‘In his State of the Union address to the nation, President George W. Bush made some disturbingly inaccurate statements about the fight against terrorism that distort the threat's reality. He continues to hail the break-up of the al-Qaida terror network as a major victory, and he has now conflated the Islamist Sunni and Shia terror organizations, misrepresenting them as a unified force against the United States.

He is grievously wrong in both cases. His assertions mislead Americans about the true nature of the terrorism this country faces and blur distinctions important to combating it.’

Off Base On Terrorism

for a more objective analysis on the root causes & challenges of modern terrorism, free of the hysterical hyperbole of Bush, Blair, Howard & their one-eyed mates, read the following abstract of Robert Pape’s book, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, published in the Australian Army Journal (Volume III, Number 3, Summer 2006). And thanks to Richard Tonkin for pointing us to this excellent piece ….

Suicide Terrorism

‘While there is no doubt that the incidence of suicide terrorism has increased worldwide over recent years, there is profound confusion as to why. Many of these attacks, including those in the United States (US) on 11 September 2001 (referred to simply as ‘9/11’), have been perpetrated by Muslim suicide terrorists. For many observers, this evinces the presumption that Islamic fundamentalism must be the central factor. This presumption often fuels the belief that future 9/11s or - closer to Australia - the more recent Bali bombings can be avoided only by the wholesale transformation of Muslim societies. The need for such a transformation was a core reason for the invasion of Iraq by US-led forces in 2003.

However, this presumed connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism is largely misleading and, what is worse, it may be encouraging domestic and foreign policies likely to exacerbate this terrorist threat.

Over the last few years the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism has collated the first complete database of every suicide terrorist attack around the world from 1980 to the end of 2005. In that period, there were 315 completed suicide terrorist attacks by 462 suicide bombers. That the figures amount to more dead terrorists than there were attacks is an indication of the presence of team attacks. This database is the first of its kind: no academic, think tank or government has collated such a dossier. Even the US Government did not begin to track suicide terrorism until the fall of 2000. 1 Interestingly, funding and support for the Chicago Project comes from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency within the Department of Defense - despite the fact that some of the project’s findings significantly conflict with the Bush Administration’s foreign policy.

The Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism collects information about suicide terrorist attacks in the key native languages associated with the phenomenon - Arabic, Hebrew, Tamil and Russian - as well as English. The project examines all available open source information from the suicide terrorist groups themselves, from target countries, from the media, and directed international research. Suicide terrorist groups proudly advertise their activities in their local communities. In Sri Lanka a glossy album is dedicated to the Black Tigers - the suicide arm of the Tamil Tigers - and it features pictures, names, birthplaces, ages and other socio-economic data. This is not a glorification of body parts; it is a dossier of key information on the suicide attackers themselves - and it is a published volume. The Chicago Project also has such information from Islamic groups including Hamas and Hezbollah; this is a project that breaks through the language barrier, providing a great deal of important new information on suicide terrorists.

The collated data shows that suicide terrorism and ordinary terrorism have been steadily moving in opposite directions. From the mid-1980s to 2001, terrorist incidents of all types declined by almost half. At the same time, the little bit of terrorism that manifested itself as suicide terrorism climbed at an alarming rate from an average of three attacks around the world per year in the 1980s to almost 50 in 2002 and 2003. In the war-ravaged nation of Iraq, 2005 set a new world record.

These alarming facts shed some light on why there was such a failure of imagination prior to 11 September 2001. Since the total incidence of terrorism was plummeting exponentially - and no-one was tracking suicide terrorism anyway - the world was blind to the fact that the threat was actually growing. What the project’s data also shows is that Islamic fundamentalism is not as closely associated with suicide terrorism as is widely believed. The leading agent of suicide terrorism is the Tamil Tigers, which is not an Islamic group - these are Marxists, a particularly secular group. In suicide terms, the Tamil Tigers lead the way - they have committed more suicide terrorist attacks than either Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Furthermore, at least a third of all Muslim suicide attacks are carried out by secular groups such as the PKK in Turkey, another Marxist group.

Overall, at least 50 per cent of suicide attacks analysed by the project were not associated with Islamic fundamentalism.

