THE FATAL ATTRACTION OF SUICIDE TERRORISM:

An Empirical Analysis of Suicide Terrorist Attacks in the Middle East and South Asia

BURCU PINAR ALAKOC

B.A., Bilkent University, 2004

M.A., University of Kansas, 2007

M.A., University of Colorado Boulder, 2009

A thesis submitted to the

Faculty of the Graduate School of the

University of Colorado in partial fulfillment

of the requirement for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Political Science

2014

This thesis entitled: The Fatal Attraction of Suicide Terrorism: An Empirical Analysis of Suicide Terrorist Attacks in the Middle East and South Asia written by Burcu Pinar Alakoc has been approved for the Department of Political Science

______Chair, Dr. Aysegul Aydin

______Committee Member, Dr. Susan Clarke

______Committee Member, Dr. Jaroslav Tir

______Committee Member, Dr. Moonhawk Kim

______Committee Member, Dr. Stan Deetz

Date: ______

The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we Find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards Of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. Alakoc, Burcu Pinar (Ph.D., Political Science)

The Fatal Attraction of Suicide Terrorism: An Empirical Analysis of Suicide Terrorist Attacks in the Middle East and South Asia

Thesis directed by Professor Aysegul Aydin

This dissertation examines and explains three distinct aspects of suicide terrorism in the Middle East and South Asia: lethality, perpetrators and strategy selection. While suicide terrorism is a mechanically simple tactic of blowing one’s self up, it terrorizes indiscriminately by generating high numbers of fatalities. I first argue that the lethality of suicide terrorism is driven by its tactical characteristics, namely the amount of control that perpetrators have over the location and targets of the attack. Using original data, I show that where the unique tactical advantages of suicide terrorism are properly utilized, suicide attacks are likely to be extremely deadly. Particularly, suicide attacks that involve multiple perpetrators, occur in densely populated areas and target indoor locations are likely to be lethality effective. Second, I elaborate a perpetrator- based distinction among suicide terrorist attacks between organizations and lone wolf terrorists, who are yet to be affiliated with any existing terrorist groups. My findings demonstrate that when terrorist organizations are involved in the planning and execution of suicide terrorist attacks, they do not only increase the lethality but also accentuate the tactical advantages of suicide terrorism. These findings suggest that despite the recent upsurge and concern about lone wolf terrorism, the lethality and security impacts of suicide terrorism continue to be driven by organizations. Given these findings, one might expect that suicide terrorism would be the most preferred strategy for all terrorist groups. However, this is not the case. I argue that the organizational choice of suicide terrorism depends on engendering both radicalization and commitment on the part of the recruits. My analysis confirms that terrorist organizations making frequent use of old and new media sources to indoctrinate and radicalize their recruits, and those that use private goods provisions to tie the hands of recruits and increase their commitment to suicide missions are more likely to employ suicide terrorism. Lastly, I present case study evidence for three organizations-- Hamas, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and Asbat al-Ansar-- to illustrate my major arguments and support my empirical findings.

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To the loving memory of my grandparents Seref and Basri Oral,

Acknowledgments

Many people have contributed to the successful completion of this dissertation with their comments, ideas, and feedback. Hereby, I want to thank them all as this dissertation would have not been put together without their help and support. First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisor Dr. Aysegul Aydin for her guidance, constructive criticisms and support at every step along the way. Dr. Aydin thank you for helping me ask the right questions, allowing me the freedom to give my own answers and for pushing me hard when I thought I did not have it in me anymore. Second, I would also like to thank my beloved professor Dr. Susan Clarke who has been much more than a committee member to me. Dr. Clarke; you have been an excellent

Professor and an exuberant, kind and insightful mentor throughout my journey as a graduate student. You have inspired and encouraged me to be a better teacher and researcher. You will always be my role model as I continue with my career. I cannot thank you enough.

To my committee members: Dr. Jaroslav Tir, Dr. Moonhawk Kim, and Dr. Stan Deetz: thank you so much for your patience, support and encouragement. Dr. Tir thanks for believing in me, and being optimistic about my work. Dr. Kim, thank you for always having your door open and making time to listen to my endless questions, issues and worries and for making me feel better every time I talked to you. I hope life introduces you to people like yourself; kind-hearted, intelligent, hardworking and supportive. Dr. Deetz, thank you for your invaluable comments during my dissertation defense; they will be most helpful when I turn this project into a book in the years to come. Finally, I am also grateful to Dr. Aaron Clauset, for giving me ideas to jumpstart my data coding and for his practical advice during the initial stages of my research.

Special thanks go to my dear friends Gulay Goksel Ugur, Amy Telligman and Kim-Lee

Tuxhorn. Dearest Gulay and Amy, we spent many days commiserating with one another about

v graduate school, but in the end we all made it! I am so proud of us. And Kim-Lee, my dear friend, thank you for your tremendous help and support throughout the difficult times of researching and data analysis. I would also like to thank my friends Cathy Xuanxuan Wu, James

Michael Pripusich, Lauren Frances, Begum Tokay, Emre Afsar, Wee Kiat Lim, Jami Nelson

Nunez, Michael Burch, Johannes Karreth, Annie Kryzanek and Barbara Green for their support, sympathy and cheerfulness.

I also extend many thanks to my ever-loving and supportive family; Dr. Zulfiye Alakoc,

Dr. Adnan Alakoc, and Engin Alakoc. Thank you for loving me unconditionally and standing by my side through good and bad. Mom, you deserve this degree as much as I do. My success is yours. I am so lucky to have you as my mother.

Finally, I would like to extend my deepest, deepest gratitude to my best friend, brilliant colleague, survival kit and partner in crime, Alan Zarychta. Alan, there is not enough space here to thank you and I cannot express myself as generously as I would like. Without your wisdom, help, love and support, none of this would have been possible. Thank you.

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1: An Introduction and Overview ...... 1 Research Questions and Theory ...... 4 An Overview of the Dissertation ...... 6 Contribution of the Research ...... 12 Chapter 2: Definitions and Typology of Terrorism ...... 15 What is terrorism and what is not? ...... 16 What is Suicide Terrorism? ...... 29 The Historical Manifestations of Suicide Terrorism ...... 37 Conclusion ...... 42 Chapter 3: An Empirical Analysis of the Lethality of Suicide Terrorism ...... 44 Introduction ...... 44 Lethality as a Measure of Effectiveness ...... 47 The Tactical Advantages of Suicide Terrorism ...... 54 Hypotheses ...... 58 Data and Operationalization of Variables ...... 59 Method and Results ...... 66 Limitations and Contributions ...... 74 Conclusion ...... 75 Chapter 4: The Impact of Terrorist Organizations on the Lethality of Suicide Terrorism...... 77 Introduction ...... 77 Who are the Different Perpetrators of Terrorist Attacks and Why Do they Matter? ...... 78 Terrorist Organizations ...... 78 Claimed vs. Not Claimed Terrorist Attacks ...... 82 Lone Wolf Terrorists ...... 89 Research Question, Theory and Hypothesis ...... 99 Data and Operationalization of Variables ...... 102 Method and Results ...... 107 Organizations vs. Lone Wolves Controlling for the Tactical Advantages of Suicide Terrorism ...... 110 Conclusion ...... 114 Chapter 5: Why do some terrorist organizations use suicide terrorism while others do not? ...... 118 Introduction ...... 118

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Literature Review & Hypotheses ...... 120 Organizational Motivations for Choosing Suicide Terrorism ...... 120 Organizational Strategies and the Use of Suicide Terrorism ...... 124 The Use of Media ...... 125 The Use of Private Goods ...... 129 Data & Operationalization of Variables ...... 138 Method and Results ...... 148 Conclusion ...... 152 Chapter 6: Case Studies ...... 156 Introduction ...... 156 Hamas ...... 160 Background ...... 162 The Influence of the Muslim Brotherhood ...... 162 Provision of Public Goods and the Formation of Hamas ...... 167 Hamas and the Transition to Terrorism ...... 174 Organizational Strategies and the Increase in the Use of Suicide Terrorist Attacks ...... 179 The Use of Mass Media by Hamas ...... 182 Private Goods Provision by Hamas ...... 190 Fame, Honor and Societal Veneration ...... 192 Religious Rewards ...... 194 Material Benefits ...... 198 Conclusion ...... 199 The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) ...... 200 Background ...... 201 Overview of the Sri Lankan Conflict and Formation of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam ...... 201 The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam under Vellupillai Prabhakaran ...... 207 The LTTE and the Use of Terrorism ...... 213 The LTTE and the Use of Suicide Terrorism ...... 218 Organizational Strategies by the LTTE ...... 223 The Use of Media Sources by the LTTE ...... 223 The Use of Private Goods by the LTTE ...... 227 Fame, Honor and Societal Veneration of Martyrdom ...... 227

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Cyanide Pill ...... 229 Dinner with the Leader ...... 229 Conclusion ...... 230 Asbat Al-Ansar ...... 231 Conclusion ...... 236 Chapter 7: Conclusion ...... 238 Summary of my Arguments and Contributions of my Research ...... 239 Directions for Future Research ...... 245 REFERENCES ...... 247

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TABLES

Table

1. Operative Methods Used in Suicide Attacks ...... 30

2. The Numbers of People Killed in Suicide vs. Non-Suicide Attacks, 1970-2010 ...... 46

3. Descriptive Statistics for Suicide Attacks from 1998 to 2010 ...... 66

4. Effects of Tactical Advantages of Suicide Terrorism on Lethality ...... 68

5. Effects of Tactical Advantages of Suicide Terrorism on Lethality, continued ...... 69

6. Effect of Organizational Involvement on the Lethality of Suicide Terrorist Attacks, 1970- 2010...... 107-108

7. Effect of Organizational Involvement on the Lethality of Suicide Terrorism Controlling for the Tactical Advantages of Suicide Terrorism, 1998-2010 ...... 111

8. Effects of Organizational Strategies on the Use of Suicide Terrorism ...... 148-149

9. Similarities and Differences between Hamas, LTTE and Asbat Al-Ansar ...... 235-236

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FIGURES

Figure

1. Numbers of Suicide vs. Non-Suicide Terrorist Incidents, 1970-2010 ...... 3

2. Numbers of Fatalities from Suicide vs. Non-Suicide Terrorist Incidents, 1970-2010 ...... 4

3. Predicted Numbers of Fatalities Across a Range of Density ...... 70

4. Predicted Numbers of Fatalities in Indoor vs. Outdoor Locations ...... 71

5. Predicted Numbers of Fatalities across a Number of Perpetrators ...... 72

6. Expected Numbers of Fatalities from Lone Wolf vs. Organizationally-linked Suicide Terrorist Attacks, 1970-2010 ...... 109

7. Expected Numbers of Fatalities from Lone Wolf vs. Organizationally-linked Suicide Terrorist Attacks, 1998-2010 ...... 112

8. Expected Numbers of Fatalities from Lone Wolf vs. Organizationally-linked Suicide Terrorist Attacks Across a Range of Density, 1998-2010 ...... 113

9. The Percentage of Suicide Terrorist Incidents in all Terrorist Incidents Worldwide, 1970- 2010...... 122

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Chapter 1: An Introduction and Overview

“If you want to find me after I have died, You will never find my whole body, You will find me in little pieces, Then, my body will be put back together.”1

“On the Day of Judgment, my God will call me, my body will be put together and God will ask me: ‘Why did you do it?’ I will answer: ‘My Lord, only to make you happy. I have laid down my life to fight the infidels.’ Then God will look at my intention and see that it was to eradicate evil for Islam then I will be rewarded with paradise.” These are the words of a fourteen-year-old Pakistani boy named Shahid, which in English means ‘martyr’, who aspires to be recruited by Pakistani Taliban to become a suicide bomber (Obaid-Chinoy 2009)2. It is not easy for citizens of the politically stable, democratic and wealthy countries to wrap their minds around the fact that there exist children in the world who want to become suicide bombers when they grow up or even before they grow up. Suicide terrorism is a promising last mission that seems to inspire the next generations of many in conflict-ridden and predominantly Muslim societies such as Pakistan, Afghanistan or Iraq.

1 Lyrics from an indoctrination song. From the PBS Documentary, Children of Taliban by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, April 14, 2009. 2 Interview with a would-be suicide bomber. Ibid.

1

While some might think of these countries as predisposed to the phenomenon of terrorism as they harbor terrorist groups, and are devoid of widespread educational opportunities and economic resources, these are by no means the only group of countries where suicide terrorist attacks are seen. In fact, what used to be a rare phenomenon has recently spread to almost all corners of the world from Spain to United Kingdom, from Indonesia to Russia and

Turkey, from Israel to Sri Lanka. How could a tactic that requires using one’s body as a weapon

(Hassan 2011) become so popular?

Suicide terrorism is one of the most gruesome, psychologically altering and deeply disturbing types of terrorism, which takes place when a politically motivated perpetrator kills him/herself along with his/her victims in order to communicate a message to a larger audience

(Hoffman 2006, Pedahzur 2005, Bloom 2005). To an outsider, the choice of suicide terrorism might seem like an absurd and irrational decision given its unique execution. Yet, many people continue to volunteer to be recruited as suicide bombers and plenty of terrorist organizations invest in these recruits by training, indoctrinating and radicalizing them, and organizing and funding their suicide missions. Hence, there is something about suicide terrorism that is, in Mia

Bloom’s (2005) words, “alluring” to the perpetrators worldwide.

Drawing on existing literature and observational data, I argue that what is particularly alluring about suicide terrorism is its fatal attraction; suicide terrorism is a popular choice because it is an extremely effective strategy to kill people. When we look at some global trends, we see that despite the recent upsurge in the number of suicide terrorist attacks worldwide, suicide attacks still constitute a very small percentage of total worldwide terrorist incidents.

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According to Figure 1, of the 98,101 terrorist attacks in the world, only 1857 were suicide terrorist incidents. In other words, suicide terrorist incidents make up around only 2% of all the terrorist incidents worldwide.

Figure 1: Numbers of Suicide vs. Non-Suicide Terrorist Incidents, 1970-20103

However, despite the small percentage of suicide terrorist incidents, the numbers of fatalities that result from suicide terrorist incidents are remarkably high compared to other terrorist attacks. Figure 2 below shows that suicide terrorism-related fatalities make up almost

20% of all the terrorism-related death toll in the world. Hence, suicide terrorism does what it seeks to do very well: it terrorizes indiscriminately with extreme lethal impact.

3 Source: National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). (2011). Global Terrorism Database. Retrieved from http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd

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Figure 2: Numbers of Fatalities from Suicide vs. Non-Suicide Terrorist Incidents, 1970-20104

While as a method of attack, suicide terrorism is mechanically simple to execute and requires more psychological than physical training, as the above figure has shown, suicide terrorist attacks generate very lethal and psychologically devastating consequences not only for the immediate victims, but also for the populations at large (Sprinzak 2000, Ganor 2002). Its striking lethal effectiveness makes suicide terrorism particularly unique compared to other forms of terrorism and worthy of further inquiry.

Research Questions and Theory

This introduction suggests that suicide attacks generate high numbers of casualties even though they take place far less frequently compared to non-suicide terrorist attacks. When we

4 Source: National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). (2011). Global Terrorism Database. Retrieved from http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd

4 focus solely on suicide terrorist incidents, we see that there is also a very high variation in the count of fatalities from one suicide attack to another. In other words, while all suicide attacks are meant to be fatal, some lead to significantly higher numbers of fatalities than others, holding the type of the terrorist attack constant. What explains this dramatic difference in lethality within suicide terrorist incidents? This will be the focus of the first part of my dissertation. Driving from the fact that not all suicide terrorist attacks are the same, the first two empirical chapters will seek to answer the following research questions: 1) What explains the variation in the numbers of fatalities that result from suicide attacks? 2) Does the involvement of terrorist organizations

(as opposed to lone-wolf terrorists) enhance the lethality of suicide terrorism?

In the second part of my dissertation, I will shift my focus from the lethal effectiveness to the organizational choice of suicide terrorism. Building on the results of the first part of my research, I will explore why some terrorist organizations choose to use suicide terrorism while others do not. The research question that I seek to answer is as follows: 3) Given the advantage of suicide terrorism in delivering the most lethal attacks, why do all terrorist organizations not exclusively use the suicide terrorism strategy at all times? This question is important for two reasons. First, it leads us to better understand the organizational mechanisms and strategies that operate behind the choices that organizations make. Second, it sheds some light on why suicide terrorist attacks are not as widespread as non-suicide terrorist attacks. Even though suicide terrorism generates very lethal outcomes and induces extreme fear in the society, apparently not all terrorist organizations engage in suicide terrorist attacks. In this section, I try to understand why this is the case.

Blending empirical evidence with qualitative case studies, I propose three major arguments in response to the research questions presented above. First, I argue that the variation

5 in the number of fatalities that result from suicide terrorist attacks is driven by the proper utilization of the inherent tactical advantages of suicide terrorism such as the choice of location, enclosure of the target site and the use of multiple perpetrators. Second, I argue that organizational affiliation provides the recruits with a source of identification, a sense of direction and resources. Therefore, the involvement of terrorist organizations in the planning and execution of suicide terrorist attacks will increase the lethality of these attacks compared to that of lone wolf terrorists, who carry out these attacks on their own. Third, I argue that the employment of well-calculated organizational strategies produces a greater disposition for terrorist organizations to engage in suicide terrorism. Among these strategies, two in particular are very significant: the use of old and new media sources to reel in, train and radicalize recruits and the provision of private goods or selective incentives to the recruits and their families in order to increase the recruits’ commitments, such as material benefits or promises of fame and honor in exchange for the successful execution of suicide attacks.

Given my research questions, this dissertation is divided into five substantive chapters, one conceptual chapter, three empirical chapters, and one qualitative chapter, which presents case studies illustrating my major arguments. The next section will provide a brief overview of the proceeding chapters and the arguments presented.

An Overview of the Dissertation

Since this dissertation seeks to comprehend the lethality of and organizational strategies that allow for suicide terrorism, it opens up with a conceptual chapter (Chapter 2) that discusses what terrorism is and what it is not. To that end, in Chapter 2, I go over some up-to-date scholarly debates over what complicates the definition and boundaries of terrorism and make a typology of terrorist attacks. Within this context, I discuss the gap between the societally-

6 perceived and the self-portrayed image of a terrorist, the distinction between guerrilla warfare and terrorism, and the different types of terrorism that exist. Finally, I distinguish between suicide and non-suicide terrorism with an emphasis on the unique characteristics of the former that make it an effective type of terrorist attack. I also dwell on the definitional problems solely associated with suicide terrorist attacks such as the significance of the act of free will or the inclusion of no-escape missions as suicide missions. I conclude the discussion by illustrating three earlier perpetrators of suicide terrorism; particularly the Ismaili Assassins, the Malabari

Martyrs and the Japanese Kamikazes and discuss some of the similarities and differences between the earlier and contemporary manifestations of suicide terrorism.

In Chapter 3, which is the first empirical chapter of my dissertation, I explore the first research question regarding the variation in the numbers of fatalities resulting from suicide attacks. I start this discussion by explaining why I chose lethality as a measure of effectiveness.

I then explain the unique tactical advantages of using suicide terrorism over other types of terrorist attacks which motivates a series of testable hypotheses. My main argument is that the deadliness of suicide terrorist attacks is due to the immense control that perpetrators have over the location, timing and targets of the attack. Suicide bombers have a strategic advantage in killing people by being at the right place and at the right time. Hence as long as the tactical advantages are properly utilized with the choice of indoor locations packed with people and involving multiple suicide bombers instead of one, the attack is likely to generate considerable fatalities. While the strategic advantage argument is heavily referenced in the current literature

(Sprinzak 2000, Pedahzur 2005, Hoffman 2006, Clauset Young and Gleditsch 2007), there has not been an empirical study yet to test the validity of this intuitive knowledge. In this chapter, I provide such an empirical test.

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Using the suicide incidents listed in the Global Terrorism Database (2011), I code the attack characteristics of 567 suicide terror incidents that took place between 1998 and 2010 in the Middle East and South Asia. The new variables that I code measure 1) the density of an attack’s location 2) the ease or difficulty of access to a given location 3) whether the attack took place indoors or outdoors 4) whether the attack was targeted or indiscriminate 5) the number of suicide bombers that were involved in execution of the attack and 6) the gender of the perpetrator. My analysis confirms that suicide terrorist attacks that seize upon targets of opportunity are in fact much more deadly than those that do not. More specifically, suicide attacks that take place in densely populated locations, indoor places and that are undertaken by multiple perpetrators are the most lethal attacks of all.

In Chapter 4, I investigate the distinct effect of terrorist organizations on the lethality of suicide terrorism. When we look at the available data, we see that most, but not all incidents of terrorism take place under the sponsorship of terrorist organizations. In fact, it is possible to see quite a few incidents of suicide terrorism, including some very successfully executed and lethal ones that are not claimed or openly carried out by any of the existing terrorist organizations. I categorize these incidents as cases of lone wolf terrorism, which happen when a politically motivated perpetrator carries out an attack on his/her own, receiving no financial, technical or logistical support from any terrorist organization. While there are some recent studies on lone wolf perpetrators (Pantucci 2011, Michael 2012, Simon 2013), they do not make a comparison between terrorist organizations and lone wolf terrorists in terms of the lethal outcomes. Hence, my research contributes to this literature and takes the existing studies one step further by comparing suicide terrorist attacks that are carried out and openly claimed by designated terrorist organizations with attacks that are undertaken by self-radicalized suicide bombers, who are yet to

8 be formally affiliated with terrorist organizations using quantitative data from the Global

Terrorism Database (2011).

Within this context, I first discuss why and under what conditions organizations would be eager to take credit for terrorist attacks in general and suicide attacks in particular. I then distinguish between the two sets of perpetrators and theoretically explain why organizationally- connected suicide terrorist attacks are likely to be more lethal than those attacks where there is no claimed and clear indication of organizational involvement. My analysis shows that the involvement of terrorist organizations increases the lethal effectiveness of suicide terrorism compared to lone wolf terrorists. Even when we control for the tactical advantages of suicide terrorism using the original data from the previous chapter, organizational involvement still remains to be a positive predictor of lethality. My findings also show that terrorist groups not only increase the lethality but also accentuate the strategic advantages of suicide terrorism by tying the hands of the perpetrators and increasing their commitment to their missions.

Given that organizational involvement enhances lethal effectiveness of suicide terrorist attacks, in my last empirical chapter, Chapter 5, I examine why some organizations use suicide terrorism while others do not. I argue that for suicide terrorism to be successfully executed, the recruitment of people is not enough. Terrorist organizations need to do more in order to make sure that their recruits are radicalized and fully committed to carry out their attacks. By using the

Minorities at Risk Organizational Behavior Dataset (2008) and focusing on terrorist groups in the Middle East from 1980 to 2004, I show that the systematic employment of certain organizational strategies are associated with an increase in the probability of using suicide terrorism. Particularly, 1) the use of print publications and old and new media sources to recruit, train and radicalize the new suicide bombers, and 2) the distribution of private goods to

9 exclusively benefit the suicide bombers and their families, and thereby enhance the formers’ commitment to their missions are very influential in increasing the probability of the use of suicide terrorism.

The link between private good provisions and the probability of suicide terrorism is both empirically supported and theoretically important. Previous studies predominantly focused on public good provisions by the organizations to gather support from the domestic populations

(Ghandour 2002, Ly 2007). While the size of the domestic support base matters for the purposes of recruitment, not every person who is sympathetic to the political ideology, grievances or agenda of a terrorist organization chooses to become a suicide bomber. Thus, what enhances popular support for a given organization may not necessarily explain its propensity to use suicide terrorism. My research focuses on the organizational strategies of positive reinforcement that strengthen the loyalty of the suicide bombers and increase their commitments to their suicide missions, and therefore more cohesively explains the probability of the organizational use of suicide terrorism.

In Chapter 6, I shift from quantitative analysis to qualitative case studies. In the previous two empirical chapters, I suggested that terrorist organizations buoy the recruits through the entire process of suicide terrorism. Here I look at the historical background, formation and evolution of three different terrorist organizations to see if the statistically significant organizational strategies can be exemplified and supported by case study evidence. The goal is to show how these complex causal mechanisms operate given the real life experiences and backgrounds of different terrorist organizations.

Using the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil

Eelam (the LTTE), I illustrate how these two terrorist organizations, which are different in terms

10 of their ideological make up, leadership structures, political and economic grievances, and resource capabilities employ similar organizational strategies to recruit, train, radicalize and increase the commitment of their suicide bombers. For instance, the Tamil Tigers has used internet sources to provide information on the background, history and suffering of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka in order to gather popular support and find recruits. The websites include the biography of the founder and leader of the LTTE and the profiles of the prominent Tamil fighters, suicide bombers and other key members of the organization. Hamas has also used websites to feature pictures of its martyrs, to explain what Intifada is and inform its followers about why they should and how they could be a part of the struggle.

While the use of organizationally-owned websites and other media sources such as TV and radio stations facilitated the recruitment and radicalization of the would-be suicide bombers for both Hamas and LTTE, in order to further incentivize their recruits and guarantee the success of their suicide missions, these two terrorist organizations have also provided their suicide squads with material and non-material rewards. For instance, Hamas has made financial contributions to the families of the suicide bombers and supported them with private benefits such as scholarships, food and coal aids and rent payments. The LTTE suicide squad units called the Black Tigers were rewarded with a private dinner with the revered leader of the organization before they were sent out to their final missions.

Before I conclude the case study chapter, I introduce a third case, Asbat Al-Ansar, as a final comparison. This is a Sunni-extremist terrorist organization based in Lebanon that has never used suicide terrorism. Relying on the observations of the two previous datasets and various internet sources, I show that Asbat al-Ansar has not used any of the organizational strategies that were frequently embraced by Hamas and LTTE. Hence, this case is particularly

11 important because it shows how an absence of the aforementioned organizational strategies would lower the probability of using suicide terrorism. In other words, empirical findings from the previous chapter are strengthened by case study evidence.

Finally, in Chapter 7, I conclude my dissertation discussing the overall implications of my research, giving an overview of my original contributions and provide thoughts on what future research should focus on to take this agenda further.

Contribution of the Research

As will be explained in the proceeding chapters, the effectiveness of terrorism has been the focus of many previous studies on terrorism (Lutz and Lutz 2009, Abrahams 2006,

McCormick and Fritz 2010). Most of these studies have judged the effectiveness of terrorism based on whether using terrorism has helped terrorist groups achieve their policy objectives or stated goals (Abrahams 2006, Cronin 2009, Bueno de Mesquita and Dickon 2007). The problem with measuring effectiveness using the stated goals of terrorist organizations is that there are almost always many contemporaneous goals, which change over time. Hence, this is not an objective measure. This is why I chose to use lethality as a measure of effectiveness; there is nothing subjective about lethal outcomes. In addition to that, lethal attacks serve important functions as far as perpetrators are concerned: they signal greater resolve and commitment by imposing significant costs on the other side; they attract more media attention and generally lead to severe economic consequences (Kydd and Walter 2006, Nacos 2000, Krugman 2004). In other words, lethality matters.

Second, many of these existing studies look at terrorist attacks in general, which limit their ability to account for the variation within the phenomenon (Crenshaw 2007). My research will contribute to this literature by looking at a relatively less studied form of terrorism in detail,

12 which is suicide terrorism. Instead of treating suicide terrorism as monolithic, I will look at the variations within suicide terrorist attacks in terms of utilization of different tactical advantages, perpetrators and organizational strategies.

Third, empirical research on terrorism suffers from controversial findings because of the incomplete or incompatible datasets that researchers have to work with (Crenshaw 2007). One reason that we still have limited data on terrorist organizations is because terrorism research in general does not easily lend itself to conducting field work given the inherent difficulties and serious risks involved (Dolnik 2011). Hence, terrorism scholars end up using sources that are, in relative terms, easily accessible such as existing datasets, interviews (i.e. interviews with failed suicide bombers), books, articles and other online sources. This is why some scholars of terrorism avoid quantitative methodology given the limitations of the available data in answering their research questions (Stepanova 2008, Hoffman and Deleeuw 2006).

In this dissertation, I try to reduce some of these data-related issues by supplementing the existing datasets with new empirical evidence regarding the tactical characteristics of suicide terrorism in the Middle East-North Africa and South Asia. While many studies do acknowledge the unique tactical advantages of suicide terrorism such as the amount of control perpetrators have over the location, the timing and the targets of the attack (Bloom 2005, Sprinzak 2000), all of these attributes are yet to be empirically tested. Using a new and unique dataset that quantify these characteristics, my research seeks to fill this gap.

Fourth, previous studies that have looked at organizational strategies designed to decrease the likelihood of defection and increase the success of terrorist operations focused on public good provisions such as relief operations, social welfare programs and fund raising activities undertaken by these organizations (Ghandour 2002, Berman and Laitin 2008). While these

13 activities are extremely important in enhancing the domestic support base of the organization in question, they are not as important as selective rewards and other private goods that are accrued to suicide bombers (and their families) in exchange for successfully carrying out suicide missions. Hence, my dissertation research shifts the focus from public to private good provisions using both quantitative and qualitative evidence from the Middle East.

In addition to its contribution to the scholarly literature, my research offers insights for national security specialists and counter-terrorism experts in coping with suicide terrorism.

Providing empirical evidence as to what makes suicide terrorism lethality effective contributes to security efforts seeking to develop strategies to harden the most vulnerable targets, to educate the public and increase societal awareness on the causes and consequences of the threat. Being informed about what particular organizational strategies are most likely to increase the likelihood of suicide terrorism can also help counter-terrorism researchers and specialists to generate measures tailored to address those specific strategies that breed suicide terrorism, examples of which will be provided in the proceeding chapters.

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Chapter 2: Definitions and Typology of Terrorism

The Palestinian Sunni Islamic scholar and theologian Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, who was also Bin Laden’s spiritual mentor, used the following words when defining Islamic terrorism: “If preparation is terrorism, then we are terrorists, and if defense of the land is extremism, then we are extremists and if jihad against enemies is fundamentalism, then we are fundamentalists”

(Oliver and Steinberg 2005, fig 12). These words exemplify one the most fundamental problems in the study of terrorism, which is the lack of a comprehensive, objective and universally recognized definition of the terms terrorism and terrorist. What is terrorism? Is it bombing a train station, an embassy or a school bus? Is it the act blowing one’s self up in a crowded market place? Does it include attacks against targets other than civilians such as military convoys, or state representatives? How about the act of mailing a letter infected with anthrax virus? Can all of these different cases be defined as terrorist attacks? Secondly, who do we call a terrorist?

