The Shahids

Islam and Suicide Attacks

Shaul Shay

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351474276
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Terrorism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

"Suicide terror has become a fundamental strategic weapon in the confrontation between Fundamentalist Islam and its adversaries and now constitutes a threat to world welfare and security. The Shahids proposes that the nature of this terror changed after the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11. In this first book to be published on the subject, the author offers both an interpretation and an overall picture of a worldwide phenomenon that is not yet fully recognized, even in Israel, which remains a central arena for the perpetration of suicide attacks by terror organizations.The Shahids analyzes the general phenomenon of Islamic suicide attacks, and provides the reader with tools, comparative analyses, and comprehensive information enabling enlightened examination about suicide attacks worldwide. After a review of the historical development of the religious and ideological values legitimating suicide attacks, the volume explores the ways in which all terror organizations are both alike and different. It focuses on the countries that support terror--Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia--discusses suicide attacks perpetrated by women and the suicide attackers' mothers, and shows how various countries have put an end to suicide attacks. It scrutinizes testimony drawn from confiscated documents regarding the approach of terror leaders and the administrative support of various organizations for suicide attacks, while offering descriptions and direction on ways to contend with this challenge. It explores the possibilities and recommendations for an international struggle against suicide attacks through the implementation of recently published, innovative ideas proposed by UN Organizations, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch.The Shahids maps out the overall phenomenon of suicide attacks, as well as identifies various organizations and central key figures through comparative cross-sections."

1

Definitions and a Historical Review of the Phenomenon of Suicide Attacks¹

Suicide terrorists are not a new phenomenon in human history. Many terrorists have already proven their willingness to die while perpetrating attacks for their political cause, by making the ultimate sacrifice that culminates in their death by choice.

Suicide terror can be found as early as the tenth century in the Hashashin (Assassins) sect. From the beginning of the eighteenth century, the pattern of suicide attacks was adopted by Moslems waging their battle against Western colonialism in Asia. However, the “modern” manifestations of the suicide terror phenomenon surfaced with the appearance of the first suicide terrorists in Lebanon about twenty years ago. Modern suicide terror has certain unique characteristics that distinguish it from those inherent to suicide terror in earlier periods. From the early 1980s, terror organizations began to carry out suicide attacks while using one or more individuals who constituted a “guided human missile.” The suicide bomber carries explosives on his body or on a platform that he is driving, and out of his own conscious choice moves towards a predetermined target and executes an act of self-killing. The suicide bomber determines the site and timing of the attack, and he can navigate himself and decide on the spot, in keeping with the circumstances and surrounding environment, about the execution of the attack so that it will cause maximum damage to the chosen target. The definition of a terror attack as a suicide bombing thus depends primarily on the perpetrator’s death. Therefore, a “modern suicide terror attack” can be defined as “a violent, politically motivated action executed consciously, actively, and with prior intent by a single individual (or individuals) who kills himself in the course of the operation together with his chosen target. The guaranteed and preplanned death of the perpetrator is a prerequisite for the operation’s success.”²

The choice of the suicide weapon as an instrument in the hands of the terrorists derives from the fact that it is available and “cheap,” and the damage caused to the morale of the rival population is grave. A suicide attack, like all other terror attacks in the modern era, is primarily meant to provide its perpetrators with maximum media coverage, thus magnifying “a powerful self-image.” Terror organizations do indeed exploit the multitude of media means to further their interests.

Suicide attacks in the modern era began in Lebanon in 1983, at the instigation of the Lebanese-Shiite terror organization, Hizballah. During the 1980s, Lebanon served as a central arena for the “development” of the suicide attack method. These attacks continued into the 1990s, but with less frequency. Today suicide attacks in Lebanon are rare. A total of about fifty terror attacks were carried out in Lebanon by six organizations. About half of the suicide attacks were perpetrated by Hizballah and Amal (a Lebanese Shiite organization) and the rest were executed by secular organizations, some communist and others nationalist, including the Lebanese Communist Party, the Socialist Naserist Organization, the PPS—The National Syrian Party (also called “The Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party”). The Hizballah also perpetrated suicide attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets in Argentina in 1992 and in 1994.

