Suicide terrorism. A term that in today’s political climate carries a certain image, like the one depicted to the left. One of irrationality and illiteracy, with fanaticism, religious zeal and 70 virgins promised in heaven for the martyr.
Etymology
The term “terrorism” comes from Latin terrere, “to frighten” via the French word terrorisme, which is often associated with the Regime de la Terreur, the Reign of Terror of the revolutionary government in France from 1793 to 1794.
Maximilien Robespierre, a leader of the revolution, proclaimed in 1794, “Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue; it is not so much a special principle as it is a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our country’s most urgent needs…If the basis of a popular government in peacetime is virtue, its basis in a time of revolution is virtue and terror — virtue, without which terror would be barbaric; and terror, without which virtue would be impotent.”
The Committee of Public Safety agents that enforced the policies of “The Terror” were referred to as “Terrorists.”
The English word “terrorism” was first recorded in English dictionaries in 1798 as meaning “systematic use of terror as a policy.”
History
The earliest known organization that corresponds to modern terrorism was the Zealots of Judea, also known as the Sicarii, or the dagger men. They were an underground organization of Jewish revolutionaries in 66CE in Judea, whose religious zeal led them to fight to death the Roman occupation. They also killed or persecuted Jews who collaborated with the Romans.
Their motive was an uncompromising belief that they could not remain faithful to the dictates of Judaism while living as Roman subjects. Eventually, the Zealot revolt became open, and they were finally besieged and committed mass suicide at the fortification of Masada. (Global Terrorism;James M Lutz, Brenda J Lutz)
Common Myths
The general image of the suicide terrorist is that of a religious fanatic, uneducated, poor and irrational. However, research on the social and psychological background of terrorists show they tend to be more prosperous and better educated than most in their societies, and no more religious or irrational than the average person.
1. Poverty
A study of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad suicide terrorists from the late 1980s to 2003 found only 13 per cent were from a poor background, compared with 32 per cent of the Palestinian population in general, according to a New Scientist report.
2. Education
Modern suicide terrorism finds its origin in the Marxist LTTE of Sri Lanka. 
“The assasination of Sri Lanka’s foreign minister …has once again raised the question of how the conflict on this ill-fated isle will end.
What bedevils conflict analysts most about Sri Lanka is that it defies the most common causal factor raised by terrorism experts — a lack of education. Among all South Asian countries, Sri Lanka has the highest literacy rate of an astounding 92 percent.
Yet this is the country where the cult of suicide bombings finds its origin with more than 200 suicide attacks since 1970 that have claimed thousands of lives. The victims include several politicians including the former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who was killed by a female suicide bomber in 1991.
Clearly the educational development in this country has not had a direct correlation with conflict reduction.�
In December 2001, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, conducted a public-opinion poll of 1,357 Palestinians age 18 or older in the West Bank and Gaza on topics including the September 11 attacks in the United States, support for an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, and attacks against Israel. 
The poll reveals several things. First, support for attacks against Israeli targets by the Palestinian population is widespread (from 74 percent to 90 percent, depending on the subgroup), though it is important to emphasize that there is a distinction between support for attacks expressed in a poll at a particular moment and participation or active collusion in such attacks.
Second, a majority, more than 60 percent of the population surveyed, believes that attacks against Israeli civilians have helped to achieve Palestinian rights in a way that negotiations could not have.
These results offer no evidence that educated people are less supportive of attacks against Israeli targets. In fact, the support for attacks against Israeli targets is higher among those with more than a secondary-school education than among those with only an elementary-school education, and the support is considerably lower among those who are illiterate. 
The study showed also that support for attacks against Israeli targets is particularly strong among students, merchants, and professionals. Notably, the unemployed are somewhat less likely to support such attacks. If poverty were indeed the wellspring of support for terrorism or politically motivated violence, one would have expected the unemployed to be more supportive of attacks than were merchants and professionals, but the evidence points the other way.
Similarly, Claude Berrebi, a graduate student in economics at Princeton, has studied the characteristics of recent suicide bombers in Israel. From information on the Web sites of Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas, he was able to paint a statistical picture of suicide bombers. He compared that to survey-based data on the broader Palestinian population of roughly comparable age.
His results indicate that suicide bombers are less than half as likely to come from impoverished families than is the population as a whole. In addition, more than half of the suicide bombers had attended school after high school, while less than 15 percent of the population in the same age group had any post-high-school education. Its not a mental disease.
