Terrorists Switching To Suicide Bombings To Gain Objectives

May 7, 2007 - PRLog -- Even though global terrorism has not lost steam, despite the international mobilization against it, it is increasingly taking recourse to suicide bombings to achieve its objectives. This growing trend gets manifested worldwide and is not confined to a single religious group, though the number of Muslims involved is overwhelmingly large. Suicide bombings are now responsible for the highest toll of innocent human lives, be it in Iraq, Pakistan or Sri Lanka.

The arrest by the Saudi Arabian police of some 172 Al Qaida militants with plane to carry out suicide attacks against public figures, oil facilities, refineries and military installations within and outside the Kingdom also proves growing reliance on this mode of violence. The $32.4 million seized from them shows that despite steps, such as, freezing of accounts and assets, terrorists are still aflush with funds. Suicide bombers in Iraq protest against the US occupying forces and their collaborators in office, they target Saudi Arabia because it is pro-America and, in Pakistan, Sunni terrorists, backed by official agencies, feel encouraged to attack Shia mosques, religious gatherings and shopping areas.

The suicide "fidayeen" terrorists select as their targets states which are politically instable, un-democratic, or are going through various stages of virtual civil war, foreign military occupation or harbour sectarian bias. The Palestinian suicide bombers are motivated by the mission to achieve their home-land, whereas the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam are using suicide bombers to gain independence from the Sinhala majority in Sri Lanka. Most of the attacks are directed against countries supporting US military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, or which provide military facilities to the US, such as, Pakistan . The avowed aim is to bring about quick withdrawal of foreign forces from their homelands, or where state actors consider the presence of foreign troops a hindrance to establishing their sway over neighbouring countries.

Owing to half-hearted measures and application of double standards while trying to combat terrorism, this violent phenomenon has not so far been weakened. Osama Bin Laden, Mulla Omar and similar others are as effective today as they were when 9/11 happened. As Robert A Papa points out in his "Dying to Win". The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, community support is essential to enable a suicide terrorist group to avoid detection, surveillance and elimination by security forces of the target society. Given that recruitment needs oblige them to keep a relatively low profile, suicide terrorist groups cannot prevent many members of the local community from gaining basic information that could be useful to the enemy. For instance, the identity of recruiters, common locations for recruitment, and even locations of frequently used safe houses, means of communication and other logistics. As a result, without broad sympathy among the local population, suicide terrorist groups would be especially vulnerable to penetration, defection and information. They must, therefore, ensure that the society as a whole would be willing to silence potential informants. Everyone may know who the terrorists are, but no one must tell.

There are significant habitations of Shia minority community in many cities and in the Northern Areas of Kashmir, along aggressive Deobandi seminaries training extremists, and there is a common thread linking suicide bombers to terrorism. They are anti-Musharraf and anti-US because Pakistan has since long been an American military base and the US is fighting Al Qaida and Taliban in Afghanistan. Being anti-Shia they belong to hardcore Sunni groups like the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. The Arab link comes via Al Qaida. The Pushtun connection via the Taliban and the Punjab connection via the Islamic radicals – all have joined hands to wage war against the US, India and "infidels" and their puppets in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Curiously, Sunni extremists, who represent the majority in Iraq, have joined forces with Al Qaida to attack American forces, which have propped up a Shia-dominated Iraqi Government in Baghdad. Since the Shias have a political alliance with the US, the Sunni-Al Qaida nexus has begun to attack Shias too. The Sunni extremists have also turned anti-Iran because of its support to the Us-backed Shia government in Iraq, to Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon. In this scenario of escalated suicide terrorism, authoritarian and military regimes without any popular support base have resorted to repression and denial of human and fundamental rights and of democracy.

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