Bombshell (4 page)

Most terrorist organizations begin quite small, as a dedicated group of true believers, existing on the outer edges of society, who use violence to spread their message. They begin by engaging in criminal activity—drug-smuggling, bank-robbery, hostage-taking, and the like—to fill their war chests. Once they obtain the money to acquire more sophisticated weapons, they raise the stakes by challenging the government, their rivals, or the institutions of the state such as the army or the police. With every attack they launch, the organizations hope that the state will reveal its brutality. When governments overreact, this plays right into the terrorists' hands.
Many civilians die as a result of heavy-handed counter-terrorist responses, and those individuals who couldn't decide which side they were on initially begin to migrate toward the terrorist groups. Without the violent overreaction by the government forces, terrorist groups could not possibly hope to replenish the ranks of lost operatives.

For rebels seeking publicity or hoping to spread their message, terrorism, and suicide terrorism in particular, may succeed when traditional methods of insurgency fail. In a world in which, according to media lore, “if it bleeds it leads,” terrorism bleeds a lot, and suicide terrorism even more so. However, most groups do not begin their campaigns against the state using suicide terrorism. There was no suicide terrorism in the first Chechen war. The first Palestinian intifada did not include suicide terrorism among the many clashes between Palestinians and Israelis. The first World Trade Center attack was a truck bomb, not a suicide mission. Suicide terrorism is frequently the option of last resort when groups are especially weak.

Even as a weapon of the weak, it remains a highly effective tactic for terrorist groups seeking publicity or hoping to cause a high number of casualties on the other side. It is effective because it is extremely difficult to guard against an attack by someone so completely dedicated to a cause that he or she is willing to sacrifice his or her life. The suicide bomber is the ultimate smart bomb, a thinking and breathing missile that can change directions, cross a street, or delay detonation depending on the circumstances. While most terrorist attacks require extensive planning, both for the operation itself and for the safe retreat of the attacker, the suicide attack requires only half as much forethought. The attacker does not expect to survive and, in fact, the success of the attack is defined in part by his or her death. While there is a lively debate about whether terrorists ever really achieve their goals of independence
or of putting an end to the presence of foreign troops, part of the goal of terrorist leaders is to terrify large numbers of people by killing only a handful.

In recent years, the goal of killing a few to terrorize many has been replaced by some of the messianic terrorist organizations with a new goal of killing as many people as possible. In the minds of groups that believe in the end of days, the violence they wreak will help expedite the end they look forward to. Groups like the Aum Shinrikyo in Japan and several of the radical Salafi groups advocate huge numbers of casualties for every operation. These groups seek and use weapons of mass destruction. The Salafi groups—which experts say encompass some of the deadliest organizations today, including Al Qaeda, Hamas, and the violent splinter groups from the Muslim Brotherhood (
al Ikhwan al Muslimun
)—aim to re-create the perfection of the early Islamic period. Salafism is associated with the beliefs of Wahhabism (fundamentalism in Saudi Arabia) and fundamentalist interpretations of Islam throughout the Islamic world. Such groups advocate the use of violence and emphasize the smaller jihad against the nonbeliever over the more important and larger jihad within each individual. Salafism differs from Islamism in that it rejects any Western ideologies or constructs such as constitutions, political parties, and elections, which Islamists support (as long as Islamic parties benefit).

It is also important to distinguish between the defensive and offensive jihad. According to political scientist Nelly Lahoud, the ideological engine that drives jihadis is the belief that they are engaged in defensive, not offensive, jihad; the defensive nature of the battle today makes jihad lawful. More to the point, during defensive jihad it is every (emphasis on “every”) Muslim's individual duty (
fard ‘ayn
) to participate. Based on the opinions advanced by the classical/medieval Islamic jurists, Palestinian jihadi ‘Abdallah Azzam concluded that the classical defensive doctrine of jihad
applies today. Thus he was able first to rally Arabs to volunteer for jihad in Afghanistan against the Soviets and then to pave the way for the foundation of Al Qaeda. Azzam argued that when the land of Islam is invaded, jihad is required for every Muslim, and the need “to seek permission” (from parents, husbands, or authorities) becomes void. Accordingly, “a son is permitted to go out to fight without his father's permission,
a wife without her husband's
, and he who is in debt without his creditor's [italics added for emphasis].”
²⁸

WOMEN WHO BLOW THEMSELVES UP

Female suicide bombers are even more effective than men for a variety of reasons. At least until recently, their use as operatives has been completely unexpected. Soldiers and security personnel have been guided by profiles and stereotypes of terrorists as men. Terrorist organizations have deliberately used these preconceptions to their advantage by employing operatives who do not fit the conventional profile. They widened the field in which they look for volunteers, and found them among women and even children. Israel's restrictive checkpoints and closely monitored borders proved fairly effective against Palestinian insurgent organizations inside the Occupied Territories in the past. Since the mid-1990s, it has been almost impossible for unmarried men under the age of forty to get travel permits to cross the border into Israel—even if they are sick, wounded, or riding in an ambulance. However, women don't arouse suspicion the way men do, and blend in more effectively with Israeli citizens. The use of the least likely suspect is the most likely tactical adaptation for a terrorist group under scrutiny.
¹⁸

Attacks perpetrated by women have tended to be especially successful where the terrorist planners needed the perpetrator to blend in with the Israeli “street.” These female terrorists Westernize their appearance, adopting modern hairstyles and short skirts.
¹⁹
For
attacking civilians, the best possible operative is one who resembles the target. Alternatively, when the women are not trying to blend into Israeli society by wearing midriff-baring halter tops and short skirts, the conservative loose, billowing clothing that many women wear in the Middle East and South Asia is perfect for concealing the IED. When women strap the explosives around their midsection, the bulge often gives the impression of late-term pregnancy, lulling security forces into thinking they are harmless expectant mothers. When the military or members of the security forces invasively search women at checkpoints, however, their action outrages the population, who feel that their women are being harassed and abused by foreigners. This feeds the propaganda machine that urges men to step up and help protect their women's honor.

Women bombers also tend to be more successful than men. They have higher kill rates and can penetrate the target more deeply than many men, who might get stopped at the entrance of a bus or restaurant. The ability to get deep inside a location increases the effectiveness both of the explosive materials and of the shrapnel packed into the IED. A bomb exploding in a confined space eliminates much of the oxygen, which is consumed as the incendiary device explodes. In essence, the deeper the bomber can get into a room or inside a bus or train, the more violently the enclosure will implode. “Suicide attacks are done for effect, and the more dramatic the effect, the stronger the message; thus a potential interest on the part of some groups in recruiting women.”
²⁰
A growing number of insurgent organizations have adopted suicide bombing, not only because of its superiority over traditional guerrilla warfare but also because it garners significant media attention, especially when perpetrated by women and young girls.

Young women who combat Israel by blowing up their bodies generate a powerful symbol that creates publicity throughout the world. The image of women defying tradition to sacrifice their lives
for the Palestinian cause has drawn international attention to the despair of the Palestinian people. On average, an attack perpetrated by a woman gets eight times as much press attention as a similar attack by a man. The Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades has drawn propaganda mileage from their female bombers. This tactic also makes them appear more dangerous because it has erased the barriers between combatants and noncombatants, terrorists and innocent civilians.

The female suicide bomber is not a recent or new phenomenon. The first terrorist who killed herself while trying to kill others was Dalal Al Maghribi, a female commander of the Palestinian resistance movement Fatah. Dalal hijacked a bus in 1978 and killed herself and thirty-six passengers on the Jerusalem–Tel Aviv road. Her mode of attack was so novel that it was not recognized as a tactic of “suicide terrorism” at the time. Only in retrospect, after suicide bombings became relatively common, was Al Maghribi's martyrdom seen by some to belong in this category. Technically, the tactic was only invented on November 10, 1980, when Hossein Fahmideh, a thirteen-year-old member of the Iranian People's Army (Basiji) used his booby-trapped body to blow up an Iraqi tank.
²¹

By most accounts, the first official female suicide bomber was a seventeen-year-old Lebanese girl, Sana'a Mehaydali, who was sent by the Syrian Socialist National Party (the SSNP or PPS), a secular, pro-Syrian Lebanese organization, to blow herself up near an Israeli convoy in Lebanon in April 1985. Women took part in twelve of the suicide attacks conducted by the SSNP during the 1980s. From Lebanon, the phenomenon of female bombers spread to other countries—from Sri Lanka to Turkey, Chechnya, Israel, and, most recently, Iraq and Afghanistan.

There has been a significant public-relations payoff and financial benefit to sending, for example, eighteen-year-old Ayat Akras into the Kiryat HaYovel supermarket in Jerusalem to set off a
bomb.
²²
The underlying message conveyed by female bombers is: terrorism is no longer a fringe phenomenon and the insurgents are all around you. Akras's death demonstrated that the Palestinian militant groups were not all composed of religious fanatics who believed that they would be granted entrance to paradise or that God would reward them with seventy-two virgins (
houris
). Nor are the organizations' leaders gripped by a burning desire to see all women locked behind black veils. This is a political war, not a religious war, and the suicide bombings are being carefully planned and executed as part of a precise political strategy.
²³

MAKING SENSE OF SENSELESS ACTS

Even terrorist organizations have a rationally calculated strategy when they plan attacks and campaigns against their enemies. Modern armies have at their disposal arsenals and trained cadres of military recruits. States can call upon stores of weapons and destroy their enemies on the battlefield. Terrorist organizations, however, rarely have access to the same kinds of firepower as states and thus must adapt their strategies to account for this imbalance. The use of terrorism and suicide terrorism can be considered an example of the law of comparative advantage. In modern states where the technology is available, states can take a high-tech approach to war. Most terrorist organizations, however, have few resources besides cheap labor and dedicated individuals willing to die for the cause. In the words of Ahmad Yassin, the founder of Hamas, the militant Islamic organization that has perpetrated hundreds of attacks inside Israel: “Once we have warplanes and missiles, then we can think of changing our means of legitimate self-defense. But right now, we can only tackle the fire with our bare hands and sacrifice ourselves.”
²⁴

When conventional military strategies are not available or fail, the rebels resort to guerrilla warfare; when guerrilla war fails, they
resort to terror; when traditional methods of terror fail, they resort to suicide terrorism and acts of increasing barbarism against their enemies. In all the cases examined in this book, a group (or groups) is fighting against an overwhelmingly powerful enemy and has no choice but to resort to terrorism if it is to continue its struggle. Even so, much of the success of terrorism hinges on whether the larger community that the terrorists say they represent approves of or rejects the use of violence.

If their own community supports and appreciates the bloodshed, we will see a literal explosion of violence and of groups that use terror to compete for the public's attention and approval. However, if the public rejects violence, or if the terrorists go too far and kill too many civilians or too many members of their own community, the groups will have to switch gears. This has been the case in Spain, where Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (or ETA, meaning roughly “Basque Homeland and Freedom”) attacks ended in so many civilian casualties that the organization implemented new operating procedures in which it promised it would give advance warning before detonating a bomb. This was also true of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), which tried unsuccessfully to implement a homicidal car-bomb campaign in the spring of 1990, only to have hundreds of staunch supporters accuse the organization of making them look like those “fanatics” in the Middle East. The PIRA faux suicide-car-bomb campaign began and ended on the same day; when the leadership realized that using such extreme tactics would alienate their base, they went back to using traditional car bombs that allowed the driver to escape with his life.

Inasmuch as the population can demand that even terrorist leaders demonstrate restraint, the population can also be the driving force behind increasing violence against the state and its constituents. Not all civilians will reject civilian casualties on the other side.
If during the course of fighting a war on terror, the government demonstrates its sheer disregard for the other side and sacrifices civilian lives in the pursuit of the terrorists, the propaganda by terrorist leaders begins to resonate with the population upon whose support the insurgent group relies. When the government targets enemy civilians in aerial bombardments or uses helicopter gunships or drones, the civilians on the other side become legitimate targets. In interviews for my previous book,
Dying to Kill
, many Palestinians said, in effect, “If our civilians are not safe from harm, neither will Israel's civilians be safe.” Thus any state or government fighting a war on terror must remember that its actions have consequences and that if its actions are unrestrained, the terrorists' will be too.