Suicide terrorism/Martyrdom and murder

[Soul On Ice]

snip

The fact that Hizbullah started the trend, and that its spread has coincided with the rise of other Islamic groups—Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), al-Qaeda and others—has led some to surmise that Islamic fundamentalism somehow explains it. Proponents of this theory can cite the lengths to which some terrorists go to justify their attacks in Islamic terms, manipulating the precedents set by the Prophet and his companions and finessing the meanings of three key concepts: suicide, martyrdom and jihad.

snip

The single most prolifically suicidal terrorist group is the LTTE, or Tamil Tigers. In the course of their attritional struggle for an independent Tamil state in northern Sri Lanka, the LTTE has, among scores of other attacks, bombed the World Trade Centre in Colombo in 1997 and assassinated two heads of state. LTTE suicide missions, which began in 1987, are inspired more by cultish devotion to Velupillai Prabhakaran, the group's leader, than by religion. The Kurdish PKK, which has deployed suicide bombers in its quests for Kurdish autonomy and for the release of its captured leader, Abdullah Ocalan, is influenced less by Islam than by Marxist-Leninism. So too is the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which perpetrated the first suicide strike in Israel for more than two months on Christmas Day.

Another sort of explanation for suicide terrorism focuses on its practitioners' travails and poverty in this world, rather than their imagined delights in the next. It used to be the case that a Palestinian bomber conformed to a recognisable type: he was young, male, single, religious and unemployed. He often had a personal grudge against Israel—for instance, a relative who had been arrested or injured by the Israeli army. He may have hoped to secure earthly as well as heavenly rewards for his relatives, in the form of financial donations after his death, and the new house that his parents might be given after the Israelis demolished their old one as punishment for his crime.

snip

As well as these tactical benefits, suicide terrorism offers a strategic one. After the debacle in Somalia in 1993, Mr bin Laden concluded that sensitivity to casualties was the heel of the American Achilles; Palestinian terrorists think something similar about Israel. Suicide bombings juxtapose these groups' disdain for life with their victims' supposed love of it. This helps to create the impression of an undeterrable enemy, one freed by his self-disregard to strike anywhere: “I depend on death,” says a would-be suicide bomber in “The Secret Agent”, “which knows no restraint and cannot be attacked.”

snip



http://www.economist.com/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=2329785

[vierundzwanzig]

1. It should be noted

that the vast majority of all attacks are legitimate under international law against armed combatants and occupying powers.

So please let's not label anyone picking up a gun a terrorist.

[The Magistrate]

3. In The Matter Of Israel V. Palestine, Mr. Zwanzig

That is not true.

The great preponderance of attacks carried out by the various Arab Palestinian irregular bodies are directed against civilian non-combatants, and explicitly so, without the least color of military legitimacy. These acts are unargueably criminal, and do great harm, by that very fact, to the legitimate aspirations of the people of Arab Palestine. Until this criminality is dealt with, by the people of Arab Palestine, and those who support them, their aspirations will continue to fail of fulfillment. The legitimate right to resist invasion and occupation does not convey any liscence for criminal action in exercising that right; it does not render all acts done under color of exercising that right as legitimate. When a just cause is pursued by criminal means, the justice of the cause is ignored, and properly so, while the criminality is dealt with.

[Lurking Dem]

4. You've been missed.

Glad to see you posting, Sir. >smooch<

[Blitz]

5. I second Lurking Dem

It's good to have you back. Happy New Year, my friend.

[meti57b]

6. Hi, it's always good to see you!!

:hi: :hi: :hi:

[JohnLocke]

7. Welcome back, judge!

You were missed.

[Jack Rabbit]

8. Good to see you again, partner

!!

[bemildred]

2. Nice piece.

Some others if you are interested:

http://www.cdiss.org/terror.htm
http://www.mises.org/fullstory.asp?control=887
http://www.ict.org.il/articles/articledet.cfm?articleid=112
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/issue_SeptOct_2001/sprinzak.html

[Aidoneus]

9. a typically made gaff

To be accurate, Hizbullah did not start that trend--an Iraqi revolutionary party called al-Daawa(***) was the first to use the technique, including the 1983 barracks & embassy bombings in Lebanon. The various barracks bombings were entirely by al-Daawa (and later--'85, particularly--by Lebanese al-Daawa cadres that melted into Hizbullah's Islamic Resistance in south Lebanon against the Israeli occupation), and were carried out in response to US support of the Zionist regime's invasion of Lebanon that murdered some 20,000 people by that time, and also of their support of Saddam Hussein's Baathist government. Before the US & French embassies in '83 and '85, the Iraqi embassy in Lebanon had been destroyed by an al-Daawa humanbomber in '81. The barracks bombing was planned out by Lebanese al-Daawa activist Mustafa Badruddeen and Imad Mughniyah, a freelance explosives expert; the driver of the truck was probably a Lebanese al-Daawa member.

***--(full name Hizbu al-Daawa al-Islamiyya, a movement originally started by top Shia scholars and activists in Najaf & Karbala in the late 50s/early 60s; the humanbomber operations began after the martyrdom of the founder, Imam Shahid Ayatallah al-Uzma Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr, at the hands of the Saddam & the Baathists in 1980)--***

That Hizbullah was highly influenced by this group and these events is true, though they were not behind them. Their humanbombers were typically directed against the Zionist regime's occupation convoys and their lackeys and local collaborators, and then mostly for psychological effect rather than as a typical tactic. For an example of this, the event that sparked the Shimon "dovish" Peres's bombing blitz in '96--a humanbomber blew up a military convoy right on the "Blue Line" border, deep within occupied territory. The response was 32,000 bombs/missiles/tank shells dropped by the Zionist military onto the people of Lebanon (causing some half a million people to flee their homes).
(note:--working off memory in that last paragraph, that series of events was either '92 under Yitzak "Man of Peace" Rabin that unleashed that blitzkreig--a murderous campaign of indescriminate bombing carried out by General "Dovish" Barak--, or '96 under Shimon "dove" Peres that led to the massacre of refugees at Qana and the bombing of ambulances, among thousands of other events within just a couple weeks' time.. I believe it was '96, but don't have time to check my books to confirm that)

Remarkbly terrible organization in this post (even for me), but I only have a couple minutes and haven't time to rework these paragraphs into something that wouldn't fail me out of even a basic English school course.. Cleaned it up a bit on edit, but still not something that an English professor wouldn't want to strangle me for.

[bemildred]

10. I saw that, but figured one can't expect too much ... nt

[dudeness]

11. I thought the Tamil Tigers

started suicide bombings pre- 1987..

[bemildred]

12. Nope.

Aidoneus has it right. The LTTE are certainly a
principal exponent of the tactic, and may still be
the most prolific.