Does a lunatic assassin qualify? How about a state? Does a terrorist have to be an identifiable organized group or can a lone wolf perpetrator be called a terrorist as well?

These questions are not unfamiliar to the scholars of terrorism. While some see this controversy pertaining to what terrorism is as trivial or irrelevant, in so far as scholarly research goes, definitions and typologies are very important. As Martha Crenshaw argues, the conceptual definition of the phenomenon matters “not only for analytical clarity and consistency and data collection but also for policies of state actors” (Crenshaw 2007, 8). This is why the opening chapter in this dissertation begins with a discussion of what terrorism is and what it is not. To that end, in this chapter, I review the scholarly debate on how to define terrorism and go over

15 some controversial issues that complicate this definition5. While doing that I also distinguish between terrorism and guerrilla warfare (as some scholars use these terms interchangeably given that both employ similar tactics). In the second part of the chapter, I distinguish between non- suicide terrorism and suicide terrorism with an emphasis on how the latter is different from the conventional acts of terror. I conclude the chapter by illustrating some earlier manifestations of the suicide terrorist attacks and glance over explanations pertaining to the popularity of suicide attacks in the modern day.

What is terrorism and what is not?

Terrorism is a subjective term. As Richard Jackson argues “there are over 200 definitions of terrorism in existence within broader terrorism studies literature; that many terrorism scholars have given up on the definitional debate and use the term unreflectively” (Jackson 2008, 1).

Maybe the only thing that is objective and consensual about the word “terrorism” is the fact that it is pejorative. Even the terrorists themselves would refrain from using the word ‘terrorist’ when defining who they are (Jenkins 1980, Wilkinson 1994). Similar to those undemocratic countries that prefer to be called ‘democracies’ such as the “Democratic Republic of Congo” or (what used to be the official name for East Germany) “The German Democratic Republic”, terrorists groups and individual perpetrators choose to select names with positive connotations such as ‘freedom fighters’, ‘holy warriors’ or ‘urban guerrillas’ (Hoffman 2006). Instead of calling themselves terrorists, they generally put the blame on the system, the state or the unfair conditions that they were forced to live under. For example, the Venezuelan terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, better known as “Carlos, the Jackal’, who is currently serving a life sentence in France for orchestrating two bombings and a triple murder, described himself as a ‘family man, above all’ in an interview

5 In the section titled ‘what terrorism is and what it is not’, I follow the same structure with Bruce Hoffman’s introduction in his book ‘Inside Terrorism’ (2006).

16 that he gave after his arrest in 1994. In his interview with the Christian Science Monitor, he claimed to be a ‘professional revolutionary’ (Hinnant 2013). In another example, an IRA member, who was also convicted of terrorism-related charges such as attempted murder, kidnapping, and arms possession vehemently denied the label: “To me, terrorist is a dirty word and I certainly don’t…nor have I considered myself to be one, but ah, I remain an activist to this day” (Gupta 2008, 6).

When we look at the names of many of the existing terrorist organizations listed on the

US Department of State’s ‘Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations’ or in the perpetrator section of the Global Terrorism Database, we see names that emphasize revered ideals and noble struggles such as freedom and liberation: the Basque Homeland and Freedom or the Popular

Front for the Liberation of Palestine, names that highlight virtuous hence easily justifiable acts such as resistance, justice and self-defense, for example, the Greek Popular Resistance or the

Justice and Liberty Warriors, names that refer to military structures, some of which even include

‘army’ in their titles such as The Fifth Battalion of the Liberation Army or National Military

Organization or names that do not have any offensive tones to them such as the Grey Wolves, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party or Al-Qaeda, which means ‘the Base.’(Hoffman 2006).

These examples are interesting primarily because they show us the gap between the societally-perceived and the self-portrayed image of a terrorist. Most terrorists fail to acknowledge the fact that they are what they are: “Cast perpetually on the defensive, and forced to take up arms to protect themselves and their constituents, terrorists perceive themselves as reluctant warriors, driven by desperation—and lacking any viable alternative—to violence against a repressive state, a predatory rival ethnic or nationalist group, or an unresponsive international order” (Hoffman 2006, 22).

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The subjective nature of the term also derives from the difference between in whose interests the violence is perpetrated for and whose interests it hurts. Depending on who practices terrorism, or who is victimized by it, the definition of terrorism changes. In his book,

Manufacturing Human Bombs, Mohammed Hafez (2006) argues that the same thing is true for suicide terrorism; those who practice the act of self-immolation or sympathize with the cause of a suicide terrorist will prefer to label the attack as a ‘martyrdom operation’ and the attacker as a

‘hero, warrior or freedom fighter.’ Others who condone the terrorist act or who lose their loved ones because of it refer to perpetrators as ‘suicidal murderers’ or ‘homicide bombers.’ (p. 4).

This is the reason why it is very difficult to find a mathematical formula which solves the definitional problem of terrorism once and for all.

What also complicates the definition of terrorism is the widespread reluctance especially in non-Western nations to call an act a terrorist attack, even though it is violent and claims the lives of innocent people, when it is carried out for the purposes of political freedom, national self-determination or liberation from oppression. For instance, the spiritual leader of Hezbollah,

Sheikh Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, claimed that they do not see resisting an occupier as an act of terrorism. They claim that they are not terrorists but holy warriors, who fight a just war in the name of innocent yet marginalized people (Hoffman 2006). However, a terrorist and a freedom fighter do not have to be mutually exclusive, hence as Boaz Ganor suggested it is unwarranted to say that “a freedom fighter cannot be involved in terrorism, murder and indiscriminate killing” (Ganor 2002, 291).

One suggestion to make the boundaries of terrorism more clear is to revise the definition of terrorism by ruling out the motivation behind the attack and by only considering the delivery of it: “Terrorism, in the Rand chronology, is defined by the nature of the act, not by the identity

18 of the perpetrators or the nature of their cause” (Jenkins 1980, 2-3). What this means is that, regardless of the cause of perpetrator, if someone places an explosive device in the middle of a busy street to cause death or bodily harm to people, the attack will be called terrorism. However, if we define terrorism in this way, as Bruce Hoffman (2006) notes, we play into the hands of the terrorists as they are already inclined to say that what they do is no different than the acts deliberately pursued by state actors in the event of conflict or war. From the perspective of a terrorist, a drone attack is no different than a low-tech pipe bomb placed next to a trash can. They argue that state armies inflict damage on civilian populations as well, or deliberately kill young children on the ground hence they should be labeled as terrorists too.

In parallel to this argument, terrorists strive to portray themselves as “fighters” just like soldiers (even though they do not wear military uniforms) and want to frame their actions using military jargon. Most terrorists argue that they are fighting an unconventional warfare and the

Geneva Conventions should apply to them, which means that they would be interrogated, tried and sentenced as Prisoners of War (Dickinson 2010).

There is, however, a very significant qualitative difference between the violence perpetrated by terrorist groups and by armed forces of a given country. When a war is officially declared between two countries, even though the means that they are using to fight one another is unconventional with the improvements in the weapons technology, the military units of countries operate under the law of war. The behaviors of the armed forces are therefore guided and judged by the rules of proper conduct during warfare as codified in the Geneva Conventions of 19496.

6 The Geneva Conventions and additional protocols that constitute the core of international humanitarian law, regulate the conduct of armed conflict by delineating and protecting internationally recognized principles such as prohibiting the use of certain types of weapons, protecting the immunity of the non-combatants, defined as people who do not partake in the hostilities, recognizing the rights of citizens of neutral states, and upholding the inviolability of diplomats and state representatives (Russet, Starr and Kinsella 2010).

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While armed forces respect and operate under these rules of conduct, terrorists do not. On the contrary, terrorist tactics violate most, if not all, of these rules frequently and deliberately such that terrorists disrespect the rights of citizens by taking civilians as hostage and violently executing them or they strike attacks against embassies and military installations. Moreover, in many cases, the killing of the civilians by the armed forces is not a deliberately pursued strategy to impose fear, but an unintentional consequence of a given operation. This is not to suggest that military personnel never commit atrocities against civilian populations. They do and sometimes they do it on purpose by violating the law of war, but in case of a violation as such, they are aware that, they will be punished for their acts of transgression:

when civilians are deliberately and wantonly attacked in war or taken hostage and killed by military forces—the term ‘war crime’ is used to describe such acts and, as imperfect and flawed as both international and national remedies may be, steps nonetheless are often taken to hold the perpetrators accountable for the crimes. By comparison, one of the fundamental raisons d’etre of international terrorism is a refusal to be bound by such rules of warfare and codes of conduct (Hoffman 2006, 28).

In addition to this, in order for a crime to be classified as a ‘war crime’ and a soldier to be considered a ‘prisoner of war’, the atrocities should be committed during warfare, meaning when a war is openly declared by a lawful authority and an open armed conflict is taking place between two (or more) parties who are in accordance with it. Terrorism, on the other hand, can happen in the absence of a war or during peacetime (Stepanova 2008). Hence, unlike what they claim, terrorists are not soldiers because they do not operate under the same rules to begin with.

In order to justify their actions, terrorists also have a tendency to portray their violent attacks as “weapons of the weak” utilized as a last resort. Lutz and Lutz (2005) argue that dissident groups resort to terrorism when the odds for them to democratically win an election are either very slim or zero, and they have no other way to participate in the political decision-

20 making process: “If the dissidents are strong enough, they can stage a coup, undertake an armed insurrection or attempt to secede. If they lack the strength for a direct assault on the government, the dissidents will be forced to resort to those violent methods that are open to the weak” (Lutz and Lutz 2005, 9) such as terrorism.

From the view point of a terrorist: “the bomb in the rubbish bin.. is merely a poor man’s air force”, the only means through which the terrorist can challenge—and get the attention of--- the more powerful state (Hoffman 2006, 26). The problem with this justification, to me, is that it distances the perpetrator from the act of violence. It also minimizes the moral responsibility of the perpetrator and suggests that the act was not strategically but circumstantially employed.

While it is true that terrorist attacks are generally employed by non-state actors when there is a clear asymmetry of power, meaning in the face of a numerically, technologically and resourcefully superior enemy, they are more than merely a natural outcome of the desperate living conditions or difficult socio-economic circumstances. Especially when we peruse the literature that examines the socio-economic backgrounds of the individual perpetrators, we see that a majority of the recruits of terrorist organizations go beyond the stereo-typical image of

“poor, desperate, naïve, single young men from third world countries, vulnerable to brainwashing and recruitment into terror” (Sageman 2004, 69). In fact, recruits are mentally stable, college graduates who have grown up in middle or upper class families (Iannaccone 2006,

Bueno de Mesquita 2005, Krueger and Maleckova 2003).

A related research by Efraim Benmelech and Claude Berrei (2007) empirically analyzes the relationship between the characteristics of suicide bombers and their performance of carrying out suicide attacks and finds that human capital matters for terrorist organizations: “The profiles of the hijackers chosen for 9/11 attacks are consistent with this notion. Two-thirds of the

21 hijackers had pursued formal academic studies and at least seven of the 19 hijackers had formal flight training” (Benmelech and Berrebi 2007, 224). Based on the biographies of the Palestinian suicide bombers from 2000 to 2005, Benmelech and Berreri demonstrate that terrorist organizations assign older and more educated suicide bombers to more important Israeli targets and that the success rate of this group is particularly high, meaning the older and the more educated the suicide bombers are, the more numbers of people they kill. All this research point at one direction: at least at the individual level, terrorist attacks are not merely weapons of the weak.

Despite this research that points at the opposite direction, the leaders of the terrorist organizations still play the ‘weak’ card as doing so legitimizes their attacks in the eyes of the larger populations. For instance, the spiritual deceased leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin used the following words to justify Hamas’s frequent use of suicide terrorism: “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” (Bloom 2005,

3). In a similar vein, the following question was asked by Yasser Arafat to indicate that those who are economically and politically at the losing end of the power spectrum can use whatever means available to them including and especially terrorism in order to level off the injustices:

“How else can be bring pressure to bear on the world?”

Such statements of the leaders downplay the strategic decision-making involved in the use of terrorism in general and suicide terrorism in particular. There is a plethora of research that suggests that terrorist attacks help the perpetrators achieve their goals more effectively (Bloom

2005, Kydd and Walter 2002). If a particular terrorist strategy helps a certain organization make a gain, that strategy immediately gains popularity among other terrorist groups as well. For

22 instance, when Hezbollah in Lebanon became widely credited for the use of suicide terrorism, the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka decided to use suicide terrorism strategy as well (Gupta 2008). As

Martha Crenshaw argues “efficacy is the primary standard by which terrorism is compared with other methods of achieving political goals…Organizations arrive at collective judgments about the relative effectiveness of different strategies….on the basis of observation and experience, as much as on the basis of abstract conceptions derived from ideological assumptions—allowing for social learning” (Crenshaw 1998, 8).

Hence, the use of terrorist tactics often times comes as a result of strategic calculations, which seek to maximize the physical and psychological harm inflicted on the enemy. While desperation or frustration may definitively precipitate the decision to resort to terrorist tactics, there is still a cost-benefit analysis that plays into the decision-making. There hardly is another attack like a terrorist attack, which terrorizes indiscriminately with such a low budget. While no terrorist attack is a nuclear weapon that could win the perpetrators a decisive military victory, they help level up the fighting field against a stronger enemy by giving the perpetrators a chance to “not lose and keep the struggle alive as long as possible” (Lanche 2009, 2). One can therefore argue that: terrorists make carefully calculated and strategic choices but maybe not under the circumstances of their own choosing.

Lastly, one other theoretically easy but practically difficult distinction to make is between guerilla warfare and terrorist attacks. For instance, regarding the 1973 attack at the Rome

Airport, in which five terrorists hijacked a Pan American 707 bound for Beirut and Tehran killing a total of thirty-two passengers, one New York Times editorial “used the words

“terrorists” and terrorism interchangeably with guerrillas and extremists…The Christian Science

Monitor’s reports of the Rome Pan Am attack similarly avoided terrorist and terrorism in favor

23 of guerillas and extremists; an Associated Press story in the next day’s Los Angeles Times also stuck with guerrillas while the two Washington Post articles on the same incident opted for the terms commandos and guerrillas” (Hoffman 2006, 28-29). The tendency to use ‘guerrilla’ and

‘terrorist’ interchangeably emerges from the fact that both guerrilla warfare and terrorism are types of political violence in which perpetrators use similar tactics to kill people. Guerrillas employ tactics such as hit-and-run, kidnapping, hostage taking, and assassinations in order to intimidate or coerce the enemy to make concessions just like terrorists do. Guerrillas also operate as irregular forces that do not wear military uniforms: it is, therefore, difficult to distinguish them from non-combatants. But as Bruce Hoffman (2006) notes, there are some important distinctions between guerrillas and terrorists.

First, guerrillas refer to a numerically larger group of armed individuals that attack enemy’s military forces, not civilians. Hence, in guerrilla warfare we see irregular and not uniformed armed units fighting against armed military forces using hit-and-run tactics. Second, guerrillas seize and hold territory and exercise control over a defined geographical area and its population. Terrorists on the other hand, are not numerically superior, they are non-state actors that do not operate as armed units, and they do not have control over a specific territory and do not exercise sovereignty over a populace or geographic area (Hoffman 2006). Most importantly, terrorists target civilians first and foremost to achieve some sort of political goal. Paul Wilkinson makes the following distinction between guerrillas and terrorists:

Guerrillas may fight with small numbers and often inadequate weaponry, but they can and often do fight according to conventions of war, taking and exchanging prisoners and respecting the rights of non-combatants. Terrorists place no limits on means employed and frequently resort to widespread assassination, the waging of ‘general terror’ upon the indigenous civilian population (Schmidt 1984, 42).

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Theoretically speaking, these differences may sound as clearly delineated, but in practice they are not as straightforward as one would hope. As Hoffman notes, if we follow these definitions hook, line and sinker, some groups that have long been categorized as terrorist organizations will no longer qualify or only partially qualify to be referred to as terrorist groups.

For instance, given their size, tactics, control over territory, and the choice of targets, some established terrorist groups like Hezbollah, Kurdistan Workers’ Party and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam can as well be categorized as guerrilla movements. Hezbollah, which is considered as the reinventor of suicide terrorism, predominantly targeted embassies, military headquarters and military convoys.

To the same extent, according to Stephan Hopgood (2005), in the majority of their attacks, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam of Sri Lanka did not strike civilians as the intended targets; they instead focused on political leaders, government officials and military targets.

However, none of these explanations could sweep under the rug the significant numbers of civilian casualties that died as a result of their terrorist attacks. As Martha Crenshaw (2007) argues, maybe the majority of the LTTE attacks did not directly aim at killing the civilian populations but how about some of their other attacks such as the suicide bombing of the Central

Bank located at the heart of Colombo in 1996, which led to the killings of 90 people and injury of more than one thousand others? Or the 1998’s suicide attack on the Temple of the Tooth in

Kandy which targeted a major Buddhist shrine?

Dipak Gupta (2008) takes this debate a step further by asking a very intriguing question: given that one will define who is a terrorist based on the intended targets, what does it mean to be a non-combatant? Do we mean civilians only or can non-combatants include the members of the armed forces that are off-duty or that are not engaged in active combat?

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If we exclude targeting of the military personnel and infrastructure, in the series of the 9/11 attacks, we will have to classify the crashing of the hijacked planes, United States Airlines flight # 175 and the American Airlines flight # 11, which struck the World Trade Center towers, and the United Airlines flight # 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, clearly as acts of terrorism. However what about the American Airlines flight # 77 that hit the Pentagon building? Since the Pentagon is the headquarters of the US armed forces, this definition would not be regarded as terrorism. If we relax the definition of non-combatant a bit to include military personnel during periods of active hostility, targeting the US patrols by Al-Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan should not be considered as terrorism, but the attack on the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen will. In that case, what about attacks by groups, such as Hamas, the Palestine Islamic Jihad, or the Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigade within Israel, which target off-duty members of the Israeli Defense Force? (Gupta 2008, 9).

In a similar vein, when we think about the Palestinian suicide terrorist attacks that target popular restaurants, shopping malls and cafes where people meet, we would assume that all of these attacks would be categorized as terrorist attacks. However, such attacks are interpreted quite differently by their perpetrators. For instance, the supporters of Hamas argue that Israeli society itself is largely militarized, and there are just a handful of civilians, hence, Hamas’s attacks cannot be considered as terrorism. In his interview on al-Jazeera, a prominent member of group, Mohammad Nazzal justified Hamas’s attacks against Israel based on this dramatically different understanding of who a civilian is:

Israeli society is overwhelmingly militarized with few genuine civilians. We define civilians as those who do not carry arms and do not fight. In the case of Israel, this applies to those who are less than 18 years old and those who are elderly; the rest are combatants. We do not kill children. We could easily go to preschools or public places where children hang out or attack the elderly but we do not. The rest, however, whether men or women, are forcefully conscripted into the army and once a year they are recalled for at least 40 days and in cases of war or emergency (Hafez 2006, 29)

This debate takes us to the point that intention alone does not save lives; randomly executed terrorist attacks at restaurants, coffee shops, and commuter buses claim the lives of so- called ‘genuine’ civilians such as children and elderly people. It also shows that distinguishing

26 terrorism from guerrilla warfare is an onerous task based on a number of different interpretations. However, in order to move on, I comply with Bruce Hoffman’s distinction that the primary difference between the two types of perpetrators is that guerrillas target only military forces, hold territory and exercise control over a specific geographic area and population, whereas terrorist groups do not seize territory, do not have sovereignty over a populace or geographic area and their attacks generally target civilians but are not restricted by them.

Terrorists also target military forces, influential political figures, embassies, hospitals and symbolic infrastructure. Hence, they do not practice precision and restraint when it comes to their targets.

Now that we know what terrorism is not, then what is terrorism? Literature is replete with various definitions of terrorism, some more comprehensive than others, and each definition emphasizes a slightly different nuance of the act. For instance, according to Boaz Ganor, the

Executive Director of the International Institute for Counter-terrorism, terrorism is “the intentional use of or threat to use violence against civilians or against civilian targets in order to attain political aims” (Ganor 2002, 292). Susan Moeller (2009) defines terrorism as “the use of force involving the killing of civilians to advance a political cause” and adds that “the psychological impact of a terrorist act is intended to be greater than the physical damage caused”

(Moeller 2009, 35). Binyamin Netanyahu suggests that the main goal of terrorism is to instill fear in the hearts and minds of innocents through the use of violence and concludes that terrorism is: “the deliberate and systematic murder, maiming and menacing of the innocent to inspire fear for political ends” (Netanyahu 1987, 9). Bruce Hoffman defines terrorism as “terrorism is violence, or equally important the threat of violence—used and directed in pursuit of, or in service of, political aim” (Hoffman 2006, 2-3). The US Department of State includes the

27 perpetrators of the violence in its definition: “terrorism is a politically violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience” (Gupta 2008, 8). According to the Global Terrorism Database (2011), which will be used in the following two chapters of my dissertation, a terrorist attack is defined as “the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a non-state actor to attain a political, economic, religious or social goal through fear, coercion or intimidation” (GTD

Codebook 2011, 4).

Blending the previous discussion with the existing definitions, I break the definition of terrorism into four criteria. First, a terrorist attack entails the use or the demonstration of violence. That is to say that violence is either physically executed, when a bomb is detonated leading to bodily harm of people and destruction of property, or threats of violence are made, which happen when a bomb is planted but its explosion is announced in advance. The purpose of demonstration is to spread fear, which may be followed by the actual use of force, if threats are not taken seriously.

Second, terrorist attacks are strategically executed in the hope of achieving some kind of political change, which may be to gain individual rights and freedoms, change a government structure or policies, or topple a leader. Hence, terrorism is political in its motivation, which according to Lutz and Lutz (2005) distinguishes the practice of terrorism from the presence of terror. When a person murders another person for revenge, the act induces terror, but it is not terrorism. While individual terrorists can be motivated by a range of emotions that go from religion to economic gain or from revenge to personal glory and honor, in the larger scheme of things, a political motivation has to exist. If there is no overarching political goal to trigger the attack, it is not terrorism.

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Third, terrorist attack generally strike secondary targets, which are the civilians, to convey a message to the primary targets--the government or the leaders on top of the power hierarchy. However, as discussed, the targets of terrorism are not strictly limited to civilian populations and can be other non-civilian audiences as well such as key politicians, military and diplomatic personnel or symbolic installments. It is also important to note that whoever the immediate targets of a given attack is, terrorist attacks intend to deliberately create an atmosphere of fear and weariness for a broader audience. Hence, terrorism is considered to be one of the best strategies to pursue a psychological warfare: “the act is intended to produce effects beyond the immediate physical damage” (Jenkins 1980, 3).

Fourth, terrorism is perpetrated by non-state actors or sub-national entities, which include

“both organizations with an identifiable chain of command, or conspiratorial cell structure

(whose members wear no uniform or identifying insignia), or by individuals or a small collection of individuals directly influenced, motivated, or inspired by the ideological aims or example of some existent terrorist movement and/or its leaders” (Art and Jervis 2007, 196). While some scholars of terrorism are not interested in the acts of individual terrorists or lone-wolves and only focus on organizationally-linked terrorist attacks (Gambetta 2005, Gupta 2008) for the purposes of this dissertation, I will keep my definition broad and analyze the terrorist attacks of lone wolf perpetrators as well. Also, given the Global Terrorism Database (2011), which only includes non-state actors as perpetrators, state terrorism falls outside of my analysis.

What is Suicide Terrorism?

Suicide terrorism is a very unique, psychologically and lethality devastating form of terrorism, which is distinguished from other (non-suicide) terrorist attacks by the way in which it is executed. Suicide attacks require the self-destruction of a politically motivated perpetrator

29 along with his/her victims to be successfully completed. While all suicide attacks require a strongly motivated perpetrator who will kill and die at the same time, there is more than one way that the perpetrators can carry out these missions. The following percentages7 show the different operative methods used during the execution of suicide terrorist attacks (Pedahzur 2005, 15):

Table 1: Operative Methods used in Suicide Attacks Detonation of an explosive belt directly attached to the militant’s body 53.3% Driving a car or a truck rigged with explosives to smash into the target 25.1 % Carrying the explosive charge in a handbag 4.5 % Activating explosive boats 4.1 % Detonating hand grenades 3.3 % Use of booby-trapped bicycles 1.7 %

Since suicide terrorist attacks are a subset of terrorist attacks, all of the above discussion that makes a precise and factual definition of terrorism problematic applies to suicide terrorism as well. Establishing facts and making an all-inclusive definition of suicide terrorism is just as difficult as any other type of terrorist attack. While I discussed some of these difficulties under the subtitle of terrorism, there are more areas of scholarly divergence and disagreement that further complicate the definition of suicide terrorism.

The first one of these issues of concern is the death of the perpetrator. In the brief definition made in the opening paragraph, I said that the self-destruction of the perpetrator along with the victims is important for the successful completion of the attack. Some scholars agree with this definition, and require the simultaneous occurrence of a self-induced suicide and killings of victims for an act to be called a suicide terrorist attack (Bloom 2005, Hafez 2006,

Shay 2004, Hassan 2011). For instance, Mia Bloom defines suicide terrorism (she prefers to call it suicide bombing) as “a violent, politically motivated attack, carried out in a deliberate state of

7 The remaining 8% is not accounted for in Pedahzur’s cite.

30 awareness by a person who blows himself or herself up together with a chosen target. The premeditated certain death of the perpetrator is the precondition for the success of the attack”

(Bloom 2005, 76). Riaz Hassan depicts suicide attacks as “targeted use of self-destructing humans against a perceived enemy for political ends” (Hassan 2011, 18).

Others argue that whether the perpetrator dies or not is of secondary importance, and what matters is the intention to die or the expectation to survive a mission. For Ami Pedahzur

(2005), in so far as the suicide bombers are concerned, the odds of returning alive are “close to zero”; Robert Pape (2003) also posits that suicide bombers do not expect to outlive their suicide missions. According to this line of reasoning, as long as there is willingness to die, no-escape missions and failed attempts could be considered as suicide attacks as well.

Other scholars disagree with the above reasoning emphasizing the difficulty of knowing someone’s intention before they carry out the attack, and exclude high-risk ‘no-escape’ attacks from the category of suicide terrorism. For example, Jeffrey Lewis (2012) argues that suicide attacks utilize at least one human being who is an agent of control rather than an agent of violence; the bomber is the weapon-guidance and control system all by him/herself. Since Lewis does not see suicide bombers as users of the weapons that they direct, but as weapons themselves, he argues that no-escape attacks should be classified in a different category than suicide terrorism:

When a perpetrator opens fire with the intention of provoking a lethal response and then fights to the death… the death of the attacker is de-coupled from the execution of the attack and is therefore not always necessitated by the attack. In addition, the death of the attacker is not self-inflicted. Although the attacker may desire to die, professing the desire to die and possessing the capability to commit lethal self-violence are two very different mental states. Since the death of the attacker in a no-escape attack is neither required nor self-inflicted there is a degree of freedom that is not present in suicide bombing (Lewis 2012, 19).

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While Lewis’s argument is interesting, it rests on a very trivial distinction. Even if the perpetrator’s death is not self-inflicted, the outcome of the act does not change, hence no-escape missions should also be considered as suicide attacks. In addition to this, excluding no-escape missions will reduce the number of suicide attacks, which already happens to be quite small relative to all terrorist incidents in the world. Given the limitations of the data, it is necessary to include no-escape attacks under the acts of suicide terrorism. For instance, in the Global

Terrorism Database (2011), suicide terrorist attacks exist as a categorical variable, which receives a value of 1 if the attack is suicide and 0 if otherwise. The codebook explains that suicide attacks are those, in which there is “evidence that the perpetrator did not intend to escape the attack alive.” Since this is a reliable database, which has been frequently used by many political scientists and referred to by experts of terrorism, I trust the existing coding schemes and take their measure of suicide attack as credible. Hence, some of the cases I will be analyzing in the following chapters will be no-escape suicide terrorist attacks.

Also, in the definition that I made previously, I suggested that successful suicide attacks require the self-destruction of the perpetrator along with the victims. However, there are many suicide terrorist ‘attempts’ that fail because the switch of the bomb does not work and the detonation does not happen, or that foil because the perpetrators get caught before they carry out their missions (Benmelech and Berrebi 2007). According to Hafez (2006) Israel prevented 74% of all the planned attacks in 2004 and put more than 300 militants in jail. Even though these cases can be categorized as unsuccessful, this does not change the fact that they are still cases of

‘poorly executed’ suicide terrorism, which failed to cause death, bodily injury or damage. I also argue that depending on one’s research agenda, the inclusion or exclusion of unsuccessful incidents of suicide terrorism might be necessary. Since one of my goals in this dissertation is to

32 explain what makes some suicide attacks more effective than other suicide attacks in terms of lethality, I will definitely include the unsuccessful incidents of suicide terrorism in the groups of incidents that I analyze.

Another issue of disagreement among terrorism scholars is whether an attack can be considered as suicide terrorism unless it is an act of free will. Some studies emphasize that if perpetrators were not voluntarily recruited but were coerced into joining a terrorist organization then their attacks do not count as suicide terrorist attacks. The justification is that these people did not naturally possess a willingness to die (Sageman 2004, Gambetta 2005). In this case, all those cases in which perpetrators were talked into carrying out suicide attacks via relational networks, peer or societal pressures, or organizational indoctrination will no longer be considered as acts of suicide terrorism, which is an incomprehensible argument to make, to say the least. First, it is hard to know what constitutes free will. Second, as we shall see in the following chapters, almost all of the perpetrators recruited by terrorist organizations go through a process of training and spiritual or religious indoctrination. Hence, at the organizational level, manipulation is a given. That is why there is not an easy way to find out whether a suicide bomber acted merely out of free will or as a result of organizational indoctrination or both.

Even without the organizational indoctrination, societal pressures or cultural stigmas that exist may force people into becoming suicide bombers. For instance, in Chechnya, women who are unable to have children are considered as sources of disgrace and shame. Thus, in order to avoid bringing further shame on their family, they join the Black Widows: “The suicide bombers who brought down Russian jets in August 2004, were unable to have children, a source of stigma in Chechen society” (Bloom 2005, 163). Also, coercion, deception or even blackmailing may exist alongside with an individual predilection to engage in martyrdom. This is why the

33 discussion on whether or not a suicide bomber acted out of free will is not very useful for the definition of suicide terrorism.

