign. Hezbollah
published most of the biographies and last testaments of its "martyrs"
only after it abandoned the suicide-attack strategy in 1986, a pattern
adopted by the Tamil Tigers as well.
At the moment, our best information indicates that the attackers in Iraq
are Sunni Iraqis and foreign fighters, principally from Saudi Arabia. If
so, this would mean that the two main sources of suicide terrorists in
Iraq are from the Arab countries deemed most vulnerable to
transformation by the presence of American combat troops. This is fully
consistent with what we now know about the strategic logic of suicide
terrorism.
Some have wondered if the rise of suicide terrorism in Iraq is really
such a bad thing for American security. Is it not better to have these
killers far away in Iraq rather than here in the United States? Alas,
history shows otherwise. The presence of tens of thousands of American
combat forces on the Arabian Peninsula after 1990 enabled Al Qaeda to
recruit suicide terrorists, who in turn attacked Americans in the region
(the African embassy bombings in 1998 and the attack on the destroyer
Cole in 2000). The presence of nearly 150,000 American combat troops in
Iraq since 2003 can only give suicide terrorism a boost, and the longer
this suicide terrorist campaign continues the greater the risk of new
attacks in the United States.
Understanding that suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign
occupation rather than a product of Islamic fundamentalism has important
implications for how the United States and its allies should conduct the
war on terrorism. 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 might well be simply to abandon the region
altogether. Isolationism, however, is not possible; America needs a new
strategy that pursues our vital interest in oil but does not stimulate
the rise of a new generation of suicide terrorists.
BEYOND recognizing the limits of military action and stepping up
domestic security efforts, Americans would do well to recall the virtues
of our traditional policy of "offshore balancing" in the Persian Gulf.
During the 1970's and 1980's, the United States managed its interests
there without stationing any combat soldiers on the ground, but keeping
our forces close enough - either on ships or in bases near the region -
to deploy in huge numbers if an emergency. This worked splendidly to
defeat Iraq's aggression against Kuwait in 1990.
THE Bush administration rightly intends to start turning over the
responsibility for Iraq's security to the new government and
systematically withdrawing American troops. But large numbers of these
soldiers should not simply be sent to Iraq's neighbors, where they will
continue to enrage many in the Arab world. Keeping the peace from a
discreet distance seems a better way to secure our interests in the
world's key oil-producing region without provoking more terrorism.
Robert A. Pape, an associate professor of political scienceat the
University of Chicago, isthe author of the forthcoming "Dying to Win:
The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism."