The world leader in suicide terrorism from 1980 to 2004 is the secular Sri Lankan marxist group, Tamil Tigers.
Pape's Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (2005) controverts many widely held beliefs about suicide terrorism.[3] Based on an analysis of every known case of suicide terrorism from 1980 to 2005 (315 attacks as part of 18 campaigns), he concludes that there is "little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, or any one of the world’s religions... . 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" (p. 4). "The taproot of suicide terrorism is nationalism," he argues; it is "an extreme strategy for national liberation" (pp. 79-80). Pape's work examines groups as diverse as the Basque ETA to the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers. Pape also notably provides further evidence to a growing body of literature that finds that the majority of suicide terrorists do not come from impoverished or uneducated background, but rather have middle class origins and a significant level of education.
In a criticism of Pape's link between occupation and suicide terrorism, an article titled "Design, Inference, and the Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism" (published in The American Political Science Review), authors Scott Ashworth, Joshua D. Clinton, Adam Meirowitz, and Kristopher W. Ramsay from Princeton charged Pape with "sampling on the dependent variable" by limiting research only to cases in which suicide terror was used.[1] In a response to the article, Pape asserted that he dealt with these objections sufficiently in his book, and that he had not sampled at all, but rather included the universe of suicide terrorist attacks.[2]
Explaining Suicide Terrorism
Caveat: the book's conclusions do not hold for terrorism in general (8-9). Pape distinguishes among demonstrative terrorism, which seeks publicity, destructive terrorism, which seeks to exert coercion through the threat of injury and death as well as to mobilize support, and suicide terrorism, which involves an attacker’s actually killing himself or herself along with others, generally as part of a campaign (9-11). Three historical episodes are introduced for purposes of comparison: the ancient Jewish Zealots (11-12; see also 33-34), the 11th-12th-century Ismaili Assassins (12-13; see also 34-35), and the Japanese kamikazes (13; see also 35-37). There was no suicide terrorism from 1945 to 1980 (13-14). Modern suicide terrorism began in Lebanon in the 1980s (14), followed by cases involving the Tamil Tigers (July 1990), Israel (1994), Persian Gulf (1995), Turkey (1996), Chechnya (2000), Kashmir (2000), and the U.S. (2001) (14-15). Five campaigns were still ongoing in early 2004, when Dying to Win was being written (15-16). Traditional explanations focus on individual motives, but fail to explain the specificity of suicide terrorism (16-17). Economic explanation of this phenomenon yields “poor” results (17-19). Explanation of suicide terrorism as a form of competition between radical groups is dubious (19-20). Pape proposes an alternative explanation of the “causal logic of suicide terrorism”: at the strategic level, suicide terrorism exerts coercive power against democratic states to cease occupation of territory terrorists consider homeland, while at the social level it depends on mass support and at the individual level it is motivated by altruism (20-23). “The bottom line, then, is that suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation” (23).
Targeting Democracies
Pape claims that his is the first complete analysis of suicide terrorism, as such revealing that not religion but “to compel democracies to withdraw military forces from the terrorists’ national homeland” is its key (38). Patterns of timing (39-41), nationalist goals (42-44), and the targeting of democracies (44-45) reveal its logical, not irrational, nature. “At bottom, suicide terrorism is a strategy for national liberation from foreign military occupation by a democratic state” (45). Foreign occupation is defined in terms of control of territory (not military occupation alone) (46). The targets selected by suicide terrorists suggests nationalist, not religious, aims (46-47). Hamas (47-51) and Al-Qaeda (51-58) are analyzed in some detail. In general, the harshness of occupation does not strongly correlate with suicide terrorism (58-60).
Occupation and Religious Difference
“[T]he taproot of suicide terrorism is nationalism” not religion (79). It is “an extreme strategy for national liberation” (80). This explains how the local community can be persuaded to re-define acts of suicide and murder as acts of martyrdom on behalf of the community (81-83). Pape proposes a nationalist theory of suicide terrorism, seen from the point of view of terrorists. He analyzes the notions of occupation (83-84), homeland (84-85), identity (85-87), religious difference as a contributor to a sense of “alien” occupation (87-88), foreign occupation reverses the relative importance of religion and language (88-92), and the widespread perception of the method as a “last resort” (92-94). A statistical demonstration leads to the conclusion that a “linear” rather than “self-reinforcing spiral” explanation of suicide terrorism is best (94-100). However, different future developments of the phenomenon of suicide terrorism are very possible, and more study of the role of religion is needed (101).
How Al-Qaeda fits this perspective
With increasing knowledge of al-Qaeda, we see 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 al-Qaeda suicide terrorists” (103). “Al-Qaeda is less a transnational network of like-minded ideologues . . . than a cross-national military alliance of national liberation movements working together against what they see as a common imperial threat” (104). The nature of Salafism, a Sunni form of Islamic fundamentalism, is complex (105-07). Statistical analysis fails to corroborate Salafism-terrorism connection, but it does corroborate a connection to U.S. military policies in the Persian Gulf (107-17). Al-Qaeda propaganda emphasizes the “Crusader” theme, which is inherently related to occupation (117-24). Pape concludes that “the core features of al-Qaeda” are captured by his theory (125).
Suicide Terrorist Organizations around the Globe
Robert Pape examines other campaigns to see if the “dynamics that make religious difference important” are present in other terrorist campaigns, acknowledging the difficulty of the inquiry (126-29). He offers detailed analyses of Lebanon (129-39), Sri Lanka (139-54), the Sikhs in Punjab (154-62), and the Kurdish PKK in Turkey (162-66). His conclusion: “Religion plays a role in suicide terrorism, but mainly in the context of national resistance” and not Islam per se but “the dynamics of religious difference” are what matter (166-67).
A Note on State Sponsors of Religious Terror Groups
Unlike the "secular" national, radical, anarchist terrorism sponsored by states such as Libya, Syria, Iraq, Cuba, North Korea, and behind the scenes by the former Soviet camp, most of the Islamic terrorist groups have never been sponsored by states. Many Egyptian organizations emerged from the Egyptian domestic landscape. Algerian groups likewise were not sponsored by foreign states. Hezbollah certainly can be viewed as an Iranian surrogate, but other movements, while open to state assistance, remain operationally and ideologically independent.[6]
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July 18, 2005 Issue The American Conservative The Logic of Suicide Terrorism It’s the occupation, not the fundamentalism
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