The Tamil Tigers conduct suicide terrorist attacks in the classic sense. Most suicide terrorist groups make martyr videos - the Tigers go further. They like to videotape the attacks themselves and use the films for recruiting and training in the Tamil capital of Jaffna - a practice that has helped expose their modus operandi. A case in point is the suicide assassination of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991, which was filmed by the Tamil Tigers. In this case, however, the Tamil cameraman got so close that he was killed in the blast and the Indian Government was able to retrieve two frames from the film. Those frames showed Dhanu, the suicide bomber, holding the garland she presented to Gandhi; in the very next second everyone in that picture is killed as Dhanu triggers an explosive vest under her garment. Dhanu was the first bomber to use the suicide vest. The method that we tend to associate with the Palestinians came, in fact, from the Tamil Tigers.

The analysis of suicide terrorism is most effectively focused at three levels:

- why suicide terrorism makes sense for terrorist organisations - its strategic logic

- why it gains mass support - its social logic

- what motivates the suicide bomber - its individual logic

Each logical level is significant because suicide terrorism is conducted by non-state actors lacking the coercive apparatus of a state to compel individuals or the surrounding communities to support their operations. The Chicago Project devotes equal weight to each of these levels. This article focuses on the strategic logic primarily because this is the logic that unifies the others. The article also describes the demographic profile of suicide terrorists based on the project’s analysis of 462 such bombers - the first accurate account of the bomber’s demographic profile.

The Goals Of Suicide Terrorists

Rather than religion or any other ideology, what almost all suicide terrorist attacks since 1980 have in common is a specific strategic political objective that seeks to compel a democratic state to withdraw combat forces. Combat forces involve serious armaments such as tanks, fighter aircraft and armoured vehicles - not advisers with side arms. Terrorists almost always seek a withdrawal from territory that they consider to be their homeland or which is greatly prized. From Lebanon, the West Bank, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, and Chechnya, every suicide terrorist campaign since 1980 has been waged by terrorist groups whose principal goal has been to establish self-determination.

Religion is rarely the root cause, although religion may be used as a recruiting tool in the service of the broader strategic objective.

Three general patterns in the data support these conclusions. The first pattern involves the timing of suicide terrorist attacks. Suicide terrorism rarely occurs as an isolated, random or scattered phenomenon, as it would if it were the product of irrational individuals or religious fanatics. Instead, the attacks tend to occur in clusters that bear the hallmarks of orchestrated campaigns. Specifically, 301 of the 315 attacks occurred in coherent, organised, strategic campaigns that terrorist groups designed for political, mainly secular, purposes. These patterns accounted for 95 per cent of suicide terrorist attacks; only 5 per cent were random or isolated attacks.

Second, all the campaigns since 1980—and there have been 18, with 5 ongoing - were directed at gaining control of territory that the terrorists prized. This has been the central objective of every suicide terrorist campaign. In June 1982, Hezbollah did not exist. In June 1982, Israel invaded southern Lebanon with 78 000 combat soldiers and 3 000 tanks and armoured vehicles, and one month later Hezbollah was born.

The third pattern concerns target selection. If suicide terrorism is a calculated coercive strategy, one might expect that this strategy would be applied to target states viewed as especially vulnerable to coercive punishment. Democracies are widely viewed as soft, and the target society of every suicide terrorist campaign has been a democracy. The PKK in Turkey is a good example. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Turks were at least moderately brutal towards the Kurds. In the 1990s, the PKK used suicide attacks against the Turkish Government. However, during that exact period and just a few miles away in Iraq, Saddam Hussein was far more brutal toward Iraq’s Kurds and neither the PKK nor any other terrorist group ever thought to use suicide terrorism against Saddam.

Now that we know more about the strategic logic of suicide terrorism, the reasons for this are abundantly clear. There are few who believe that killing hundreds or even thousands of Iraqi civilians would have caused Saddam to change his mind.

Thus, the timing, goals and societies targeted by suicide terrorism suggest that this is a coherent strategy designed to cause democratic states to abandon control of territory prized by terrorists. Since al-Qaeda suicide attacks began in 1995, the organisation’s strategic logic has been to compel Western combat forces to leave the Arabian Peninsula. This is a logic that it has been pursuing with increasing vigour since 9/11, carrying out over 17 suicide and other terrorist attacks, killing over 700 people - more attacks and more victims than all the years before 9/11 combined.

