Dying To Win The Strategic Logic Of Suicide Terrorism – Robert Pape

I argue that the logic of religious difference provides a more compelling explanation. Fear of religious persecution, not internal dynamics within Tamil society or the LTTE, largely accounts for the pervasive use of suicide terrorism in this case. In Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese majority are predominately Buddhists, while the Tamil minority is overwhelmingly Hindu and Christian. Especially after the new Sinhalese constitution took effect in 1972, the Tamil community has increasingly come to believe that the Sinhalese government is deliberately pursuing policies that seek to stamp out core attributes of Tamil national identity, and that Buddhist religious goals are the driving force behind this program.

In response, the Tamil community has supported higher and higher intensities of armed resistance and individual self-sacrifice in order to preserve the ability to perpetuate its national heritage without interference from others. Suicide attack became the signature weapon of the LTTE’s national liberation strategy when all other means had failed. Sinhalese Occupation of the Tamil Homeland Sri Lanka is an island-state off the coast of India. In 1990, it had a population of about 17.2 million people, composed of 74 percent Sinhalese (predominately Buddhists), 18 percent Tamils (mainly Hindu), and 8 percent other (mostly Muslims).

The Tamil minority are concentrated in the northern and eastern regions and call this land “Tamil Eelam,” the term for their ancestral homeland since Hindus first began migrating to the island in the sixth century B.C.29 Sri Lanka first experienced suicide terrorism in July 1987, in the form of a suicide truck bombing carried out by the LTTE against a Sinhalese military barracks and modeled after the spectacular suicide bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983.

Before this point, there were no suicide attacks in Sri Lanka, even though the Tamil community had been politically and economically disadvantaged since the island achieved independence from British colonial rule in 1948 and became a functioning democracy governed by the Sinhalese majority.

9 Altruism and Terrorism 10 The Demographic Profile of Suicide Terrorists 11 Portraits of Three Suicide Terrorists CONCLUSION 12 A New Strategy for Victory Appendix I: Suicide Terrorist Campaigns, 1980–2003 Appendix II: Occupations by Democratic States, 1980–2003 Appendix III: Salafism in Major Sunni Muslim Majority Countries Notes Acknowledgments About the Author Copyright Page OceanofPDF.com To my mother, Marlene Pape OceanofPDF.com INTRODUCTION 1 The Growing Threat SUICIDE TERRORISM IS rising around the world, but there is great confusion as to why.

Since many such attacks—including, of course, those of September 11, 2001—have been perpetrated by Muslim terrorists professing religious motives, it might seem obvious that Islamic fundamentalism is the central cause. This presumption has fueled the belief that future 9/11’s can be avoided only by a wholesale transformation of Muslim societies, a core reason for broad public support in the United States for the recent conquest of Iraq.

However, the presumed connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism is misleading and may be encouraging domestic and foreign policies likely to worsen America’s situation and to harm many Muslims needlessly. I have compiled a database of every suicide bombing and attack around the globe from 1980 through 2003—315 attacks in all.1 It includes every attack in which at least one terrorist killed himself or herself while attempting to kill others; it excludes attacks authorized by a national government, for example by North Korea against the South.

This database is the first complete universe of suicide terrorist attacks worldwide. I have amassed and independently verified all the relevant information that could be found in English and other languages (for example, Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, and Tamil) in print and on-line. The information is drawn from suicide terrorist groups themselves, from the main organizations that collect such data in target countries, and from news media around the world.

More than a “list of lists,” this database probably represents the most comprehensive and reliable survey of suicide terrorist attacks that is now available. The data show that there is little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, or any one of the world’s religions. In fact, the leading instigators of suicide attacks are the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a Marxist-Leninist group whose members are from Hindu families but who are adamantly opposed to religion.

This group committed 76 of the 315 incidents, more suicide attacks than Hamas. Rather, what nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland. Religion is rarely the root cause, although it is often used as a tool by terrorist organizations in recruiting and in other efforts in service of the broader strategic objective.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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