Dying for retribution

History shows that suicide terrorists do not belong to one religion or culture.

Over this weekend, five girls have killed at least 12 people in Nigeria and Cameroon in suicide bombings, officials stated. In Nigeria, one girl strapped explosives to her body, killing herself and seven others at a military checkpoint. In Cameroon, on November 23, four teenage suicide bombers killed themselves and a family of five. These are just a few examples, among hundreds, of people giving up their lives for a cause.

Josy Joseph

Suicide terrorism, it seems, is becoming more common, driving yet another wave of violence across the world. Which brings us to the question, why are some people, belonging to the Islamic State or Boko Haram or other militant groups, willing to die for a cause? Or it is true that all human beings are willing to give up their lives for some cause or the other if their grievances cross a certain threshold?

Explanations to these questions offered by many academics have been challenged as shallow and incomplete, and political pundits often let their religious, social and political biases creep into their analyses. A holistic assessment of the factors that trigger suicide terrorism could prove to be a key tool in ensuring a safer world.

If giving up one’s life is the highest risk, what happened in Paris was a flawed execution of a grand plan, and France may have escaped what could have been a deadlier attack. The fact that three suicide bombers blew themselves up outside Stade de France shows that the key target of the terrorists was the stadium, as the French President and several other important persons were watching a soccer match between France and Germany there.

There have been many academic studies to try to understand why people become suicide bombers, but none as impressive as the book Dying to Win by Robert Pape of the University of Chicago. Pape, in what is one of the finest efforts to understand suicide terrorism, has argued that most suicide attacks can be understood if they are seen as efforts that try to compel democracies to withdraw military forces from the terrorists’ homeland. However, that doesn’t fully justify why Pakistan has been witnessing so many suicide attacks in recent years. Nor does it explain the 4,620 suicide attacks in over 40 countries between 1982 and 2015, as recorded by the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism led by Prof. Pape.

Many have pointed fingers at the Salafi strand of fundamentalist Islam, based on incidents of recent years, to argue that it promotes this violent manner of retribution. The point here is that most terrorist organisations have a common ideological underpinning, which inspires people to become suicide bombers with the promise of a better afterlife.

However, to blame a single religion for suicide terrorism is a terrible mistake and here’s why. Between 1987 and 2008, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a socialist organisation comprising mostly Hindus and Christians, gave rise to at least 275 suicide terrorists. Much of the inspiration for the LTTE’s Black Tigers may have come from the tradition that glorifies those who lay down their lives for the greater good of society. Christian masses in the Tamil part of Sri Lanka were rewritten partially to praise suicide terrorists, and statues of Black Tigers were erected around the Tamil territories.

Every point in time gives a different perspective of suicide terrorism. Hezbollah, which carried out a series of deadly suicide attacks, especially in the early 1980s, is a Shiite organisation. It is believed that Hezbollah’s attack on the U.S. Marine barracks in 1983 that killed almost 250 people was what inspired the LTTE to adopt the concept of dying to kill others.

In the Kashmir conflict, there is only one recorded instance of a local Kashmiri fidayeen, of a 17-year-old who rammed a car into a military installation in 1999. Almost all other fidayeens in Kashmir have come from Pakistan or elsewhere.

History shows that the Japanese have produced more suicide attackers than any other culture. As it began to suffer military setback in World War II, Japan unleashed kamikaze pilots, who flew their aircraft filled with explosives into American ships. Some 3,860 of them died in these attacks.

There are also detailed recordings from southern Kerala of the tradition of “chaverpada” (suicide squads) existing for centuries.

Jewish zealots were also legendary, and probably the first recorded instance of people willing to fight and die. In fact, the stunning Masada fortification in Israel tells the story of a mass suicide by 960 people, mostly Jewish rebels and their families, when the Roman Empire was closing in on them. It is in a way the same tradition exhibited by Velu Thampi Dalawa in the early 19th century. Dalawa killed himself after his rebellion against the British forces failed near Thiruvananthapuram.

If history is a reliable teacher, there is only one lesson to be learnt from these diverse examples: suicide terrorists do not belong to one religion or culture alone. It is a fact that nation states fighting terrorism do not really have an idea of how terrorists are going to respond and to what length they will go to in order to cause damage. Without a proper assessment of emotions and passions that shape the response of non-state actors, how can even the mightiest of military be assured of success?

Instead of focussing myopically on a religion or a region, it is time to look far deeper into issues contributing to the plague that is terrorism. This demands a rigorous effort to remove all biases before sitting down to look for answers to the crucial question: when will someone be ready to give up his/her life for a cause? 

Sources: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/suicide-terrorists-do-not-belong-to-one-religion-or-culture/article7912954.ece