The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism

Last week Phillip Adams spoke to Robert Pape, an American academic who has catalogued every suicide terrorist attack since 1980. The research is now available in his book Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism.

The Tamil Tigers... at this point, have still got the greatest number of suicide bombings to their credit, they've been the world leaders in the technique, haven't they?...The Tamil Tigers are a secular group.

Suicide terrorism is not as closely associated with Islamic fundamentalism as most people think... They're part of the pattern of over 95% of suciide terrorist attacks around the world including those by the Tamil Tigers are done not for a religion but for a specific strategic goal. To compel a moderate democracy to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland.

You can listen to Robert Pape speaking to Phillip Adams here. In an article in the Chicago Tribune, Pape goes further:

Our best strategy is to return to the policy that the United States had for decades. In the 1970s and 1980s, the U.S. secured its crucial interest in oil without stationing a single combat soldier in the Persian Gulf, instead relying on an alliance with Iraq and Saudi Arabia, the presence of naval air power off the coast and land bases to rapidly deploy troops in a crisis. Offshore balancing worked splendidly against Saddam Hussein in 1990 and is again our best strategy for securing our interest in oil, while preventing the rise of more suicide terrorists coming at us.

In other words, suicide attacks will continue in Iraq, if not escalate, so long as the country remains under occupation. Important words from a dispassionate specialist who, interestingly, isn't interested in limiting American geopolitical power. Why hasn't this man's research been frontpage news? (NB rhetorical question) Instead, we get this. Next we will hear that Osama will be at Dymocks signing autographs of his new bestseller 1001 Things To Do In A Dark Cave.

Given the significant use of suicide attacks in Sri Lanka, you'd think the conflict there might provide some insights into how to stop such attacks in the future. That should be a moot statement, especially since the most brutal stages of the Sri Lankan civil war, including the suicide attacks, have now ended (touch wood). Of course, plenty of work is still necessary to ensure that the two communities have a peaceful coexistence. The slow progress towards peace did not come about from a military response. They occurred through dialogue and significant outside arbitration. That's right, arbitration, not ordinance from 10,000 feet.