While a plethora of counter-terrorism efforts should logically have weakened the group - and thousands have been killed and captured - by the measure that counts, the ability of the groups to carry out attacks that can kill, al-Qaeda is stronger today than ever.

The Chicago Project is the first to compile a complete dossier on al-Qaeda suicide attackers from 1995 to early 2004. During that period there were 71 individuals who killed themselves in carrying out these attacks. Of those 71, we know the names, nationality and other socio-economic data for 67. The largest number – 34 - comes from Saudi Arabia, and the majority are from the Persian Gulf, where the United States first began to station combat forces in 1990. It is important to underscore the fact that 1990 was a watershed year in the US deployment to the Persian Gulf. Before 1990, the West had some advisers with side arms in the Persian Gulf, but combat forces had not been stationed in this part of the world since the Second World War.

Which countries, then, do not provide recruits for al-Qaeda suicide attacks?

Suicide attackers do not tend to come from:

- Iran. Iran has an Islamic fundamentalist population with over 70 million people, three times the size of Saudi Arabia.

- Sudan. An Islamic fundamentalist population about the same size as Saudi Arabia and with a brand of Islamic fundamentalism so congenial to bin Laden he chose to live there for three years in the 1990s.

- Pakistan. The largest Islamic fundamentalist country on the planet with 149 million people.

If this was a threat driven by Islamic fundamentalism, we should be seeing suicide attackers pouring out of Iran, Sudan and Pakistan - but this is not the pattern. It is crucial to see that the presence of Western combat forces on the Arabian Peninsula is bin Laden’s best recruiting tool. With only one exception, al-Qaeda suicide attackers from 1995 to 2004 came from a handful of Sunni-majority countries. Al-Qaeda suicide attackers are over ten times more likely to come from a Sunni country with an American combat presence than a Sunni country without such a presence.

In light of the above, the 7 July 2005 (known as ‘7/7’) London bombings are worth closer scrutiny. Four points about these suicide attacks emerge:

The al-Qaeda group that claimed responsibility - just two hours after the attacks occurred and with specific operational details not yet in the press - described the London bombings as punishment for British military operations in Iraq.

Hussain Osman, one of the would-be 21 July bombers (who was captured in Rome) said in his interrogation: ‘This was not about religion, this was about Iraq. We watched films of British military atrocities in Iraq.’

Mohammed Khan was the ringleader of the 7/7 bombers. Some months ago, Al-Qaeda released Khan’s martyr video in which he says that the London bombings were aimed at punishing Britain for military operations in Iraq and in other Muslim countries.

In 2004 the British Government’s Home Office conducted a four-volume survey of the attitudes of the 1.6 million Muslims in Britain. In that survey, the Home Office found that between 8 and 13 per cent of British Muslims believed that more suicide attacks against the West were justified—primarily because of Iraq.

The implication is, if al-Qaeda’s trans-national support were to dry up tomorrow, the group would still remain a robust threat to the US and its allies. However, if al-Qaeda no longer drew recruits based on the anger generated by Western military forces in Sunni Muslim countries, the remaining trans-national network would pose a far smaller threat and may simply collapse. Far from resting on its terrorist laurels, al-Qaeda’s strategy has been evolving since 11 September 2001. Since 9/11, al-Qaeda’s attacks have occurred across a broad geographic range and in many Muslim countries; yet there remains a consistency in the victims’ identity. Al-Qaeda is consistently killing citizens of countries with combat forces stationed side-by-side with the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq. In other words, since 9/11 al-Qaeda has been focused - not chaotic. The group has been focused on stripping the United States of its core military allies in Europe and Australia, a strategy evidenced not only by the pattern of the attacks but actually stated in an important al-Qaeda strategy document. In September 2003, al-Qaeda used the Internet to publish a 42-page document which outlined its strategy for dealing with the US after Iraq.

The document was found just a few months later, in December 2003, by Norwegian intelligence. The Norwegians gave it to the Pentagon and to the White House, where it was quietly ignored. That document is no longer being ignored.

