The Hard Truth About Suicide Bombers

By Nichole Argo, AlterNet. Posted May 8, 2006.

Suicide terror has become a daily news staple. Who are these human bombs, and why are they willing to die in order to kill? Many observers turn to Islam for an explanation. They cite the preponderance of Muslim bombers today, indoctrination by extremist institutions, and the language used in jihadi statements.

But these arguments fall short. At present, bombers are primarily Muslim, but this was not always so. Nor does indoctrination play a strong role in growing today's selfselected global jihad networks. Rather, militants and bombers are propelled by social ties. And even when jihadis use the Qur'an and Sunna to frame their struggle, their justifications for violence are primarily secular and grievance-based.

So what is religion's role? Almost 100 years ago, Emile Durkheim contended that religious ideation is born of sentiment. This is worth considering in the current context. Against the repression, alienation and political helplessness of the Muslim world, jihad speaks of individual dignity and communal power. 'Against the Goliaths,' martrydom says, 'even one bursting body can make a difference.' The Muslim street is buying it, though sometimes ambivalently. To stop the bombers of today and tomorrow, we need to figure out why.

A Different Profile

Suicide attacks have been a prominent tactic in insurgent movements since the 1970s. Then, analysts believed that bombers and their masterminds were irrational, if not crazy, or had given up on life because of desperate circumstances such as poverty, depression, or social failure. However, data that have since been compiled show that suicide attackers come not from the criminal, illiterate, or poor, but from largely secular and educated middle classes. They do not exhibit signs of sociopathy or depression, nor do they appear to have suffered more than their respective populations. Surprisingly, many are volunteers, rather than recruits. There is, in short, no individual-level profile for a suicide bomber. Human bombs are a product of structural, social, and individual interactions.

Rather than evince suicidal tendencies -- as the term "suicide bombers" connotes -- psychological autopsies of past and would-be bombers show many of these individuals to be wholly, even altruistically invested in life. As a result, it is more apt -- and less misleading -- to refer to these individuals as "human bombs" rather than "suicide bombers."

Why Religion, and Why Not

Since 9/11, the notion that terror is bound to religious extremism has almost become an implicit assumption. This is easy to understand. If bombers were once "normal" people, then religious indoctrination could explain their fanatical behavior. Moreover, the numbers are powerful: 81 percent of suicide attacks since 1968 have occurred after 2001, with 31 out of the 35 organizations responsible being jihadi. Even the London and Bali (II) bombers who acted independently of terror organizations were Muslim. It would be difficult to deny that Islamic inspiration is at work in the motivation and mobilization of rising terror. But how? Inspiration is not causation, and a growing body of data suggests that Islamic indoctrination and belief are not the answer. Below, I audit several arguments commonly offered in support of the religious terror thesis.

1. Muslims perpetrate most of today's terror, so most terror must be motivated by Islam.

At present, 31 of 35 organizations perpetrating suicide terror are Muslim. But five years ago, a majority of attacks were carried out by secular rather than religious organizations. Because religion-terror correlations have changed over time, they tell us little about causation. Even if the statistics were stable, it is not possible to infer bomber motivations from organizational charters. Rather than ask who is perpetrating the attacks, we need to ask why.

Here history can help. Martyr missions made their official twentieth-century debut in the Second World War with the Kamikazes; they showed up again in the 1960s, when Viet Cong sympathizers exploded themselves amidst U.S. troops. Their debut in the Islamic world was not until the 1980s, during the Iran-Iraq war. Facing a far superior Iraqi military, Ayatollah Khomeini rounded up children by the tens of thousands and sent them in "human waves" to overrun the enemy. While Persians accrued losses in the war against Iraq, the role of the martyr in defensive jihad was exalted. As in U.S. wars, the dead became heroes.

The Iranian example had seismic effects. Lebanese groups appropriated the notion of a martyr's death almost immediately, employing human bombs against Israeli and international presences in Lebanon as early as 1981. Half of the human bombs in Lebanon were perpetrated by secular organizations. The Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka perfected the tactic, becoming the most professional cadre in the world. Human bombs were also used by the Kurdish PKK against Turkey, the Sikhs in India, and the Palestinians against Israel, to name a few.

Nichole Argo is a doctoral candidate in political science at MIT. She lived for two years in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza and has conducted a study of human bombs for a forthcoming book.