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| Terror Networks |
| The strategy of suicide-bombing |
| 2008-05-06 |
| Book Review by Khaled Ahmed Suicide bombing was initially embraced by only a couple of Islamist groups: al Dawa, an Iraqi Shia group, and the Lebanese Shia organisation, Hezbollah. Later, it was copied by others moved by nationalism and, more frighteningly, ethnic sub-nationalism. Toward the end of the 1980s, suicide terrorism began to spread beyond Lebanon and Kuwait in the Middle East: first to Sri Lanka but then, as the 1990s unfolded, to India, Argentina, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, and Tanzania. Apart from the Eelam Tigers of Sri Lanka, most of the stuff has been motivated by religion. From 2001 to 2005, 78 percent of all the suicide terrorist incidents were religion-driven. Indeed, of thirty-five terrorist organisations employing suicide tactics in 2005, 86 percent were Islamic. These movements have been responsible for 81 percent of all suicide attacks since 9/11. By 2005, more than 350 suicide attacks took place in at least twenty-four countries — including the United Kingdom, Israel, Sri Lanka Russia, Lebanon, Turkey, Italy, Indonesia, Pakistan, Colombia, Argentina, Kenya, Tanzania, Croatia, Morocco, Singapore, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq. But the mechanics of suicide-bombing is not religious at all. It is adopted because it makes terrorism so easy. If you don’t use ‘martyrdom’ based on religion you have to arrange for the getaway of the terrorist you have sent out to do the job. The terrorist must know that he would definitely make his escape after the act of terrorism or he will not do the job. In the case of suicide-bombing, the terrorist knows he is going to his death and therefore seeks to do the utmost level of damage possible. The organisation that uses him benefits from the fact that no trace of the perpetrator is left for the victim state to make out who has done the job. In the case of Al Qaeda, each bomber was handpicked by bin Laden himself but also was then asked to swear an oath of loyalty, pledging to carry out a suicide operation. Each was filmed for a ‘martyrdom video’ to be released after the attack. According to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man who thought up the 9/11 attack, all but one of the nineteen hijackers made such a tape. The lone exception was the terrorist who thought his oath could be hypocritical and therefore Allah might not accept his sacrifice! The suicide-bomber is indoctrinated/brainwashed into believing that he would go to heaven as a martyr. The martyr not dying physically and enjoying the pleasures of paradise is recorded in the Quran in relation to historical events which occasion the Revelation. But the pivot of the suicide bomber phenomenon is religious extremism prevalent in the society from where the bomber is chosen. Extremism is not a specialisation. It is flowing from the pulpit and TV screen in most Muslim states, including Pakistan. Research in Pakistan by an Islamabad doctor after interviewing the TNSM returnees from jihad against America in Afghanistan has found that the warriors were picked up from the mosque rather than the madrassa. In Pakistan, extremism of faith leads to another result. Al Qaeda bombers function in a Muslim milieu and rely on society to oppose the state and embrace the act of suicide-bombing. This has not worked when the bombers have operated in non-Muslim societies, as in the case of Chechen terrorists in Russia. Despite the fact that Muslim bombers kill innocent Muslims, it is the state which is isolated and condemned and not Al Qaeda. The more Al Qaeda kills Muslims in Pakistan the more the population will become alienated from the state. And that will happen not because the state has failed to resist and eliminate Al Qaeda but because Al Qaeda is right and the state is wrong. The Muslim-kill-Muslim function of Al Qaeda suicide-bombing has escalated into sectarian killings. When this happens, the Muslim population instead of becoming united before opposing the state now divides before condemning the state. This new version is more lethal in the degree to which the state is rejected, and therefore Al Qaeda has supported the sectarian brand of suicide-bombing more than the other brand in recent times. On May 31, 2005, a suicide-bomber attack in Karachi during evening prayers inside Ali Raza Imambargah, killed as many as 19 and wounded 38. The force of the blast was so severe that it cracked the building’s dome. This attack came just weeks after May 7 at another Shia mosque, which killed 23 and injured almost 100 people during the Friday prayers. The Ali Raza imambargah attack was most probably in retaliation for the assassination of the Sunni Muslim head of Jamia Banuria in Karachi, Nizamuddin Shamzai, the previous day. Suicide bombing appeals through martyrdom and is more successful if the victims are Muslims. For instance, it has not succeeded as a tool of persuasion in Europe the same as it has in Pakistan which leads the world in being the victim of this warfare. Therefore, the natural inclination on the part of Al Qaeda to kill Muslims in Pakistan rather than Christians in Europe and America is understandable. Al Qaeda doesn’t appear to be original if you compare it with the 19th century European anarchists and their rationale for killing innocent fellow-Christians. The central idea of Al Qaeda is to create anarchy after which it might set about creating the global khilafa its website promises. The khilafa will of course be in one state first before it spreads and controls the rest of the Islamic world. What will be the technique to spread out from, say, the mini-state of South Waziristan to the rest of the Islamic world? The answer is easy: suicide bombing. It inverts some of the most important concepts to achieve this. Killing Muslims becomes more useful in terms of influence and persuasion; and Islamophobia becomes a positive intra-Muslim value if Muslims fear Islam as the beginning of their becoming good Muslims. Today, Al Qaeda’s suicide-bombers affect the Pakistani mind by staging suicide-bombing; but it forms the Pakistani mind more effectively in its favour by switching off suicide-bombing for a period of time. If we kill Americans through suicide-bombing, America will not become Muslim. If we kill Pakistanis through suicide-bombing, Pakistan will become a more strict adherent of Islam. In that is the first building block of the khilafa. Dying to Kill: the Allure of Suicide Terror; By Mia Bloom; Columbia University Press New York 2007 |
| Posted by:john frum |
| #1 Columbia University Press New York 2007 Our own hallowed institutions are so corrupted by Saudi money that free people are actually willing to print such vile and putrid ideals. A very sad day, indeed. |
| Posted by: Sninert Black9312 2008-05-06 08:15 |