“In writing my book on suicide attackers, I had researchers scour Lebanese sources to collect martyr videos, pictures and testimonials and the biographies of the Hezbollah bombers. Of the 41, we identified the names, birth places and other personal data for 38. Shockingly, only eight were Islamic fundamentalists.
Twenty-seven were from leftist political groups like the Lebanese Communist Party and the Arab Socialist Union. Three were Christians, including a female high-school teacher with a college degree. All were born in Lebanon.� (Pape, Robert A. The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. American Political Science Review 97:343-362 August 2003)
3. Religious Fanaticism
Contemporary suicide terrorists from the Middle East are publicly deemed crazed cowards bent on senseless destruction who thrive in poverty and ignorance. Recent research indicates they have no appreciable psychopathology and are as educated and economically well-off as surrounding populations.
A first line of defense is to get the communities from which suicide attackers stem to stop the attacks by learning how to minimize the receptivity of mostly ordinary people to recruiting organizations (Scott Atran, Science, 7 March 2003:Vol. 299. no. 5612, pp. 1534 – 1539)
Ariel Merare, a psychologist at Tel Aviv University in Israel, said he had changed his view that most suicide bombers were mentally ill after studying the background of every suicide bomber in the Middle East since 1983.”In the majority you find none of the risk factors normally associated with suicide, such as mood disorders or schizophrenia, substance abuse or a history of attempted suicide,” he said.
“With a queue of willing participants, how do terrorist or militant groups choose their suicide bombers? A planner for Islamic Jihad explained to Nasra Hassan, a relief worker for United Nations (New Yorker, November 19, 2001), that his group scrutinizes the motives of a potential bomber to be sure that the individual is committed to carrying out the task. Now, a high level of educational attainment is probably a signal of one’s commitment to a cause, as well as of one’s ability to prepare for an assignment and carry it out. For this reason, the stereotype of suicide bombers being drawn from the ranks of those who are so impoverished that they have nothing to live for may be wildly incorrect.
This interpretation is also consistent with another of Hassan’s observations about suicide bombers: “None of them were uneducated, desperately poor, simple-minded, or depressed. Many were middle class and, unless they were fugitives, held paying jobs. More than half of them were refugees from what is now Israel. Two were the sons of millionaires.â€?
Common explanations are not based on fact:
A 64-year-old Palestinian woman blew herself up as a suicide bomber in Gaza [ 23 November 2006] in an attack on Israeli troops. Hamas, which claimed responsibility for the attack, named the woman as Fatma Omar An-Najar and said that she lived near the refugee camp. Her oldest daughter, Fatheya, said she decided to become a bomber because her grandson had been killed. “They [the Israelis] destroyed her house, they killed her grandson – my son,” she told the Associated Press. “Another grandson is in a wheelchair with an amputated leg,” she said.
Suicidal attacks are broadly correlated with certain conditions – economic deprivation and human loss – along with policy outcomes (closures and other structurally damaging policies); eroding the individual motives to support and participate in violence would necessarily include improving the structural health of Palestinian society.
Does Al-Qaeda conform to the myths?
Marc Sageman’s findings from biographical material from more than 400 al-Qaida-affiliated terrorists (Sageman, Marc Terror Networks (Philadelphia, Penn.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).
* The vast majority of terrorists in the sample came from solid middle class backgrounds, and its leadership came from the upper class.
* Only 13 percent of terrorists went to madrassahs, and this practice was specific to Southeast Asia, where two school masters, Abdullah Sungkar and Abu Bakar Baasyir, recruited their best students to form the backbone of the Jamaah Islamiyah, the Indonesian al-Qaida affiliate. This means that 87 percent of terrorists in the sample had a secular education.
* The vast majority of al-Qaida terrorists in the sample came from families with very moderate religious beliefs or a completely secular outlook. Indeed, 84 percent were radicalized in the West, rather than in their countries of origin. Most had come to the West to study, and at the time they had no intention of ever becoming terrorists. Another 8 percent consisted of Christian converts to Islam, who could not have been brainwashed into violence by their culture.
* About two-thirds of the sample had attended college, a sharp contrast with the less than 10 percent of their original communities who did so. Despite their education, they did not know much about religion; however, many had studied engineering, which made them doubly dangerous. Their relative lack of religious education made them especially vulnerable to an extreme version of Islam, and they had the skills to build bombs.