The al-Qaeda strategy document states that, in order to lever the United States out of Iraq, al-Qaeda should not seek to attack the American homeland in the short term, but instead should focus on hitting America’s military allies. The document proceeds with an assessment as to whether the next blow should be against Spain, Britain or Poland. Al-Qaeda concludes that the Spanish capital, Madrid, should be hit just before the March 2004 election.

The strategy reasons that this attack would be most likely to coerce the Spanish to withdraw forces from Iraq and subsequently put pressure on the British:

Therefore we say that in order to force the Spanish government to withdraw from Iraq, the resistance should be dealt painful blows. It is necessary to make upmost views of the upcoming election in Spain in March of next year. We think that the Spanish government could not tolerate more than two, maximum of three blows, after which it will have to withdraw as a result of popular pressure. If its troops still remain in Iraq after these blows, then the victory of the Socialist party is almost secured and the withdrawal of Spanish forces will be on its electoral program. Lastly, we are emphasising that a withdrawal of Spanish forces from Iraq would put huge pressure on the British in Iraq.

The attack occurred, the Spanish withdrew and the London bombings were simply the next step in al-Qaeda’s execution of its strategic logic.

The first point to note is that this places bin Laden’s most recent statements in quite a different context. In January and April 2006, bin Laden, who had been quiet for over a year, gave two statements, both four pages long in language very similar to the Norwegian strategy document. In his January statement bin Laden asserts that for the last few years al-Qaeda has been focusing on killing the citizens of America’s European military allies and Australia, and that now the group plans to put American targets back on the list.

The second point is that, in the last few months, al-Qaeda’s recruitment, particularly of home-grown suicide attackers, has become increasingly vigorous. How does al-Qaeda recruit home-grown suicide attackers? One explanation lies in the group’s most recent recruitment video, which came out in July. It features Adam Gadahn, an American citizen. He is 28 years old and was born in Riverside, California. His father was Jewish and converted the family to Christianity; Adam converted from Christianity to Islam when he was in his late teens. In 1998, just a few years after he converted, he chose to go and live with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, and he has been with bin Laden since. Adam has become the al-Qaeda ‘poster boy’ for recruiting home-grown terrorists. This latest video shows his face for the first time, although it is not his first video as he has appeared in a few other, much shorter videos. He is not speaking to you or to me: he is speaking directly to Muslims in Britain, the US and presumably also in Australia. This is what he says: [Video soundtrack] … keep in mind that the Americans, the British and the other members of the coalition of terror have intentionally targeted Muslim civilians and civilian targets both before and after September 11. In both the first and second Gulf Wars, as well as their parade into Somalia and Sudan and Afghanistan, just to give youa few examples … was this portable backing of the populations and electorates… in targeting civilians for assassination and kidnapping. He kept [unintelligible speech] and shipped them off to Guantanamo or worse. Many were handed over to the American - and British-backed despotic regimes of the Islamic world to be brutally interrogated …

We haven’t talked about the American and British atrocities in the two Iraq wars… In Mahmoudiya five American soldiers gang raped an Iraqi woman and then to hide the evidence murdered her, a few members of her family and burnt her body.

There is no discussion of the 72 virgins or the supposed rewards waiting in heaven, and barely a mention of Islam. This is a direct emotional appeal to dual loyalty citizens to feel sympathy and identification with the plight of kindred Muslims. He is not making up the core facts. This is the enemy - probably bin Laden’s most precious tool for recruiting home-grown suicide attackers. This is a graphic portrayal of what al-Qaeda believes to be its best mobilisation appeal. Al-Qaeda would not waste the powerful image of Adam Gadahn if the group did not believe him to be critically effective.

