What We’ve Learned About Suicide Terrorism Since 9/11

Robert A. Pape is professor of political science at the University of Chicago and the author of the forthcoming Cato Institute paper "Suicide Terrorism and Democracy: What We've Learned since 9/11."

The attacks of September 11th, 2001 brought us face to face with the horror of suicide terrorism. In the years since, pundits have painted al Qaeda as a fearless enemy motivated by insatiable religious hatred. Amid prognostications of doom, we lost sight of the truth: that suicide terrorism is a tactic, not an enemy, and that beneath the religious rhetoric with which it is perpetrated, it occurs largely in the service of secular aims. Suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation rather than a product of Islamic fundamentalism.

Al Qaeda is a paradoxical entity: a group with territorial concerns but no territory of its own. It came about in response to the presence of thousands of American troops on the Arabian Peninsula after 1990, and recruited terrorists for suicide missions with the primary aim of forcing them out. Though it speaks of Americans as infidels, al Qaeda is less concerned with converting us to Islam than removing us from Arab and Muslim lands, and it was in this cause that it attacked our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, the U.S.S. Cole in 2000, and the World Trade Center and Pentagon on 9/11.

Above all, Al Qaeda seeks to coerce democratic governments into changing their foreign policies. Since 2001, it has achieved a significant degree of success in dividing the West, by concentrating on vulnerable U.S. allies like France, Germany and Turkey, attacking tourists and foreign workers from north Africa to Indonesia.

There is no better way to understand the enemy than to listen to how it recruits new suicide bombers to kill us. In July, Al Qaeda released its most recent recruitment video, encouraging Muslims to carry out new attacks similar to the July 7 bombings in London last year. The video is stunning in its absence of religious declamation.

The first speaker is Shehzad Tanweer, one of the actual 7/7 bombers, who explains that he intended to punish "the non-Muslims of Britain" because "your government has openly supported the genocide of over 15,000 innocent Muslims in Fallujah," the site of a major Western military operation in Iraq in 2004.

The second speaker is Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's second in command, who reiterates that "Shehzad's motivation was the repression which the British are perpetrating in Iraq" and other Muslim countries.

Finally, the main event: Adam Gadahn, a 28-year old American citizen, born of Jewish and Christian parents, who converted to Islam as a teenager and has lived with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 1998. Gadahn is the new voice -- and new weapon -- of Al Qaeda. In his long recruitment appeal, he never mentions 72 virgins or the benefits Islamic martyrs receive in Heaven. Instead, he speaks to an earthly motive: revenge for Western military atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I know [Western combat forces] killed and maimed civilians in their strikes because I've seen it with my own eyes ... I've carried the victims in my arms: women, children, toddlers, babies in their mother's wombs," Gadahn says. "When we bomb their cities and civilians like they bomb ours, or destroy their infrastructure and means of transportation like they destroy ours ... they should blame no one but themselves. Because they are the ones who started this dirty war and they are the ones who will end it ... by pulling out of our region and keeping their hands out of our affairs."

To make sense of Al Qaeda's campaign against the United States and its allies, I compiled data on the 71 terrorists who took their own lives carrying out attacks sponsored by Osama bin Laden's network between 1995 and 2004. These men are drawn from two groups: those who feel harmed and humiliated by foreign military occupation, and those who identify with the plight of a kindred ethnic group under foreign occupation.

Although British authorities thwarted last month's airliner attack plot, the arrest and detention of two dozen individuals in the U.K. reveals that Al Qaeda continues to draw strength from disaffected European Muslims, whose anger over Western combat operations in Muslim lands motivates them to take up arms. If it could no longer draw recruits from the Muslim countries where there is an American and Western combat presence, however, the remaining transnational network would pose a far smaller threat.

From 2002 to the end of 2005, Al Qaeda carried out over 17 suicide and other terrorist bombings, killing nearly 700 people – more attacks and victims than in all the years before 9/11 combined. Most Americans would like to believe that Western counter-terrorism efforts have weakened al Qaeda, but by the measure that counts – the ability of the group to kill us – it is stronger today than it was before 9/11.

We must understand that suicide terrorism results more from foreign occupation than Islamic fundamentalism, and conduct the war accordingly.

Uh, I don't think so. If anything, at least speaking in terms of terrorism in general, it appears to be a result of DEoccupation. ... All of these things STIMULATED terrorism against Israel.

Israel is a unique problem. It doesn't really seem to matter what Isreal does, insofar as terrorism levels go. To say that there is less or more as a result of what they do is probably pretty hard to prove statistically.

Likewise the withdrawal of American troops and assets from Saudia Arabia, supposedly UBL's number one complaint, has had no effect on al Qaeda's hostility toward America.