In her review essay on suicide terrorism, Martha Crenshaw argues that authors who study suicide terrorist attacks rarely make a comparison of it to other types of terrorist attacks. One exception to this is Robert Pape’s study on the subject. In his book, Dying to Win: The Strategic

Logic of Suicide Terrorism, Pape (2006) compares suicide terrorism to other types of terrorism, which respectively are demonstrative and destructive terrorism. According to his categorization, demonstrative terrorism, which includes the acts of hostage-taking, airline hijacking and explosions announced in advance, is carried out not to give serious physical harm but to convey a message and to gain the attention of the target audiences. Destructive terrorism, on the other hand, is more aggressive in its intention and seeks to mobilize support through the actual use of violence, except for the act of suicide: “For instance, Palestinian terrorists in the 1970s often sought to kill as many Israelis as possible, fully alienating Jewish society but still evoking sympathy from Muslim communities” (Pape 2006, 10). Robert Pape defines suicide terrorism as the most aggressive form of all three, in which coercion takes place at the expense of angering both the victims and the neutral audiences. Since the suicide terrorist’s expectation of surviving the mission is zero, the method of attack supposedly guarantees the perpetrator’s death “such as car bomb, suicide vest, or ramming an airplane into a building” (Pape 2006, 10). Scott Atran

(2004) agrees with Pape and argues that ‘suicide attacks are the most politically destabilizing and psychologically devastating form of terrorism’ (p. 67), since suicide attacks require the involvement of human bombs.

Hence, the primary difference between suicide and non-suicide terrorist attacks is the method of execution. As will be explained in detail in the following chapter, suicide terrorists

34 have the privilege to be the master of their attacks; they hold the steering wheel and as long as they do not arouse any suspicion and the bomb works, they are guaranteed to kill and give harm.

In his interview with Nasra Hassan, a senior Hamas official said that: “The main thing is to guarantee that a large number of the enemy will be affected. With an explosive belt or bag, the bomber has control over vision, location, and timing” (Hassan 2001, 3).

Second, given central role of the suicide bomber, the scare factor increases in suicide terrorist attacks. While any act of terrorism is deeply disturbing causing trauma and stress and disrupting the ordinary life, suicide terrorist attacks strike even more fear and hopelessness among victimized societies by making survivors, onlookers and larger audiences feel at risk by thinking that they could be next. In the words of Bruce Hoffmann, suicide terrorism forces societies that are constantly exposed to such violence, to redefine what normal is: “First you feel nervous about riding the bus. Then you wonder about going to a mall. Then you think twice about sitting for long at your favorite café. Then nowhere seems safe. Terrorist groups have a strategy: to shrink to nothing the areas in which people move freely-and suicide bombers, inexpensive and reliably lethal, are their latest weapons” (Hoffman 2003, 2). Hence, suicide terrorist attacks are particularly effective in striking fear, which according to the consensus among the perpetrators of this violence, is just as important as killing people as it makes life unbearable (Hassan 2001).

The petrifying and demoralizing fact that there are people out there, who do not mind dying to inflict harm on the enemy also gathers more media attention than any other type of terrorism. If anything, there is more to write about regarding the incidents of suicide terrorism.

When someone blows him/herself up in the middle of a crowd, questions fly in every direction:

Who is the suicide bomber? How did the attack happen? Why did they choose to sacrifice

35 themselves? Are they recruited by an organization? What kind of a family or background do they have? Hence, there is more curiosity about both the act and the perpetrator when a suicide terrorist attack happens. In his famous book ‘Terror in the Mind of God’ (2003) Mark

Juergensmeyer argues that terrorists ‘perform’ violence as if they are performers on a street theatre, and when people “who observe these acts take them seriously- are disgusted and repelled by them, and begin to distrust the peacefulness of the world around us—the purpose of this theatre is achieved” (p. 128).

Compared to other types of terrorist attacks, the acts of suicide terrorism are inexpensive and mechanically simple operations that are well suited for both discriminate and indiscriminate killing, which enhances their tactical efficiency (Sprinzak 2000, Sandler and Enders 2011,

Crenshaw 2007). Assuming that the attack will be successful, the suicide bomber does not need a second chance or a complicated rescue mission, hence, s/he can be easily assigned to assassinate high-value, well-protected VIP targets such as presidents, military commanders, and ambassadors. Within this context, in so far as suicide terrorism goes, offense is superior to the defense; because the offense needs to be successful only once: one access to the high-value target is all that it takes for the target and the perpetrator to be destroyed whereas defense has to be successful every time. Just like Paul Wilkinson once said: “Fighting terrorism is like being a goalkeeper. You can make a hundred brilliant saves but the only shot that people remember is that one that gets past you” (London Daily Telegraph, September 1, 1992). Finally, successful suicide terrorist attacks do not carry the risk of private information leakage as the perpetrators are dead and cannot be interrogated.

All of these unique attributes of suicide terrorism increase the popularity of the attack in the eyes of existing terrorist organizations and perpetrators. However, one should note that

36 suicide terrorism is not a new phenomenon. In fact, the strategy of killing one’s self along with one’s victims has been deployed by various groups in the past for its effectiveness in instilling fear and giving harm. When we look at the previous incidents of suicide terrorism, we see that the tactic itself has not really changed all that much over the years; however there are some slight differences in terms of the intensity of recruits’ training or the operative tools being used; today we see explosive devices, back then, suicide missions were executed by using daggers.

In the final part of this chapter, I turn my attention to these previous cases, particularly the suicide attacks carried out by the Ismaili Assassins, Malabar Martyrs and Kamikazes, in order to see whether and how these cases would fit within the definition of suicide terrorism and to lay down some of the similarities and differences between the old and the new perpetrators of the attack. I think that looking at the previous cases helps us, among other things, better understand the present day suicide terrorism. To quote Mia Bloom; “The common themes that emerge from the early case studies provide a template of what is happening today: the role of early education in creating adherents, the appearance of charismatic ambitious leaders, disputes over occupied territory, and the ways in which religion was manipulated to induce followers to kill in the name of God” (Bloom 2005, 4).

The Historical Manifestations of Suicide Terrorism

The first Islamist terrorist organization called the Ismaili Assassins, were the first Shiite

Muslim sect to utilize suicide terrorism during the 11th and 12th centuries. By carrying out suicide attacks, Assassins aimed to purify Islam and unite the Shiite Muslims under one state:

“The Assassins’ goal was to return the Islamic Community of believers (Umma) into a single community and they rebelled against the existing Sunni order and sought to establish their own state—consisting of a series of fortresses and city states” (Bloom 2005, 7). Hence, one can say

37 the Assassins represented the weaker side of an asymmetrical conflict, which was fought against the dominant religious order and its supporters.

Since Ismaili Assassins were the adherers of Prophet Ali, who was martyred at the Battle of Karbala in 680 AD, martyrdom was already highly respected within the Assassin culture.

However, the use martyrdom operations also served a strategic purpose given the choice of their targets; Ismaili Assassins deployed suicide attacks to weed out a privileged group of leaders such as grand viziers, kings, Sunni rulers and Christian Crusaders (Bloom 2005, Pedahzur 2005).

Also, they realized that the willingness to die was an effective strategy, which could strike fear and destroy the morale of the enemy like no other tactic would. Given that their targets were well-protected, high ranking officials, the Assassins’ recruits had to be very well trained and indoctrinated in an organizational setting. Just like modern day religious terrorist groups like

Hamas and Hezbollah, the Assassins used religious schools to train, educate and indoctrinate their followers at an early age. They also made use of an established network of sleeper cells in order to increase the efficacy of the suicide method.

One thing that was particularly different about the martyrdom operations carried out by

Assassins was the use of dagger during the execution of their attacks. As Rapoport (1984) explains, the network functioned as follows: the young Assassin would be assigned to a target such as a prominent official at a very young age. He would earn his master’s trust over the years through his hard work and dedication. When the time was right, the cell would be activated, and he would thrust a dagger into his master’s back and then kill himself. Many attacks carried out by the Ismaili Assassins8 can be categorized as no-escape suicide missions, after which the assassin had no intention to stay alive. In fact, surviving a mission was considered a shame:

8 The Assassins continued their attacks until the thirteenth century Mongol invasion which exterminated all the Ismaili population in the Elburz mountainous region.

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“They did not prepare gateway routes in advance, and considered death in action a source of pride. The fact that they did not fear death augmented significantly the effectiveness of their operations” (Pedahzur 2005, 9).

The Muslim communities of Malabar, Aceh and the Philippines also adopted suicide terrorism during the 18th and 19th cc to harm and intimidate the foreign colonial occupiers. Hence their attacks were politically and religiously justified: “The suicidal attacks by Muslims in Asia represent a pre-modern form of terrorism---as a more politicized variant of a type of anti-colonial resistance that long antedates the twentieth century” (Dale 1988, 36). Mia Bloom writes that especially in Malabar, suicide bombers would directly strike the enemy and kill as many as possible before their imminent death: “The Jihadis, called juramentados, would rush the enemy, trying to kill as many Spaniards as possible, until they themselves were killed...there is no record of a juramentado who ever returned home alive” (Bloom 2005, 12).

Similar to the suicide bombers of today’s Hamas, the Malabari Martyrs had to go through an intensive training program to physically and psychologically prepare for their suicide attacks.

However, the way in which they showed their commitment to their missions was quiet original.

Instead of leaving a videotaped statement explaining their motivation and current state of mind before they carry out their attacks, Malabar Martyrs would divorce their wives, dress up in generic white clothes, and participate in religious ceremonies, which would keep them focused on their missions. Societal pressures such as families and peers, also tied the hands of the

Martyrs, making it very difficult for them to change their minds once they decided to engage in the missions of self-sacrifice. The suicide terrorist attacks of the Asian Muslims continued until the mid-20th century and came to an end due to some progressive changes in the political sphere which allowed them to be more active in politics.

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Finally, Japanese Kamikazes, also known as the ‘Divine Wind’, adopted suicide missions as a war tactic against the American Pacific fleet towards the end of the World War II. The idea of turning planes into human missiles was devised by imperial navy admiral Onishi Takijiro, who knew that Japanese forces had lost almost all of their aerial power and were in desperate need of a new strategy to turn the tide in favor of them. The Kamikaze squads were comprised of

2200 young men, mostly university students or graduates of special training programs, whose primary task was to crush their planes into the enemy ships to sink their fleet (Bloom 2005, Pape

2006). As previously explained, suicide attacks provide the perpetrators with a chance to ‘keep the struggle alive’ if not win a war, by destroying the morale of the enemy and creating an illusion of power parity (Lanche 2009). In an asymmetrical conflict, such an illusion matters especially for the losing team. The instructor of the suicide attacks, Hichiro Naemura, admitted that: “I did not believe we could win the war against the overwhelmingly powerful enemy, no matter how well we fought…Our special kamikaze tactics could delay the enemy’s advance towards our homeland and inflict severe damage upon him. By delaying his encroachment we hoped that the enemy would agree to negotiate a truce” (Pape 2006, 35).

Hence, Japanese Kamikaze squads were motivated primarily by nationalism, and the hope that their death could make a change in Japan’s standing in the war. However, unlike many of the today’s organizationally-sponsored perpetrators of suicide terrorism, Kamikazes did not go through extensive training or preparation sessions before they carried out their attacks. Given that the tactic was deployed as a war strategy under time pressure, the Kamikaze units did not really have a chance to be fully trained and indoctrinated. In fact, there were no further formal instructions given to them besides the order to fly their planes directly into American warships.

As suggested, one advantage of suicide terrorism is the mechanical simplicity of the attack’s

40 execution: the pilots only had to learn how to take off the rest was free fall, which would not only terrify the enemy but also cause massive damage.

Even though there was no intensive training, the group pressure definitely helped to increase the commitment of the young Kamikaze pilots to their missions. According to Ariel

Merari, Admiral Onishi gave the following speech just minutes before the Kamikaze squads were sent to their final missions: “I know that it is too much to ask and I don’t want to force anyone of you to do it, so if anyone of you would not like to participate, one step forward.”

Unsurprisingly, nobody stepped forward. In an interview, an old Kamikaze pilot, who accidentally survived his mission by landing on a nearby island due to engine failure, said that:

“It did not matter if I wanted to go or did not want to go; I just thought that I had to carry out my job…. I think the sense of responsibility that I had to carry out my task was stronger than fear”

(Roberts 2006).

Another similarity between the kamikaze pilots and many of today’s perpetrators of suicide terrorism is the surrounding supportive culture of martyrdom. Even though Japanese public opinion towards Kamikaze pilots and their missions has changed over time, at the time, a majority of the Japanese citizens admired the Kamikaze pilots because of their acts of self- sacrifice for the country and they showed their admiration whenever they had a chance:

Although the kamikaze bombers were dedicated to a nationalistic rather than religious cause, those soldiers who died in battle…became national gods. A cult of personality, akin to that of Palestinian and Tamil martyrs, developed around them. Comparable to the posters that are immediately put up after every Palestinian martyrdom attack and the pamphlets of Black Tigers distributed at the annual Heroes’ Day celebrations, the kamikaze were lionized in the press and in communiques in which they were referred to as “god-heroes” and their photos were publicized in the newspapers. One young kamikaze pilot wrote to his parents that a film crew had visited his unit (He wrote: “I hope I looked photogenic today”). Kamikaze pilots received fan-mail and handmade dolls from schoolgirls to take on their missions. Civilians would approach them in the street and express their appreciation (Bloom 2005, 16).

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Looking at these previous incidents of suicide terrorism, we see that the characteristics that made suicide terrorism an effective strategy in the past have remained relatively unchanged over time. The value of having a perpetrator who is ready to die for a cause is very favorable within the context of asymmetrical conflict. This is why suicide terrorism has always been a popular strategy adopted by many terrorist groups. Despite differences in the choice of weapons, in many aspects, the historical and contemporary suicide terrorist perpetrators are very much alike; they share similar individual motivations, go through relatively comparable training and indoctrination sessions, and are exposed to a high level of societal and cultural veneration. Some of these similarities and differences will be revisited in Chapter 6, which makes a qualitative analysis of three different terrorist organizations: Hamas, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and

Asbat al-Ansar.

Conclusion

Terrorism is a loaded word. It is open to subjective attribution of positive or negative qualities depending on who is victimized by it and who is perpetrating it. While there has been and will always be controversy regarding the definition of terrorism, this chapter has tried to shed light on some of this controversy by acknowledging the most pressing issues pertaining to what terrorism is and what it is not. To the end, I have first reviewed the scholarly debate on terrorism, and discussed the subjective gap between societally perceived and self-portrayed image of a terrorist, which can be summarized as one man’s freedom fighter is another’s terrorist. I have explained why terrorists cannot be considered the same as soldiers of the armed forces, who operate under the law of war and how weapon of the weak argument distances the perpetrator from the attack. I have underlined that while poor economic and social conditions might strengthen the conviction to resort to terrorism, the use of terrorism is not only

42 circumstantial; it is strategic and politically motivated. Then, I have distinguished between guerrilla warfare and terrorism; emphasizing that despite similar tactics being employed, terrorists, much to their regret, are non-state actors who do not have control over a specific territory or populace, and who do not practice restraint in terms of their targets of choice. Hence, while guerrillas solely target military forces, and installments, terrorists attack both military and civilian targets.

Finally, I have distinguished between suicide and other terrorist attacks emphasizing the pivotal role of the death of perpetrator for the former to succeed, and have discussed the unique attributes of suicide terrorism that increases its popularity over other types of attacks. In this section, a new set of controversial inquiries pertaining to suicide terrorism have come to the fore.

For example, should no-escape attacks be considered under the same category as suicide terrorism? How about unsuccessful incidents of suicide terrorism? Should they be analyzed along with successful cases? How important is ‘free-will’ in so far as suicide bombers are concerned? I have tried to answer all of these questions keeping in mind the limitations of the available datasets and the existing variables that I will be using in the next chapters. I have concluded the discussion on definitions and typology of terrorism by illustrating three cases of the earlier versions of suicide terrorism in an effort to show the similarities and differences between the historical and the contemporary manifestations. This analysis has revealed that what made suicide terrorism an effective strategy back then is what still makes it popular today.

Having made a definition of terrorism and suicide terrorism, in the next chapters of this dissertation, I will be focused solely on suicide terrorist attacks and try to account for the variations within suicide terrorism in terms of fatal outcomes and perpetrators.

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Chapter 3: An Empirical Analysis of the Lethality of Suicide Terrorism

Introduction

On a Tuesday morning in August 2012, two suicide bombers targeted two different locations in Kabul, Afghanistan. One was a hospital gate bazaar in south west Kabul packed with people shopping for groceries to prepare for the Eid –holiday weekend. The other was at an outdoors food market in the north of Kabul, which was heavily populated with child vendors.

The two attacks killed roughly 70 people and injured more than 100, most of whom were women and children (Graham-Harrison 2012). In a different case in 2009, a suicide bomber disguised as a police officer detonated an improvised explosive device close to home of a police officer, killing the officer himself and his family in Ninawa, Iraq. In the brief aftermath of the attack, another suicide bomber, who was also disguised as a police officer, detonated another explosive.

Only this time the attack took place near the crowd of civilians who had volunteered to help the victims of the first attack. The second attack killed 11 officers, 22 civilians and wounded 60 people in total9.

Examples of similar cases abound in which suicide bombers claimed the lives of innocent people randomly and unexpectedly. Most of these cases are premeditated attacks by multiple perpetrators in which the second perpetrator walks into the scene of the attack minutes after the

9 National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). (2011). Global Terrorism Database. Retrieved from http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd

44 first suicide bomber completes his mission to kill the people who try to help the victims of the previous attack. As these and similar examples suggest, suicide attacks are a lethal and psychologically devastating form of violence, which makes this specific type of terrorism especially popular among perpetrators. This chapter will argue that the popularity of suicide terrorism can be attributed to its effectiveness in killing people, and seek to explain the variation in the number of casualties that result from suicide attacks.

As previously stated, suicide terrorism is a deadly form of political violence carried out by politically motivated perpetrators who voluntarily use their bodies to deliver and detonate explosives in order to communicate their grievances and achieve their political goals. The fear and chaos that come as a result of these attacks usually reach beyond the primary targets and spread across the larger populations. Riaz Hassan (2011) attributes the rising popularity of suicide terrorism as a weapon of choice to the tactic’s effectiveness in causing fatalities and instigating fear and mayhem among innocent people. His statistics show that even though suicide attacks constitute only 4 % of all terrorist attacks worldwide from 1981 to 2006, they account for

32% of all terrorism-related deaths (Hassan 2011, 27).

The statistics derived from the Global Terrorism Database (2011) also display a similar pattern: while suicide attacks make up 1.8 % of the overall terrorist incidents worldwide (See

Figure 1), the fatalities that result from suicide terrorist attacks account for 20% of all the terrorism-related fatalities in the world (See Figure 2). For instance, from 1970 to 2010, the average number of casualties from suicide attacks is 39.29 (with a standard deviation of 66.42, min: 0 and max: 1362), whereas the same average for non-suicide attacks is as low as 4.7 (SD:

45.56, min: 0 and max: 10000). All of this evidence points to the same direction that suicide attacks are deadlier than non-suicide attacks.

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When we focus solely on the cases of suicide terrorist attacks, we see that the numbers of people who die from these also vary significantly. Table 2 demonstrates the variation in the number of fatalities by suicide and non-suicide attacks worldwide.

Table 2: The Numbers of People Killed in Suicide vs. Non-Suicide Attacks, 1970-2010 Observations Mean St. Dev. Min.# killed Max. # killed

Suicide 1,549 13.71 52.54 0 1,381

Non-Suicide 69,426 1.85 8.39 0 518

Source: National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). (2011). Global Terrorism Database. Retrieved from http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd

As can be seen, suicide terrorism is not only deadlier, but also the count of fatalities due to suicide terrorist attacks varies profoundly compared to that of non-suicide attacks. While some suicide attacks generate no casualties, some others kill as high as 1,381 people. This represents a very high variation in terms of fatalities especially considering the fact that the type of terrorist attack is held constant. How could such a simple tactic of blowing one’s self up result in zero death in some cases and thousands of deaths in others? Why is there such a dramatic difference in the number of people killed due to suicide attacks? In other words, why are some suicide attacks much more effective than other suicide attacks? This chapter seeks to answer these questions.

Suicide terrorism is an extremely human-driven act of violence and cannot take place in the absence of psychologically motivated suicide bombers. Hence, the tactical advantage of suicide terrorism derives from the presence of this human element and the amount of control that perpetrators have on their attacks. Suicide bombers have a strategic advantage in killing people by being at the right place at the right time, thereby controlling the location, timing and targets of the attack (Benmelech and Berrebi 2007). As terrorism expert Yoni Fighel once suggested,

46 suicide bombers are essentially “guided bombs with eyes and a brain” thereby knowing where to go and whom to attack in order to do the most substantive damage and kill the highest number of people (Roberts 2006). Within this context, I argue that the variation in the number of fatalities that result from suicide terrorist attacks is conditional upon the tactical advantages of suicide terrorism, such as the choice of location and the availability of targets. While the current literature descriptively acknowledges the tactical advantages of suicide terrorism (Benmelech and Berrebi 2007, Gupta 2008, Kydd and Walter 2006, Sprinzak 2000), to the best of my knowledge, there has not been an empirical study to test this argument using statistical evidence.

My primary goal in this chapter is to address this gap.

With this purpose in mind, I first review the literature that discusses the effectiveness of terrorism in general. While doing that I justify why I chose lethality as a measure of effectiveness. Second, I expand on my theoretical expectations for what will be particularly influential in determining the lethality of suicide attacks. Third, I detail the data and methods used in the subsequent analysis. Finally, I discuss the results, and talk about the contributions and limitations of my findings.

Lethality as a Measure of Effectiveness

Whether terrorism an effective strategy or not is a difficult question to answer since

‘effectiveness’ as a variable is not easy to quantify. Some scholars assess the effectiveness of terrorism by looking at how successful terrorist attacks are. In order to determine the success of a given terrorist attack, they study the objectives of terrorist organizations and whether terrorist attacks help organizations achieve their goals more effectively or time-efficiently (Abrahms

2006, McCormick and Fritz 2010). These studies summarize the goals of terrorist organizations under two general categories: process and outcome goals. Process goals are defined as narrow

47 strategic goals through which terrorist groups try to sustain their very existence. By narrow, they look at goals that fall short of achieving large scale political concessions through compliance of the target government. For instance, guaranteeing funding, enlarging the membership of the organization through new recruits, attracting media attention to foster mobilization and support at the society level are various examples of process goals.

Outcome goals have a more confined meaning and refer directly to the publicly announced political goals of the terrorist groups. A few examples would be the establishment of an independent Kurdish land, establishment of Caliphate rule all around the world, removal of military forces from what a group of people considers to be one’s homeland, etc. Thus, the important distinction between the two sets of goals is that while process goals do not require government compliance in order to be fulfilled, outcomes goals cannot be achieved unless the target government complies by making substantial concessions. Studies so far have taken into consideration whether terrorist attacks in general are effective means of advancing both process and outcome goals (Atkinson et al. 1987, Bloom 2005, Friedland and Merari 1985, Kydd and

Walter 2002).

For instance, in his empirical study on terrorism’s effectiveness in generating government’s concessions, Max Abrahms (2006) looks at a sample of 42 outcome goals that are pursued by Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) designated by the US State Department. His findings show that FTOs that attack military targets such as Hamas are only moderately successful in extracting policy demands, whereas FTOs that attack civilian targets fail politically.

Thus, he concludes that terrorist campaigns fail as coercive strategies since they rarely lead to the fulfillment of the outcome goals that they set to achieve. Chenoweth et al. (2009) argues that

Abrahms’ research suffers from selection bias, since his analysis is restricted to actively violent

48 groups and thus condones the former FTOs which renounced violence upon realization of their policy demands and thus were removed from the State Department’s list.

Drawing conclusions about the effectiveness of terrorist attacks based on the fulfillment of outcome goals is problematic because many of these groups have more than one goal. Most of the time, they achieve some of these and fail at others. Also, while public statements could provide us with some insight as to why perpetrators do what they do, most of these statements are not meant to be achieved; they are a part of the propaganda to mobilize public support (Lutz and Lutz 2009). For instance, in the US Department’s list of terrorist organizations, one of the objectives of Al Qaeda is stated as “establishing a pan-Islamic Caliphate throughout the world by working with allied Islamic extremist groups to overthrow regimes that it deems non-Islamic.”

Relying on the fulfillment of statements like these for effectiveness will lead us nowhere since terrorist attacks had not generated and will certainly not likely to generate such dramatic redistributions of global power.

Moreover, if political concessions were the ultimate goals of terrorist groups, then we would expect that the terrorist violence would come to an end once the governments make the desired political concessions or when they take steps toward moderation. However, there are quite a few cases as well as a growing literature on counter-terrorism that suggest that the opposite is true; terrorist violence increases rather than decreases following the target government’s concessions (Bueno de Mesquita and Dickson 2007). For instance, the Basque separatist group Euzkadi ta Askatasuna (ETA) had intensified and increased the number of its terrorist attacks on Spanish government after the Basque country has been granted autonomy by the newly democratized Spanish government in 1978. The number of people killed by ETA was a total of 73 between 1968 and 1977, which rose to 235 between years 1978 and 1980. This

49 example suggests that political concessions that are categorized as outcome goals of terrorist groups do not completely capture what terrorists are after. Terrorist groups also value, maybe more than outcome goals, less strategic, yet more achievable goals that help them make it to the headlines consistently. As Robert Pape argues, terrorism is conceivably an effective coercive tactic even if its practitioners inconsistently succeed in inducing government compliance (Pape

2003, 9).

In his analysis of the outcomes of suicide campaigns, Pape (2003) concludes that suicide terrorism is an effective tactic since six out of eleven suicide terrorism campaigns succeeded in bringing about a political change. He posits that suicide terrorism is strategic, and its main goal is to coerce modern democracies to make significant concessions to national self-determination.

Pape’s work has also generated various criticisms. Some scholars emphasize the modesty of his sample size (Abrahms 2006), which inhibits generalizability of his conclusions. Some argue that Pape’s work confuses the fine line between process and outcomes goals (Crenshaw

2007, Hoveyda 2005); while Pape tries to demonstrate that terrorism often succeeds in fulfilling outcome goals, his sample includes cases of process goals as well such as winning back a prisoner to sustain the group. Assaf Moghadam (2006) argues that Pape’s sample is selectively biased since it does not include ongoing campaigns that failed to bring any political concession for decades.

Mia Bloom (2005) agrees with Robert Pape that suicide terrorism is motivated by a political desire to end foreign occupation or to gain independence. However, she argues that the most attractive characteristic of suicide terrorism is its ability to enhance the prestige of a given organization by giving it a competitive advantage over rival terrorist groups in the domains of recruitment, publicity and funding. Hence, when other coercive tactics fail, groups ‘jump onto

50 the suicide bandwagon’ in order to mobilize support and force the other rival terrorist groups out of the power competition. However her data are entirely qualitative and her outbidding argument is still in need of empirical testing. Also, as Martha Crenshaw (2007) notes, one of her case studies (out of three) seems to offer contradictory evidence to her main argument. In her analysis of the Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers, Bloom argues that by the time the LTTE began its first suicide attack in 1987, the other rival Tamil groups had already been completely weakened and out of the competition. If the systematic elimination of the rival organizations in Sri Lanka was completed before the suicide attacks of the LTTE had even begun, then her argument does not really hold water in the case of Tamil Tigers.

Studies that emphasize process over outcomes goals consider terrorism as a strategy of political mobilization more so than a strategy of political coercion (McCormick and Giordano

2007, Jenkins 1974). As Brian Jenkins (1974) noted “terrorists want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead.” Terrorist attacks draw considerable media attention, which introduces the terrorists’ cause to greater masses and help generate new supporters for the group. Through frequent attacks and boosted media attention, terrorists attempt to provoke an extreme government response, which would also serve to mobilize popular support. Terrorist organizations hope that inflicting humanitarian casualties, and spreading fear and anxiety across society would ignite repressive counter measures by the targeted governments. As governments resort to harsh and indiscriminate responses to inhibit terrorism, they would inadvertently radicalize and mobilize support for the terrorists’ political cause (Mishal and Sela 2000, Bueno de Mesquita and Dickson 2007). Thus, these scholars argue that process goals do matter just as, and maybe even more than the outcome goals.

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Other research focusing on the effectiveness question analyze the tangible costs and traumatic consequences of terrorist attacks such as destruction of infrastructure or human capital

(Becker and Murphy 2000), drop of national income and economic growth (Abadie and

Gardeazabal 2003), stock market fluctuations (Shiller 2003) or the increase in political instability and the resulting decline of life satisfaction in the target country (Frey, Luechinger and Stutzer

2004). According to this line of research, one of the biggest costs of terrorism is economic.

Terrorism in general derogates economic activity in multiple ways: 1) it reduces capital stock of a country, 2) diverts resources away from the targeted countries to other destinations—for instance, transnational terrorist attacks caused Greece to lose 9% of its tourism market share,

Turkey 5% and Israel less than 1% between years 1991 and 2000 (Drakos and Kutan 2003) increases transaction costs by inhibiting the productive use of domestic resources. Studies also look at people’s utility losses due to high numbers of terrorist incidents. They suggest that the high numbers of terrorist fatalities have a statistically significant effect on the life satisfaction of people: citizens of countries that suffer frequent incidents of terrorism have considerably less life satisfaction than citizens of countries with stable political conditions (Frey et al. 2004).

All of the above studies make important contributions to the understanding of effectiveness of terrorism in general. This chapter will add to this literature in two ways. First, I narrow down the scope of my research to one a specific type of terrorism, which is suicide terrorism. Most studies on terrorism, with some exceptions (Pedahzur 2005, Riaz 2011) look at terrorist attacks in general, which limit their ability to explain variations within suicide attacks.

This chapter does not treat suicide terrorism as monolithic, which distinguishes it from previous studies.

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Second, I use lethality as an indicator of effectiveness. As previously stated, some scholars posit that terrorists want people watching, not dead so that their imaginations would do the terrorists’ dirty work for them (Jenkins 1974, Nacos 2000). I, on the other hand, argue that unless terrorist attacks consistently impose significant costs on the other side, the imagination of the target population would dry up and the perpetrators would not be able to realize any of their goals, whether process or outcome. Hence, terrorist attacks need to be lethal so that the target audience would take the perpetrators seriously. While it is true that the terrorists want and need their audience, in order to keep their audience on their toes, terrorists first need to demonstrate their resolve. Since talk is cheap, and terrorists have the disadvantaged end of the stick given the asymmetrical warfare, they cannot simply rely on the imagination of the target audience for long without executing unpredictable, frequent and gruesome attacks (Kydd and Walter 2006).