Iraq and suicide terror

Iraq is a prime example of the strategic logic of suicide terrorism. Before the US-led invasion in March 2003, Iraq had never experienced a suicide terrorist attack in its history. Since then, suicide terrorism has been doubling every year that the 170 000 - strong Western combat forces have been stationed there. There is a widespread belief that there is no logic and consistency to the suicide attacks—yet the facts make nonsense of this view. The Chicago Project has tracked the suicide attacks, taking great care to separate these from other attacks that are also occurring. What is striking is that the geography and targets of the attacks have been remarkably consistent, even as the attacks have been doubling from year to year. The insurgents are following a fairly standard model of insurgency. Year after year, 50 to 60 per cent of the attacks are consistently in the capital city, with the rest evenly distributed around the country. This is one of the most common insurgent patterns, as these elements seek to convince the population that the government cannot protect them. If the government cannot protect the capital cities, it is clearly incapable of protecting other cities and towns. Further, more than 75 per cent of the attacks were against military and political targets such as government buildings, police convoys, police stations, recruiting stations and Western combat troops. Only 15 to 25 per cent of the attacks were against local Iraqi civilians not working for the Iraqi government. News stories that describe attacks in Iraq against civilians will very often identify those civilians as standing in line waiting to work for the government or security organs inside Iraq.

It is also important to emphasise that there have been attacks against mosques. Of the over 190 attacks, a grand total of 13 were against mosques.

What this pattern suggests is a fairly clear goal to prevent the establishment of a government in Iraq under the control of the United States. To achieve this, Iraqi terrorists attack targets they hope will undermine the Iraqi population’s confidence in the Iraqi Government and its ability to maintain order. Although there are multiple causes, it is the presence of American ground forces in Iraq that is mainly responsible for fuelling the support for suicide terrorism. Today, there are 13 different terrorist organisations in the Sunni Triangle, four of which use suicide terrorist attacks. Some are quite religious, some are quite patriotic.

Some use foreign suicide attackers, some only Iraqi suicide attackers. Where these organisations agree is that they want Western combat forces out of Iraq. They view these forces as the power behind the throne. In January 2004, Zarqawi said he was going to use suicide attacks against the Iraqi security organs and Western agents in Iraq because they are ‘the eyes, ears and hands of the American occupier.’

Who are the Iraqi suicide attackers? Right now their identity is murky, which is normal in the opening years of a suicide terrorist campaign. The identities typically come later. While we can only identify about 12 to 15 per cent of the Iraqi suicide attackers, this data shows they come from two main groups: Iraqi Sunnis and Saudis.

The next largest grouping is from Syria, followed by Kuwait. The attackers come either from Iraq itself or the immediately adjacent border areas. There is not a single instance of an Iranian suicide attacker. There are none from Pakistan and none from Sudan. Given the evidence from the Chicago Project, this fits – it is perfectly consistent with the strategic logic of suicide terrorism.

Demographics of suicide terrorists

The Chicago Project has studied 462 suicide terrorists and provides reasonably good primary demographics data for the group as a whole. There is also relatively sound socio-economic data for the Arab attackers. This data provides some fresh insight into past cases. Prior to this effort, our understanding of that famous suicide terrorist group in Lebanon, Hezbollah, was quite thin. We knew that it was an umbrella organisation and that Islamic fundamentalism obviously mattered. Many speculated that Hezbollah attackers must be poor, uneducated religious fanatics. We now know that these suicide attackers come from a far broader range of backgrounds. Perhaps the most important aspect is the ideology of the attackers - we can identify the ideology for 38 of the 41 Hezbollah suicide attackers:

- 20 per cent (8) were Islamic fundamentalist

- 71 per cent (27) attackers were secular; communists or socialists from groups such as the Lebanese Communist Party

- 3 were Christian - one a Christian high school teacher with a Bachelor of Arts degree

The project collected hundreds of recruiting pictures of suicide attackers. It is striking to see them in Western clothes with Western make-up - hardly the image of the Islamic fundamentalist. This is not the image that would be projected if the aim were to recruit Islamic fundamentalists.

The project also found interesting characteristics concerning the suicide attackers overall. Interestingly, female attackers are almost always older than male attackers.

Female bombers are commonly presented as young women who are easily swayed.

However, any comparison of the ages of male and female attackers shows that about 46 per cent of female attackers are over the age of 24. These are not young adolescent girls; these are mostly mature, fully formed personalities, adult mature women. … about 46 per cent of female attackers are over the age of 24.