That's kind of hard to guage, since we're now in Iraq. It certainly took it off the table, as far as a PR issue. At the core, al-Qa'ida holds a very unpopular philosophy, but they latch on to popular issues to gain support. U.S. troops stationed in Saudi Arabia and Iraq are two such examples. Without some kind of concrete boogeyman to rally the people against, AQ would only appeal to a very tiny fraction of extremists.

Al-Qa'ida, in many ways, is a political movement masquerading as a religious one. They need current issues to keep themselves relevant, or they will have no meaningful resources or support rolling in.

Further proof that Libertarians, just like the Utopians of the far left, believe that people will do irrational things (like blowing themselves up) for rational motives. ___

That, IMHO, is not rational.

Agreed. And Pape misses the fundamental precursor skewing-radicalizing-of the target population of the recruiters. That has already been accomplished in full in the radical mosques and madrassas. All these recruiters then is throw the match of a specific perceived Western provocation into the pool of gasoline of the existent islamo-nazi insanity/.

Cato is full of crap...to say that suicide attacks are up because from foreign occupation not Islamic fundamentalism is idiotic. If they wanted to say that RPG attacks were up because of our having taken the fight to them that would be a correct statements...suicide attacks on the other hand are an idiological weapon used, in this case, by Islamic extremists.

Cato is full of crap...to say that suicide attacks are up because from foreign occupation not Islamic fundamentalism is idiotic.

I notice that you inadvertantly missed my question to you earlier. What do you think about the following?

If suicide bombing was caused only by Islamic extremism, then there would have been no statisitcal difference from the rate of incidents pre and post invasion Iraq. We're no more or less infidel now than we were then. Whether or not we agree with it, the perception in the Arab world is that we're a foriegn invading army in the heart of the Arab wrold, and that propaganda is what's used to induce new recruits. Otherwise, we'd be seeing suicide bombers in places other than Iraq.

Before Iraq, the experiences the U.S. had with suicide bombers were seperated by many years. Now we experience them daily, and only in Iraq. That's significant, and the cause is obviously more than simply 'Islamic extremism'. How to handle it is more complicated, of course, but before we can fix a problem we need to figure out what causes it.

Feel free to take a stab at that one.

And Pape misses the fundamental precursor skewing-radicalizing-of the target population of the recruiters. That has already been accomplished in full in the radical mosques and madrassas. All these recruiters then is throw the match of a specific perceived Western provocation into the pool of gasoline of the existent islamo-nazi insanity.

Would the brand name of that matchbook happen to be "Iraq"?

Where were the vast numbers of suicide attacks against Americans prior to 2003? Why are there now hundreds of attacks, and only in Iraq?

I did answer it...your example would be fine for RPG attacks and is ludicrous when trying to claim suicide attacks aren't endemic to irrational beliefs...Islamic extremists

That's not an answer, it's a statement unrelated to my questino. It's like saying "Your point is wrong, but you would have been right had you said 'The sun comes up in the east'".

Yes, the sun comes up in the east. You need to have Islamic extremist beliefs before you become a jihadi suicide bomber. Good points all. How does that relate to my post?

Robert Pape's argument that suicide terrorism is an inherently rational act (however evil) stemming from a political agenda is incomplete, in my opinion.

In the short term, obviously Al Qaeda's objectives are politcal. They want us out of Iraq. But long term what they want is the Muslim caliphate, and, I believe, beyond. The caliphate as I understand it would encompass anywhere Muslims used to rule or believe they used to rule. They want absolute Wahabbi rule from Spain to Indonesia, with absolutely no Christian or Jewish presence of any kind in this holy kingdom of Allah, which they believe is a geopolitical reality here and now.

This is not merely a political goal, and it is certainly not rational. It is fundamentally a religious goal.

Given the nature of radical Islam as a relentlessly offensive religion that utilizes jihad as a method of expanding Allah's kingdom, the ultimate goal cannot be anything other than the worldwide dominance of Islam. The fact that suicide bombers aren't necessarily dying with this wish on their lips (yet) doesn't mean that this is not the inevitable goal of radical Islam. Islam, like Christianity, seeks the widest possible influence for its creed and faith. Christianity does it by socialization and evangelism. Islam appears to do it by education and jihad.

Any thoughts on this theory?

It is an answer to a flawed premise. That might be hard to accept but you'll just have to come to terms with it. Under your example suicide attacks by U.S. troops against terrorists would have escalated in proportion because of our being there.

The reason they haven't is because suicide attacks are not a weapon of sane and rationale people...in other words, it is the result of the Islamic fundamentalism not occupation or warfare.