Hence, James Winkates’s argument is well taken; “nothing succeeds like success” (Winkates

2009, 8). Deadly terrorist attacks signal greater resolve and commitment, thereby strengthening the otherwise weak bargaining positions of the perpetrators.

Lethality also matters since lethal attacks attract more media attention. As number of fatalities mount, terrorists achieve higher levels of publicity, which extend the psychological impact of these attacks beyond their immediate targets. Through the use of the media, terrorists demonstrate a large group of audiences what they are capable of delivering with limited resources, thereby demoralizing the society and weakening their trust in the government. When terrorist attacks are dramatic and bloodier resulting in a significant number of casualties, they have better chances of being on prime time. The contemporary news media crave for “drama, shock and tragedy” (Nacos 2000, 175) and lethal terrorist attacks have all the ingredients to satisfy this craving. In other words, suicide terrorism leads as long as it bleeds.

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Finally, lethal attacks are also severe in terms of their outcomes, which affect the targeted population with dramatic financial costs. These attacks not only kill or severely injure people, but they also damage physical property and destroy critical infrastructure such as roads, bridges, power plants, public buildings, historical sites, etc. As economist Paul Krugman notes, even though the losses that come as a result of terrorist attacks are “imposed by men and not by God, they are similar to the costs of a natural disaster such as an earthquake or hurricane” (Krugman

2004, 1). Last but not least, severe terrorist attacks have a severe impact on the economy. After the devastating 9/11 attacks, financial markets such as New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ had seen an immediate and dramatic decline in the share prices (Navarro and Spencer 2001).

For all these reasons, I argue that lethality is an important indicator of effectiveness of terrorism in general, and suicide terrorism in particular. Lethal attacks communicate a more solid message to societies than non-lethal attacks, and shift the conditions of asymmetrical warfare to the advantage of the otherwise weaker perpetrators. Thus, this chapter focuses on lethality as an outcome. Given that lethality matters as an outcome, and that suicide terrorism is particularly effective in delivering lethal thereby more effective attacks, what is it about this particular type of terrorism that generates considerable number of fatalities?

The Tactical Advantages of Suicide Terrorism

Most of the scholarly literature on terrorism treats the terrorist organizations as the unit of analysis and looks at motivational and structural explanations such as the different ideologies of terrorist organizations (Kindt Post and Schneider 2009), the continuing presence of financial support for a given terrorist organization (Giraldo and Trinkunas 2007) or the territorial control that an organization has (Sinno 2010) to understand the lethality of terrorist attacks. However, when it comes to suicide attacks, none of these studies quantitatively acknowledge “the elephant

54 in the room”, which is the tactical advantage of using “suicide” as a form of attack, and inevitable impact of this on the lethal consequences of these attacks (Clauset, Young and

Gleditsch 2007, 2010). Almost any article that specifically focuses on suicide terrorism starts with a definition of suicide terrorism followed by a list of tactical advantages that suicide attacks provide with the perpetrators such as being able to see the how close the targets are stationed vis-

à-vis the blast radius or the population density at the moment of the attack (Sprinzak 2000,

Pedahzur 2005, Hoffman 2006). One should note that these tactical advantages do not derive from the ideology or structural characteristics of terrorist organizations or the availability of funding; they are simply a function of the raw nature of suicide attacks.

First, suicide attacks are low-cost operations that are simple to execute. Most of the bombs being used for suicide operations are standard bombs or homemade devices made of fertilizers that are cheap to assemble. According to an estimate given by Bruce Hoffman “the total cost of a typical Palestinian suicide operation is about one hundred fifty dollars” (Hoffman

2006, 133). This is interesting primarily because the cost of a suicide attack is not necessarily correlated with its potential deadliness. While most lethal terrorist attacks require sophisticated weapons, funding, heightened levels of expertise and training, an average suicide attack can technically take place in the absence or minimum presence of these factors and can still kill considerably. The seminal work of Jeffrey Lewis (2012) takes this argument a step further by suggesting that it is the deliberate choice of the terrorists to not seek very sophisticated, high-tech weapons since these weapons are much more difficult to manufacture, assemble and use compared to their low-tech counterparts. Hence, terrorist groups imitate the guidance system of the most advanced weapons available by using “suicide bombers” who, in Lewis’ words, offer the best of the both worlds. By effectively turning their bodies into bombs and executing these

55 lethal attacks, suicide terrorists in fact imitate the precision and sophistication of the most complex technologies. Thus, suicide terrorism debunks our faith in the well-established superiority of high-tech weapons over low-tech ones.

Second, despite their unsophisticated nature, suicide operations guarantee high numbers of casualties and physical damage, which lead to massive media coverage and public attention.

There are cases in which deadly terrorist attacks increase the support for the terrorist group in question. For instance, the number of raids carried out by Fatah on outlying Israeli settlements across the Jordanian border in 1960s had gotten Fatah a great deal of support from the

Palestinian population (Roberts 2006).

Third, suicide terrorism is the most human-contingent form of terrorism, which gives the designated perpetrators the leverage to carry out the attack at the ripest time and the busiest location, targeting the densely populated areas such as shopping malls, coffee shops, movie theaters or subways during rush hours (Clauset, Young and Gleditsch 2007). Unlike remotely controlled bombs, suicide attacks are more structured and controlled ways of killing people.

They are also extremely difficult to thwart once the suicide bomber is en route to the target. As long as the switch that ignites the bomb works properly, at least some damage or partial success is achieved. Partial success takes place when a suicide bomber detonates a bomb earlier than originally planned (without necessarily making it to his/her main target) but still causes civilian deaths and injuries as well as physical damage. Gordon McCormick and Lindsay Fritz (2010) acknowledge this situation as follows:

Conventional bombers depend on the unwitting cooperation of their targets to carry out their missions. The bomb itself is stationary. The targets of an attack must come within the effective blast radius of the bomb before the explosion can have the intended effect. In the case of a timed detonation in particular, which constitutes the majority of the bombings, the attacker has no control over who or how many are caught in the fragmentation pattern. The suicide attacker by contrast is a smart bomb with a human

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guidance system. He can vary the timing and vector of his attack to improve his chances of hitting his target and maximizing his intended effects (McCormick and Fritz 2010, 140).

It is also believed that suicide attacks that take place in confined areas or inside closed spaces increase the lethality of these attacks, which can again be controlled by the perpetrators. If the suicide bomber detonates the bomb in an open area or an outdoor place, the blast is much less effective as the waves of the explosion disappear into the thin air. However, if the attack takes place in an indoor location such as inside of a bus or a coffee-shop; almost everyone in the close proximity of the attacker (within 10 to 15 feet of the blast) is immediately destroyed (Patel et al.

2012).

In addition to this, the victims who survive an indoor explosion are usually severely wounded by the nails and heavy shrapnel that enter their bodies at high velocity, or they are thrown against hard surfaces such as walls or concrete floors. Another impact of an explosion that occurs in confined locations is the blast trauma. The impact of sound waves from the explosion vibrates through the bodies of the victims. In most cases, the victims of the suicide attacks suffer from widespread tissue damage, shattered bones, damaged ears because of overpressure, imploded internal organs and severe burns (Almogy et al. 2004). Hence, perpetrators plan their attacks to target indoor locations rather than outdoors places.

Another tactical advantage of suicide terrorism is that, since suicide terrorism’s success depends on the death of the perpetrator, there is no fear that the bombers will be talked into revealing top secret information regarding the masterminds behind the attack or the specifics of the organization that they belong to, if there indeed is one. Hence, there is no need to strategize a b- plan or an escape route in a suicide attack.

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Finally, the use of multiple and female suicide bombers can potentially increase the lethality of suicide attacks. When suicide attacks are carried out by multiple perpetrators in a row, the second bomber usually supplements the mission of the first one by targeting the people who crowd the scene in order to help the survivors of the first attack. Hence suicide attacks that involve multiple perpetrators are likely to produce more casualties compared to suicide attacks undertaken by a single perpetrator.

According to some scholars, the gender of the suicide bomber could also be indicative of higher numbers of casualties resulting from these attacks (Zedalis 2004, Speckhard and

Akhmedova 2006). Compared to their male counterparts, women are believed to enhance the lethality of suicide terrorist attacks by hiding bombs and explosives under their dresses or faking pregnancy, thereby avoiding detection and facilitating their pass through the security checkpoints. In Mia Bloom’s interview (2005) with an ex-LTTE cadre, Bernard Henri Levy, he argued that in LTTE, women’s training included hiding a hand-grenade in their vagina. Thus, female operatives are expected to be more successful in carrying out lethal suicide attacks than male operatives.

Hypotheses

Given the literature on the unique tactical advantages of suicide terrorism, this chapter tests the following hypotheses that pertain to the location-specific advantages of suicide terrorism:

Hypothesis 1: Suicide attacks that take place in high density locations (such as markets

during busy times, busy streets, crowded coffee shops etc.) compared to low or medium

density locations will generate higher numbers of fatalities.

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Hypothesis 2: Suicide attacks that take place indoors will generate higher numbers of

fatalities than those that take place outdoors.

Hypothesis 3: Suicide attacks that are carried out in easily accessible locations will

generate higher numbers of fatalities than difficult-to-access locations.

I also test the following hypotheses pertaining to the specific targets and perpetrators of suicide attacks:

Hypothesis 4: Indiscriminate suicide attacks that target civilians will result in higher

numbers of fatalities than discriminate ones, which target a specific person or entity,

such a politician or a military convoy.

Hypothesis 5: Suicide attacks that involve multiple perpetrators will be deadlier than

attacks carried out by a single perpetrator.

Hypothesis 6: Suicide attacks carried out by female perpetrators will be deadlier than

suicide attacks carried out by male perpetrators.

Data and Operationalization of Variables

This study employs a negative binomial regression model in order to test whether the strategic advantages of suicide terrorism such as the number of perpetrators involved or the strategic choice of location, would explain the increased lethality of suicide attacks. It uses original data that supplement the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism database (2011), which is an open-source comprehensive database that includes both domestic and international terrorist events (more than 88, 000 terrorist incidents are reported), from 1970 to 2010.

According to the GTD, in order for an incident to be considered a terrorist event, it should satisfy

59 all three of the following criteria: The incident must be intentional, it must entail some level of violence or threat of violence and the perpetrators must be sub-national actors (Global Terrorism

Database 2011). The reason that I chose this database is because it is the most contemporary one with a substantive list of variables that range from the regions/locations where acts of terrorism are widely seen to types of weapons that are heavily used in these attacks.

In the attack information section, the “suicide attack” exists as a categorical variable, which is coded as “1” for cases where there is evidence that perpetrator did not intend to escape from the attack alive, and “0” for those where such evidence does not exist. Thus, using this dataset, I am able to easily spot the suicide attacks. Instead of looking at all the suicide terrorist incidents starting from 1970, I will start the data from 1998 onwards. There are two reasons for limiting the time period to 1998 through 2010. First, the narrative summary of the incidents are only available for the terrorist attacks that occurred after 1997. I need to use this information in order to code the location specific variables such as density, indoors vs. outdoors, accessibility, etc. Second, there are not many incidents of suicide terrorism that took place before this period.

Thus, 1998-2010 will be a more convenient time period for the purposes of this research. In the original database, for the time period of 1998 to 2010, 567 attacks are coded as suicide attacks in the Middle East and South Asia, which comprise 10.88% of all terrorist incidents in the data.

While GTD involves terrorist attacks from all around the world, I limit my analysis to two regions: Middle East & North Africa, and South Asia. The Middle East- North Africa region consists of 24 countries, which are Algeria, Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan,

Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, North Yemen, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Yemen,

Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, West Bank and Gaza, Western Sahara and

Yemen. The region of South Asia includes 10 countries, which are Afghanistan, Bangladesh,

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Bhutan, India, Maldives, Mauritius, Nepal, Pakistan, Seychelles and Sri Lanka. According to the

Global Terrorism Database, the Middle East-North Africa and South Asia represent two regions accounting for 42.87 % of all terrorist incidents worldwide from 1980 to 2010.

My dependent variable is the lethality of suicide attacks, which equals to the number of fatalities that result from these attacks or the sum of numbers of people killed per suicide attack from 1998 to 2010. The unit of analysis is, therefore, the events or suicide attacks. In the original database, the numbers of people killed and wounded are coded separately, using the independent sources that report the numbers of casualties. The codebook notes that when different sources report different numbers of casualties, the number reported by the most recent source has been given. According to this original coding, from 1998 to 2010, the number of people killed per attack in Middle East and South Asia range from a high of 141 to a low of zero, with a mean of 13.32. The number of people wounded in the same regions range from a high of

552 to a low of zero, with a mean of 35.47. Since I focus on deadliness as an outcome, I will only look at number of people that are reported as dead as a result of the suicide attacks. While some of the people who are reported as “severely wounded” might lose their lives in the aftermath of the attack, since I cannot be certain how many of these injured cases would actually become fatalities, I chose to focus on the count of deaths per suicide attack as my dependent variable.

The numeric variable of the number of people killed in the original dataset under casualty information includes the number of all victims and attackers who died as a direct result of the incident. In so far as the suicide terrorism attacks are concerned, one can argue that the death of the perpetrator should be excluded from the fatalities since these perpetrators are not the actual victims and their deaths only inflate the casualty rates of those who really suffered from these

61 attacks. While this line of reasoning has its merit, it is not necessarily true. Casualties refer to the number of humanitarian casualties that result from terrorist attacks, and if a suicide attack by nature necessitates the death of the perpetrator, the death of the perpetrator should also be included in the casualty information. Moreover, the death of the perpetrator is not always a given in all suicide attacks. If something goes wrong during the execution of the attack, the perpetrator may not die, but may get severely injured. So, death of the perpetrator is an indicator that the attack was in fact successful and effective. This is the reason that I kept this variable as it is.

There are six main independent variables in this study. The density of a given location is the first main independent variable. Since the original dataset does not include a variable to assess the density of people in a given location, I coded a new variable which could get either one of three numerical values for different levels of density. The variable is coded 1 for low density locations, 2 for medium and 3 for high density locations. The coding was done based on the narrative of the attack provided in the original dataset. If the summary of an attack specifically mentioned the location as a busy street, crowded marketplace, or rush hour traffic, density received a value of 3. For instance, in the original dataset, one suicide attack incident is summarized as follows: “09/10/2007: Twin suicide bombers targeted a crowded market in

Southern Afghanistan. The attack that has been blamed on the Taliban was aimed at the police presence in the area of Gereshk, Afghanistan” (Global Terrorism Database 2011). This attack gets a value of 3 since the summary of the incident explicitly notes that the marketplace was crowded.

Road-sides, non-busy places, distant checkpoints at insignificant times of the day, were coded as low density locations and received a value of 1, and anything in between the two extremes were classified as medium-density locations, and given a 2. An example to a low

62 density location is the following: “06/12/2007: …a Taliban suicide bomber detonated explosives near a police patrol of three on the outskirts of Lashkar Gah, Helmand Province, Afghanistan”

(Global Terrorism Database, 2011). This attack receives a value of 1, since the number of police officers patrolling were noted as 3, which is a very small number, and the attack took place on the “outskirts” of a city, not in the city center. While there could potentially be more people in the area during the occurrence of the attack, the summary of the incident does not verify the presence of any other bystanders. Hence, it is fair to code this incident under “low density” locations.

An attack that was coded as a medium-density location is the following: “01/15/2006: A suicide car bomb targeted a Canadian military convoy in Do Rahee (District), Kandahar

(Province) city, Afghanistan, damaging the military vehicles” (Global Terrorism Database 2011).

The reason that this particular incident was given the value of 2 is because the attack took place in the city and targeted a military convoy which at the time of the attack was on the road.

Generally military convoys interfere with civilian traffic or have a right- of-passage. So, it is very likely that this incident killed only those making the convoy, which could only have a certain number of military personnel in it. Hence this attack cannot be considered as targeting a high density location or a low density location. It is in between these two extremes, and receives a value of 2. Coding density as low/medium/high instead of low and high allowed me to fully grasp the variation within the mid-stream data. While there is some level of subjectivity involved in the coding process, in order to keep this at a minimum, I attempted to be consistent with my coding, referring back to rough description of what constitutes low, medium and high density locations.

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The second variable that I coded was indoors, which tries to capture whether the attack took place indoors or outdoors. Thus, this variable is operationalized as a dichotomous variable and given the value of 1 when the attack took place in indoor locations such as movie theaters, temples, mosques, inside of the coffee shops etc., and it received a value of 0 for outdoor locations such as graveyards, military checkpoints, and bridges. One may think of indoors vs. outdoor distinction to be highly correlated to density of a given place. However, this is not necessarily the case. Indoors environments may not always be denser than outdoor environments.

For instance, Taksim square in Istanbul is an outdoors walking street, which is one of the most focal, hence, the busiest spots in the city. Thus, whether a location is indoors or outdoors may not always intuitively indicate the density of it.

Third, the accessibility of a given location is coded as low/medium/high accessibility, which tests the ease or difficulty of access to a specific location. Highly accessible places, which received the value of 3, refer to those places where any member of the public can wander in and out with ease and without much fear of being directly observed. Examples would be public buses or fast-food restaurants. Low accessibility locations, coded as 1, would be locations such as military bases, embassies, parliament buildings, where only authorized personnel are permitted.

Medium accessibility locations are the ones in between meaning places a person can enter freely but they have to go through doors, restricted entrances and exits, or past watchful eyes to get to their final destinations. Discriminate suicide attacks is a dichotomous variable coded 1, for attacks which are launched against a specific target or an elite such as a city major, politician, or a military officer. Indiscriminate attacks are those that target regular people are coded as 0.

In order to test whether the involvement of multiple perpetrators made any difference in the number of casualties that result from suicide attacks, I included a binary variable, which is

64 coded 1 if the attack was executed by more than one person and 0, if it was done by a single perpetrator. The gender of the bomber was also coded as a binary variable; 1 for female and 0 for male. For all of the variables supplementing the original database, missing values are created when the narrative description of the suicide attacks did not yield any substantive piece of information to code the attack systematically across given categories.

This study also includes five control variables. BiWeapon is a dichotomous variable, which controls for the type of weapon used in a given attack. In the original database, weapon type had 13 different values which range from biological, chemical, radiological to vehicle, and sabotage equipment. When I limit the data to only include suicide attacks, the types of weapons used fall from 13 to 4 categories, which respectively are: chemical weapons, which are used 3 times, firearms used 20 times, explosives/bombs/dynamites used 543 times, and fake weapons, which are used only once. I then created a dummy variable for weapons to make a distinction between the most heavily used weapons and the others. Since explosives/bombs and dynamites are the most frequently used weapons in so far as the suicide attacks are concerned, I coded them as 1, the rest of the weapon types (chemical, fake and firearms) are coded as 0.

Region is regressed as a dichotomous variable as well. If the designated suicide attack took place in Middle East, it is coded as 1, if it took place in South Asia, it is coded as 0. Years indicates the year that any given suicide attack took place and goes from 1998 to 2010. I coded it as a dichotomous variable to measure whether the suicide terrorist attack was recently executed or not. Those attacks that took place before 2006 were assigned the value of 0, which means they were not recent attacks, and the attacks that took place in 2006 or anytime between 2006 and

2010 were assigned a value of 1 indicating that they were recent attacks.

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I also included country-level control variables. I used Polity II variable for regime type,

which varies from -10 (strongly autocratic) to 10 (strongly democratic). From the World Bank

Data, I used the logged GDP per capita as a control variable, which measures the economic level

of development of the country in constant purchasing power parity US dollars.

Table 3: DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS FOR SUICIDE ATTACKS FROM 1998 TO 2010 Standard Variable Observations Mean Minimum Maximum Deviation

Nkill (DV: number of 562 13.32 19.134 0 141 people killed)

Density 541 2.373 0.814 1 3

Indoors 542 .405 0.491 0 1

Access 541 2.164 .852 1 3

Discriminate 543 .519 .500 0 1

Multiple perpetrators 544 .283 .450 0 1

Female 360 .111 .314 0 1

Middle East 567 .544 .498 0 1

Logged GDP 517 6.048 1.869 1.110 10.788

Democracy 567 .223 .417 0 1

BiWeapon 567 .223 .417 0 1

Years 567 .507 .500 0 1

Method and Results

The unit of analysis in this study is suicide attacks. Since the dependent variable is the

sum of the numbers of people killed as a result of each suicide attack in the Middle East-North

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Africa and South Asia from 1998 to 2010, a Poisson regression model (PRM) is initially applied for the analysis of the results. However, in all the models, the PRM produced spuriously large z- values, which is due to the fact that the standard errors are biased downward. Thus, the estimates produced by the PRM seem to be inefficient. Therefore, I tested for overdispersion using a negative binomial model, which adds “alpha”, an overdispersion parameter and a likelihood ration test to account for the overdispersion. The chi-squared statistic and the p-value in the full model is reported as (chibar2(01) = 1476.84 Prob< 0.001). The chi-squared value is 1476.84 with one degree of freedom, which strongly suggests that alpha is non-zero, meaning that the variance is greater than the mean (Osgood 2000, Peternoster& Brame 1997). Given the significant evidence of overdispersion, the negative binomial regression model is preferred to the

Poisson regression model to analyze count data as it is a better fit for the overdispersed count data.

Table 4 and Table 5 report the results from the eight NBREG models. The first six

NBREG models look at six different independent variables of interest, and the last two models are full models, which include either all of the independent and control variables (Model 7) or just the independent variables of interest (Model8).

According to my results, the density of the people in a given location and the use of multiple perpetrators are the most important indicators that explain the variation in the lethality of suicide attacks, which are followed by the indoor attacks. In Model1, as the density goes from low to medium, and medium to high, the expected numbers of fatalities increase. The coefficient is statistically very significant. When we look at the predicted values, we see that at the lowest level of density (1), the expected number of people killed could range from 1.7 to 2.5, when we

67 move to the highest level of density (3), the expected number of fatalities move up to a range of

19.1 to 23, which is a very significant increase in the expected count of fatalities.

Table 4: Effects of Tactical Advantages of Suicide Terrorism on Lethality (Model 1) (Model 2) (Model 3) (Model 4) Fatalities Fatalities Fatalities Fatalities

Density 1.146*** (0.054)

MiddleEast 0.176* 0.390*** 0.346** 0.327** (0.085) (0.105) (0.107) (0.107)

Lgdp 0.0460** 0.242*** 0.254*** 0.248*** (0.040) (0.052) (0.053) (0.053)

Democracy -0.666*** -0.154 -0.205 -0.265 (0.173) (0.229) (0.234) (0.238)

Bioweapon -0.503* -0.0243 -0.178 -0.0985 (0.201) (0.256) (0.243) (0.245)

Years 0.307*** 0.178 0.0363 0.0584 (0.092) (0.116) (0.121) (0.119)

Indoors 0.506*** (0.096)

Access 0.202*** (0.060)

Discriminate -0.346*** (0.101)

Constant -0.367 0.620 0.597 1.189** (0.344) (0.454) (0.449) (0.450) N 492 492 491 493 AIC 3256.9 3529.2 3540.7 3554.7 Standard errors in parentheses * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

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Table 5: Effects of Tactical Advantages of Suicide Terrorism on Lethality, continued (Model 5) (Model 6) (Model 7) (Model 8) Fatalities Fatalities Fatalities Fatalities

Multipleper 0.394*** 0.465** 0.526*** (0.114) (0.143) (0.150)

MiddleEast 0.358** 0.462** 0.424*** (0.110) (0.141) (0.111)

Lgdp 0.201*** 0.225** 0.0328** (0.059) (0.072) (0.057)

Democracy -0.266 -0.450 -0.877** (0.248) (0.320) (0.243)

Bioweapon 0.108 -0.497 -0.667* (0.248) (0.361) (0.318)

Years 0.174 0.108 0.300** (0.119) (0.152) (0.115)

Female 0.432* 0.0890 0.0696 (0.183) (0.136) (0.158)

Density 0.976*** 1.053*** (0.069) (0.068)

Indoors 0.258** 0.321** (0.097) (0.108)

Access 0.0696 0.127 (0.066) (0.071)

Discriminate -0.0267 0.216 (0.110) (0.116)

Constant 0.875 1.306* -0.150 -0.887*** (0.466) (0.594) (0.495) (0.268) N 492 320 300 335 AIC 3531.3 2212.5 1925.9 2187.6 Standard errors in parentheses * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

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In all other models where density is regressed as the primary independent variable, there

is a statistically significant and positive relationship between density of a place and lethality of a

given suicide attack. In the full model (Model 7), at the lowest level of density, the expected

numbers of people killed is approximately 2; at the highest level of density this number goes up

to 22, which can be shown as follows:

Figure 3: Predicted Numbers of Fatalities Across a Range of Density

Predictive Margins with 95% CIs

25

20

15

10

5

Predicted FatalitiesNumber Of 0

1 2 3 density

Model 2 looks at the effect of indoor locations on the lethality of suicide attacks. As

predicted, suicide attacks that take place inside close locations are more lethal than those that

take place outdoors. Looking at the predicted values in the full model, we can conclude that the

expected number of fatalities from suicide attacks that take place in indoor locations is 19,

whereas for suicide attacks that take place in outdoor locations, the expected number of fatalities

is as low as 12, holding all other variables constant. The following figure depicts the predicted

values for the full model.

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Figure 4: Predicted Numbers of Fatalities in Indoor vs. Outdoor Locations

Predictive Margins with 95% CIs

25

20

15

Predicted FatalitiesNumber Of 10 0 1 indoors

The indoor outdoor distinction is statistically significant in the full model. Thus, indoor

locations are strategically linked to higher levels of lethality in so far as the suicide terrorist

attacks are concerned.

The accessibility of a given location is also a significant predictor of the lethality of

suicide attacks. According to Model 3, suicide attacks that take place in easily accessible

locations are more likely to generate higher fatalities everything else equal, as was previously

predicted. Model 4 shows that discriminate suicide attacks are negatively related to the increase

in fatalities, which gives support for hypothesis 4. In other words, discriminate attacks that target

a specific political figure generate fewer fatalities compared to suicide attacks that target an

indiscriminate group of people, controlling for other variables. Both accessible locations and

discriminate suicide attacks lose their initial significance when they are regressed in the full

model. Thus, hypotheses 3 and 4 can only be partially verified.

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Model 5 in Table 5 looks at the effect of the involvement of multiple perpetrators on

lethality. According to the NBREG results, the suicide attacks that are undertaken by multiple

perpetrators lead to higher fatalities than attacks carried out by single perpetrators, which is

statistically different from zero at a very small significance level. A suicide attack that is carried

out by a single perpetrator kills an expected number of 13 people, whereas a suicide attack that is

undertaken by two or more perpetrators kills an expected number of almost 20 people. The use

of multiple perpetrators is also statistically very significant in the full model, which means that

the involvement of multiple perpetrators in an attack is a strong positive predictor of the lethality

of suicide terrorism:

Figure 5: Predicted Numbers of Fatalities across a Number of Perpetrators

Predictive Margins with 95% CIs

25

20

15

Predicted FatalitiesNumber Of 10 0 1 The Use of Multiple Perpetrators

Model 6 suggests that the gender of the perpetrator also influences the deadliness of the

attacks which does not reject the initial hypothesis. Controlling for everything else, suicide

attacks that are executed by female perpetrators are likely to increase the lethality of suicide

terrorism, which is statistically significant at .10 level.

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In the full model (Model 7), the three independent variables of interest that positively and significantly predict the expected lethality of suicide attacks are the density of a given location, indoor locations, and the use of multiple perpetrators. In Model 8, where only independent variables of interest are regressed, the same three indicators seem to be influential on the expected count of fatalities, whereas the gender of the perpetrator, accessibility of a given location, and discriminate nature of attacks lose their initial significance.

Among the control variables, two deserve special attention: (1) The Middle East dummy is statistically significant across most of the NBREG models. In other words, suicide attacks that take place in Middle East are more lethal than suicide attacks that occur in South Asia, which may be a function of the frequency of these attacks in the Middle East. (2) The logged gdp variable is also statistically significant. This finding is congruent with the findings of the development scholars who argue that the high-income countries are more vulnerable to terrorist incidents compared to less-developed countries (Blomberg and Hess 2008, Crenshaw 1981). The main argument for this finding is that the new technologies, transportation and communication networks that are available in developed countries provide terrorist groups with mobility and publicity thereby facilitating the adoption and implementation of terrorist tactics in these countries.

The year variable is also significant in the full model. While significance varies, recent suicide attacks seem to be more lethal than older ones, which may indicate the level of experience that perpetrators earn with time. In the first and the full model, democracy dummy is negative and statistically very significant. However, in the other models, it loses its significance, thus one can say that democracy is not conclusively or consistently linked to higher levels of lethality of suicide attacks.

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These results suggest that the expected lethality of suicide attacks is actually a function of the tactical advantages of suicide terrorism. Controlling for everything else, the strategic choice of location, targets and perpetrators are significant determinants of the numbers of fatalities deriving from the suicide attacks.

Limitations and Contributions

While the results are insightful and verify the previously stated hypotheses, this study shares the inevitable fate of other quantitative research done on terrorism. Even though I attempted to extend and enhance the Global Terrorism Database through my vigorous coding efforts, the inevitable data constraints still impede the generalizability of the results. First, there were missing values in the original dataset and the new variables that were coded. For instance, while the available data showed some evidence that the gender of the perpetrator mattered, the effect of it was only slightly significant. This effect might have been greater if there were no missing values for this variable. For most of the suicide attacks, whether the perpetrator was male or female was simply unknown or could not be drawn from the narrative of the incident.

While I sought further information from the internet and other media sources, these sources also proved useless at various times to assign an objective final value for the gender variable as well as other variables.

The adverse effects of missing variables could also be seen in the reduced number of observations when the negative binomial regressions were run. While 567 suicide attacks were initially coded, after running the regression models, this number dropped to (approximately) 490 in the first five models, and for the rest, it dropped to the range of 300s. Since the observations that reported a value of zero were dropped from the regression, the final numbers of observations were negatively affected.

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The results are also limited in terms of their time span as only suicide incidents that occurred between 1998 and 2010 are studied. I have considered suicide attacks that took place in two regions, namely Middle East-North Africa and South Asia. Thus, further research needs to be conducted in order to see whether these findings would travel across other regions at different time periods. In addition to this, at the beginning of the paper, I suggested that suicide attacks are more lethal than non-suicide attacks. However, my results do not allow for an analysis of whether the strategic advantage of suicide terrorism is what makes it deadlier than non-suicide terrorism. This is because the new data are coded only for suicide attacks and not for non-suicide ones.

