History of Suicide Bombing in the Middle East

Factual Questions
1

I’m posting this on behalf of my mother… but both she and I are woefully ignorant on this subject, so any and all enlightenment is welcome!
My mother was telling me about an article she read in which a journalist offered her condolences to the mother of a Palestinian man who had killed himself in a suicide bombing, and the mother reacted in horror and said essentially, “Oh, no, no, he’s a martyr. I’m so proud of him!”

My mom would like to know if this is this a relatively modern mentality, or is there a history rich in example that contemporary Muslim suicide bombers take inspiration from?

(I’m Catholic, and I know there are 2000 years worth of stories about Catholic martyrs who allowed themselves to be killed by their oppressors, but as far as I know, no Catholic saint – as an individual, and not as a soldier in battle – actively attacked someone in order to be killed. Are there stories of Muslim holy men and women from centuries past that did indeed – as individuals and not as soldiers – attack others to achieve martyrdom?)
I tried a Google search (“Suicide bombing” “History”) but I didn’t really find what she was looking for. Could someone suggest a way to refine the search, or even suggest the titles of books you know of that deal with this subject?

2

According to this report, the recent wave of suicide bombings (mostly by HAMAS) in Israel began in earnest only recently. Between 1993 and September, 2000, there were fourteen suicide bombings against civilians in Israel.

A predecessor of the attacks by HAMAS and others may be seen in the actions of the Lebanese guerilla/terrorist outfit Hizbollah. This group has a long record of suicide attacks, usually, however, against military targets.* Hizbollah appears to have been behind some of the recent suicide attacks against American military units in Iraq. Hizbollah is probably most famous to Americans for attacks on the Marine barracks and the US Embassy in Lebanon in 1983 and 1984.

The Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka also has an affinity for suicide bombing, but has stuck largely to political and military targets since it began suicide bombing attacks in 1987.

Suicide squads, including bomb-carryers, were used by the Viet Cong during the Tet offensive in 1968 and regularly thereafter. Though these attacks were carried out against mostly military targets, some of the suicide bombings inflicted huge civilian casualties while killing only a comparatively few military personnel–bars were apparently a regular target according to my friend who grew up there.

And of course, prior to that you have the Kamikaze, a purely military suicide tactic.

However, a close cousin of suicide bombing against civilians has been around since at least the late 1960s. Plane hijackings are very similar: they often promised the deaths of civilians at the hands of a hijacker who is willing to die if political demands are not met. The two types of terrorism were finally logically dovetailed on September 11, 2001 (which, incidentally, also included a military target, the Pentagon, which serves to further blur the line between terrorism and guerilla warfare and civilian/military targets).

Suicide tactics can be very effective. At the most base level, it’s an excellent way to utilize your most incompetent assets–the guys who can’t read maps and are continually dropping the hand grenades in training, but who are all about the cause. On another level, I’m sure the suicide component is supposed to send a message to the enemy–that the situation is dire enough that people are willing to die for the cause, or just don’t give a crap any more. And on a very sophisicated level, a piloted plane is far less expensive than a precision guidance system.

Like many Westerners, I’m guilty in this very post of making a distinction between civilian and military targets. It has been pointed out to me that prior to the crackdowns by intelligence agencies in the late '80s/early '90s, attacks by guerilla organizations on military targets were much easier than they are now. Switching to civilian targets–and therefore sliding into the west’s “terrorist” category–may have been a necessity because attacks against political and military targets began to have low levels of success.

  • Hizbollah is also sometimes known as “Islamic Jihad,” but I think it is a different organization from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which has also carried out suicide attacks against civilians in recent years.
3

Sofa King mostly has it, but I’ll add just a couple more points.

The modern origins of suicide attacks lies in the Iran-Iraq War, when the ruling clique of Shi’a clergy, hard-pressed and drawing some wrong conclusions about some battlefield successes, re-articulated the concept of martyrdom to include suicide attacks. Only in this context it referred to infantry assaults.