* Some argue that lack of sexual opportunity for young Muslim men transforms their sexual frustration into suicide terrorism to reap the rewards of heaven, especially access to the 72 virgins. In fact, three-fourths of al-Qaida terrorists are married, and two-thirds of them have children (and many children at that). This apparent paradox is explained by the fact that they want many children to pursue the jihad, while they sacrifice themselves for their cause and comrades.
* About 60 percent of al-Qaida terrorists in the sample have professional or semi-professional occupations.
* There was a near total lack of mental disorders in the sample.
* Recruitment into al-Qaida was through friendship and kinship rather than dedicated recruiters.
Why is it necessary to understand terrorism?
Suicide terrorism is rising around the world, but the most common explanations do not help us understand why. Religious fanaticism does not explain why the world leader in suicide terrorism is the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a group that adheres to a Marxist/Leninist ideology, while existing psychological explanations have been contradicted by the widening range of socio-economic backgrounds of suicide terrorists.
In contrast to the existing explanations, Robert Pape’s study, which has collected biographical information of 188 suicide terrorist attacks worldwide from 1980 to 2001, shows that suicide terrorism follows a strategic logic, one specifically designed to coerce modern liberal democracies to make significant territorial concessions. Moreover, over the past two decades, suicide terrorism has been rising largely because terrorists have learned that it pays. Suicide terrorists sought to compel American and French military forces to abandon Lebanon in 1983, Israeli forces to leave Lebanon in 1985, Israeli forces to quit the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in 1994 and 1995, the Sri Lankan government to create an independent Tamil state from 1990 on, and the Turkish government to grant autonomy to the Kurds in the late 1990s.
In all but the case of Turkey, the terrorist political cause made more gains after the resort to suicide operations than it had before. Thus, Western democracies should pursue policies that teach terrorists that the lesson of the 1980s and 1990s no longer holds, policies which in practice may have more to do with improving homeland security than with offensive military action.
Rohan Gunaratna, head of terrorism research at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said the findings had overturned popular ideas about terrorists. “They are like you and me,” he said. The experts said resistance groups tended to adopt suicide tactics when they were losing political ground to rival groups, and used psychological techniques to ensure recruits went through with the act. Suicide attacks are a kind of tactic, planned and organized by extremely committed military or paramilitary groups.
According to Robert Pape, director of the Chicago Project on suicide terrorism and expert on suicide bombers, ninety-five percent of such attacks in recent times have the same specific strategic goal: to cause an occupying state to withdraw forces from a disputed territory. It is the only way small, disaffected groups can fight a powerful enemy.
The Islamic Position on Terrorism:
According to Islamic jurist and scholar Khaled Abou Al-Fadl, 
The classical jurists, nearly without exception, argued that those who attack by stealth, while targeting noncombatants in order to terrorize the resident and wayfarer, are corrupters of the earth. “Resident and wayfarer” was a legal expression that meant that whether the attackers terrorize people in their urban centers or terrorize travelers, the result was the same: all such attacks constitute a corruption of the earth. The legal term given to people who act this way was muharibun (those who wage war against society), and the crime is called the crime of hiraba (waging war against society). The crime of hiraba was so serious and repugnant that, according to Islamic law, those guilty of this crime were considered enemies of humankind and were not to be given quarter or sanctuary anywhere. … Those who are familiar with the classical tradition will find the parallels between what were described as crimes of hiraba and what is often called terrorism today nothing short of remarkable. The classical jurists considered crimes such as assassinations, setting fires, or poisoning water wells – that could indiscriminately kill the innocent – as offenses of hiraba. Furthermore, hijacking methods of transportation or crucifying people in order to spread fear and terror are also crimes of hiraba. Importantly, Islamic law strictly prohibited the taking of hostages, the mutilation of corpses, and torture.
References and Further Reading:
All it Takes to Make a Suicide Attacker. New Scientist 182:3 May 15, 2004.
Bennett, James. Gingerly, Arabs Question Suicide Bombings. New York Times, p.A1, Op, July 3, 2002.
Bennett, James. HAMAS Urges Iraqis to Make Suicide Attacks on the Invaders. New York Times, p.B13, Op, March 22, 2003.