Aside from these limitations, this chapter makes an important empirical contribution to the existing literature. This study shifts the focus from the present studies on the lethality of terrorism, which focused mainly on the motivational and organizational explanations to a new empirical explanation that is centered on the characteristics of the specific suicide attacks. To the best of my knowledge, this study is the first attempt to provide a line of empirical evidence to further clarify the tactical advantages of suicide terrorism and test them systematically to see whether they influence the numbers of fatalities. Based on this research, we can make a distinction within suicide attacks in terms of their lethal effectiveness, and conclude that suicide attacks that take place in densely populated locations, indoors places and that are undertaken by multiple perpetrators are likely to be more lethal than suicide attacks that follow a different strategy.

Conclusion

Suicide terrorism is the deadliest form of terrorism. The sacrifice of the suicide bomber for the successful execution of the terrorist attack brings with it certain tactical advantages such

75 as amount of control that the designated perpetrator has over the choice of location, the choice of targets and the involvement of different numbers of perpetrators.

This chapter has empirically demonstrated that these choices in fact determine and enhance the lethality of suicide terrorist attacks. Looking at the tactical advantages of suicide terrorism by using new empirical data, I have shown that the fatalities from suicide terrorist attacks vary in relationship to the strategic planning of these attacks. While the findings seem to state the obvious, the main contribution of this chapter is the collection of new data that quantify the controlled aspects of the suicide terrorist attacks. It thereby adds another notch to the scholarly understanding of suicide terrorism by making it possible to see what kinds of suicide attacks are more deadly than others and why. In the next chapter, I will make another layer of distinction within suicide terrorist attacks not based on tactical differences, but based on two sets of perpetrators: terrorist organizations and the lone wolf terrorists.

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Chapter 4: The Impact of Terrorist Organizations on the Lethality of Suicide Terrorism

Introduction

In the previous chapter, I argued that the variation in the number of fatalities that result from suicide attacks is due to the inherent tactical advantages that are more readily available to suicide bombers than other terrorists. My statistical analysis has shown that suicide attacks that target heavily populated indoor locations and that involve the use of multiple perpetrators are deadlier than suicide attacks that do not. The follow up questions is: why don’t all perpetrators take advantage of this simple utility function of suicide terrorist attacks? Are certain perpetrators of terrorism more likely to benefit from the tactical advantages of suicide attacks than others? If so, who are these perpetrators and why are they better able to launch more deadly suicide attacks?

This and next chapter will focus on the supply-side of suicide terrorism. In this chapter, I make a perpetrator-based distinction within the incidents of suicide terrorism. More specifically,

I draw a line between suicide attacks that are carried out and claimed by terrorist organizations and those that are undertaken by unknown perpetrators or self-radicalized suicide bombers who, given the information in the Global Terrorism Database, are yet to be formally affiliated with existing terrorist organizations. While there is plenty of literature that discusses why terrorist groups choose to launch suicide terrorist attacks (Piazza 2009, Asal and Rethmeyer 2008,

Moghadam 2006) or whether the use of suicide terrorism helps organizations achieve their

77 political objectives (McCormick and Fritz 2010, Abrahms 2012), what is missing in this debate is whether and how terrorist organizations contribute to the sophistication of suicide terrorism. I argue that the engagement of terrorist organizations in the planning and execution of suicide attacks will increase the lethality of these attacks compared to those cases in which terrorist organizations are most certainly not involved.

For the purposes of this chapter, I first explain different types of perpetrators that organize and execute terrorist attacks and rationalize why it is important to make such a distinction both theoretically and empirically. While doing that, I also talk about the motivations of these different perpetrators in carrying out suicide attacks and address what is missing in the existing literature. Second, I theorize why suicide terrorist attacks that are organized, executed and claimed by terrorist organizations are expected to be deadlier compared to those attacks that are not launched by the terrorist groups. Third, I explain the data and method used. Last, I discuss my results and conclude this chapter by talking about the contributions of my findings.

Who are the Different Perpetrators of Terrorist Attacks and Why Do they Matter?

Terrorist Organizations

Most incidents of terrorism take place under the sponsorships of terrorist organizations.

Hence, terrorist groups; their leadership, organizational structure, ideology, political agenda, goals, membership, strategies, funding, criminal and other activities have been the focus of various scholarly publications (Norwitz 2009, Kydd and Walter 2006, Jackson et al. 2005,

Mannes 2004, Rapoport 1988).

Once this literature is reviewed, we see that organizations do in fact take the lead in recruiting, training and dispatching suicide and other terrorists to their missions. They set up training camps in countries that are sympathetic to the group’s political cause and grievances.

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For instance, Al Qaeda had training camps in Sudan and in Afghanistan, which were essential for the preservation of the organization and for the successful execution of its terrorist attacks

(Gunaratna 2013). Terrorist organizations use various sources of funding that come through state sponsorship, organized crime activities - drug trafficking and money laundering- or though money donations from charities, wealthy individuals and businesses in order to enhance their intelligence gathering, recruiting and training capabilities and increase their weapons stock. They also use these financial contributions to develop human capital and garner popular support

(Giraldo and Trinkunas 2007, Croissant and Barlow 2007, Makarenko 2001, Roth and Sever

2007, Sanderson 2004).

For example, Matthew Levitt argues that: “Al-Qa'ida and Hezbollah raise millions of dollars in drug money to support their operations. By one account, al-Qa'ida raised as much as 35 percent of its operating funds from the drug trade. Hezbollah benefits from the drug business in

Lebanon, much as al-Qa'ida did from the drug business in Afghanistan. Hezbollah not only used the Biqa’a Valley's poppy crop for funds, but also to buy support from Israeli Arabs” (Levitt

2002, 14). In their case study on the PKK, Roth and Sever note that “if one accepts the United

Nations definition of organized crime, the PKK would be considered both a terrorist group and a transnational criminal organization” (Roth and Sever 2007). In its war of terror against the

Spanish government, the ETA engaged in robberies to raise the money needed to buy the essentials for its attacks such as weapons, explosives and vehicles (Douglass and Zulaika 1990).

Various terrorist groups use their funds and resources to provide public goods to domestic populations, especially the poor and the needy in order to win their support (Fawaz

2005, Ghandour 2002, Ly 2007). For instance, Pierre Emmanuel Ly (2007) argues that terrorist groups engage in charitable activities to advertise their ideology, goals and agenda among

79 potential sympathizers. In a similar yet more recent study, Christine Mele (2012) posits that terrorist organizations spend their resources on both military action and the provision of social services. According to her research, terrorist organizations invest significant resources into non- militant activities such as funding NGOs to provide social services to the public as long as the marginal benefit gained from social services is greater than the marginal benefit gained from successful military action. As I will explain in detail in the following chapter, terrorist groups also allocate a considerable portion of their budget to distributing private goods exclusively to suicide bombers and their families to enhance the former’s commitment to their missions.

Another reason why there is a plethora of literature on terrorist organizations is that organizational motivations are relatively accessible and less varied compared to that of individual suicide bombers. Hence, the terrorist organizations can be analyzed more systematically using quantitative data. Terrorist organizations use the social media, internet blogs, and print publications to make their propaganda, educate their audiences and spread their ideology (Torok 2010). There are also a number of research websites and databases such as the

US Department of State’s List of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, or the START Knowledge

Base that provide information on the specific profiles of the terrorist groups worldwide including the year that they were founded, the size of their membership, the list of their key leaders, bases of operation, their ideological orientation, sources of finance, principal philosophy and their stated objectives or goals.

The stated objectives listed on these websites suggest that terrorist groups generally justify their attacks on religious or political/nationalistic terms such as the desire to form an independent land, the establishment of religious rule, or the removal of military forces from what some people consider to be their homeland. For instance, all the terrorist attacks carried out by

80 the IRA (Irish Republican Army) were motivated by the same political objective: driving British out of Northern Ireland and creating a unified Republic of Ireland free from the British rule

(English 2005). To the same extent, the suicide terrorist campaigns of the Liberation Tigers of

Tamil Eelam were motivated by the desire to win independence for the Tamil provinces in the

North and East of Sri Lanka (Raju 2004).

Within this context, the denial of political rights and freedoms and the lack of protection by the state, or the desire to preserve one’s national identity, religion and culture serve as strong justifications for terrorist groups to engage in violent attacks. Martha Crenshaw argues that minority groups embrace political violence in order to “gain or regain something that they consider rightfully theirs such as land or political rights” (Crenshaw 1981, 381). Similar to the

IRA example, ETA in Spain, which stands for the Basque Homeland and Freedom, was an extreme nationalist group, whose acts of terrorist violence were dedicated to free the Basque region, located in the northern part of Spain, from the Spanish rule. Hence, the main objective of

ETA was also political at its core; to establish an independent Basque homeland, which would be a fortress for the Basque identity, language and culture (Woodworth 2004).

Another political goal that motivates terrorist groups is the resistance against military occupation. Robert Pape (2005, 2006) posits that among all kinds of political systems, liberal democracies are the ones that are most vulnerable to suicide attacks whose strategic objective is to create or maintain political self-determination by compelling a democratic government to withdraw from the territories that terrorists claim to be their homeland. For instance, the Shi’a militant/terrorist group Hezbollah was formed after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The most notorious and the deadliest attacks of Hezbollah are known to be nearly simultaneous truck bomb explosions in October 1983. The first of these targeted the Marine peacekeepers stationed in

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Beirut, which took the lives of 241 US service members, and the second one aimed at the barracks of the French contingent to the UN mission, which killed 80 French soldiers. As a result of these attacks, the American and French forces withdrew from Lebanon, which earned

Hezbollah the hero status in the eyes of many Muslims in the region (Kindt 2009). Even the former Israeli Prime minister Ehud Barack had concurred that “when we entered Lebanon there was no Hezbollah. We were accepted with perfumed rice and flowers by the Shi’a in the south. It was our presence there that created Hezbollah” (Kindt 2009, 126).

Given that terrorist organizations and their activities are essential for the occurrence of terrorist attacks including the suicide attacks, one would assume that 1) most, if not all, terrorist attacks will take place under the umbrella of terrorist groups, and 2) these attacks will be claimed by them as evidence of success and recognition. However, not all terrorist attacks, including some very lethal and successful ones, are claimed by terrorist groups. The next section discusses this literature pertaining to the claimed versus unclaimed terrorist attacks. Based on this literature, I make a distinction between different types of perpetrators and theoretically explain why organizationally-linked suicide terrorist attacks are expected to be more lethal than suicide attacks where there is no clear indication of organizational involvement.

Claimed vs. Not Claimed Terrorist Attacks

The literature review in the previous section indicates that terrorist groups indeed play significant roles in planning, executing, supplying and finding support for violent terrorist campaigns. With the help of deadly attacks, terrorist organizations build a name for themselves.

Thus, the publicity and the recognition that follows are a big part of the terrorist’s business. As

Brigitte Nacos argues that “without massive news coverage the terrorist act would resemble the proverbial tree falling in the forest: if no one learned of an incident, it would be as if it had not

82 occurred” (Nacos 2000, 175). Hence, terrorist groups want their existence, grievances and struggle to be known by larger groups of people, which also matters for the purposes of instilling fear and panic among larger populations (Hoffman 2010).

Within this context, it is natural that terrorist groups would be eager to take credit for the attacks that they perpetrate. Bruce Hoffman argues that “..all terrorist groups have one trait in common: they do not commit actions randomly or senselessly. Each wants maximum publicity to be generated by its actions, and, moreover aims at intimidation and subjection to attain its objectives” (Hoffman 2006, 173). David Rapoport (1997) calls this tendency the terrorists’ doctrine of “propaganda of the deed” (p. 11) and argues that what distinguishes terrorist groups from criminal organizations is the former’s willingness to claim responsibility for their actions.

Other scholars also make convincing arguments as to why terrorist organizations are most likely to take credit for their acts of violence. These arguments can be summarized under two subheadings: 1) competition between groups over scarce resources and support (Bloom 2004,

2005, Pedahzur and Perliger 2006) and 2) the desire to signal strength (Overgaard 1994, Ross

1993). The first one of these arguments suggest that when terrorist groups compete for access to a single pool of scarce resources such as recruitment, finances, and domestic support, they vie to build a reputation for toughness in order to achieve control over these resources. Given this competition, it is pointless for terrorist groups to invest time and money to launch a well- planned, lethal attack unless they find a way to ‘tag’ their involvement in this attack. The most effective way to “tag” an attack is publicly claiming responsibility for its planning and execution.

For instance, Ami Pedahzur and Arie Perliger argue that there are cases of terrorist organizations in Palestine such as northern Samaria and Jenin networks which take credit for martyrdom

83 operations that may not have been carried out by their networks just because they want to deprive the rival groups of the public support (Pedahzur and Perliger 2006).

In a related yet different argument, some authors claim that in the aftermath of the successful terrorist attacks that generate considerable media attention, terrorist groups have a tendency to “follow through” by taking responsibility which helps them signal their strength and capabilities to their constituents and nemeses. More specifically, Ross (1993) notes that detailed and complete information on terrorist groups’ support and resources cannot easily be known by states. This fact is not lost on terrorist groups. Hence, terrorist groups use dramatic attacks that generate high numbers of casualties and considerable physical damage to signal to their audience what is at their disposal. Taking credit for the deadly attacks reinforces the strength of the terrorist organization in question. Looking at this literature, one could argue that terrorist organizations only claim responsibility for violent and most lethal attacks that will serve their strategic interests directly. Hence, there is selection bias. This is not necessarily true.

Global Terrorism Database (2011) shows that within unsuccessful10 suicide attacks,

19.52% of them were claimed by designated terrorist groups. Within all terrorist attacks, this percentage is 17. 45. Moreover, 16.13 % of the suicide attacks and 16.46% of all terrorist attacks worldwide, which generate zero casualties, are also claimed by some terrorist group, which is significant especially given that these attacks were not deadly at all. These examples suggest that terrorist groups would even claim responsibility for failed terrorist attacks including those of suicide. Apparently, bad publicity is better than no publicity in so far as some terrorist groups are concerned.

10 In the codebook of the GTD (2011), success of a terrorist attack is defined according to the “tangible effects of the attack. For example, in a typical successful bombing, the bomb detonates and destroys property and/or kills individuals, whereas unsuccessful bombing is one in which the bomb is discovered and defused or detonates early” (p. 21).

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At the opposite end of these arguments, there is literature that discusses why terrorist groups would be, if anything, “unwilling” to admit their involvement in lethal attacks.

Addressing the shift in organizational motivations to claim responsibility, Bruce Hoffman (1997) in “Why Terrorists Don’t Claim Credit”, argued that things have changed since 1980s. Terrorist groups over time have grown more reluctant to trumpet their success or reveal themselves since they no longer enjoy the impunity that they previously did. Given the improvements in states’ abilities to identify and hunt down the responsible parties, taking credit for a lethal terrorist attack, according to Hoffman, only increases the vulnerability of a given terrorist organization and makes it subject to harsh government reprisals. In a similar vein, George Michael writes the following:

This development has drastically changed the security environment within which terrorists operate. Fewer parts of the world than before are conducive to harboring large, clandestine groups, since many foreign governments are coordinating their counterterrorism efforts with the United States, as they seek to dismantle terrorist organizations and deny them funding and resources…Finally, new surveillance technology has enabled governments to better monitor dissident groups and potential terrorists. Large groups cannot operate as effectively as in the past because this monitoring makes them more vulnerable to infiltration and disruption (Michael 2012, 3). While it is true that terrorist organizations suffer serious costs and losses as a result of the coordinated counter-terrorism efforts by states, these explanations still fail to make convincing arguments as to why some acts of terrorism remain unclaimed by terrorist groups.

First of all, many governments in the world respond to the threat of terrorism with the use of military/physical force. Audrey Kurth Cronin (2011) finds repression to be states’ natural response to terrorism. For instance, in late 1970s, when Tamil Tigers stepped up their campaign of terror, the Sri Lankan President declared a state of emergency and introduced new sets of dramatically repressive counter-terrorism measures and anti-terrorism laws. These laws bestowed the Sri Lankan police and security forces with unprecedented powers of arrest and

85 detention, which they employed with brutal enthusiasm against the Tamil minorities. Similarly, when the civil war in Spain ended in 1939, General Francisco Franco started to take his revenge on the Basques who sided with the Republicans during the war. His method of dealing with what he called “the traitors” was exterminating thousands of people and sending many more to labor camps where they would perish under harsh working conditions (Powell 2011).

However, as Cronin (2011) says, these harsh responses that come from the governments are well-known to terrorist groups. Terrorist organizations are well-aware that there will inevitably be serious clashes between them and the opposing government forces. If terrorist groups were too concerned to fall apart and dismantle once they are identified, they would not resort to terrorism to begin with.

Second, there are some cases in which domestic and international pressures and the consistent use of repression by the states have been effective in weakening terrorist groups and paving the way for their demise. Two examples would be the capture of the leader of the Shining

Path in Peru Abimael Guzman in 1992 or the arrest of Shoko Asahara, the founder and spiritual leader of Aum Shinrikyo in Japan, who was responsible for the 1995 sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway. However, there are also other cases where the capture or the killing of the leaders or key figures of a terrorist organization aggravate the existing tension, turn the deceased into heroes in the eyes of the domestic population and thereby help the deed of the terrorist organization. For instance, when Israel assassinated the infamous bomb maker of Hamas, Yahya

Ayyash in 1996, nicknamed “the engineer”, his popularity reached epic proportions. His death not only elevated his status to that of a cultural hero in Palestine, but also resumed a series of

Hamas-initiated revenge suicide attacks (Roberts 2006). Hence, arguing that state repression and

86 the use of force will make terrorist groups less willing to take credit for their attacks does not hold much water.

In fact, Andrew Kydd and Barbara Walter (2006) argue that one of the strategies deliberately employed by terrorist groups is “provocation” which is the idea of tricking the government into unleashing undisciplined military forces on the domestic populations on whose behalf terrorist groups operate. This helps terrorist organizations gain new sympathizers and recruits as well as earn legitimacy. Thus, on occasion, terrorist groups intentionally look forward to state violence and harsh counter-terrorism measures, which help, not hinder their deeds.

Third, as I previously mentioned, terrorist groups need recognition and publicity to reach out to and terrorize large groups of people. Hence, instead of keeping their identities secret in the aftermath of their attacks, they choose to find innovative ways of becoming more resilient and continue their fight. We see that state reprisals generally serve to harden the resolve of the terrorist groups, not weaken it. For instance, in response to Sri Lanka’s anti-Tamil offensives in late 1970s, Tamil Tigers stepped up their violent campaigns. None of Franco’s draconic orders to stamp out Basque nationalism stopped the Basques’ quest for independence. When the police hunt for the ETA’s leading operatives and key members accelerated, the members of the group set up secret bases in the remote areas of Basque mountains. Hence, terrorist groups adapt to new security challenges; they may even alter their organizational structure to make it more difficult for states to target and disrupt the organization once and for all. An example to this would be Al

Qaeda, which has transformed from a hierarchical organizational structure to a networked structure over time for the purposes of security (Philpott, 2007). Once the Al Qaeda recruits would finish their trainings at training camps in Sudan or Afghanistan, they would be dispatched to their cells so they could have little or no contact with the rest of the hierarchy or other cells

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(unless absolutely necessary). Hence, if one cell is lost, this would not lead to the loss of another cell, leaving the entirety of the organization intact.

For all these reasons, I argue that terrorist organizations are not likely to be easily intimidated by state repression or shy away from claiming responsibility for terrorist attacks that they meticulously planned and ardently executed. Therefore, given the resolve of terrorist organizations, the scholarly attempts to theoretically justify unclaimed terrorist attacks as an organizational choice seem to be nebulous at best. Then the question is how else can we categorize these “unclaimed attacks” for which there is no indicator of organizational involvement?

I argue that given the available data, terrorist attacks that are carried out by “unknown perpetrators” and unclaimed by terrorist organizations can empirically and theoretically be distinguished from the group of attacks, where there is an intentional, clear and openly-stated organizational involvement. In the absence of a perpetrator-based distinction like this, the implicit assumption is that all perpetrators are the same or all terrorist attacks are undertaken by or in the loop of a terrorist organization. As I will demonstrate in the following pages, this is not the case. There is an emerging literature that discusses the new face of terrorism which does not require or rely upon the sponsorship of terrorist organizations. Some scholars define it as “lone- wolf terrorism”, others as “leaderless resistance” or “freelance terrorism” (Zakaria 2007, Michael

2012, Simon 2013). Thus, the perpetrator distinction that I make contributes to this emerging literature.

I must note that categorizing the incidents of terrorism in which there is an absence of a clear organizational involvement as “lone wolf terrorism” may not be 100% accurate. It would be a legitimate concern and a fair criticism to suggest that we do not necessarily know if this

88 second category of “unknown terrorists” can actually be thought of as “lone wolf terrorists” as they may not be so. However, the definition of lone wolf terrorism, as we will see in the next section, is somewhat flexible and includes cases of terrorists who may have previously been involved in extremist organizations. The most significant and common criterion for a lone wolf terrorist is that during the time of their attack, they act on their own initiative. Thus, the assumption that the organizationally unclaimed attacks done by unknown perpetrators would be the attacks of lone wolf terrorists is a strong one.

Another reason why this distinction is important is because it helps us explain the distinct effect of terrorist organizations on the lethality of suicide terrorist attacks. In the third chapter, I explained the variations in the number of fatalities from suicide attacks by looking at the use of tactical advantages unique to suicide terrorism. Now, I will try to explain whether the involvement of terrorist organizations in suicide terrorist attacks actually makes a difference in terms of fatalities: How does organizational involvement affect the lethality of suicide operations, if at all? Could it be possible that the involvement of terrorist organizations in suicide attacks actually makes suicide terrorism more dangerous than it would otherwise be? Is it fair to assume that when terrorist organizations are involved, the number of civilian fatalities would increase considerably than when they are not involved?

In order to answer these questions, we need to compare suicide terrorist attacks that are undertaken and claimed by designated terrorist organizations with those that most certainly lack that organizational connection and claim.

Lone Wolf Terrorists

“Terrorism isn’t James Bond or Tom Clancy. Even al-Qaeda is looking old school these days—now it is just some guy with a bomb. He walks the same roads as us. He thinks the same thoughts. But he’s got a bomb” --Michael Marshall, Blood of Angels.

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Bruce Hoffman argues that “to qualify as terrorism, violence must be perpetrated by some organizational entity with at least some conspiratorial structure and identifiable chain of command beyond a single individual acting on his or her own” (Hoffman 1998, 42-43). Unlike what Hoffman thinks, terrorist organizations are not the only perpetrators of terrorism. There are individuals who operate independent of the existing terrorist groups and still carry out very lethal attacks. In fact, in 2003 the FBI director Robert S. Mueller III stated that the threat that comes from single individuals who are sympathetic to the cause of terrorist organizations but act without their support and sponsorship is increasing. In a similar vein, a recent post in Jerusalem

Post reveals that one of the primary security concerns for Israel Security Agency today is the rise of independently executed terrorist attacks with no revealed connection to terrorist networks:

“What characterizes most of the recent violence in Israel are lone Palestinian individuals who act without the backing of a terrorist organization, or a limited number of Palestinian youths who take part in containable disturbances” (Lappin 2013, 1).

While previous scholarly research on terrorism mainly focused on understanding the motivations and dynamics of the well-established terrorist organizations, recent studies acknowledge the rise of a new set of perpetrators known as the “lone wolves” and emphasize the emergence of this new form of terrorism, which is categorized as “lone wolf terrorism”,

“leaderless resistance”, “the freelance terrorism” or “individual terrorism” (Burton 2007, Robb

2007, Sageman 2008, Michael 2012). Within this context, Thomas Friedman had coined the term “the super-empowered individual” who, according to him, is capable of launching an extremely lethal attack, if adequately armed. Based on this term, Fareed Zakaria (2007) posits that the new face of terrors lies in the rise of small-scale, “do it yourself” attacks by local groups that share a global ideology.

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By definition, lone wolf terrorists are perpetrators of terrorism with no revealed connection to any of the existing terrorist organizations. In other words, these are individuals who plan, organize and execute their attacks in the absence of a financially or physically supportive terrorist organization. One notorious example of a lone wolf terrorist is Anders

Behring Breivik, the Norwegian extremist, who massacred 77 people in two different attacks in the summer of 2011 in Norway. The first attack targeted the Norwegian government buildings in

Oslo, in which Breivik placed and detonated a car bomb in Oslo’s government district. In the second attack, he targeted the youth camp of the labor party on the island of Utoya, where he engaged in a mass shooting of the young people at the camp. In the aftermath of his slaughter, which generated intense media coverage, Breivik explained his motivation as an effort to thwart what he allegedly called the “Islamic colonization of Norway” and punish the traitors who supported immigration laws that would eventually lead to this abhorred Islamisation of his country (Nilsen 2013). While Breivik was not a suicide bomber, he definitively represents an example of a lone terrorist derailed by an extremist ideology, since he organized and executed his attacks by himself.

An example of a suicide bomber, which can be placed under the category of a lone terrorist, is Taimour Abdulwahab, an Iraqi-born Swedish citizen, who detonated a bomb attached to his body and set a car on fire in Stockholm in 2010. As CNN news report, before

Abdulwahab carried out his attack, he sent several emails to news agencies and security services in Sweden, and his family explaining the triggering cause for his attack (Cruickshank, Lister and

Nyberg, 2011). His outrage was partially caused by Lars Vilks, the cartoonist who depicted the

Prophet Mohammed offensively and partially by the presence of the Swedish troops in

Afghanistan. From the rest of the CNN report, we see that Abdulwahab was able to build a

91 bomb he strapped to his body, on his own by using ingredients such as pressure cookers, fireworks and nails, all of which were available to him through purchase at downtown.

In a 2007 article by COT Institute for Safety Security and Crisis Management, a more nuanced definition of a lone wolf terrorist is made. According to this definition, in order to qualify as a lone wolf terrorist, a perpetrator should “1) operate individually 2) not belong to an organized terrorist group or network and 3) act without the direct influence of a leader or hierarchy and 4) implement tactics and methods without any direct outside command” (COT

2007, 6). In “The Lone Gunman” (2001), Ehud Sprinzak talks about these groups of terrorists as

“self-anointed individuals with larger than life callings” and labels them as “megalomaniacal hyper-terrorists” who “operate according to an altogether different logic… they tend to be loners.

They think big, seeking to go beyond conventional terrorism. They perceive themselves in historical terms and dream of individually devastating the hated system” (p. 72-73). He places

Yigal Amir under this category, who was the right-wing extremist that assassinated the Israeli

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in November 1995. He also puts Timothy McVeigh under the same category, who was also a right-wing extremist responsible for bombing the Alfred P.

Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

In so far as the lone perpetrators and their attacks are concerned, we can talk about some commonalities. As suggested, these bombers are inspired by the political ideology or the general mission of a terrorist group. However, instead of relying on technical, logistical or financial support from a given terrorist organization, they organize and plan their attacks single-handedly.

The fact that these individuals are not active members of any of designated the terrorist organizations now does not mean that they had never been affiliated with an extremist group or an organization in the past. Harvey Kushner (2003) argues that there might be a time when these

92 perpetrators were members of some type of terrorist organization; they might have even received training or support from an organization in the past (p. 144). What matters is that they take solitary action during the planning and execution of their terrorist attacks. For instance, on

February 25, 1994, Baruch Goldstein, an American-born Israeli physician opened fire on the

Palestinians praying at the Cave of Patriarchs in Hebron, which led to the death of 29 and injury of 150 people. Goldstein belonged to a militant Jewish organization known as the “Jewish

Defense League.” However, the commission of inquiry appointed by the Israeli government after the attacks reported that Goldstein organized his attack independent of this organization. He did not communicate with anyone about his plot and acted alone in the prosecution of it. Hence, so long as there is no direct advice or support of a terrorist organization pertaining to the execution of an attack, it is safe to categorize the perpetrators as the lone wolves.

Given the lack of communication and collaboration with terrorist networks or suspects, the attacks of these perpetrators are hard to track down. This also is one advantage that lone wolf terrorists have over the terrorist organizations. They prepare and execute their attacks in secrecy, and hence they remain under the radar of law enforcement authorities until they actually carry out their attacks. Absent the contact with terrorist groups, the attacks by lone perpetrators are met with astonishment by targeted societies and authorities alike as if these attacks come out of nowhere. From a counter-terrorism point of view, no linkage to other conspirators presents a dangerous situation; it means that these perpetrators are extremely difficult to be identified, detected and deterred. Norwegian extremist Breivik was aware of this advantage. In his 1500- page long manifesto titled “2083: A European Declaration of Independence, which was published online, he warns the would-be terrorists against sharing their plans with others for this will increase their chances of being identified and arrested: “Don’t trust anyone unless you

93 absolutely need to (which should never be the case). Do absolutely everything by yourself”

(Berwick 2011) he says.

In his recent book about lone wolf terrorism, Jeffrey D. Simon (2013) lists the commonalities and the differences between the lone wolves and the terrorist organizations. He argues that in terms of the availability of tactics and targets, there is not much difference between the two set of perpetrators. Different tactics of terrorist attacks such as hijackings, bombings, assassinations, armed assaults, the release of chemical or biological agents or the use of suicide are available to any perpetrator of terrorism. The targets of lone wolves are also not very distinct from that of terrorist groups’. Lone wolf terrorists, just like organizationally-linked terrorists, can attack government buildings, political authorities, military personnel, businesses, and civilians.

The differences between terrorist groups and lone wolf perpetrators can most clearly be seen in the realm of motivations and objectives. As I tried to explain in the introductory part of this chapter, organizational behavior has a systematic pattern, therefore, organizational motivations are easier to discern and quantify. Studies on the motivations of suicide bombers, on the other hand, demonstrate that individual terrorists may have a variety of motivations in mind when they join the ranks of terrorist groups. These motivations could range from tragic personal experiences to economic deprivation or denial of basic rights and freedoms (Woodworth 2001,

Lewis 2002, Sageman 2004). Some studies even delve into cultural factors such as the impact of television in pursuing hate propaganda and rituals that are conducive to creating a social environment that reflects and approves violent behavior (Friedman 2005, Hafez 2006). Whatever the personal motivation might be, once these people are recruited by designated terrorist organizations, they internalize the values of the organization and conform to its objectives.

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Hence, organizations turn out to be a melting pot for an indefinite set of personal motivations and impose their own agenda on the recruits.