The use of suicide attackers stimulated considerable prestige for the Hizballah and turned it into a symbol of sacrifice and a source of inspiration for terror organizations worldwide that adopted and even “refined” the suicide attacks. Among the organizations in the world that adopted this method, the most prominent is the isolationist Tamil organization, “The Tamil Tigers” (LTTE), which is involved in a struggle for independence of the Tamil minority from the Sinhalese majority in Sri Lanka.

The “Black Tigers” unit began perpetrating terror attacks in 1987, and since then has initiated over one hundred and sixty terror attacks carried out by over two hundred suicide attackers; in several of the incidents, more than one suicide terrorist participated in the attacks. These attacks were particularly vicious and caused many hundreds of deaths. This organization, which focused its suicide attacks on senior leaders in Sri Lanka’s political and military establishment, is the only one in the world to succeed in assassinating two heads of state. The first, Sri Lanka President Primadasa, was assassinated in an attack in which twenty-two additional victims met their deaths (May 1993), and the second, former prime minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi, who at that time was involved in a reelection campaign in Madras. This attack claimed the lives of a total of eighteen people (May 21, 1991). On December 17, 1999, the organization attempted to assassinate Sri Lanka’s President Chandrika Kumaratunga, via a female suicide terrorist who detonated herself at the president’s front door. The president lost an eye in the attack, but survived.

The organization also acted against politicians affiliated with the Singhalese majority as well as pragmatic politicians from the Tamil minority, senior military personnel, boats, command headquarters, and economic facilities such as oil centers. In the attacks, the LTTE demonstrated indifference to the killing of innocent bystanders and showed no compassion for anyone who happened to be in the vicinity of their target. The main motivating factors behind the Tamil suicide attackers are an aspiration for national independence, blind obedience to the charismatic leadership of the organization’s leader, and strong peer and social pressures.

Another “secular” organization that perpetrated suicide attacks in Turkey is the Marxist, separatist Kurd PKK, although its members are Muslims. The organization was active mainly during the years 1996-99 and carried out sixteen suicide attacks (another five were thwarted), which caused about twenty fatalities and scores of casualties. PKK’s suicide campaign did not induce the Turkish government to allow Kurdish autonomy. The PKK suicide operations of male and female terrorists were carried out under the command and inspiration of the charismatic and central leader Ocalan, who was perceived by the members of his organization as a “sun onto the nations.” Following his arrest and the death sentence passed in 1999, the suicide attacks of his members ceased. A female member of a left-wing Turkish terror organization carried out a suicide attack in 2002 in protest against the treatment of her friends in prison.

Egyptian organizations, the “Jama’a al-Islamiya” and the “Egyptian Jihad,” which were affiliated with Bin-Laden’s “Islamic Front,” carried out two suicide attacks, in Croatia (October 1995) and at the Egyptian Embassy in Karachi, Pakistan (November, 1995).

Under Bin-Laden’s direct command, Al-Qaida had carried out three suicide attacks before September 11, 2001, and it has “assisted” in the perpetration of four additional attacks. Al-Qaida’s first attack was carried out by suicide drivers who detonated car bombs near the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (September 7, 1998), killing 214 and wounding about 5,000. The second attack was against the USS Cole at the Aden port (October 12, 2000), in which seventeen American sailors were killed and thirty-five were wounded. The terror attacks perpetrated in the United States on September 11, 2001 obviously constituted the apex of suicide attack operations in the annals of terror in general, and suicide terrorism in particular.