Bennett, James. Rash of New Suicide Bombers Exhibit No Patterns or Ties. New York Times, p.A1, Op, June 21, 2002.
Bond, Michael. The Making of a Suicide Bomber. New Scientist 182:34-37 May 15, 2004.
Dying to Kill Us. New York Times, p.A17, Op, September 22, 2003.
Eshel, David. Israel Reviews Profile of Suicide Bombers. Jane’s Intelligence Review 13:20-21 November 2001.
Gunaratna, Rohan. Suicide Terrorism: A Global Threat. Jane’s Intelligence Review 12:52-55 April 2000.
Gunaratna, Rohan. Terror From the Sky. Jane’s Intelligence Review 13:6-9 October 2001.
Describes the evolution of suicide terrorism and the use of airborne attacks.
Hecht, Richard D. Deadly History, Deadly Actions, and Deadly Bodies: A Response to Ivan Strenski’s ‘Sacrifice, Gift and the Social Logic of Muslim “Human Bombers.”‘ Terrorism and Political Violence 15:35-47 Autumn 2003.
Hoffman, Bruce and McCormick, Gordon H. Terrorism, Signaling, and Suicide Attack. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 27:243-281 July-August 2004.
Israeli, Raphael. A Manual of Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorism. Terrorism and Political Violence 14:23-40 Winter 2002.
Kondaki, Christopher. Suicide Terrorism, an Age-Old Weapon, Adds Technology. Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy 29:8-9 2001.
Kushner, Harvey W. Suicide Bombers: Business as Usual. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 19:329-337 October-December 1996.
Luft, Gal. The Palestinian H-Bomb. Foreign Affairs 81:2-8 July-August 2002.
Article discusses the Palestinian’s growing acceptance of suicide bombings as a legitimate tool of war.
Moghadam, Assaf. Palestinian Suicide Terrorism in the Second Intifada: Motivations and Organizational Aspects. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 26:65-92 March-April 2003.
Pape, Robert A. The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. American Political Science Review 97:343-362 August 2003.
Perina, Kaja. Suicide Terrorism: Seeking Motives Beyond Mental Illness. Psychology Today 35:15 September-October 2002.
Pope, Hugh. HAMAS Official Won’t Rule out Suicide Bombings. Wall Street Journal, p.A10, Op, April 21, 2003.
Sprinzak, Ehud. Rational Fanatics Foreign Policy 120:66-73 September-October 2000.
Strenski, Ivan. Sacrifice, Gift and the Social Logic of Muslim “Human Bombers.” Terrorism and Political Violence 15:1-34 Autumn 2003.
Telhami, Shibley. Why Suicide Terrorism Takes Root. New York Times, pA23, Op, April 4, 2002.
Waldman, Amy. Masters of Suicide Bombing: Tamil Guerrillas of Sri Lanka. New York Times, p.A1, Op, January 14, 2003.
Very well researched. Terrorism is a political tactic. It has a long history. And it is winning.
As far as the part where suicide bombing has nothing to do with Islam, I agree.
But political, ethnic, religious violence extend beyond terrorism. They extend to state actors, ethnic networks, religious leaders, etc. Right now terrorism is part and parcel of larger conflicts going on in the world. To me, the violence in a place like Gujurat against Muslims, or against Hindus in Bangladesh, is far more worrying and disturbing than a suicide bomber. Do the authors have any thoughts or analysis on these phenomenon, beyond the simplistic “communalism is bad” that we usually get from our politicians? I ask because the analysis of terrorism is so excellent.
This article misses one point as to why these so called prosperous and secular people have taken to terrorism. Is this because they were more towards leftist leaning? In India the biggest threat of terrorism it seems is from maoists, naxalites and communists. Nandigram is a latest example where communists butchered people. They also went to the extent to say in parliament that this is a state issue and can not be discussed. Many Muslims have also been killed by these communists in Nandigram. Also the case of Rizwanur in calcutta who had married a Hindu girl and was killed in mysterious circumstances. The state goverments big wigs tried to hush the case. However, having said that the real analysis as to what motivates these people into terrorism has not been done in this article.
shama: Thanks, I have lived and worked in India, the Middle East and the US and consider myself fairly in touch with the culture and society in these three regions.
As a part-time peace activist, I also have the opportunity of meeting people associated with these ongoing conflicts.