For instance, Jeffrey Simon writes that: “al Qaeda members pledge their personal loyalty to Osama Bin Laden, thus declaring their membership in the family of global jihad and willingness to sacrifice their lives for the goal as defined by the group’s leader. This personal declaration of loyalty obligated organization members to carry out Bin Laden’s orders with strict obedience” (Simon 2013, 41). Similarly, a used-to-be PKK recruit, Dilara, who ran away from her home to become a member of the terrorist organization, explains in her interview that for all women who were a part of the PKK organization, the leader Abdullah Ocalan, was a prophet.

She admits that she would have killed everyone in her family without a second thought had he ordered so.

The lone wolf, on the other hand, does not have to take orders from a leader or act within the boundaries of an organization. They have the freedom to carry out their personal agendas in any direction that they want. This provides them the opportunity to be more creative while carrying out their attacks. In addition to that, the motivations of lone wolf terrorists are diverse, and there is no way to know if lone wolf acts of terrorism necessarily contribute to a higher political, ideological or religious goal. As I noted before, some lone wolves may identify with the ideology or goals of a terrorist organization and perpetrate their violence for political, religious, or ethnic-nationalist reasons just like terrorist groups do. Others, on the other hand, might have completely different reasons for undertaking violent attacks, which may range from psychological problems to personal justifications for seeking revenge, or criminal and idiosyncratic motivations or a combination of these (Simmon 2013, 94).

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In order to demonstrate the breadth of personal motivations, Bruce Simmon exemplifies five different types of lone wolf terrorists. The first one is a secular one, who just like other secular terrorist groups, commits his/her attacks for political, ethnic-nationalist or separatist reasons. The second type is religious lone wolf terrorist, who engages in terrorist attacks in the name of any religion; Islam, Christianity, Judaism, etc. He places white supremacists and neo-

Nazis under this category. The third type is single-issue lone wolf terrorist, who undertakes violent attacks in the name of specific issues, such as abortion, animal rights, or the environment.

The criminal lone wolf is the fourth type, who is motivated mostly by financial gain or economic profit. The final type is idiosyncratic lone wolf, who Simon describes as unique: “with the exception of cults that commit terrorist attacks, there are really no idiosyncratic terrorist groups in operation. Although the idiosyncratic lone wolf may commit attacks in the name of some cause, it is the severe personality and psychological problems that mainly drive these individuals to violence. Their causes are irrational, and they are often diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenics”

(Simon 2013, 45).

An example to idiosyncratic lone wolf will be Bruce Ivins, who was the renowned microbiologist behind the 2001 anthrax letter attacks in the US. The envelopes he mailed to random people, which were contagious with anthrax spores, led to the death of 5 people and infection of 17 others, who either inhaled or absorbed the spores through the skin. While he was known to have psychological problems, what seems to have triggered his attacks was his fear of losing his job. He has been working on bio-defense research, particularly in the development of anthrax vaccine at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases

(USAMRIID). In 2001, Pentagon officials had ordered the managers at USAMRIID to invest in new research on the development of products that could be used against biological agents other

96 than anthrax, such as glangers, tularemia and plague. Bruce Ivins was not fond of this idea.

Fearing that he would lose the funding for his research and all the work he has done would fail, he comes to the conclusion that the only way they would allow him to continue working on anthrax vaccines is if there was a demand for it. Hence, he attempted to create that demand on his own by sending infected envelopes to people across the US. He failed and committed suicide in 2008.

The reason that attacks by lone wolves are especially puzzling is because of this unpredictable or random nature of personal vendettas: “Assigning purposes and motivations to individual acts of terrors is inherently subjective and open to considerable interpretation, especially given that terrorist groups whose motivations are relatively accessible, do not claim for these attacks.” (Simmon 2013, 46) In the radicalization of the solo perpetrators and promotion of individual terrorism, internet and social media play key roles (Friedman 2005,

Anderson 2003, Conway 2006). The internet serves as a platform which is heavily used by terrorist groups to release unlimited and uncensored materials of propaganda in order to inspire new recruits, and find new supporters. Especially the websites that indoctrinate the extremist ideology; books, and publications that propagate hate messages have tremendous influence on people who already display open sympathy towards terrorist cause and religious ideology. Thus, through the use of internet, individuals who sympathize with the terrorist cause become perpetrators as they find a convenient means of channeling their radical thoughts into action

(Pantucci 2009). For instance, Simon (2013) argues that Breivik was allegedly influenced by

“some of the anti-Islamic blogs and other internet materials that were prevalent in the United

States and Europe. In his manifesto, Breivik quoted Robert Spencer numerous times. Spencer

97 runs a “jihad watch” website. Breivik also cited other Western writers who argued that Muslim immigration posed a threat to Western culture” (p. 52).

The online forums and chat rooms also contribute to the radicalization of the solo actors.

The discussion forums coupled with chat rooms present a dangerous means of radicalization, since these tools encourage a more active communication and socialization between the like- minded, which is, if anything, more influential than just passively being exposed to radical material online such as browsing extremist websites.

The videos that are easily accessible on the internet not only encourage the solo acts of terrorism but also serve educational purposes by providing would-be perpetrators with the technical know-how pertaining to bomb-making. For instance, the recently released online magazine of Al-Qaeda, named “Inspire” contains articles that diligently instruct the readers on how to make bombs using simple materials such as home-made improvised explosive devices

(IEDs), as well as give strategic advice about where to go, who to target and when to detonate a bomb in order to generate the most amount of damage. One of the articles that appeared in the magazine was called “Make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom” (Torok 2010). While the website has been shut down, the magazine has allegedly been in circulation through online chat rooms.

Similarly, in June 2011, Al Qaeda’s media base As-Sahab released a two-part video entitled “You are only responsible for yourself”, which encourages and endorses the idea of

“lone wolf jihad”. In the video, the American Al-Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn urges that the followers who are willing to fight against the enemies of Allah, should have the opportunity to do so. However, they should pay attention to making use of all the means available to them, taking up arms, and plotting their attacks in secrecy. In his speech, Gadahn advises potential

98 perpetrators who want to contribute to the cause of Jihad to take advantage of the variety of resources available on the internet, particularly “manuals, encyclopedias and courses which deal with the Mujahideen’s operational and electronic security” (Stewart 2011, 1). As can be seen, while terrorist organizations are not physically involved in the launching of the solo attacks, they are still present, at least in spirit, in encouraging the perpetrators and justifying their causes.

According to one argument, one of the main reasons that large terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda would give support for smaller-scale lone acts of terrorism is that these organizations, even though they are unlikely to admit it, have difficulties in financially supporting new recruits (Gomez 2010). Since recruitment and training place a significant financial burden on terrorist groups, they find it easier and profitable to encourage individual acts of terrorism. Scott Stewart (2011) argues that the growing threat of lone wolf terrorists and the support given to them could be signaling the “defeat” of the terrorist organizations. He posits that terrorist groups previously were much more eager to bring perpetrators under their own umbrella; train and equip them, and eventually dispatch them to their final missions. Recently, however, terrorist organizations started to put more emphasis on “do it yourself” type of attacks, which require far less training, preparation and planning especially in so far as the terrorist organizations are concerned. Thus, the new terrorism displays a shift from large-scale attacks with massive casualties and catastrophic consequences such as 9/11, toward attacks of smaller- scale, which are planned and executed merely by perpetrators who are not linked to terrorist organizations besides sharing a common ideology or a sense of religious duty.

Research Question, Theory and Hypothesis

The research question that I seek to answer in this chapter is the following: does the involvement of terrorist organizations in the organization and execution of suicide terrorist

99 attacks increase the fatalities from these attacks compared to lone wolf terrorists? I argue that it does. As I discussed before, where there is no clear, easily identifiable or “claimed” organizational involvement, these cases can be considered as lone wolf terrorist attacks. Based on this distinction and the Global Terrorism Database, I divide the existing terrorist attacks into two groups: terrorist attacks that are organized, executed and claimed by terrorist organizations, and terrorist attacks in which organizational involvement is not present. Hence, my main independent variable will be “organizational involvement.”

Given the literature, one could argue that the rise of individual terrorism or lone wolf terrorism indicates a shift in organizational preferences to carry out and claim terrorist attacks.

As lone wolf terrorists become more available to take the initiative and carry out lethal attacks using their own resources, terrorist organizations will be more likely to encourage lone wolf terrorism than carry out all the terrorist attacks by themselves. Since lone wolf terrorists operate freely compared to suicide bombers or other terrorists dispatched by terrorist organizations, they will be more adventurous in their attacks which could make their attacks more lethal than those of organizations. Hence, one can argue that the attacks which are executed by lone wolf terrorists will be deadlier than those that are organized, executed and claimed by terrorist organizations.

However, I do not think that this would be the case. I argue that organizational involvement will enhance the number of fatalities from suicide attacks thus make suicide terrorism more dangerous by radicalizing the suicide bombers and making them more loyal and committed to their missions. Based on this, I hypothesize the following:

Hypothesis: Suicide terrorist attacks that are carried out and openly claimed by

designated terrorist organizations will be more deadly than suicide terrorist attacks that

lack a clear and claimed organizational involvement.

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This could theoretically be explained by the resource mobilization argument, which posits that social networks help channel individual frustrations and alienations into a meaningful collective action (Gupta 2008). These social networks and institutions of the community become effective mobilization vehicles for collective action especially when dissident leadership can resort to shared beliefs and ideologies that motivate individual actors and legitimize the acts of rebellion. Within this context, individuals’ identification with the motives and goals of a terrorist organization influences their engagement in and support for similar acts of political violence.

Thus, I expect the organizational-linkage to provide a sense of direction, identification and resources for perpetrators and an enhanced level of strategic advantage for suicide operations.

Another reason that organizations will generate more deadly attacks than lone wolf terrorists is that organizational presence will increase the commitment of the suicide bombers using material and non-material incentives. In other words, I expect terrorist organizations to serve as coercive commitment tools which tie the hands of the perpetrators (Slantchev 2005).

Once potential perpetrators are recruited as members of a terrorist organization, their presence and duties are known to other members of the group, which makes it more difficult for the perpetrators to renege on their missions at the last minute. Thus, the group pressure ties the hands of the perpetrators and urges them to commit fully to their missions. In addition to this, recruitment, training and equipment of the perpetrators cost money to organizations. Hence, the very presence and maintenance of the perpetrators regardless of whether or not they carry out their attacks cause organizations to incur sunk costs. If there is also the promise of material rewards to be given to the perpetrators’ families in case of successful implementation of the suicide attack, this also further incentivizes perpetrators to want to succeed in their missions.

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Thus, theoretically speaking, suicide bombers that are dispatched by terrorist organizations are expected to be less likely to fail at their missions on purpose. The commitment argument will be directly tested in the following chapter. In this chapter, I seek to find out if the perpetrator-based distinction that is theoretically sound is empirically meaningful as well.

Data and Operationalization of Variables

In this chapter, I also use the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism database (2011).

As I explained in Chapter 3, in the Global Terrorism Database codebook, they define three attributes in order for an incident to be considered a terrorist event: The incident must be intentional, it must entail some level of violence or threat of violence and the perpetrators must be sub-national actors (Global Terrorism Database, 2011). Besides these attributes, the codebook also notes that in order for attacks to be included in the dataset as terrorist attacks, two of the following three criteria should be present: “(1) the act must be aimed at attaining a political, economic, religious or social goal (2) there must be evidence of intention to coerce, intimidate or convey some other message to a larger audience than the immediate victims (3) the action must be outside the context of legitimate warfare activities” (GTD Codebook, 5), which means the included attacks should deliberately target civilians or non-combatants and go against the international humanitarian law. In my analysis, all the terrorist attacks satisfy these criteria.

In the attack information section, the “suicide attack” exists as a categorical variable, which is coded as 1 for cases where there is evidence that perpetrator did not intend to escape from the attack alive, and 0 for those where such evidence does not exist. Thus, using this dataset, I can distinguish between suicide and non-suicide terrorist attacks and focus on the former. In this chapter, I will look at all suicide terrorist incidents from 1970 to 2010. For my third chapter, I had to limit my research with the time period of 1998 to 2010 given the

102 limitations of the dataset. In this analysis, I do not have to restrict myself with a specific time period, and therefore can use the all the suicide terrorist incidents that happen from 1970 to 2010 in the original dataset.

Since I investigate whether organizationally-linked suicide terrorist attacks would increase the number of fatalities, my dependent variable is the number of people killed per suicide attack from 1970 to 2010. Hence, it is the same dependent variable used in the previous chapter. My main independent variable is the organizationally carried out suicide attacks versus attacks that lack a clear and claimed organizational involvement, which I categorized as lone wolf suicide terrorist attacks. In order to code my independent variable, I used two variables that exist in the original database, which respectively are the perpetrator information and the claim of responsibility. Global Terrorism Database (2011) includes variables to account for the perpetrator information such as the perpetrator group name, statistics, motivation etc.

According to the codebook, if a terrorist attack is carried out by a terrorist organization, the perpetrator information specifically addresses the name of the organization which carried out the attack. For instance, Amal, Ansal al Islam, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or The Liberation

Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The claim of responsibility exists as a categorical variable which takes the value of 1 if a given group claimed responsibility for the attack. It takes the value of 0, if no claim of responsibility was made, and a value of -9 (unknown) if one cannot assess whether or not a claim of responsibility was made. The unknown cases only make 5.88% of the overall terrorist incidents and they are not included in the coding as they are not useful for the creation of my independent variable. I am mainly interested in the claimed vs. unclaimed attacks to code the organizational involvement. In the database, there are also incidents of terrorism for which the perpetrator name is coded either as “Individual” or “Perpetrator”. GTD codes terrorist

103 attacks that are undertaken by specific perpetrators whose names are known as “Individual”, whereas if the attack is undertaken by an unknown perpetrator whose name is not given, then the

GTD codes this case as “Perpetrator”. For instance, in the codebook of GTD, under the descriptive summary of the incidents, the information given for one of the suicide attacks reads as “Islamic extremist Ahmed Saeed attempted to burn down a Roman Catholic Church in

Lahore, Punjab Province, Pakistan”. In the perpetrator information section, this attack is coded as perpetrated by an “Individual”.

I treated Individual and Perpetrator categories as one category, since both variables refer to the individual perpetrators/bombers which I place under “no organizational involvement” category. In other words, this is the group that I suspect to have carried out suicide attacks on their own. Thus, my main independent variable of organizational involvement is operationalized as a dichotomous variable. When the organizational involvement was unambiguous, meaning that an organization’s name is specifically addressed, and the given terrorist organization openly claimed responsibility for the attack, I coded these attacks as “1”, which represents the organizationally-linked terrorist attacks. If a given attack is carried out by individuals

(perpetrator/individual), no organization claimed responsibility for the attack and there was no organizational name disclosed in the perpetrator name section, I coded these attacks as “0”. This category indicates that there is no organizational involvement and the attack most likely symbolizes a lone act of terrorism.

The other independent variables that are important controls for the purposes of this chapter are the weapon type, the attack type, the target type, year and vicinity. The GTD includes variables for each of these controls. In the original database, weapon type includes 13 different categories which range from biological, chemical, nuclear weapons to firearms, vehicle, and

104 sabotage equipment. I created a new variable called ‘weapon scale’ and ordered the types of weapons used in terrorist attacks from the most sophisticated to the least sophisticated. The coding is done according to the following criteria: if a given type of weapon is not easily accessible or cannot be easily assembled at the comfort of one’s house by looking at the online bomb-making instructions, the weapon is considered as the “most sophisticated” type of weapon and is coded as 3. The most sophisticated category of weapons involves biological, chemical, radiological and nuclear weapons from the original database. If the weapon can be assembled by a would-be terrorist but with serious effort and some level of technical skills, it is considered as

“moderately sophisticated” and receives a value of 2. Weapons that fall under the category of moderate sophistication include firearms, explosives, bombs and dynamite. Otherwise, the weapon is coded as 1, which indicates the least sophisticated category and includes fake weapons, incendiary, vehicles etc.

Under the attack information, the attack type exists as a categorical variable, which has 9 different values that range from assassinations to hijacking, bombing and unarmed assault. I recoded the attack type such that it would range from the most sophisticated to the least sophisticated attacks. According to my coding, the most sophisticated attacks require the most extensive planning and organizing, and are most likely to lead to considerable humanitarian casualties. The least sophisticated attacks, on the other hand, are less complicated in terms of planning and organization and target objects such as facilities, infrastructure, and symbolic monuments instead of directly targeting human beings.

Based on these criteria, the new variable for attack type “attacks” includes the following categories: the most sophisticated attacks, which include assassinations, armed assaults, bombings and explosions, and receive a value of 3. Moderately sophisticated attacks include

105 hijackings, and hostage taking, which are coded as 2; the least sophisticated attacks which are given a value of 1, include facility/infrastructure attacks since their primary objective is to cause damage to a non-human target and harm an installation, such as buildings or monuments.

The variable for target type originally consists of 22 different categories, which range from businesses, to abortion clinics; government buildings, religious institutions etc. Since the number of categories for this variable was too many, I recoded the variable and categorized it under five headings, which respectively are: (1) political targets, including government, police, diplomatic targets and political parties; (2) military targets, which include attacks against army units, soldiers, recruiting sites, barracks etc. (3) civilian targets, which is the most exhaustive category of all and involves attacks against civilians. In the original database, businesses are a separate category, which encompasses “individuals or organizations engaged in commercial or mercantile activity as a means of livelihood” (GTD Codebook, 24) such as restaurants, gas stations, hospitals and cafes. However, these are places inhabited mostly by civilians. Thus, businesses were placed under civilian targets along with abortion clinics, airports, educational institutions, media, NGOs, private citizens’ property, religious institutions, public transportations and tourists. Finally the last category for target type is (4) infrastructure, which includes facilities and infrastructure as targets, such as phone towers, microwave towers, power lines, oil pipelines, etc. I then coded the target type variable as a dichotomous variable to control for whether any given attack targeted civilians (1) or not (0). I assume that the attacks that target civilians will generate higher casualties than those that target specific military or political targets.

Year variable, which goes from 1970 to 2010, is also included as a control variable to account for recent and not so recent terrorist attacks. To be consistent with the coding that I have done in the previous chapter, I coded year as a dichotomous variable to measure whether the

106 suicide or terrorist attack was recently executed (1) or not (0). Those attacks that took place before 2006 were assigned the value of 0, which means they were not recent attacks, and the attacks that took place in or after 2006 were assigned a value of 1 indicating that they were recent attacks. Vicinity is the last variable that I included in order to control for whether an attack occurred in the vicinity of a city (1) or inside the city center (0). City centers are generally more populated than suburbs. By including this variable, I try to control for the probable density of a given attack location.

Method and Results

Since my dependent variable is the number of people killed per terrorist attack, I am still dealing with count data. Hence, I use the same statistical method of negative binomial regression from the previous chapter to test whether organizationally-linked attacks actually lead to higher fatalities compared to the lone acts of terrorism. To test my hypothesis about organizational involvement, I run three models, which can all be seen in the following table.

Table 6: Effect of Organizational Involvement on the Lethality of Suicide Terrorist Attacks, 1970-2010 (Model 1) (Model 2) (Model 3) Fatalities Fatalities Fatalities

OrgInv 0.402*** 0.284*** 0.449*** (0.064) (0.080) (0.113)

Weapons 0.642 0.281 -0.217 (0.075) (0.181) (0.287)

Civilians 0.553*** 0.487*** 0.528*** (0.062) (0.078) (0.110)

Attacks -0.246 0.0689 0.307 (0.157) (0.176) (0.279)

Year 0.262*** 0.459*** 0.135 (0.066) (0.081) (0.129)

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Vicinity -0.150 -0.348** 0.109 (0.101) (0.124) (0.171)

Constant -1.274 -0.0186 2.167 (0.771) (1.232) (1.617)

N 1478 870 487 AIC 10301.3 6093.3 3331.1

Standard errors in parentheses * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

The first model looks at all suicide terrorist incidents in the world from 1970 to 2010.

The second model concentrates on suicide attacks in the Middle East and North Africa. Finally, the fourth model tests the organizational linkage hypothesis for suicide attacks that occur only in the South Asia region. For all the models, the time period covers from 1970 to 2010.

According to all three models, there is a statistically significant and positive relationship between organizational involvement and the lethality of suicide terrorist attacks, which means that the organizationally carried out attacks kill more people than attacks where no organizational involvement exists. In other words, my hypothesis in this chapter is verified. In the first model in which all suicide terrorist incidents are included from 1970 to 2010, we can interpret the results looking at the predicted values, as follows: for the suicide terrorist attacks that are carried out by lone wolf terrorists, the expected count of fatalities is 12 whereas for suicide attacks that are executed and claimed by terrorist organizations, the expected fatalities goes up to 18, controlling for everything else.

In other words, the engagement of terrorist organizations in the planning and execution of suicide attacks does in fact make these attacks more dangerous by considerably increasing the expected number of fatalities. The results are significant at less than 1% level of significance, holding all other variables constant.

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Figure 6: Expected Numbers of Fatalities from Lone Wolf vs. Organizationally-linked Suicide Terrorist Attacks, 1970-2010

Predictive Margins with 95% CIs

20

18

16

14

Predicted FatalitiesNumber Of

12 10

0 1 Organizational Involvement

In Model 2, which specifically focuses on suicide attacks in the Middle East and North

Africa, and Model 3, which looks at suicide attacks in South Asia, the organizational

involvement is still a statistically significant and positive predictor of the fatalities from suicide

terrorism.

Among the control variables, attacks on civilians and recently executed attacks (in two

out of three models) are important in predicting the number of fatalities that result from suicide

terrorist attacks. As predicted, when civilians are targeted instead of specific political or military

figures or attacks on infrastructures, the expected numbers of fatalities increase. This finding

makes sense, given that the more easily reachable a target is or the less protected it is, the higher

the casualties are likely to be. Recent attacks also seem to be more lethal than previously

executed ones, which coincide with the findings in the previous chapter. The results also suggest

that the use of different types of weapons, sophistication of attack types, and whether the attack

took place in a city center or suburbs (vicinity) have no significant relationship with the number

of fatalities that result from suicide terrorism.

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Organizations vs. Lone Wolves Controlling for the Tactical Advantages of Suicide Terrorism

In the final part of this chapter, I test the organizational involvement hypothesis by using the original data that I coded for my previous chapter. The first goal is to see whether the organizational involvement in the execution of suicide attacks would still have an influence on the expected count of fatalities even when the tactical advantages of suicide terrorism are controlled for such as density, indoors- outdoors distinction, and the use of multiple perpetrators.

Second, I will look at whether organizational involvement is statistically significant as an interaction term, when it is interacted with the density variable. If the interaction effect turns out to be significant, this would indicate that terrorist organizations not only increase the effectiveness of suicide terrorist incidents but also accentuate the tactical advantages of suicide terrorism compared to lone wolf terrorists. In other words, what was theoretically stated will be empirically justified.

In order to test the organizational involvement hypothesis using the newly coded data, I first distinguished organizational involvement from lone wolf terrorists for the 1998- 2010 time period. Since the new variables were coded only for suicide attacks that took place between 1998 and 2010 in the Middle East-North Africa and South Asia, the new regression will inevitably be run for the same time period including only these two regions. The coding reveals that, of the

567 suicide attacks that took place in the Middle East and South Asia from 1998 to 2010, 490 were organizationally-linked suicide attacks. The remaining 77 were carried out by lone wolf terrorists. Table 7 shows the results.

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Table 7: Effect of Organizational Involvement on the Lethality of Suicide Terrorism Controlling for the Tactical Advantages of Suicide Terrorism, 1998-2010 (Model 1) (Model 2) Fatalities Fatalities

Orginv 0.690*** 0.0969 (0.122) (0.346)

Density 1.040*** 0.822*** (0.055) (0.130)

Indoors 0.328*** 0.338*** (0.077) (0.077)

Access 0.187*** 0.190*** (0.054) (0.053)

Discriminate -0.0223 -0.0237 (0.088) (0.087)

Multipleper 0.339*** 0.343*** (0.082) (0.081)

Vicinity -0.151 -0.140 (0.121) (0.121)

Lgdp 0.0646 0.0649 (0.041) (0.041)

Democracy -0.797*** -0.797*** (0.172) (0.171)

Org*Density 0.242** (0.131)

Constant -1.691*** -1.176** (0.331) (0.435)

_cons -0.736*** -0.744*** (0.076) (0.076)

N 471 471 AIC 3097.2 3095.8

Standard errors in parentheses * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

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Table 7 presents two models: the first one looks at the discrete effect of the organizational involvement on the expected count of fatalities controlling for the tactical advantages of suicide terrorism. The second model looks at the effect of organizational involvement as an interaction term with the density variable on the lethality of suicide terrorism.

The new NBREG results in Model 1 suggest that even when we control for the tactical advantages of suicide terrorism such as density of an attack’s location, the indoors/outdoors distinction and the use of multiple perpetrators, the organizational involvement remains to be a positive predictor of lethality. When organizations are involved in the planning and execution of suicide terrorist attacks, these attacks are twice as deadly as those attacks undertaken by lone wolf terrorists. The expected number of fatalities that result from suicide attacks carried out by lone wolf terrorists is 6, everything else held constant. When a suicide attack is carried out by a terrorist organization, the expected number of fatalities increases to 12.

Figure 7: Expected Numbers of Fatalities from Lone Wolf vs. Organizationally-linked Suicide Attacks, 1998-2010

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Hence, organizational involvement actually makes a difference in the lethal effectiveness of suicide terrorism. Suicide attacks that are undertaken by terrorist organizations are two times deadlier than when they are carried out by lone wolf terrorists controlling for the advantages of the tactic itself.

The interaction effect presented in Model 2 captures the differential influence of terrorist organizations vs. lone wolves on the expected numbers of fatalities across a range of density, which can be shown in the following figure.

Figure 8: Expected Numbers of Fatalities from Lone Wolf vs. Organizationally-linked Suicide Terrorist Attacks Across a Range of Density, 1998-2010

According to the NBREG results of Model 2, in sparsely populated locations, or in low density areas, there is no difference in the effectiveness of organizationally-linked versus lone wolf-led suicide terrorist attacks in terms of fatalities. However, as the density of a target location goes from low to medium and from medium to high, there appears to be a large and

113 statistically significant difference in the lethal effectiveness of organizationally-linked vs. lone wolf suicide terrorist attacks. The expected numbers of fatalities for lone wolf suicide terrorist attacks in high-density locations is 10, whereas in the same high density location, this number goes up to 23 for organizationally-linked suicide terrorist attacks. Hence, organizationally- sponsored suicide terrorist attacks kill more than twice as many people in the same dense location as suicide attacks that are not sponsored by terrorist organizations.

To conclude, the results in Table 7 lead to two significant conclusions: terrorist organizations not only increase the lethal effectiveness of suicide terrorist incidents but also accentuate the tactical advantages of suicide terrorism compared to the lone wolf terrorists. If a suicide bomber is recruited, indoctrinated, trained, and dispatched by a terrorist organization, he or she is more concentrated, less likely to get nervous or panic during the execution of the attack.

Hence organizationally trained suicide bombers do not scare away their victims and therefore are less likely fail their missions. Also, given the material incentives and other private goods provisions, suicide bombers who are sponsored by terrorist organizations are further incentivized, more committed to successfully carrying out their missions and less likely to change their minds or back out at the last minute. That is why, when suicide bombers who are sponsored by terrorist organizations target high density locations, they generate twice as many fatalities as when lone wolf perpetrators target high density locations.

Conclusion

Terrorism today is more diversified than it has ever been. However, existing studies on terrorism do not necessarily take into account the variation within and across different types of terrorism. As Martha Crenshaw (2007) argues, most of the available publications on the subject do not “distinguish sufficiently between suicide and other terrorist or insurgent attacks or

114 account for variation within the phenomenon” (p. 134). The few studies that compare different forms of terrorism mostly do not rest on empirical evidence, and those they do are problematic in their methodology. This chapter has tried to address some of these problems, and made an important contribution to the literature on terrorism by making a perpetrator-based distinction among suicide terrorist attacks. Inspired by the idea that not all terrorist attacks are the same, I theoretically and empirically separated organizationally-linked suicide terrorist attacks from those perpetrated by lone wolf terrorists, accounting for another variation within the incidents of suicide terrorism.

My findings have shown that suicide attacks that are undertaken by terrorist organizations generate higher numbers of fatalities than those attacks that are launched by the lone wolf terrorists. Moreover, terrorist organizations accentuate the tactical advantages of suicide terrorism; when organizationally sponsored suicide bombers target dense locations, they generate twice as many fatalities as lone wolf terrorists.

These findings have significant policy implications. Even though lone wolf attacks of suicide terrorism seem to be on the rise and therefore generate widespread concern by shifting the threat of terrorism to a new level, my analysis has shown that lone wolf-perpetrated suicide terrorist attacks are not nearly as lethal or dangerous as those carried out by terrorist organizations. In other words, the lethality and security impacts of suicide terrorism continue to be determined by terrorist organizations; they constitute a bigger threat than lone wolf terrorists.

Terrorist organizations are much more devoted, resourceful and strategic when it comes to the planning and execution of the suicide attacks, hence their attacks are much more deadly compared to the attacks of their counterparts.

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The fact that the organizational involvement makes suicide attacks more lethal than they would otherwise be is good news in so far as the security and counter-terrorism experts are concerned. As I previously explained, the occurrences of lone wolf terrorist attacks are totally random. Therefore, it is extremely difficult to identify and track lone wolf terrorists before they actually carry out their attacks and this is why they remain under the radar of intelligence agencies. However, the same thing is not true for terrorist organizations.

Terrorist organizations and their whereabouts are relatively well known by the researchers and practitioners alike. As we will see in the next two chapters, terrorist groups utilize different means of communications such as TV and radio stations, social media, internet blogs, and print publications to educate and radicalize their audiences, and to propagate their ideology and political demands. Some terrorist leaders even write autobiographies laying out the details of their careers as well as some secrets of their organization (Shapiro 2014). In other words, terrorist organizations leave behind their footprints. There are also a number of research websites and databases that provide information on the profiles and characteristics of the terrorist groups around the world. Given all this information, political science researchers and security specialists can investigate and analyze terrorist groups much more systematically than the lone wolf terrorists.

If the most lethal form of suicide terrorism takes place under the sponsorship of terrorist organizations, then governments should divert their resources and human capital to adopt political strategies and military measures that will systematically undermine the cohesiveness of these organizations and bring them to an end. Within this context, anti-terrorist measures that would target the leadership of the organization either by the use of force or negotiations, sever their financial resources, address the major economic and political grievances of the people who

116 are most likely to be recruited by terrorist organizations or divert media attention away from these organizations thereby decreasing their popularity in the eyes of larger groups of people might be helpful in coping with the lethal threat of terrorist groups.