This theological rationale was exported to Lebanon, where it was elaborated on by Hezbollah, a Shi’ite militia that was ( less so now, since Khomeini’s death ) theologically subservient to Iran and created with the help of Iranian troops and money. As Sofa King notes, they were the first to use actual suicide bombers against military and political targets.

From there, we have two branches - One theological, as fundamentalist Sunni groups in Lebanon, especially those taking root on Palestinian refugee camps, adopted the religious reasoning of those Shi’ite clerics. In addition other less-religiously oriented groups ( Hezbollah’s rival Amal among them ) adapted to and adopted these tactics in Lebanon, which reenforced their prevalence.

The other, more applied route was via Sri Lanka, where the Tamil Tigers adopted the tactic, minus the Islamic theology. They quickly became the heaviest and most proficient users of this new tactic in the world ( a title they still hold, with at least 168 such attacks between 1987 and 2000 ). Some of their technical expertise may have filtered back to the Middle East.

The attacks in Israel started in 1993 and were launched by Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas, two Sunni fundamentalist organizations that learned their “craft” in Lebanon, with an assist from Hezbollah ( who had dealings with them from the 80’s ).

Other groups have also adopted the tactic in the region, some using theological justifications ( Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Gama’a al-Islamiya, al-Qaeda ), some not ( for example the Kurdish PKK, a leftist group and Turkey’s primary Kurdish nemesis that began using suicide attacks starting in 1996 ).

  • Tamerlane
4

Thank you both so much for these detailed answers!

Sofa King, that’s a very interesting point you make by bringing up the distinction between civilian and military targets. I think you’re right (I don’t know if that’s the word I want but it will do…“justified,” maybe?) in making the distinction, because it suggests that there is a difference in the psychology of the attacker – between someone who sees himself as the enemy of a vague collective organization or force (army, government) and someone who sees himself as the enemy of certain people (as human beings).

Tamerlane, thank you for explaining the theological motivation behind the different waves of suicide attacks. I’m going to look into this further.

5

The move towards suicide bombing in Israel/Palestine seems to be linked to the increasing Islamicisation of politics in the region. In the 1970s, people in organisations like Fateh and the PLO tended to be secular Marxists. Although they may have been willing to die for the cause, they did not have the religious background or believe in martyrdom and paradise to spur them to actually seek suicide. However as Tamurlane says, the increasing spread of radical Islamic ideas (probably coinciding with the decline of Marxism as a valid belief system) seems to have inspired the growth of suicide bombings.

Also related to this is the fact that terrorism like other areas of politics and society seems to be governed to some extent by fashion. Much of the ideology of terrorism is highly devoted to symbolism and heroic imagery, which leads to certain figures becoming heroes and icons the world over. This means that the movement is dependent on new concepts and ever more dramatic gestures.

Another more sober explanation may be increasing feelings of despair in the region, linked in part to the decline of earlier ideologies, and to the failure of the peace process.

6

Getting back to the OP…

My question is similar: Is the pride of this mother rooted in a genuine expression of her religion or of her political group? Or is it merely something which she was brainwashed into, by leaders who are looking for cheap but effective soldiers?

A friend suggested to me that this question might be answered by looking at a different statistic: How frequently do the religious or political leaders send or allow their own children to be suicide bombers? If their religion or politics takes genuine pride in their martyrdom, then we should find that even the children of the leaders take active part in it. But if the suicide bombers are only from the masses, then something fishy is going on.

Anyone know the statistics?

7

Keeve,
I can’t cite anything, but those are hard questions to answer. The martyrdom idea is present in the Islamic faith, but like all scripture I imagine there is plenty to contradict it. You won’t find this sort of thing coming from either fanatics (like the September 11 hijackers) or people in very dire straits (like Palestinians. There’s plenty of overlap.

I don’t know how often the children of religious leaders do this. It’s fishy no matter what. Bin Laden makes himself out to be a religious leader, and some of his kids are involved with Al Qaeda, but none have been involved in suicide attacks that I know of - and certainly the big guy himself hasn’t done so either.