The socio-economic data on the Arab attackers adds an interesting perspective. These attackers are much more educated than many expect. Only 10 per cent have primary education or less compared to almost half in their respective societies; 54 per cent have some degree of post-secondary education, compared to only a small fraction in their surrounding societies. Income provides a different perspective again: the attackers are overwhelmingly working class or middle class, not unemployed. A total of 17 per cent occupy the bottom rung of society or are unemployed compared to a third in their societies as a whole, and 76 per cent are working or middle class.

They are technicians, mechanics, waiters, police, ambulance drivers, security guards, and teachers. Many quit their jobs just a few days or a few weeks before their attacks.

Both secular and religious attackers have the same income distribution, and religious attackers are more highly educated. Suicide attackers are not – and have not been from the beginning - mainly poor, uneducated religious zealots, but well-educated workers from both religious and secular backgrounds. Many are people who would go on to lead productive lives if they had not chosen to commit a suicide attack.

Conclusion

The war on terrorism is heading south. The threat is growing and a core reason for this is that the Global War on Terror has been waged on a faulty premise that has led the United States and its coalition partners to exacerbate the causes of terrorism.

The faulty premise is that suicide terrorism is mainly a product of Islamic fundamentalism.

If that were the case, it would make perfect sense to transform Muslim societies, to wring the Islamic fundamentalism out of them, even at the point of a gun, as has been occurring now for five years. However, although there are multiple factors, the main cause of suicide terrorism is not an ideology independent of circumstance. The main cause of the threat we face is the sustained presence of US and Western combat forces on the Arabian Peninsula. In 2001, there were 12,000 American combat soldiers on the Peninsula: 5,000 inside Saudi Arabia, 7,000 in other countries. Today, over 170 000 Western combat forces occupy Iraq and other countries on the Arabian Peninsula. As this presence has increased, suicide terrorism - first by Iraqis and then by al-Qaeda - has been surging. This does not mean that the Coalition should simply ‘cut and run’. The stability of this region is crucial to that of the entire Middle East and Iraq, in particular, holds oil assets vital to the global community.

On the other hand, Coalition forces should not simply stay and die; the longer Western combat forces remain on the Arabian Peninsula, the greater the risk of the next 9/11, 7/7, Bali bombings or worse.

In my book, Dying to Win, I map out a new approach, a new military strategy for the Persian Gulf.

I call this strategy ‘offshore balancing’. The core of the idea is not to have military forces stationed ashore on the Arabian Peninsula, but to have them offshore, poised and ready to intervene in a military crisis. This strategy is quite similar to the military strategy the West used for decades before 1990. In the 1970s and 1980s the West successfully maintained its core interests in the Persian Gulf without stationing a single combat soldier on dry land. Instead, an alliance was formed with Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and even critics of the war in Iraq should see the benefits of this policy.

The US has numerous aircraft carriers stationed off the coast of the Arabian Peninsula as a matter of course, and readily available airpower which is far more effective than it was 30 years ago. Finally, in the 1970s and 1980s the United States maintained a system of bases without ground troops, but bases through which troops could rapidly deploy in a crisis.

That strategy worked splendidly to reverse Saddam Hussein’s aggression against Kuwait in 1990. An offshore balancing approach is, once again, the best strategy to secure US interests in the Persian Gulf and to prevent the rise of a new generation of terrorists. It is a strategy that can be maintained, not just for a year or two by sheer dint of effort as is the case now, but for decades, which is what it will take even in the most optimistic assessments. The US should be moving to an offshore balancing strategy with a phased withdrawal of ground troops from the Persian Gulf over the next three to four years. Over the last ten years since 1995, our enemies have been dying to win. But with the right strategy, it is the United States and its military allies that are poised for victory.’

Endnotes

Naturally, US Department of Defense officials were quite eager to access this data and, in return, they funded the update and expansion of the database which forms the basis for my book on the subject, Dying to Win.

Additional funding for this project was provided by the Carnegie Corporation in New York, Argonne National Laboratories and the University of Chicago itself.

PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan) is the acronym used by the Kurdish Workers Party.

The Author

Robert Pape, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, is the author of Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, which was published in this country last year by Scribe. Professor Pape has also published Bombing to Win: Airpower and Coercion in War, and his articles include ‘Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work’ and ‘The Determinants of International Morale Action’.