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Chapter 5: Why do some terrorist organizations use suicide terrorism while others do not?

Introduction

The previous two chapters sought to comprehend the lethal effectiveness of suicide terrorism. The underlying research question was: what makes suicide terrorism an extremely lethal form of attack? To that end, in Chapter 3, I have explained the variation in the number of fatalities within suicide attacks by using newly collected data and have concluded that the density of an attack location, the level of enclosure in a targeted site, and the involvement of multiple perpetrators are all significant determinants of the varying degrees of lethality within different suicide attacks. In Chapter 4, I have looked at another layer of distinction among suicide terrorist attacks, one that is based on different types of perpetrators. The goal was to draw a line between suicide terrorist attacks that are carried out and claimed by designated terrorist organizations and those that were undertaken by self-claimed terrorists, which were categorized as lone wolf terrorist attacks. My analysis has shown that an affiliation with a terrorist organization does in fact increase the lethality of suicide terrorism.

Based on these findings, one possible conclusion we can draw is that all terrorist organizations would prefer to use suicide terrorism over other forms of terrorism most, if not all, of the time. This is first because a carefully strategized and successfully launched suicide attack guarantees considerable numbers of casualties and second because terrorist organizations have

118 an advantage in the planning and execution of suicide attacks compared to the other perpetrators.

However, not all terrorist organizations use suicide terrorism at all times. In fact, as previously mentioned, despite its lethal effectiveness, suicide terrorist attacks remain a small percentage of the worldwide terrorist incidents (Hassan 2011, Pape 2003).

Why do some terrorist groups use suicide terrorism while others do not to? This is the main question of this final empirical chapter. In this chapter, the focus is not on lethality but rather on a consequential question: given that suicide attacks are extremely lethal and that terrorist organizations have a strategic advantage in enhancing this lethality, then why do all terrorist organizations not exclusively use the suicide terrorism strategy?

What is also different in this chapter is that I shift my attention from the incidents of suicide terrorism to the strategies and characteristics of terrorist organizations. The particular terrorist organizations that I focus on are the ones in the Middle East-North Africa region since this is the region where the most frequent and lethal suicide attacks take place. Hence, there are plenty of terrorist organizations to study and more significantly, these organizations vary in terms of their leadership structures, age, ideological orientations, and resources. Therefore, it is intriguing to look at what particular strategic, structural and motivational differences would shape organizational preferences for suicide attacks over other types of terrorism.

In this chapter, I argue that the choice of suicide terrorism over other types of terrorist strategies depends on the organization’s ability to engender both radicalization and commitment on the part of the recruits. The logic is simple: one cannot launch a suicide terrorist attack if one does not have the incentivized and motivated terrorists to commit an attack. Hence, terrorist organizations that are better able to indoctrinate their recruits and enhance their levels of commitment will be the ones that employ suicide terrorism. In the indoctrination process, the use

119 of mass media for the purposes of propaganda and education, and the provision of private goods to the recruits and their families play invaluable roles. Thus, I expect to see that terrorist organizations that are better able to utilize these particular organizational strategies will be more likely to use suicide attacks than those that do not.

The rest of this chapter is structured just like the previous chapters. I first review the literature that discusses what motivates organizations to use suicide attacks. While doing that, I emphasize the deliberate strategies pursued by terrorist organizations, which I hypothesize to be important predictors of the organizational tendency to use suicide terrorism. Then I introduce the

Minorities at Risk Organizational Behavior (MAROB) dataset (2008) and the method used in my analysis. Finally I discuss my results, and talk about the larger implications of my findings.

Literature Review & Hypotheses

Organizational Motivations for Choosing Suicide Terrorism

The previous chapters established that suicide attacks are strategically beneficial compared to other terrorist attacks, especially in so far as terrorist organizations are concerned. From an organizational perspective, using suicide attacks as part of larger terrorist campaigns brings with it several advantages. If we summarize the previously mentioned advantages, the following list appears. First, suicide attacks are generally less expensive yet more lethal than other types of terrorist attacks. As an example, while suicide attacks constituted only 1% of the total number of terrorist attacks in Palestine from 2000 to 2002, the death toll was about 44% more in cases of suicide terrorism (Canetti-Nisim, Mesch and Pedahzur 2006, 490). Furthermore, the amount of damage inflicted and the number of casualties generated can be strictly controlled by a given perpetrator. As I explained, suicide bombers carry out their attacks in a manner very similar to attacks by smart bombs controlling the timing, targets and location of a given attack. They can

120 talk their way into strategically significant locations especially when they are after key well- protected VIP targets such as important politicians, leaders or military figures. They can also target areas populated mainly by civilians, as well as easily accessible public places if the goal is to kill and maim large groups of people all at once. Hence, the lethal effectiveness of suicide attacks mainly depends on what damage perpetrators would like to achieve and who they are willing to kill.

As a result of considerably high numbers of fatalities and the involvement of human bombs, suicide attacks attract greater publicity, which, if used strategically, can help raise awareness, and even in some cases, sympathy towards the terrorists’ cause. Sometimes publicity might even force targeted governments to take conciliatory steps in the direction that terrorist groups want. In other cases, it may encourage retaliatory moves that fuel further resistance.

Regardless of whether conciliation happens or not, using suicide terrorism to physically and psychologically combat an enemy leads to enhanced bargaining power and legitimacy for terrorist groups and their supporters: “there is a perception that suicide attacks are unstoppable, an impression perpetuated not only by the logistical challenges of detecting and repulsing the threat but also by the impression that the attacker is driven by a desperate determination” (Cronin

2003, 14). So far the content of this literature is pretty similar to what I have discussed in the previous chapters. Given the strategic advantages, cost-effectiveness and the lethal effectiveness of suicide attacks, one expectation might be that, terrorist organizations would frequently choose to use suicide terrorism over any other types of terrorism. However, this is not the case.

According to the Global Terrorism Database 2011 (1970-2010), suicide terrorism accounts for only .05 percent of all terrorist incidents in the world in 1985. This percentage rose to 11.4 in 2007 and then declined to 3.5% in 2010, which can be shown in the following figure:

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Figure 9: The Percentage of Suicide Terrorist Incidents in all Terrorist Incidents Worldwide, 1970-2010

14.0%

12.0%

10.0%

8.0%

6.0%

4.0%

2.0%

0.0% 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015

According to the scholarly literature, the increase in the numbers of suicide terrorist attacks as well as other terrorist incidents coincides with the rise of specific regional conflicts.

The frequency of terrorist incidents usually increases in the aftermath of peace talks and negotiations, which are harshly opposed by the radical factions or hardliners within the terrorist groups (Hassan 2011, Bueno De Mesquita 2005, Kydd and Walter 2002). For instance, when the

United Nations General Assembly recognized the legitimacy of the Palestine Liberation

Organization and invited Yasser Arafat, the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the PLO to make a speech in New York in 1974, Arafat’s conciliatory approach and his bid for recognition infuriated some of the extremist factions within the Palestine Liberation Organization. In 1976 the militant Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which used to be a smaller group under the umbrella organization PLO, separated from the hierarchy and continued to engage in terrorist activities on its own. One of the most significant incidents organized by the PFLP was the

122 hijacking of a French airbus en route from Tel Aviv to Paris in June 1976, which was forced to land in Uganda. In exchange for the release of hostages, terrorists demanded that the Israeli government would release the Palestinian militants held in Israeli jails. While this was not a suicide terrorist incident, it is still an example of the increased use of terrorist violence by a militant organization that rejected compromise with the enemy.

When we turn our attention specifically to suicide attacks, we see that the rise and fall of suicide terrorism also coincide with the emergence of various regional conflicts and civilian uprisings around the globe (Hassan 2011). For instance, in mid 1980s, the civil war in Lebanon explains the particular rise in suicide terrorism. When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982,

Hezbollah carried out violent suicide attacks against the Israeli Defense Forces as well as the US and French multinational peacekeeping forces that occupied the Southern Lebanon. As a result of the Israeli invasion, Fatah’s (the military wing of PLO) terrorist campaign from Lebanon paused briefly as the PLO was forced to relocate from Beirut to Tunisia. However, it was not before too long that the attacks resumed from Tunisia.

In a similar vein, the rise of the first Palestinian uprising “Intifada” in 1987 and the mass riots of the Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip led to the rise of Hamas and generated another wave of suicide terrorism. Furthermore, the signing of Oslo Accords in early

1990s created a split among the Palestinian terrorist groups which also increased the amount of terrorist violence aimed at derailing the peace process (Kydd and Walter, 2002). The rise in the number of suicide attacks around this time can also be attributed to the massive escalation of the use of suicide terrorism by Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka starting from late 1980s. Finally, Riaz

Hassan argues that the rise of the second Palestinian uprising in 2000, the suicide attacks by

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Chechen insurgents in Russia and the commencement of the war in Iraq in 2003 are primarily responsible for the dramatic increase of the suicide bombing attacks from early to mid-2000s.

While Hassan (2011) focuses on significant regional conflicts to explain the rise and fall of suicide terrorism, I argue that this is only part of the explanation. Even during the most dire social, economic and political circumstances, which generally increase the acts of terrorism, not all organizations resort to the use of suicide terrorism. I seek to understand why this is the case by looking at various organizational strategies that may facilitate the choice of suicide terrorism.

In other words, my research shifts from tactical advantages of suicide terrorism to organizational characteristics and strategies. I focus on terrorist organizations in the Middle East and North

Africa to explain how the variation in the use of some deliberate organizational strategies affects organizational decision-making in favor of suicide terrorism.

Organizational Strategies and the Use of Suicide Terrorism

As I tried to explain in the introduction of this paper, the number one requirement for suicide terrorism is a determined suicide bomber who is willing to die and kill at the same time.

Thus, terrorist organizations use a variety of strategies from intelligence-gathering to financing and propaganda in order to find supporters for their violent acts. However, not every person who is sympathetic to the dominant ideology, political agenda or goals of an organization becomes a suicide bomber. In other words, what enhances popular support for a given organization may not necessarily increase the probability of the organizational use of suicide terrorism; this is because the support base of an organization can be diverse including active supporters, who may provide the members of the terrorist organizations with safe havens, financial contributions or medical assistance, as well as passive supporters, who are sympathetic to the political cause of an organization but choose not to take an active part in its militant activities.

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In order to explain why some terrorist organizations are able and choose to use suicide terrorism, I focus on two organizational strategies: 1) the use of mass media and print publications for educational and propaganda purposes, which will allow organizations to spread their ideology, agenda and goals, thereby attract new recruits into their ranks and radicalize them, and 2) the provision of private goods such as material and non-material benefits to the members of the organization and their families, which will increase the loyalty and commitment of the recruits. My main argument is that the terrorist organizations that are able to find, indoctrinate and radicalize new recruits through the use of mass media and to tie their hands through the provision of private goods are more likely to use suicide terrorism.

The Use of Media

The former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once said that media publicity serves like oxygen for terrorist groups (Muller et al. 2003, p.65). Terrorists need media attention for a variety of reasons. Alexander et al. (1979) summarize these reasons under three broad categories, which are gaining attention, recognition and legitimacy. To be more specific, terrorist organizations welcome publicity to make a name for themselves, to intimidate larger groups of people who were not directly affected by their heinous attacks, to stimulate sympathy for their cause, to educate their sympathizers and supporters about their background, motivations and broader agenda, to find financial contributors and to find, indoctrinate and radicalize new recruits. All these goals require a greater interaction between terrorists and the media.

As I briefly mentioned in the previous chapter, the perpetrators of terrorism want to be on the minds of their audience. Publicity makes it easier for terrorists to get what they want.

Through the interviews and aired videos, the leaders of the terrorist groups enjoy being placed on equal footing with world leaders, winning the former a more legitimate status in the eyes of the

125 larger audiences: “By regularly appearing in the media, terrorists are trying to become a legitimate representative of their own cause….Al-Qaeda’s Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri extensively use this strategy, by regularly sending in videos to the media portraying themselves as leaders of the (Muslim) world” (COT 2008, 11).

In fact, the use of various media sources for propaganda purposes is nothing new in the context of terrorist struggle. Terrorist organizations have deliberately sought to glorify the attacks of their suicide bombers by using radio stations, underground newspapers, posters, flyers, publications or online videos. One common image of a (would-be) suicide bomber is him/her giving a final videotaped statement standing in front of the flag of the terrorist group that s/he is a member of, holding a rifle or a Koran. In these videos, which are recorded hours before the act of martyrdom, the “living martyr” explains his/her motivations for becoming a suicide bomber

(Hafez 2006).

The interaction between the media and the terrorist groups has evolved over time. Before

1990s, terrorist organizations were more at the mercy of the established media outlets. They would carry out an attack and wait to see how the media would report it. Or they would send their message straight to the existing outlets in the hope that their message would be broadcast as it was. In other words, while terrorist groups had control over the targets, location and timing of the attack, they did not necessarily know whether and how their attacks and broader message would be framed and broadcast since they were not the ones writing of the content of the news.

The final word still belonged to the editors or gatekeepers. With the advent of new technologies, terrorist groups no longer need the established media outlets or newspapers to report their stories.

Now, they have the freedom to shape and distribute their messages in any direction and context that they want without fearing censorship.

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They use their own websites, newspapers, radio and TV stations. Therefore, they have full control over what message they want to give, and how it should be delivered, which gives them a new sense of empowerment. The old media and the state-owned broadcasting outlets are now replaced by the excessive availability and easy reach of the internet, which offers a fast and relatively inexpensive mode of communication that terrorist groups are eager to take advantage of: “In recent years, the art of terrorist communication has evolved to a point at which terrorist themselves can now control the entire production process: determining the content, context and medium over which their message is projected and targeting precisely the audience (or multiple audiences) they seek to reach” (Hoffman 2006, 198). For instance, there are online videos that specifically target children and inspire them to grow up only to die as a martyr. In these videos

‘death’ is presented as a ‘gentle, innocent, and heroic’ act, not as something formidable. Suicide bombers are portrayed as heroes or role models that children look up to (Skaine 2006).

Hence, many terrorist groups have an online presence. While I talked about Al Qaeda in the previous chapter, there are various other terrorist groups that successfully harness different communication mediums to pursue their agendas. One of the first terrorist groups to have an online presence was the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Post 2007, Hoffman 2006). In 1995,

Tamil Tigers have established their first network called Tamilnet.com whose success paved the way for other LTTE websites which have operated in countries that had sizable Tamil presence.

Hamas and its armed branches such as “Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades” also use the internet intensively for propaganda, mobilization, education, and fundraising purposes. Most of their websites tell stories from the Palestinian perspective and feature pictures and photographs of the martyrs, explain what Intifada is, and instruct the readers about how they could be a part of the Intifada. There are websites available in different languages that are solely devoted to solicit

127 money donations or other contributions for the Palestinian cause. An affiliated Hamas site

(qassam.net) actively tries to raise money for the purchase of rifles, dynamites and bullets to contribute to the fight against the Israeli occupation. The attached message to the would-be donors on the website reads as: “Dear Donor: Please tell us the field in which you prefer your money to be spent on such as: martyrdom attacks; buying weapons for the mujahedeen; training the youth; or inventing and developing missiles, mortars and explosives” (Kelley 2002, 1). They even recommend specific amounts that will be reasonable for different purchases. To confound the officials, terrorist groups regularly change the addresses of these websites and take precautions to stay anonymous.

Hezbollah is another terrorist group that has been very active on the internet. It is known to have more than 20 websites designed for different audiences and maintained in several languages. The group also owns its own radio and satellite television station, which is called the

Al-Manar Television. Al-Manar, which means the Beacon in English, is reported to be in the top

5 of the most watched TV channels in the Middle East. In his book “Beacon of Hatred: Inside

Hezbollah’s Al-Manar Television”, Avi Jorisch (2004) argues that Hezbollah uses this television station to perpetuate its fight against the US and Israel. Being exposed to Hezbollah’s point of view and propaganda exclusively, the viewers are advised to support and partake in Hezbollah’s terrorist activities.

One interesting promotion that Hezbollah has done through its TV station and internet sites was the videogame called Special Force, designed to simulate Hezbollah’s fight against

Israel. The game allows the player to pursue and fire at the enemy, which is either the Israeli prime minister, minister of defense or the chief of the IDF. It includes training simulations and tests to check the player’s skills at avoiding land mines, traps and snipers: “The introduction is

128 an exploding Israeli tank. A row of burning Israeli flags marks time while the computer loads a training session in which shooting Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s electronic forehead on a target is worth 10 points. Victory come from no one but Allah exhorts the screen before the mission begins” (Wakin 2003, 1). The members of the game’s design team argue that this is a game based on real events, which aims at both entertaining the players and educating them about

Hezbollah’s ideas and values.

As the above examples have shown, the use of various media and communication sources has been growing among the terrorist groups. Terrorist organizations deliberately use internet- based sources such as websites and social media, radio and television stations, newspapers, books and leaflets to inform and educate larger groups of people and to garner their support.

Along with information come recruitment opportunities. As the extremists ideologies and values are dissipated, sympathizers become more radicalized and more willing to take an active part in execution of a terrorist group’s violent activities. Hence, one specific benefit of the use of mass media and print publications for the purposes of terrorist groups will be the recruitment of suicide bombers who are informed about the history/background of the given organization, are aware of the socio-economic and political grievances and are radicalized enough to be recruited for suicide missions. Hence, I make the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 1: The more frequently terrorist organizations use mass media and print

publications for the purposes of education and propaganda, the more likely they will be

to use suicide terrorism as they will find and radicalize greater numbers of recruits.

The Use of Private Goods

While the use of media and print publications is an important strategy for terrorist groups to make their ideology and grievances known, and thereby turn potential sympathizers into

129 radicalized recruits, as far as suicide terrorism goes, the use of media should be reinforced by another strategy to achieve further success in the execution of suicide terrorist attacks. As I said before, for a suicide attack to be successfully executed, the minimum requirement is a suicide bomber who is indoctrinated and motivated enough to carry out the attack as planned. However, there are cases of “failed” suicide bombers, whose missions failed not because the ignition switch did not go on, but because they changed their minds along the way.

In one of these cases, a suicide bomber “Ahmad” who was coming from a poor family in

Pakistan was introduced to the Pakistani Taliban by a friend of his. In the Taliban camp where he was subject to a warm welcome, he was indoctrinated with verses from Koran and hours-long films about what has happening in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the interview, Ahmad says that he was outraged watching the video clips of atrocities allegedly committed by the Americans that he decided to be recruited as a suicide bomber. However, on the day of his attack as he neared the checkpoint where he was going to blow himself up, he chose not to press the button and turned himself in (Gopal 2009).

An interview by Vered Levy-Barzilai, which appeared in Ha’arezt Daily (2003) tells a story of another case; a young female Palestinian terrorist named Arin Ahmed. She was recruited by Islamic Jihad, who also changed her mind on her way to the target area and backed out. In her interview, she explains her reasons for changing her mind as follows:

I got out of the car. The place wasn't exactly like I'd seen on the map. I saw a lot of people, mothers with children, teenage boys and girls. I remembered an Israeli girl my age whom I used to be in touch with. I suddenly understood what I was about to do and I said to myself: How can I do such a thing? I changed my mind. Issam also had second thoughts, but they managed to convince him to go ahead. I saw him go and blow himself up…I decided that I wasn't going to do it. They were very angry at me. They yelled at me the whole way back. And they also tried to send me to carry out another attack in Jerusalem. But I'd already changed my mind and given up the whole idea. I stayed at home, until your forces came and arrested me (Levy-Barzilai 2003, 1).

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As these examples suggest, the availability of recruits may not be enough to guarantee that the suicide attack will be successfully executed. Terrorist organizations need to do more in order to make sure that their recruits are fully committed to carry out their attacks. One important strategy to achieve this is the provision of private goods or selective rewards. What distinguishes a private good from a public good is that the latter is non-exclusive and non-rival whereas the former is rival and excludable. So, by definition, a private good exclusively benefits a select few since one’s access to it restricts others’ access to and consumption of the same good (Malkin and

Wildavsky 1991, Olson 1965). In the realm of politics, the rule of law, freedom of expression and transparency would be considered as examples of public goods, whereas favorable tax policies, trade and protective tariff agreements that are meant to benefit only a specific group of voters would be examples of private goods.

When we think about suicide terrorism, the use of mass media, social media and print publications as well as provisions of public goods and social services by terrorist organizations enlarge the support base of the terrorist organizations and help facilitate the radicalization of new recruits. However, none of these strategies increase the likelihood that the attacks will be launched uninterrupted. In order to strengthen the loyalty of the suicide bombers, terrorist organizations have to provide their recruits with private goods, which will exclusively benefit the suicide bombers and their tight circle. Private goods offered to the suicide bombers and their families such as monetary rewards, scholarships, food aids or rent payments will tie the hands of the suicide bombers and make them more committed.

The argument here is similar to the one proposed by Bueno De Mesquita et al. in The

Logic of Political Survival (2003). The selectorate theory assumes that regardless of the regime type, all leaders have a common motivation which is to stay in power or survive. However,

131 depending on the type of the regime, the size of the selectorate and the winning coalition, the means through which leaders can achieve their political survival changes. Assuming that every leader including the dictators needs some level of support to stay in power, leaders are divided about what kinds of goods they should provide to secure the continuing support of their key constituents. The winning coalition is defined as a subset of the selectorate whose support is absolutely necessary to keep the incumbent in office. Hence, while the provision of the public goods such as civil freedoms, national security or economic prosperity benefits the population at large, in regimes where the winning coalition is too small, private good provisions such as granting certain privileges like key positions to satisfy the members of this exclusive group is more suitable for the purposes of the leaders.

Based on this, I suggest that suicide bombers can effectively be seen as winning coalitions within the terrorist organizations. In fact, in a different paper, Ethan Bueno De

Mesquita (2005) presents a formal model of interaction between a government, a terrorist organization and potential volunteers to explain mobilization. According to this model, while many sympathizers may volunteer to join a terrorist group, the terrorist organization screens these potential applicants carefully and only selects the most qualified ones.

One study presented by the US Army Intelligence Services (2007) also supports this model arguing that while some recruits are selected from the schools financed by the terrorist organizations, others are selected and recruited based on particular skills and qualifications such as their ideological orientation or level of commitment. While Bueno de Mesquita’s model also accounts for the potential effect of the government crackdowns on mobilization, what is important for the argument that I present in this chapter is that there is a selection process going on when it comes to recruits that organizations choose. An example that would reinforce this

132 argument would be the special status that The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eealam had conferred on its suicide unit called the Black Tigers: “Those who volunteer to join the Black Tigers are required to demonstrate an even higher level of skill, dedication, and motivation than traditional

LTTE cadres. While everyone must be willing to fight, in Prabhakaran’s view only a few have what it takes to intentionally sacrifice themselves to destroy the enemy” (Hoffman 2006, 142).

This argument and the supporting examples imply that the terrorist organizations will be even more careful to maintain and satisfy their members, especially the suicide terrorists, who have been cherry-picked in the first place.

When we peruse the literature, there is a raft of scholarly work on the terrorist organizations’ use of public goods, which help strengthen their domestic support base (Fawaz

2005, Ghandour 2002, Ly 2007). Just like political leaders in power, terrorist groups also care about and benefit from the support they get from the domestic populations. Faira and Arce

(2005) argue that the level of social support is important for terrorist organizations since it affects the number of recruits an organization would get. Hence, various extremist groups do not solely engage in violent attacks but also invest in charitable activities and social welfare programs to mobilize support (Ghandour 2002, Azam 2005). Pierre Ly (2007) argues that the main reason for terrorist groups to undertake charity work and take care of the poor is because they want to raise popular support. As a result of these charitable investments, considerable numbers of people who were previously inactive yet sympathetic to the terrorist group’s cause become more willing to actively contribute to the fight of the terrorist group in question. Hence, terrorist organizations that have a more hybrid workload, meaning those that mix terrorist activities with charity work, are more successful in garnering support than those who are purely specialized in terrorist activities.

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Related to this point, Matthew Levitt (2002, 2003) posits that the activities of some of the prominent international non-governmental organizations were brought to an end due to their financial connections with the terrorist organizations. One example is the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, which was closed in December 2001 when the FBI found out that the foundation was transferring funds to support the Palestinian Hamas: “…funds were used to support schools and indoctrinate children to grow into suicide bombers” (Ly 2007, 177).

In a recent study, Christine Mele (2012) argues that there exists a competition between the terrorist group and the target government in terms of social service provisions. The potential support base of terrorist organizations gains utility from successfully executed violent attacks as well as from the benefits provided by the terrorist groups, especially in countries where the governments do a mediocre job in providing such benefits to their populations. Hence, terrorist organizations spend their resources on both military action and on the provision of social services and public goods. Mele confers that terrorist organizations will invest significant resources into non-militant activities such as funding NGOs or providing social services to the public so long as the marginal benefit gained from social service provisions is greater than the marginal benefit gained from successful military action. Especially when the government proves inefficient in the provision of social services to the greater population, the terrorist organization usually fills the gap, thereby gathering support.

For example, before Hamas emerged as a rival political and religious organization, it has spent many years and a large amount of its budget, which Ghandour (2002) reports as 95%, to help the impoverished communities in the region, gain their trust and enhance its credibility as an organization that stands by the deprived. As I will explain in detail in the next chapter, Hamas has long been concentrated on social welfare programs such as building school and hospitals,

134 and offered financial assistance to the poor and needy as well as the families of the martyrs.

Hence, the sweeping victory of Hamas in 2006 Palestinian parliamentary election did not come out of nowhere--all the charity work that Hamas has done over the years was expected to pay off.

Hezbollah is another terrorist organization that has a well-organized system of health care and social services. While most people thought that Hezbollah would fade away in the aftermath of the Israeli occupation, Hezbollah proved them wrong by remaining to be a potent political force in Lebanon. If anything, it grew in power and popularity as it slowly transferred itself from an extremist militant group to a political party in the eyes of the poor Shiite communities in

Lebanon. What made it possible for Hezbollah to win the hearts and minds of the people was its ability to present itself as the “movement for the poor”. These social welfare and aid activities started out as small, disorganized initiatives of individual who were members of the organization. But soon enough, they have evolved into more organized activities undertaken by different branches of the organization:

Hezbollah has a highly organized system of health and social-service organizations. The service system is made up of the Social Unit, the Education Unit and the Islamic Health Unit, which together make up an elaborate network of service providers that primarily benefit Lebanon’s Shiites. Many of Hezbollah’s service organizations are legally registered with the Lebanese government as NGOs, a status that provides certain legal protections and eases collaboration with other organizations that may be wary of the “Hezbollah” name. Hezbollah’s NGOs eagerly cooperate with other local and international organizations in their efforts to serve the community (Flanigan &Abdel- Samad 2009, 124). For instance, the Jihad Construction Foundation known as ‘Jihad El Binaa’, which is a part of the Social Unit of Hezbollah’s has been responsible for infrastructure building, paying damage or reconstruction compensations to people in need and for providing municipal services such as garbage removal or delivery of clean drinking water. Flanigan and Abdel-Samad (2009) note that this institution had delivered drinking water to almost half of the residents in the suburbs of Beirut in 2000. Similarly, the LTTE is also known to be involved in charity work. The

135 various webpages of Tamil Tigers had links to request and collect donations for the tsunami disaster, which devastated parts of Sri Lanka’s coast in December 2004. As part of the relief effort, the affected parties were referred to the offices of the Tamil Rehabilitation Organizations which were established to provide disaster relief to those in need.

In short, many terrorist organizations are known to undertake relief operations, development and social welfare programs and engage in fund raising activities in order to increase their popularity and support. In their article, Berman and Laitin (2008) argue that the religious organizations are more effective in providing local public goods in general. In exchange for these provisions, they require commitment of their recruits. The model that they propose shows that the sacrifices necessary to guarantee religious public goods decreases the likelihood of defection by loyal recruits, which increases the success of suicide bombings. In other words, the provision of public goods allows terrorist organizations to weed out potential defectors and successfully undertake risky terrorist attacks such as suicide operations.

I agree with Berman and Laitin that recruiting suicide bombers and gaining their complete loyalty are two different things. Yet, I think the provision of public goods will help generate support from society in general. In order to solidify the loyalty of the suicide bombers, and make them commit to their missions, organizations need to be more specific in terms of the services and goods that they provide. By specific, I mean any private good that will exclusively benefit the suicide bombers and their relatives. For instance, Hamas organization awards a monthly amount of approximately $1000 to the families of suicide bombers for life as well as other beneficial services such as educational scholarships for their siblings, or food/coal aid for the families in need (Laqueur 2003, Winkates 2009). Walter Laqueur (2003) writes that:

Support for the families of the martyrs is an important consideration, as is the religious obligation to repay one’s debits prior to the suicide mission---hence the financial help

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(amounting to about twenty-five thousand dollars) given to the families of suicide bombers in Iran and Iraq, as well as other Arab countries and Muslim foundations. In comparison, families of those killed in open combat with the Israelis were paid merely two thousand dollars. Saudi Arabia provides a trip to Mecca for the members of the family of the suicide bomber, as well as other fringe benefits such as housing… In Sri Lanka the candidates for suicide have their last supper with the leader (Laqueur 2003, 92). In addition to the families of the suicide bombers, cadres who help with the bomb making and organization of the suicide attacks also receive substantial sums of money in return for their services. Cadres include active members, which make up the core of the terrorist organizations.

By active members, I do not only mean suicide bombers but also mid-level cadres such as trainers and bomb makers, and high-level operatives who manage intelligence, finance and communications for the organization. These people also benefit largely from the use of private goods. According to Shapiro and Siegel (2007), the confiscated documents of the Palestine

Liberation Organization (PLO) have revealed that those who planned the suicide attacks were paid more than the families of the suicide bombers. Those who run “the criminal fund-raising operations” for Hezbollah also received various benefits from the organization such as luxury cars, and houses in upper-middle-class neighborhoods. This is important because as these cadres receive more benefits, they are also incentivized to commit to their work and contribute harder toward the successful execution of suicide terrorist attacks.

Based on these considerations, I argue that terrorist organizations that strategically give out private goods as positive reinforcements will be more likely to execute suicide attacks since they will have greater influence on their recruits. I therefore make the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 2: Terrorist organizations that strategically offer private goods as incentives

to the key members of the organizations, particularly suicide bombers and their relatives,

will be more likely to employ suicide attacks.