I believe the communalism in India is very largely a part of the sudden changes that our society has been subjected to and much of it is based on the partition, historical revisionism and a self conscious sense of identity that has been infected by false expectations of keeping up with the Joneses.
As a culture, we Indians also tend to suffer from class and caste consciousness, which when not tempered with our prosaic sense of pragmatism can be easily seduced into channels that are non-productive. The irony of being a majority Hindu country with a Muslim (now ex) President, a Roman Catholic and foreign born leader of the National Party and a Sikh Prime Minister, which reflects our true pluralistic Indian personality, while having religious conflicts in Gujarat, Kashmir and civil conflicts in Jharkand, is a symptom of a society in the grip of a dilemma, between emulating the much admired Western societies with their strong individualistic focus, while breaking away from a culture entrenched in distinct notions of religious conservatism and social groupings.
However, it is a dilemma we are better equipped to tackle than the Europeans who fought for 300 years before arriving at their 30 states and consolidating them into a Union, and the Middle East, that through the last 5000 years has seen much political, cultural and religious upheaval, still unresolved.
Indian culture has also had its moments of shame, from the Buddhist-Hindu wars to the atrocities of the caste system to the oppression of various invaders and their collaborators.
But we have always reached a consensus (albeit not always a secular one) which allowed for all voices to be heard. In this I believe we have been more successful in aligning our evolutionary tendency towards tribalism with a vastly more profound vision that envelops not just the world, but the whole universe. I give the example of where an alien spaceship in the Middle East will be met with suspicion, in the West with possibly aggression, but in India with a sense of wonder and awe.
The present tendency towards violence and group think can be overcome. We just need to realise it needs effort, commitment and dedication. Its in our genes. Just switch it on.
Chirag: Do the authors have any thoughts or analysis on these phenomenon, beyond the simplistic “communalism is bad� that we usually get from our politicians? I ask because the analysis of terrorism is so excellent.
shama:I have some ideas on that, however, I have not crystallised those thoughts or researched the available literature. An idea for another article perhaps *starts cranking up brain matter*
Khoja:why these so called prosperous and secular people have taken to terrorism. Is this because they were more towards leftist leaning? In India the biggest threat of terrorism it seems is from maoists, naxalites and communists.
shama: that is an interesting theory which I am trying to explore. I also wonder the same thing, but do not have sufficient evidence for reaching conclusions. There are several pieces of history which provide a possible link.
1. The first Palestinian anti-Zionist political party was communist and was started by secular Jews in Palestine, later joined by Arabs. In fact, the loudest voices in Palestinian political history have been from communism.
2. The earliest suicide bombers in Lebanon were mostly Marxist
3. The LTTE are Marxists.
And as you say, the cases in India.
However, I would like to point out the instance of Kerala, perhaps the only successful communist experiment in the world as an instance of how other factors also play a role in ideology and resistance.
However, it would be interesting to look at communism more closely to see if it creates the mindset required to support terrorism.
Shama,
An excellent analysis! Very well written! I think the day Robert Pape published his work he dented this whole theory of religion being the reason of suicide bombings. But surprisingly even after his work the same theories have continued to go the rounds. And Robert Pape contrary to being a third rate academician, is a respected one from Univ of Chicago (one of the best univs in the world).
Surprisingly I just heard his interview once on NPR and perhaps that was it.
Shama
Such comprehensive analysis! I have skimmed Pape’s book too, and heard an interview in “Conversations with History” (they’re available on google video for everyone.
Problem is, there is an interest in pretending that the violent reactions of foreign occupation are actually not reactions, but the inherent quality of the local people. The “white christian west” (those who perceive themselves as such; not all of those who are such) has now come to hate anti-semitism (atleast in public), and has quite successfully transferred that image to the Muslims. (When they were anti-semitic, they used to accuse Muslims of being too lenient to women, slaves and the jews- I’m not kidding.)
We can’t go on complaining that west doesn’t treat us well. Nobody treats anybody well (except the exceptions) unless the good treatment in earned. We can’t keep on being amazed by their cars and guns and hope to be “treated fairly”. Only when we, too, amaze them with our cars and guns, all guns shall be silent. US doesn’t attack Europe. Deterrence.