It is an answer to a flawed premise. That might be hard to accept but you'll just have to come to terms with it.

I'll see what I can do.

Under your example suicide attacks by U.S. troops against terrorists would have escalated in proportion because of our being there.

Whoa, no fair. You just made the rule, and now you're cheating.

The reason they haven't is because suicide attacks are not a weapon of sane and rationale people...in other words, it is the result of the Islamic fundamentalism not occupation or warfare

If that's the case, then explain this:

If suicide bombing was caused only by Islamic extremism, then there would have been no statisitcal difference from the rate of incidents pre and post invasion Iraq. We're no more or less infidel now than we were then. Whether or not we agree with it, the perception in the Arab world is that we're a foriegn invading army in the heart of the Arab wrold, and that propaganda is what's used to induce new recruits. Otherwise, we'd have seen far more before Iraq, and we'd be seeing suicide bombers in places other than Iraq.

What's foreign occupation? They've been suicide bombing continually at a rising clip as fundamentalist Islam has galloped along, replacing more traditional forms. Meanwhile the Turks occupied Arab lands for centuries, were resented and fought, but never evoked it. Nor did decades of western colonialism. Nor centuries of incessant frontier warfare, nor crusades. Bali is not famously occupied territory, nor east Africa, nor London.

The thesis is pure balderdash, it does not survive elementary contact with history.

In the short term, obviously Al Qaeda's objectives are politcal. They want us out of Iraq. But long term what they want is the Muslim caliphate, and, I believe, beyond. ... This is not merely a political goal, and it is certainly not rational. It is fundamentally a religious goal.

Mull this over for a bit: al-Qa'ida is a armed political organization masquerading as a religious one.

AQ not only believes in the afterlife, but they have a plan for hhow to fix what's wrong with the world, right here and now. The state of men's souls is of secondary interest to them; it's control the temporal world they're after. While they use and believe in extremist Islamic beliefs, they're

Given the nature of radical Islam as a relentlessly offensive religion that utilizes jihad as a method of expanding Allah's kingdom, the ultimate goal cannot be anything other than the worldwide dominance of Islam.

In that respect, Islam uniquely differs from other religions. (Although it's a textbook example of a cult.) Islam, as an entity, is half religious, and half political. You're not necessarily dealing with both or either at any given time, because in the mind of a Muslim, much of what we separate down lines of 'church' and 'state', they consider interchangeable.

What would you suggest threatening a suicide bomber with?

It is possible that over time the movement itself can be deterred. Their goals are irrational, but their decision-making and tactics are intensely rational. If suicide bombing seems not to work, or is resulting in this ideological loss of more and more population centers, they might decide that it just isn't worth the trouble anymore. But something will probably have to change in radical Islam for that to happen.

I'm glad to see Cato has a fan...with their ability to break suicide attacks out of fanaticism they sure need at least one.

1. No one is saying that suicide bombing is independent of fanaticism. Kamikazi bombers weren't independent of it. Jihadis aren't independent of it. The point is that it's a phenomenon triggered by territorial concerns. A point that you've been utterly unable to refute.

2. I take it this is your way of saying "I have nothing for your arguements, except for a Maureen Down-esqe jab." I'll see if I can get anyone else to take up the challenge. FReegards.

"No one is saying that suicide bombing is independent of fanaticism."

CATO: "We must understand that suicide terrorism results more from foreign occupation than Islamic fundamentalism..."

Do both of us a favor...try peddling it to someone who might actually believe that kind of BS.

The thesis is pure balderdash, it does not survive elementary contact with history.

The idea that the Turks or Arabs didn't use suicide bombings earlier may run along the same lines as why samurai didn't use Zeros as kamikazi weapons.

(Insert "elementary contat with history" joke here)

Nor centuries of incessant frontier warfare, nor crusades.

Suicidal charges are quite common in Arab history. Accounts of battles with crusaders and others have numerous accounts. The Hashishim of the Middle Ages being the more famous of the type.

Bali is not famously occupied territory, nor east Africa, nor London.

You're thinking like a Westerner. Muslim hardliners still consider Spain to be occupied territory. In their eyes, anywhere that Islam sets foot is claimed by God to be Dar al Salaam, the house of peace. It's Islamic territory as soon as Muslims congregate there and set up mosques.

However, Robert Pape appears to be saying that resentment of foreign occupation of muslim and arab lands, rather than islamic fanaticism, drives the suicide bombers.

How, then, does this totally secular motive explain the suicide attacks since we entered Saudi Arabia in order to protect it from invasion by Iraq in 1991? Or after we left Saudi Arabia for Qatar in 2002?

In all due respect, methinks Pape organized his thesis around a conclusion he was predisposed to support.

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