Since September 2001, additional suicide operations carried out by terror cells supported by Al-Qaida are:

1. The assassination of Massoud Sh’ah, military leader of the “Northern Alliance” in Afghanistan, which presented the main opposition to the Taliban regime in that country. Sh’ah was terminated two days before the terror attack in the United States by a team that was apparently affiliated with the Algerian GSPC (the Salafi Group for Propaganda and Combat), acting according to the instructions of the Al-Qaida headquarters. The attack was meant to neutralize the Taliban’s main adversary prior to the perpetration of the terror attack in the United States. It was carried out by two terrorists masquerading as press photographers who asked to interview Sh’ah. One of the two detonated himself, killing Sh’ah in the process, and the second was terminated by his bodyguards.

2. The attempt by Richard Reed to cause an explosion on the American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami on December 22, 2001. The attempt was made by Richard Colvin Reed, a suicide terrorist who hid the explosives in his shoe.

3. The detonation of the oil tanker near the synagogue in Djerba, Tunisia, by a suicide driver, causing nineteen deaths, including fourteen German tourists, who were inside or near the synagogue.

4. A suicide driver detonated his car and hit a bus driving foreign workers to the Karachi shipyards. The death toll was fourteen, including eleven French workers.

5. The detonation of a boat bomb near a French oil tanker opposite the shores of Yemen.

6. Suicide bombings on the Island of Bali, Indonesia, that killed over 200 people.

7. A suicide attack against Israeli tourists in Mombassa, Kenya.

8. Suicide attacks perpetrated in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

9. Suicide attacks against Jewish targets in Morocco.

10. Suicide attacks against Jewish and British targets in Istanbul, Turkey.

In recent years, the circle of suicide attackers has been expanded by Chechen and Indian terrorists. Chechen organizations executed about twenty suicide attacks beginning in 2000. The culmination of these attacks was the combined overtaking of a theater in the heart of Moscow by terrorists wearing explosive belts.

Indian organizations carried out several suicide attacks in car bombs driven by suicide bombers; one of the most prominent attacks was the joint assault of the Jeish Muhammad and Lashkar e-Toiba organizations on the Indian Parliament in December 2001.

The Palestinian terror organizations, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, also adopted suicide attacks, based on the active assistance and inspiration of the Hizballah and with Iranian backing. Palestinian terrorists started carrying out suicide missions in 1993. Between the years 1994 and September 2000, they perpetrated some twenty-five attacks.

September 28, 2000 marked the beginning of violent activity known as the “Al-Aksa Intifada,” instigated by the Palestinian Authority. Since that date, Palestinian terror organizations have perpetrated some 123 suicide attacks (in addition to 255 suicide bombings that were thwarted).³ These attacks were initially carried out by “religious” Palestinian terror organizations, such as the Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but since the end of 2001 the “secular” terrorist organizations of the Fatah/Tanzim have joined the activities under the cover name of the “Al-Aksa Brigades,” in addition to the “Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.” Five Palestinian women perpetrated suicide bombings, and several other women were caught while planning or en route to an attack. Most of the women were affiliated with the Tanzim/Al-Aksa Brigades of the Fatah organization (one was from the Islamic Jihad).

Journalist Thomas Friedman published an article called “Lies of the Suicide” in which he stated:⁴

The consequences of the war currently being waged between the Israelis and the Palestinians will have a crucial impact on the security of every American and also, I believe—on the security of civilization as a whole.

Why? Because the Palestinians are currently checking out a new form of combat, based on suicide bombers wearing explosive belts and dressed as Israelis, meant to achieve their political goals, and it works.

Let it be clearly stated: The Palestinians have adopted the suicide attacks as a strategic choice, not out of desperation, and this phenomenon threatens all of civilization....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Glossary of Terms
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1. Definitions and a Historical Review of the Phenomenon of Suicide Attacks1
• 2. Suicide Attacks in the Modern Era—The Arab-Israeli Conflict
• 3. Suicide Attacks in the Modern Era—Throughout the World
• 4. Summary
• Appendices
• Index