This week alone the use of suicide attacks has been conducted in several countries in Asia and the Mid-east. Bangladesh was attacked by suicide bombers for the first time according to the National Chief of Police. In Iraq there has been a total of 23 suicide attacks in the month of November. And in Afghanistan, the use of suicide attacks has risen to estimated 16 attacks for the year.

Will militant groups able to recruit suicide attackers fast enough to replenish loses? Or is this tactic beginning used as a measure to gain media awareness for their cause in the short term while they prepare for a different type of tactical option?

What drives a person to give to give his/her life for a cause for one single mission with usually little or significant advancement for their cause? Are this people being used as pawns for their group’s political leadership or are they actually accomplishing their group’s objectives?

Suicide Bombings Come To Bangladesh

How a Belgian girl next door ended up a suicide bomber in Iraq.

Iraq Suicide Attacks Fell in Nov.

Afghan suicide attacks raise threat to US, NATO

Suicide Bombing as a Problem in Asymmetric Warfare

Yes, I understand that suicide attacks have been used for decades now however there is an increase of who are conducting the attacks and why they resort to conducting this style of attack. Is this form of attack is becoming the standard method of attack against an enemy organization by militant groups?

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Originally posted by Aristotleded24:
Here's the problem with suicide bombers:

How do you prevent suicide bombers from striking when they are willing to die while they take out their victims?

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If the yanks stay hypnotized by the glory of war the suicide bombings will only increase.

It's about time the Hew Hess of Hay learned how to mind it's own business and stop being the biggest bully on the block.

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Originally posted by Webgear:
The only logical way (in my opinion)to prevent suicide bombers is find the root of the problem and then determine if you can change the cause of the problem through diplomatic means.

However this has limited effectiveness because no nation or group will give up a complete portion of their rights or beliefs for another group opposing them.

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Yes, I would agree with you to a point. But I believe that many organizations will start to use suicide attacks as a method to solve their problems instead of by other means.

Look at the Jamayetul Mujahedeen, in Bangladesh, they have decide to use suicide attacks to pressure a new form of government in their country.

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Yeah, and just wait: There will be nutcase Xian suicide bombers at abortion clinics.

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Originally posted by Webgear:

Look at the Jamayetul Mujahedeen, in Bangladesh, they have decide to use suicide attacks to pressure a new form of government in their country.

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What drives a person to give to give his/her life for a cause for one single mission with usually little or significant advancement for their cause? Are this people being used as pawns for their group’s political leadership or are they actually accomplishing their group’s objectives?

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What drove those landing craft onto the beach at Dieppe? What flew those Zeros into the deck of the USS Hornet? What drives anyone to join a military organization with the understanding that their lives are disposable at the whim of the powerful?

Suicide has been a part of warfare since warfare began. Don't give me this garbage about your inability to understand why when you yourself would gladly walk into a German machine gun nest singing "It's a long way to Tipperary" at the top of your lungs if it meant a VC on the other side. There are countless examples of suicide in warfare that when committed by us Worthy Victims is lauded as heroic, selfless, and the ultimate in courage. That's why posthumous awards are so popular. The recipients don't care; they're dead. But everyone else sees that killing themselves for the goals of the elite can bring rewards. Mostly meaningless shiny trinkets, but rewards nontheless that convey the values of honor and bravery, bullshit words that are so useful in motivating people to do things usually sane people wouldn't normally do.

To me, this feigned outrage and shock at suicide is based in the racist assumptions like "Those people have no respect for human life", or "Their religion is a religion of hate". They aren't fighting an occupation, they are "nutcases". Ultimately, the goal is to paint Muslims in general as vicious maniacs who care nothing about killing themselves if they can take a few Infidels with them. It's a basic dehumanizing tactic, similar to the rhetoric about Native North Americans when they were being exterminated. If Natives were naked savages who cared nothing about human life, it was not only right to kill them all, it was your Duty.

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Originally posted by Webgear:
What drives a person to give to give his/her life for a cause for one single mission with usually little or significant advancement for their cause?

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Hopelessness and anger about their (or their people's) oppression, and feeling that no one gives a damn, I would think.

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Are this people being used as pawns for their group’s political leadership

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Yes.

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or are they actually accomplishing their group’s objectives?

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Probably not the long-term ones, but yes, probably the shorter-term ones.

[ 03 December 2005: Message edited by: Michelle ]

My point was referring to this new method of attack. Would an organization not be better off in the long run training its soldiers to conduct roadside IED attacks (Improvised Explosive Devices) other than training its soldiers for suicide bomber missions?

Would it not be more productive for an organization to have 25 IEDs attacks that usually have the same effect and outcome as the same number of suicide attacks and yet at the end of the day still have soldiers to carry on the battle with?

That aside, I really have to question the authenticity of all the claims of suicide bombings by the media and government organizations. Given the fact that suicide bombings have an hugely negative emotional impact on the target audience, it is all too easy for intelligence and military agencies to merely state that a bombing was a suicide bombing for propaganda value. It is an article of faith that any bombing of western targets must be at the hands of fanatical suicidal nutcase muslims. That the London or Jordan bombings showed evidence of planted explosives is merely ignored or denounced as heresy, and we are instead presented with the swarthy faces of those evildoers who are determined to destroy our wonderful way of life.

[ 04 December 2005: Message edited by: Jingles ]

In Iraq as of November 2005 there has been 662 soldiers killed by IEDs while only 153 deaths were caused by suicide bombers via different methods (car, person or boat).

Of the 153 deaths, 99 of the soldiers killed were related to car bombs, I do not believe all the car bombs were suicide attacks.

Cause of death in detail in Iraq

“A bomber can make the most of his ordinance, making sure the conditions are just right to maximize his impact. An IED is hit and miss.”

