Attention, War and Peace

Notes on Terror and Terrorism, Part 2: Suicide fighters of various groups

A special case of terrorism is the use of agents intending to die in the attack, i.e.the use of suicide. Most terrorists don't use it. The main two groups besides al Qaeda who have done it frequently are Palestinians against Israel and Tamil Tigers against the Sri Lanka government.

The suicide-bombing Palestinian terrorists are at least largely religious Muslims, who ostensibly believe they will end up in a special part of heaven as soon as they are "martyred." These are always men. Tamil Tigers, on the other hand, don't seem to make any assumptions about an afterlife; many of their suicide bombers have been women. (As have been at least two of the non-religious Palestinian Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade an offshoot of Arafat's Fatah, only active quite recently, apparently in competition with Hamas.)

While deliberately planning an action in which one will surely die is unusual in terrorism, taking substantial risks for a cause, including almost certain death, or accepting martyrdom, or greatly risking one's life in some totally un-warlike adventure are hardly uncommon at all. The grunge rock star Kurt Cobain's suicide didn't hurt his popularity, and the high school mass murderer-suicides in Colorado and (perhaps also in Saxony-Anhalt ) were well aware of the attention they would get, albeit posthumously. The world is full of memorials to gloriously dead soldiers.

What suicide fighters of various groups all do seem to have in common is that preceding their planned deaths they are indoctrinated and then remain in an environment of others who are all similarly indoctrinated in the outlook that justifies their suicide. It appears that the September 11 attackers, though relatively isolated in an unfamiliar country, nonetheless managed to keep themselves surrounded by the like-minded, deliberately remaining cut off from any chance to develop or examine doubts.

In addition to a possible quick trip to a "wonderful" afterlife for themselves and their families, at least the Palestinian terrorists get more visible rewards- money for their families, and most important, attention for themselves (post-death, but still) on various Arab TV stations and through their organizations passing around videos of them interviewed on their way to martyrdom. (An "eternal life" in video form!) The first young woman to be an al Aksa martyr, was immediately seen as a "cool" role model among other young girls in well-off West Bank families, according to news reports.

I have never heard of this kind of attention in association with Tamil terror, and Al Qaeda's people dispense with it too, apparently. (Might there be a secret trove of videos for future release?) However, after September 11 bin Laden did get his face on those T-shirts. Explicitly claiming credit is no longer necessary, it would seem.

Perhaps not so incidentally, the first American (quasi) military person to die in Afghanistan was featured heavily in American media. Win death, reach the crowds. (I have always been struck by a mural memorializing World War I soldiers long on prominent display at Widener Library at Harvard. A soldier is being clasped by two nubile, barely clad women; the painting?s caption is painted right in:?How happy they, who, in one embrace, clasped death and victory.? At least the Quran has no pictures.)

Finally, as regards suicide, just threatening it gives one power. Saying one will fight to the death makes one a far scarier enemy. No punishment so far used can deter a bomber bent on death, and that makes such figures seem all the more unstoppable.

"Root causes"

Can we say what is behind terrorism? A desire for more power than is otherwise at hand, evidently, and generally power that isn't even possibly obtainable by the ballot, either because one wouldn't get the votes or because there is no vote to be had. Grievances of some sort are always stated, when statements are made, but they may not always be the real reason. Terrorism can become a habit. It gives people something quite exciting to do, it gets them attention, and it may further some ideological goal.

What did Aum Shinrikyo really want? A purpose, a meaning, a deeper sense of involvement with life, power? For others justice, a payback for humiliation, a chance for some ultimate victory. Ye it has to be stated that others in exactly the same position as those who become terrorists very often do nothing of the sort; simple passivity or non-violent action, or some mode of life that makes the pain or humiliation being fought not all that relevant are other possibilities that tend away from terrorism. One might move away, find another profession, involve oneself in mysticism, seek amity and constructive relations with one?s putative oppressor, and on and on.

Terrorism is at most one possible response to certain kinds of situations, but it is hard to say exactly which kinds. Once someone thinks of terrorism, carries it out or presents a case for it, then it becomes one of the recognized means of dealing with that or any similar situation. All it may take then to get going, aside from sufficient organizing capacity is the lack of any sufficiently compelling argument against it. (Though it is remarkable how often arguments against adopting terrorism do seem effective; it is still extremely rare, after all.)

In each case there is a grievance, but are not there almost always grievances that could be nursed? Why are Basque separatists so much more addicted to terrorism than say Breton separatists? Why was there no East Timorese terrorism in favor of independence, just state supported pseudo-terrorism against it? Terrorism may require a certain degree of civility on the part of the governments facing it. Too much brutality as a response might make terrorism a path not to individual but to collective suicide. It probably has in the past.

Means

You could hide in dark alleys and kill passersby with knives, but you might not get that much publicity out of that choice. (Though the murder of whole villages by knife is the practice, apparently , of the Islamic terrorists of Algeria.) Bombs, automatic weapons, and other noisy , bloody, intensely dramatic means of killing maximize the immediate, direct terror, and therefore also maximize the terror that comes through media reports. Few terrorists invent something new. They copy others quite freely, though.

The September 11 terrorism not only went to a previously unheard of level of dramatic destruction, but used a kind of ingenuity and organization not previously particularly noticeable (though al Qaeda?s more or less simultaneous attacks in 1998 on US embassies in two countries "Kenya and Tanzania" also showed an unprecedented degree of coordination.) In hijacking planes with nothing but box cutters, and then smashing those planes into buildings, they frighten us not only with their willingness to die for their cause, whatever it is, but with the idea that nothing can be safe. The more we live in a world of high technology and complex systems, it superficially seems, the more we are subject to the kind of jiu jitsu they invented, that is the more our own apparent strength can be used against us. Hijacking planes and crashing them into buildings would not have had very noticeable consequences in, for example, Afghanistan.