Thanks Shama! In India in the last 10 years a strange feeling has got or has been built up against Muslims. One of the primary reasons is because none either in India or Pakistan has accepted partition. In India because a very large number of Muslim populations is seen in everyone’s day to day life in various shades. Pakistan because although it became an Islamic republic has not been able to reconcile the fact that how come Muslims have remained in India, are successful and even talk against Pakistan. Kashmir was a tipping point definitely but without going into historic and social reasons happening in Kashmir I guess the entire Muslim community got blamed especially when the government itself failed to protect Hindus there. Strangely the very politics of this hate started from the period India chose to liberalise itself. Many powers worldwide dont want India to become an economic and military power. The best thing to stop any country in achieving this is by creating issues and problems within also happening in India. Although the naxalites and communists have been creating issues right from day 1 Muslims in this country have largely criticised the 2 nation theory and have worked within its realm to develop the country.
I guess a time has come that Muslims also accept partition and even stop criticising the 2 nation theory. Pakistanis on many fronts although very friendly strongly believe Pakistan as correct. It is more of our mindset that they are closer and like us. This on one hand just helps in building very superficial relations with Pakistanis on the other makes us seen standing with Pakistanis in India neither of which helps us. Indian Muslims should now play a role in resolving out Kashmir and improving India’s relation with the Islamic countries. Even the Muslim countries should see India as a power centre which can provide them cushion in near future. It definitely can not be Pakistan because although entirely Muslim and a nuclear power state it is still in a mess. Democracy is a distant dream to be successful there. I guess a larger role should be played by Muslims in this country throwing the tags being put on them as Isla mists, terrorists or whatever. We should have the courage to accept that yes there were some Islamic invaders in past which did huge damage to this country or there was an educated secular Jinnah who divided India but now we are one and parcel of this nations culture. Rather than be defensive always from attacks from RSS where we are seen justifying these past acts in history as not entirely wrong we should be aggressive in our voice for patriotism and development.
Also Shama in western Up from where I come I do believe that the poorer segment of Muslim population is more prone to see their poverty because of being part of Hindu India which is not correct as many other segments of society are poor here. Therefore opportunities in Arabia or Muslim countries enforces their views of them being more closer to them rather than India. It is strange that Indian Muslims in these countries rather than working like Indo American community choose to simply praise Middle East’s infrastructure and stuff which does not goes down well with many other people in India. My personal take that Muslims should work in strengthening national parties like congress rather than voting for best candidate who can defeat BJP or looking for third front elsewhere. A Regional Gujarat, Maharashtra or even south is neither in interest of India or Muslims. Also, in terms of danger the real threat posed by communists where a nuclear deal is being stopped because of china’s interest should be more exposed rather than the unusual and incorrect picture of Muslims being a danger for this country.
***It is the only way small, disaffected groups can fight a powerful enemy***
Firstly – an excellent piece of journalism. Thanks Shama!
It has been my belief, all along, employing a suicide bomber is to ‘negate’ the traditional aspects of strength or power seen in a match up between military or armed forces. Building ever sophisticated & powerful armies was supposed to cower the opposition into submission – ‘cuz of fear of defeat, death & mutilation. Enter – suicide bomber; the logic is turned upside down.
No wonder – educated & employed Palestinians, knowing the extent of injustice(perceived or real) meted out to them, turn out to be the ones with most radical views amongst the Palestinian population. With the information of the injustices, comes the moral responsibility to do something against the perpetrators.
The freedom struggle in India was led was the elite of the society – for they really understood the extent of deprivation & subjugation by the colonists. And of course – we had our own terrorists a.k.a Bhagat Singh, Azad..etc (pun intended)
I think the suicide bombers have effectively demolished the belief that having a large military presence, state of the art technology and an aggressive stance is worthless when faced with a stateless individual who is using himself as the ultimate weapon. How can you fight a man whose weapon is his life?
typo in above comment. I meant to say.
I think the suicide bombers have effectively demonstrated that having a large military presence, state of the art technology and an aggressive stance is worthless when faced with a stateless individual who is using himself as the ultimate weapon. How can you fight a man whose weapon is his life?
A very informative write up and to be critical, I must say that the opponents’s position/ideology could have explained the reason for the rise of ‘terrorism’. I am hopeful that, that side too need exposure, I mean Zionists, US etc. To conclude my small comment, Is it not the case that the states using disproportionate force to neutralise the targets they call ‘terrorists’ is the real cause for people committing their life?