A new interview is out with Robert Pape, author of Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (2005), which I'm reading at the moment: The Logic of Suicide Terrorism, interview with Scott McConnell American Conservative 07/18/05 issue, accessed 07/09/05.
Describing his comprehensive empirical research on suicide terrorist incidents from 1980 to 2004, Pape says:
This wealth of information creates a new picture about what is motivating suicide terrorism. Islamic fundamentalism is not as closely associated with suicide terrorism as many people think. The world leader in suicide terrorism is a group that you may not be familiar with: the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.
This is a Marxist group, a completely secular group that draws from the Hindu families of the Tamil regions of the country. They invented the famous suicide vest for their suicide assassination of Rajiv Ghandi in May 1991. The Palestinians got the idea of the suicide vest from the Tamil Tigers.
In his book, Pape argues based on analysis of the incidents, that the most likely situation to generate suicide terrorism is one which:
[N]ational[ist] resistance to foreign occupation, a democratic political system in the occupying power, and a religious defference between the occupied and occupying societies are the main causal factors leading to thrise of suicide terrorist campaigns. ... [M]odern 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 other do not.
He includes Al Qaeda suicide attacks as fitting this model because of their focus on removing foreign troops from the Arabian Peninsula and its vicinity. He says in the interview:
Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism, the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies over there, if you would, is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us.
Since 1990, the United States has stationed tens of thousands of ground troops on the Arabian Peninsula, and that is the main mobilization appeal of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. People who make the argument that it is a good thing to have them attacking us over there are missing that suicide terrorism is not a supply-limited phenomenon where there are just a few hundred around the world willing to do it because they are religious fanatics. It is a demand-driven phenomenon. That is, it is driven by the presence of foreign forces on the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. The operation in Iraq has stimulated suicide terrorism and has given suicide terrorism a new lease on life.
Pape's analysis does not minimize the role of religion. On the contrary, it emphasizes that religious differences between the occupying power and the occupied are ususally decisive in the decision of an insurgent group to employ suicide terrorism as a strategy. This is not always true, as he explains. The most important exception is the use of suicide terror against Turkish targets by the Kurdish group PKK, where the Kurds and Turks are both predominately Sunni Muslim.
And religion is also a powerful component in defining the martyrdom concept that is crucial for a suicide terrorist campaign. Even with a secular, Marxist group drawing like the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers (which has so far employed more suicide terrorist attacks than any other group, Muslim or otherwise), evidence suggest that the Hindu religious affiliation of the Tamil population is a decisive factor in creating martyrdom (suicide) operations against the Buddhist Sinhalese who are the majority in Sri Lanka.
Pape observes of Iraq:
Before our invasion, Iraq never had a suicide-terrorist attack in its history. Never. Since our invasion, suicide terrorism has been escalating rapidly with 20 attacks in 2003, 48 in 2004, and over 50 in just the first five monthsof 2005. Every year that the United States has stationed 150,000 combat troops in Iraq, suicide terrorism has doubled. ...
Our best information at the moment is that the Iraqi suicide terrorists are coming from two groups—Iraqi Sunnis and Saudis—the two populations most vulnerable to transformation by the presence of large American combat troops on the Arabian Peninsula.
Michael Scheuer recently reviewed Pape's book: Throwing America a Life Preserver Antiwar.com 06/10/05.
http://www.antiwar.com/scheuer/?articleid=6286
Yes, Pape has documented both the valid logic behind the use of suicide attacks – they are an effective weapon for an inferior force fighting a great power, especially a pain-averse, democratic great power – and the reality that groups using such attacks are playing for strategic stakes: Their goal is victory, not mere destruction. The suicide attacks by each of the groups studied in Dying to Win, Pape concludes, were "mainly a response to foreign occupation rather than the product of Islamic fundamentalism." In sum, America faces a logical, patient, and deliberate enemy, one with clear strategic goals. This enemy is attacking because he perceives his country, culture, and/or religion are under attack. In addition, Pape shows conclusively that suicide attackers are usually respected and even revered in their own societies because they are defending those societies against a foreign threat. Simply put, Pape suggests there is no sound reason to believe the pool of potential suicide attackers can be dried up as long as their societies perceive an existential threat to their existence.
Pape's conclusions flow into a set of recommendations that cannot be too highly commended to American leaders and citizens, whatever their political persuasion: For near-term self-defense, America must kill as many of this generation of terrorists as possible while simultaneously beginning to terminate the interventionist policies and presence that motivate our present enemies and, if continued, will motivate greater numbers in the next generation. Pape warns thatthe hands-on, Wilsonian crusaders who today control both U.S. political parties have already vastly increased the likelihood of another 9/11 attack via their efforts to use military force to spread democracy abroad; this he calls the "taproot" of the suicide attackers' motivation.
Scheuer mentions that many Israeli politicians along with many US Republicans insist on the explanation "that Islamist suicide attacks against America and other counties are launched by undereducated, unemployed, alienated, apocalyptic fanatics who are eager to kill themselves because Americans vote, have civil liberties, and allow women to drive cars." He says that defenders of that view often label those who criticize it anti-Semitic.
I'm not sure what Scheuer means by that, and he doesn't make it clear in the review. He may be referring to the strange attempt by David Brooks and others to say the term "neoconservative" is a code word for Jews. Since many neoconservatives have used that as a self-description of their viewpoint, that was one of the loopier of David Brooks' positions. Maybe he's saying that because Pape's policy recommendations as he describes them seem closer to the conservative "isolationist" viewpoint than to a "liberal internationalist" one, and rightwing isolationists sometimes really are anti-Semites.
The Pape interview I quote above appeared in The American Conservative, Pat Buchanan's magazine. I certainly haven't seen anything anti-Semitic in Pape's work. And American Conservative is not generally regarded as any kind of anti-Semitic publication, despite its association with Buchanan.
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