This does not appear to be the case in Iraq, according to the numbers, it appears that a well planned and executed IED along the side of a road are more effective than a suicide attack against a military target.

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Originally posted by Sven:

That's why these religious freaks are so friggin scary. They can't be dealt with rationally if they believe that 72 virgins BS.

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You are of course aware that the Tamil Tigers, by and large the founders of suicide bombing as a tactic, are in fact cross-denominational and not religious are all.

Commiting suicide as an act of war has a long history, and much of it completely unrelated to religion.

While Dalrymple begins by talking about the madrasas in Pakistan, he also spends a good part of the article mid-section taking apart myths and lies and superstitions about suicide-bombing and Islamic studies.

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Whatever else the suicide bombers believe, they certainly, clearly believe they have a secular, political purpose. It is only credulous North Americans who keep repeating the scary stories about the 72 virgins.

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When you ride the (T) [probably for tayyara, aeroplane in Arabic], before your foot steps in it, and before you enter it, you make a prayer and supplications. Remember that this is a battle for the sake of God. As the prophet, peace be upon him, said, 'An action for the sake of God is better than all of what is in this world.' When you step inside the (T), and sit in your seat, begin with the known supplications that we have mentioned before. Be busy with the constant remembrance of God. God said: 'Oh ye faithful, when you find the enemy be steadfast, and remember God constantly so that you may be successful.' When the (T) moves, even slightly, toward (Q) [unknown reference], say the supplication of travel. Because you are traveling to Almighty God, so be attentive on this trip.

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When the confrontation begins, strike like champions who do not want to go back to this world. Shout, 'Allahu Akbar,' because this strikes fear in the hearts of the non-believers. God said: 'Strike above the neck, and strike at all of their extremities.' Know that the gardens of paradise are waiting for you in all their beauty, and the women of paradise are waiting, calling out, 'Come hither, friend of God.' They have dressed in their most beautiful clothing.

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It is certainly true that many madrasas are fundamentalist and literalist in their approach to the scriptures and that many subscribe to the most hard-line strains of Islamic thought. Few make any effort to prepare their students to function in a modern, plural society. It is also true that some madrasas can be directly linked to Islamic radicalism and occasionally to outright civil violence. Just as there are some yeshivas in settlements on the West Bank that have a reputation for violence against Palestinians, and Serbian monasteries that sheltered war criminals following the truce in Bosnia, so it is estimated that as many as 15 percent of Pakistan's madrasas preach violent jihad, while a few have been said to provide covert military training. Madrasa students took part in the Afghan and Kashmir jihads, and have been repeatedly implicated in acts of sectarian violence, especially against the Shia minority in Karachi.

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The men who planned and carried out the September 11 attacks have often been depicted in the press as being "medieval fanatics." In fact it would be more accurate to describe them as confused but highly educated middle-class professionals. Mohamed Atta was an architect; Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's chief of staff, was a pediatric surgeon; Ziad Jarrah, one of the founders of the Hamburg cell, was a dental student who later turned to aircraft engineering; Omar Sheikh, the kidnapper of Daniel Pearl, was a product of the London School of Economics. As the French scholar Gilles Kepel puts it, the new breed of global jihadis are not the urban poor of the third world so much as "the privileged children of an unlikely marriage between Wahhabism and Silicon Valley, which al-Zawahiri visited in the 1990s. They were heirs not only to jihad and the umma but also to the electronic revolution and American-style globalization."

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Originally posted by skdadl:
Anyone still falling for the myth that most suicide bombers are religious fanatics should read, eg, this excellent review article by William Dalrymple in the NY Review of Books for 1 December 2005: "Inside the Madrasas."

While Dalrymple begins by talking about the madrasas in Pakistan, he also spends a good part of the article mid-section taking apart myths and lies and superstitions about suicide-bombing and Islamic studies.

Whatever else the suicide bombers believe, they certainly, clearly believe they have a secular, political purpose. It is only credulous North Americans who keep repeating the scary stories about the 72 virgins.

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Originally
posted by Reason:
Need I point out that politics and religion go hand in hand within hard
core Whabbism beliefs. Politics is religion, religion is
politics.

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Originally posted by Cougyr:

Jerry Falwell would go along with that. Different religion; same policy.

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Oh an ladies and gentlemen, that is a touchdown!

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Excellent post, Jingles. Suicide (I prefer the term kamikaze) missions are best understood as the extreme end of a continuum of risk the soldier takes.

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I think our use of language does us a disservice when we discuss the tactic of suicide bombing.

I believe we will see an increase of groups and organizations that will use suicide bombers as a method of attack. Suicide attacks may not be as effective in the same manner as an IED attack however they still are excellent tactic to use against a larger and powerful opponent.

If I was fighting as an insurgent in Iraq, I would make more use out of IEDs attacks than I would for suicide attacks. I would save my suicide attacks for important targets or for large media coverage.

With the US running around the world "saving" the poor oppressed people of the world by dropping smart bombs on them, the only way for these people to show the US the proper gratitude for killing their family members to save them from the local dictator, is to hit back at the US with the only military tactics left available to them.

The reason we see these kind of attacks is not because people have decided that they like to blow themselves up, or to blow others up by remote control with improvised explosives ... the reason we are seeing these "low tech" forms of war making is because the one side has such a large advantage in the conventional war making market.

What sane army is going to fight the enemy using the same tactics that the other side has a complete and utter advantage in?

In 1776 the Americans didn't fight the British using the conventional methods of combat of the times, because the British held the distinct advantage of being way better trained in those conventional tactics than the Americans ... so the Americans switched to unconventional means of warfare ... in Iraq, the advantage of the US forces in modern conventional warfare is so great that the only weapon the insurgents have is such primitive but relatively unstoppable tactics as suicide and IED bombings.