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Data & Operationalization of Variables

The unit of analysis in this chapter is terrorist organizations, not attacks. I employ a logistic regression model in order to test whether the above listed strategies actually make terrorist organizations more likely to use suicide terrorism instead of non-suicide terrorism. In order to test the hypotheses, I use data from the Minorities at Risk Organizational Behavior

(MAROB, 2008) database as well as data on additional terrorist groups exported from the Global

Terrorism Database (2011).

The codebook of the MAROB dataset explains that MAROB is a subsidiary of the

Minorities at Risk project and its specific purpose is to identify the factors that motivate the members of ethnic minorities to become radicalized and form extremist organizations. Hence, this is a dataset that is predominantly focused on violence and terrorism, which makes it convenient for my research. The dataset gives information on the characteristics of 118 ethno- political organizations that operate in the Middle East and North Africa between 1980 and 2004.

According to the codebook of MAROB, the organizations were included in the dataset based on specific criteria. First, the organization has to explicitly claim to represent the interests of one or more ethnic groups or the members of the organization should primarily be members of a specific ethnic group. Second, the organizations should have a political agenda which define its goals and activities. Third, the organization has to be active at a regional and national level.

Fourth, the organization should not be created by the government and finally, it has to be active for at least three consecutive years between 1980 and 2004. The reason that I chose this dataset over alternatives was because my key variables of interest or the proxies for those already exist in this database for most of the terrorist organizations.

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While MAROB has a substantial number of organizations listed, not every single organization that represents the interests of a certain ethnic group and is motivated by political goals is a terrorist organization. For instance, MAROB includes cases such as the “Bahrain

Freedom Movement” which is an opposition group headquartered in London, UK protesting the oppressive government rule and human rights abuses in Bahrain (Alam 2010). However, this group cannot be categorized as a terrorist organization since it has never carried out terrorist attacks in or outside of Bahrain.

Since there are more examples such as this one, I first reviewed all the organizations listed in the original dataset in order to categorize them as terrorist organization versus not. My first criterion to decide whether a certain ethno-political group is indeed a terrorist organization was to look at their use of terrorism or suicide terrorism. If the original database reports one or more of these groups as having resorted to terrorism or suicide terrorism once or more times from 1980 to 2004, I coded these as terrorist organizations and assigned them the value 1. To support my categories, I also used the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and

Responses to Terrorism (START) Knowledge Base’s Terrorist Organization Profile search engine. This knowledge base lists all terrorist organizations worldwide and gives detailed descriptions of these organizations including their date of foundation, size of membership, ideological orientation, goals and activities. Based on the information available at this database, I confirmed whether an existing organization in the MAROB can be categorized as a terrorist group or not.

My dependent variable is the use of suicide terrorism, which is a binary variable that receives the value of “1” when an organization uses suicide terrorism or “0” when an organization does not use suicide terrorism. The MAROB dataset has a section called the

139 organizational violent repertoire, which includes the specific tactics used by the organizations that range from arm-attacks to hostage taking and kidnapping. In this section, “suicide attack” exists as a categorical variable. Initially there were 17 out of 118 organizations that used suicide attacks one or more times from 1980 to 2004. To exemplify, some of these groups were: the

Partiya Karkari Kurdistan, Hamas, and Hezbollah. In terms of the frequency, between 1980 and

2004, out of 1,784 incidents reported, 59 were coded as suicide attacks. These numbers are expected given the literature that the suicide attacks comprise a very small percentage of the violent terrorist incidents worldwide (See Figure 1, Chapter 1). Since the number of terrorist organizations that resorted to suicide was substantially small in the original dataset, I included the terrorist organizations that exist in the Global Terrorism Database (2011), which also operate in the Middle East-North Arica region and use suicide terrorism such as Salafi Jihadia, Ansar al-

Sunna or Armed Islamic Group in Algeria. When I included the terrorist organizations in the

Global Terrorism Database, out of 54 terrorist organizations, the number of those that use suicide terrorism rose to 28.

There are two main independent variables of interest in this chapter. The first one is the use of media sources and publications. The original dataset has this variable coded under the organizational behavior section. It is coded as an organizational strategy, which exists as a categorical variable with 3 values. It takes the value of “0” if organization does not use any media sources or print publications for education and propaganda purposes. It takes the value of

“1” if the organization uses this strategy infrequently, which means that the organization has monthly/quarterly publications or it distributes educational leaflets less than weekly. The variable is coded “2” if the organization uses media sources frequently--when it has daily or weekly publications and distributes educational or propaganda material on a weekly or more

140 frequent basis. I renamed the original variable as “Media” and coded it for the newly added terrorist organizations that I extracted from the Global Terrorism Database. For every single organization that I added, I browsed the START Knowledge base as well as other internet resources to see if the organization has an active website or had one in the past from 1980 to

2004. I also searched for the radio stations or TV channels that the organization owns and whether or not these have regularly been used to allure recruits. While coding the newly added organizations, I followed the original coding assignments of the MAROB dataset.

The second main independent variable is the use of private goods. Unlike the use of social media and print publications, the information regarding terrorist organizations’ use of private goods is difficult to find since it is not openly reported in accessible datasets. First, I created a new dichotomous variable called “private”. For the major terrorist groups which certainly distribute private goods such as Palestine Liberation Organization or Hezbollah, I coded private as “1”. Most of the information regarding the distribution of private goods comes from secondary sources such as scholarly articles, books, and internet sources, many of which are already cited in the literature review section of this chapter. I also carefully read the terrorist organization profiles available at the START Knowledge Base and used the newspapers, textbooks and media sources to confirm the distribution of private goods and services under specific organizations. When the organizational activities listed in the START database included specific economic benefits, monthly payments, or aids to families of the martyrs, I coded the private good variable as “1”.

If there was no reference to financial aid or selective payments to specific groups, I coded the variable as “0”. However, there were cases in which the activities of an organization

141 indicated provision of social services without any reference to private goods distribution. For instance, in the START Knowledge base, the following information is given for Hamas:

As part of its Islamist ideology, Hamas maintains an active network of social services within the Palestinian Territories. Hamas' substantial financial support has enabled it to provide social services, such as education, health care, and recreation services that the Palestinian Authority has been unable to provide. This social work has substantially increased popular support for Hamas, drawing political support away from the Palestinian Authority. Hamas has been able to leverage its popular support into increased support for its terrorist activities (START Knowledge Base 2011).

This statement indicates the use of public, not private goods. So, I turn to other sources such as articles, books or online materials which are about terrorist organizations. For Hamas, the information I was looking for came from the book called “The World’s Most Threatening

Terrorist Networks and Criminal Gangs” (2009). The article by James Winkates in this book attests the positive incentives accrued to suicide bombers and their families by terrorist organizations, which range from abstract gains such as honor, praise, elevated status, eternal life in paradise to more tangible benefits such as monetary benefits. Hamas, according to Winkates, awards the families of the suicide bombers an approximate amount of $1,000 a month for life, as well as make payments to the families of the martyrs, who lost their homes to due to Israeli settlements (p. 14). Hence, as long as I could find and verify information pertaining to the distribution of private goods by terrorist groups from different open sources such as journal articles, books, newspapers and online magazines, I coded this variable as “1”.

The organizations for which the use of private goods, or the lack thereof, was not available, I used a proxy measure from the MAROB dataset. The data include a variable which measures whether a terrorist organization receives “non-military financial support” from a foreign state. By non-military financial support, the authors mean ‘the support provided for the organization that does not contribute to the purchase of military equipment’ (MAROB

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Codebook, 12). There are other variables in the dataset that measure the financial and political assistance given to different organizations by foreign states. However, the codebook specifically distinguishes between the motivations behind different types of support.

For instance, “non-violent military support” is a dummy variable which is coded “1” if a foreign state provides funds for military supplies; “violent military support” is another dummy variable which receives the value of “1”, when a foreign state provides rescue missions or contributes active combat units etc. (MAROB Codebook, 13). Hence, none of these variables is appropriate to be used as proxies for measuring the private good provisions except for “non- military financial support”. I expect that any financial support that is not used for military purposes is likely to be utilized to satisfy the members of the organization, which include but are not limited to the suicide bombers. As I argued before, private goods do not only benefit the suicide bombers and their families but also other key members of a terrorist organization such as the mid-level and high-level operatives, so that they also try harder to contribute to the success of organizational activities and operations including suicide attacks.

One could argue that this money that is provided by the foreign states could well be spent to provide public goods not only private goods. While this argument is valid, there is another variable in the dataset named “foreign state humanitarian support”, which is specifically defined as support given to an organization to be distributed to the general population. So, the “non- military financial support” remains to be the most viable indicator for measuring whether an organization will distribute private goods or not.

There are several control variables in this study, which respectively are: the use of public goods, leadership structure of a terrorist group, the number of bases a terrorist organization has, age, ideology, democracy and logged gdp. The use of public goods has previously been tested by

143 scholars (Berman and Laitin 2008, Mele 2012). Here I measure it by using a different variable from the existing MAROB dataset. It is originally called “organizational strategy 5”, which I renamed as “public”. It measures “the non-coercive collection of local support”; it is coded “1” if an organization holds 1 to 10 events to garner financial, material and personal support, coded “2” if organization holds more than 10 events soliciting financial, material or personnel support. It is coded as “0” if this strategy is never used. For the newly added organizations, I coded the public goods provisions based on the information I found in the START Knowledge Base being loyal to the original coding.

In the Rational Design of International Institutions, Koremenos et al. (2001) argue that the structural design differences of the organizations such as membership rules, scope of issues covered, flexibility of arrangements, etc. are not random. On the contrary, they emerge as result of rational, purposive interactions of states. I suggest that the same argument applies to the cases of terrorist organizations. The way in which terrorist groups are structured affects their choices and performances. Hence, it is important to control for some of these structural differences. One of them is strong leadership.

As I indicated before, a centralized and strong leadership may be important for many terrorist groups. In his book “Organizations at War: In Afghanistan and Beyond” Abdulkader

Sinno (2008) argues that the way in which power is distributed in an organization creates incentives that affect how members of the organization would perform their assigned duties or operations. Within this line of thinking, a strong single leader and commitment to this leader may motivate the members of the organization to fully commit to their tasks. The “Lead” variable in the MAROB dataset measures the type of leadership for a given organization. It has four values: “1” indicates that the leadership is factionalized and has competing leaders. “2”

144 indicates that there is a weak and decentralized leadership, “3” means that there is a strong ruling council, “4” means there is a strong single leader. I expect to see that the more centralized a given terrorist organization is in terms of its leadership, the more likely it is for that organization to use suicide terrorism.

I control for the number of bases an organization has. Literature is divided on the relationship between control of territory and the use of terrorism. On the one hand, some argue that the number of bases and the territory an organization possesses are extremely helpful during the course of its operations. The base of an organization allows it to smuggle arms, establish training camps and other communication facilities (Makarenko 2004, Inbar 2006). On the other hand, some scholars such as Abdulkader Sinno (2008) posit that territorial safe havens matter only if they are within the borders of the contested territory so that the rivals will not be able to intervene and disturb the operations of the organization in question: “Havens across the border are rarely safe for long because finicky sponsors may interrupt operations at will or distract the organization from its original goals by making it a tool to project influence in the neighboring county” (Sinno 2008, 13). Hence, according to Sinno, an internal base would suffice.

I control for the number of bases a terrorist organization has by using the “Orgloc”

(location of an organization) variable from the MAROB dataset, which I renamed as “base”. This variable is originally coded as a categorical variable for which “1” indicates that an organization has an internal base, “2” indicates that the organization has both internal and external bases and

“3” means that the base is outside of the country that an organization lives. I recoded this variable as a dummy, where “1” covers those organizations that only have one base, either internal or external. The organizations that have multiple bases are coded as “2”. I expect to see that the more bases a terrorist organization has, the more likely it is to use suicide terrorism.

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Ideology of a terrorist organization is another important predictor that might affect the organizational use of suicide terrorism. Some studies that look at the motivations of suicide bombers link the willingness to die to the religious commitment of the bombers in question.

Hence, they argue that the more religiously motivated bombers are, the more likely they are to think that God approves of these attacks, which makes it easier to justify suicide killings. Others attribute the lethal outcomes of suicide attacks to the religious ideology of the terrorist organizations that execute these attacks (Hoffman 1999, 2006, Berman and Laitin 2008, Asal and

Rethmeyer 2008). For instance, Bruce Hoffman (1999, 2006) argues that the lethality of different terrorist attacks including suicide is a function of the ideological orientation of the terrorist organization in question; and that the religious motivation would account for the increased number of casualties by terrorist incidents.

Others support this argument by pointing to one specific type of religion, the rise of

Islamist terrorism, as the major cause of the deadliness of terrorist incidents. (Stern 1999, Enders and Sandler 2000, Asal and Rethmeyer 2008) The justification for religious groups to supersede their secular counterparts in terms of lethality rates is that religiously motivated groups were less concerned about winning the hearts and minds of the larger audience, and more concerned about receiving spiritual rewards.

As Asal and Rethmeyer (2008) suggest, organizations whose primary motivation is to impress a supernatural audience turn out to be more likely to kill greater number of people.

Hence, religious groups are not as inhibited in their target selection as secular groups are. While religious groups can commit violent acts against civilians and declare wars on entirety of people from different cultures, political and religious ideologies, secular groups chose to limit their attacks on individual governments. Hence, the lethality rates of the two groups differ. I therefore

146 will control for the religious ideology of the terrorist group. The “Relorg” variable measures if an organization is religiously motivated (1) versus not (0). Given the literature, I expect religion to be a positive predictor of suicide terrorism.

I also control for national ideology, which seems to be another important factor that motivates people to become suicide bombers. Literature suggests that volatile national and political situations serve as pretexts that can explain individual justification for suicide attacks

(Williams 2008, Dworkin 1997). Within this context, the lack of political freedom and legitimacy causes resentment and mobilization against political injustices. Thus, the use of terrorism by people who have been deprived of their land or political rights is justified as an attempt to correct a perceived social, political or historical injustice. Hence, terrorist groups that justify their attacks based on nationalistic claims of self-determination and political independence are likely to be more prone to using suicide terrorism. The “Natorg” is a dummy variable that is coded in the original dataset as follows: if the organization is making nationalist claims such as gaining an autonomous status or independence, it receives “1”, otherwise “0”.

I control for age of an organization, which is calculated as the difference between the year of foundation and 2004, inclusive of the year that the organization is formed. While the age variable existed for the variables in the original dataset, for those that are newly added, this information was found from online sources. As organizations exist for longer periods of time, they get more experienced and therefore better at what they are doing. Consequentially, they may find innovative ways to use the media and other resources to gain and maintain potential recruits.

Hence, the age of a terrorist organization could be an important factor in explaining the choice of suicide terrorism. Finally, for the countries that the organizations reside, the country level

147 controls of regime type (democracy) and logged gdp are included using the Polity II scores and the World Bank Data.

Method and Results

In this chapter, I test what particular organizational strategies are associated with an increased use of suicide terrorism over other types of terrorism. In the analyses I present here, I aggregate the data in the following way: for continuous variables, which are GDP and age, I take the average values for the entire time period. For the categorical variables which are suicide, media use, private goods, leadership, number of bases, religious ideology, nationalist ideology, and democracy, I use the median values. And for the public goods variable, I use the maximum value. By collapsing the data this way, I create one observation for every single variable per terrorist organization. Since my dependent variable is dichotomous, a logit model is applied and the following results are generated.

Table 8: Effects of Organizational Strategies on the Use of Suicide Terrorism (Model 1) (Model 2) (Model 3) Suicide Suicide Suicide

Media 1.344** 1.295* 1.921* (0.478) (0.548) (0.807)

Private 2.361** 2.309** 3.348** (0.772) (0.872) (1.189)

Public 1.329 1.904 1.169 (0.764) (1.005) (1.142)

Age -0.0345 -0.0335 (0.034) (0.039)

Leadership 0.932 0.989 (0.724) (0.870)

Number of Bases 0.887 0.438 (1.028) (1.264)

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Religious Ideology 0.956** 1.061* (0.981) (1.429)

Nationalist Ideology -1.001 2.257 (0.899) (1.722)

Democracy 0.976 (1.071)

LGDP 2.006* (0.934)

Constant -3.287** -6.495* -57.59* (1.037) (3.308) (23.683) N 56 56 56 AIC 58.46 63.95 59.09 Standard errors in parentheses * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

Table 8 shows three models, the first one is a baseline model, which only incorporates the three organizational strategies two of which are my key independent variables: media use, private good provisions and public goods provisions. The second model adds the organizational controls to the baseline model. Lastly, the third model is the full model including the country- level controls.

The logit results suggest a statistically significant and positive relationship between the two major organizational strategies and the choice of suicide terrorism. The findings therefore support the major hypotheses presented in this chapter regarding the use of media and the provision of private goods. Since the regression results cannot be comprehensively interpreted without talking about the logged odds, I turn to predicted values and discrete changes for a clear interpretation of substantive effects.

In the second model, the predicted value of using suicide terrorism for a terrorist organization that frequently uses the media sources and private good provisions is .91, holding

149 all other organizational controls at their means. According to the full model (Model 3), the predicted probability of using suicide attack for a terrorist organization that uses the media and print publications very frequently and provides private goods to its members, and which is otherwise average, is .96.

When we look at the discrete changes in the full model, a terrorist organization which frequently uses media sources and print publications for educational and propaganda purposes has a .74 higher probability of executing a suicide terrorist attack than an organization that does not use mass media or print publications at all, holding all other variables at their mean values.

This difference is statistically significant. Based on these findings, we can confirm that the more frequently terrorist organizations use media sources and print publications for education and propaganda purposes, the more likely they are to use suicide terrorism. When it comes to private goods provisions, the findings in the full model show that a terrorist organization that offers private goods to its members has a .61 higher probability of executing suicide attacks than an organization that does not offer such benefits keeping the rest of the variables at their mean. This finding supports the second hypothesis regarding the link between private good provisions and suicide terrorism.

Among the control variables in the full model, religious ideology and the logged GDP variables are also significant at .05 levels. Therefore, we can say that the terrorist organizations that are motivated by religious ideology have a higher probability of engaging in suicide attacks than terrorist organizations that are not religiously motivated. Also, terrorist groups that operate in high income countries are more likely to use suicide terrorism than groups that operate in different environments.

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Limitations and Contributions

This research is important for two reasons. First, it supplements the MAROB database with new variables to test which organizational strategies are positively associated with the occurrence of suicide terrorism. While previous studies focused on the use of media and public goods provisions by terrorist organizations, there were relatively less studies published on the connection between private goods provisions and likelihood of suicide terrorism. This is at least partially because it is difficult to find information regarding the private goods provided by terrorist groups.

Relying on the START Knowledge Base and a number of open sources, I coded private goods provisions for the terrorist organizations listed in the MAROB database -as well as some groups from the Global Terrorism Database-. For those organizations for which no such information was available, I used a proxy measure from the existing dataset: “non-military financial support” based on the assumption that any financial support that is not used for military or public purposes is likely to be utilized to satisfy the members of the organization, including especially the suicide bombers and their families. However, more data on the strategies and financial activities of terrorist organizations making it possible to directly measure the private goods provisions will definitely lead to more comprehensible and robust results.

Second, this research is important because it shows us that when we account for private goods and the use of media, public goods provision does not have a significant effect on the probability of an organization employing suicide terrorism. As I mentioned previously in the literature review, the provision of public goods and social services by terrorist organizations has been frequently studied by scholars. These studies have argued that when organizations are engaged in charitable activities, they would be more likely to mobilize support for their terrorist

151 operations, which in turn would increase the success of these operations. While theoretically, these arguments make a lot of sense, given the limitations of the data, these studies have not been able to account for the use of private goods (Ly 2007, Berman and Laitin 2008). In fact, most of them illustrate their arguments using formal models. I suggest that controlling for private goods might have a similar effect on their findings especially pertaining to the success of terrorist attacks.

Conclusion

Shifting the focus away from the tactical advantages of suicide terrorism to the deliberate strategies employed by terrorist organizations, this chapter has sought to understand what particular organizational strategies increase the likelihood of suicide terrorism. Building on the results of the previous chapter which suggested that organizationally-connected suicide attacks are much more lethal than those perpetrated by lone wolf terrorists, here I highlighted the strategic mechanisms behind the organizational choice of suicide terrorism. Using the MAROB and Global Terrorism Databases, I have shown that those terrorist organizations in the Middle

East-North Africa which systematically use media sources and publications as well as private goods to reel in, radicalize and increase the commitment of their recruits, are the same organizations that have a higher probability of using suicide terrorism. Even when different organizational characteristics such as ideology, leadership structure and the number of bases used for training are controlled for, these two strategies remain statistically significant predictors of suicide terrorism.

My results and analysis in this chapter complement the policy implications from the previous chapter and provide a more nuanced insight to what can be done to eliminate the strategies that breed suicide terrorism. I concluded the last chapter arguing that if the most lethal

152 form of suicide terrorism is done under the supervision of organizations, then research and resources should be allocated to come up with policies that will specifically target and undermine the cohesiveness and resources of these terrorist organizations. Knowing which organizational strategies are most predictive of suicide terrorism can help counter-terrorism researchers and security practitioners to generate measures tailored to address and eliminate those strategies and their associated threats.

So far my analyses have shown that organizations nurture a sense of belonging for their recruits; they reinforce their extremist views and allegiance by relying heavily on old and new media sources and selective rewards. Previously I suggested that governments can try to alleviate the socio-economic and political factors that marginalize and lead some people to become suicide bombers. Such policies will be likely to decrease the vulnerability of those living in the rural and impoverished areas to the influence and indoctrination attempts of terrorist groups.

Political solutions, negotiation and democratic alternatives that seek to reduce the cost of political participation for terrorist groups could also be successful in gradually weakening the support and the raison d’etre of terrorist groups.

However, given the deep-seated conflicts and the past atrocities, most governments are not willing to negotiate with the leaders of terrorist groups at the expense of infuriating and polarizing their own populations. Moreover, previous research has shown that while negotiated settlements could be effective for a period of time in facilitating organizational decline, these strategies have rarely been long term solutions all by themselves (Cronin 2011). Therefore, an alternative strategy might be to offer positive incentives to people who denounce the use of terrorism. Using the same strategy for a different purpose can motivate a reverse radicalization and beat the organizations at their own games. Also, positive reinforcement and incentives can

153 be offered to those people who were previously recruited by terrorist organizations but later withdrew. For instance, government protection or educational opportunities can be offered to those former recruits of terrorist organizations, in exchange for their cooperation in giving insiders information about the future activities and other secrets of the terrorist organization

(Frey 2006). Offering positive incentives to insiders, who credibly commit to renouncing terrorism, can help weaken the terrorist organizations from within; every recruit an organization loses can turn into a gain for society.

Also in the previous chapter, I argued that in order to decrease the popularity of terrorist groups, strategies designed to divert media attention away from the terrorist organizations thereby decreasing their overall popularity and means of influence might be helpful. As I have discussed in detail, most communication technologies, but especially internet, have expanded the opportunities for terrorist groups to introduce themselves to broader audiences and disseminate their propaganda. In addition to that, as we have seen, terrorist groups heavily resort to the use of different communication mediums for other purposes such as fund-raising, recruitment and mobilization and networking. Since shutting down these websites or blocking certain group’s access to the internet are not viable options, especially in democratic countries where governments respect the freedoms of speech and expression, alternative approaches should be explored to educate the public and desensitize them in the face of terrorist propaganda. Security agencies should also keep an eye on the online activities of the terrorist groups, constantly monitoring their websites against potential threats and operations. Another strategy that governments could purse might be to supply more information than what the terrorist organization would desire thereby deliberately misleading the supporters and viewers of terrorist

154 groups. Intentionally disseminating false information on the terrorist groups and the attacks they claimed might be confusing and slow down terrorist propaganda.

In sum, this chapter has quantitatively analyzed the strategies deliberately pursued by terrorist organizations which increase the likelihood of using suicide terrorism over other types of terrorist attacks. In the next chapter, I will look at case studies to illustrate my major arguments and show how these complex causal mechanisms actually operate given the experiences and backgrounds of different terrorist organizations.

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Chapter 6: Case Studies

Introduction

In the previous two chapters of this dissertation, I argued that terrorist organizations hold the first rank in the successful execution of terrorist attacks. As far as suicide attacks are concerned, terrorist organizations collect intelligence on targets and locations, engineer explosives to be used in suicide missions, engage in fundraising and propaganda activities to recruit, train, incentivize, and dispatch suicide terrorists to their final missions. Hence, they provide a sage way for frustrated and deprived individuals to systematically and effectively use violence to act on their frustrations.

This chapter will move from statistical analysis to case studies in order to see whether the causal conclusions made in the previous empirical chapter can be exemplified and supported by case study evidence and whether the statistical explanations are generalizable across different cases. I will first look at two terrorist organizations; the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), both of which have employed suicide terrorism. The goal is to illustrate whether different terrorist organizations with different ideologies, political and economic grievances, leadership structures, and resource capabilities employ similar organizational strategies to attract and indoctrinate suicide terrorists and garner popular support for their operations. Then, I will discuss the case of Asbat Al-Ansar as my final comparison, as this is a terrorist organization that has not used suicide terrorism.

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While statistical studies generally lump dissimilar incidents of terrorism together in order to increase the number of observations, coefficients can only tell us how much and in what direction a variable matters for a particular outcome. In this chapter, my main goal is to demonstrate how specific variables actually matter for certain outcomes (George and Bennett

2005). In the previous chapter, I suggested that there is a connection between the use of media sources and private good provisions and the use of suicide terrorism by a given terrorist organization. The case studies in this chapter will show how these complex causal mechanisms operate given the experiences and backgrounds of different terrorist organizations. In other words, by using case study evidence, I seek to reinforce the strength of my theory.

This chapter begins with a general discussion on what motivates terrorist groups to use suicide terrorism. Then, I will discuss two organizations in detail, which respectively are Hamas and the LTTE, both of which have undertaken suicide terrorist attacks in the countries that they operate. I will look at the historical background, evolution and strategies of these organizations and draw inferences from them by combining within-case analysis with cross-case comparisons in order to see whether the hypothesized causal path between the independent and dependent variables would remain strong across two different cases. As I said, the goal is to exemplify and enrich the conclusions drawn from statistical analysis in the previous chapters. Then, I will briefly look at a third case, Asbat al-Ansar, which has remained under the radar of the scholars compared to the other two organizations, as it is a Sunni-extremist group that has operated on the fringes in Lebanon. This is an organization, which according to the available datasets, has not used suicide terrorism since its foundation. If my theory from the previous chapter is correct, then, Asbat al-Ansar should not have adopted the same organizational strategies used heavily by

Hamas and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

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The literature on why organizations use suicide attacks revolves around rational decision- making processes in which organizations weigh the costs of using terrorism against the benefits and decide in favor of terrorist activities (Hafez 2006). According to these explanations, suicide terrorism is a natural and rational outcome of asymmetrical warfare, in which a relatively weak and disadvantaged group tries to level up its fight against a stronger opponent. From a rationalist perspective, the organizational motivations for the use of suicide terrorism are strategic (Pape

2003). Since conventional tactics of fighting prove ineffective given the lack of sophisticated weapons, intelligence capabilities or other significant resources, terrorist groups turn to unconventional means of fighting such as suicide attacks in order to impose costs on the powerful enemy. Hence, religious justifications only provide partial explanations; the real reason for the organizational use of suicide strategy is in fact instrumental; suicide attacks are seen as

“necessary evil” by the perpetrators in order to subvert occupation and denial of basic rights and freedoms.

While suicide terrorism may not always help terrorist groups achieve their political ends, they still serve strategic purposes for terrorist organizations. The first one of these is the “balance of terror” that they generate. Given the nature of the suicide attacks, as explained in the Chapter

3 in detail, suicide bombings provide their perpetrators with a sense of powerfulness while confronting the superior enemy. The psychological devastation and vulnerability felt by the targets in the aftermath of the suicide attacks are just as immense as the physical destruction that results from them. Hence, even though suicide terrorist attacks do not necessarily bring their perpetrators a military victory, the violence and chaos generated definitely give them an illusion of “strategic parity” or equalization of power. And in so far as the terrorist groups are concerned, every small victory counts.

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Suicide attacks are also used as an alternative to the strategy of negotiations that are likely to fail. As Ami Pedahzur (2005) explains, the propensity to violence increases when perpetrators face with the harsh reality that injustice is permanent; and that there is little possibility that the status quo would change in their favor in the near future. As a result of a long and brutal cycle of desperation, violence is adopted as a coercive strategy to extract concessions from the other side and achieve the national aspirations of the groups that are subject to injustice.

As the general secretary of the Islamic Jihad organization, Ramadan Abdulla Shalah said in an interview on Al-Jazeera, “years of negotiations have not achieved the basic goals and rights of the Palestinian people. History has shown, whether history with the Israelis or history of the oppressed people around the world, that resistance is the only way to achieve our objectives.”

(Hafez 2006, 28)

While these explanations facilitate our understanding of what motivates terrorist groups to adopt suicide terrorism strategy, all of these rest on exogenous factors that affect organizational choice such as conditions of asymmetrical warfare, the tactical advantages, or the desperate and humiliating living conditions under the occupation. In addition to these exogenous factors, there are also important endogenous factors that come from within the organization such as the dominant ideology and agenda of the organization, the charity, social work and other activities that the terrorist groups undertake to reach out to the masses or to legitimize the use of violence, and the private goods that terrorist groups distribute exclusively to perpetrators and their families, which all increase the organizational propensity toward using suicide terrorism. In this chapter, I will pay attention to these factors and the strategies that are deliberately pursued by the terrorist organizations in order to increase the popularity of suicide terrorism in the eyes of both their recruits and populations at large.

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Hamas

I want to proclaim loudly to the world that we are not fighting Jews because they are Jews. We are fighting them because they assaulted us, they killed us and they took out land and our homes; they attacked out children and our women; they scattered us. All we want is our rights. We don’t want more---Sheikh Ahmad Yassin (The spiritual leader of Hamas, 1936-2004).

Hamas or the Islamic Resistance Movement was formed in December 1987 with the outbreak of the first Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation. Until then, the rights of the Palestinian people were represented predominantly by the mainstream, secular Palestine

Liberation Organization (PLO) which was formed in 1964 with the objectives of eliminating

Israel and downplaying the rising prominence of the infant Fatah movement. Fatah was a radical movement, which was informally established in late 1950s by a group of young Palestinian

Arabs, who at time were in exile in Kuwait to fight against the Israel. The leader of the group was a civil engineering student named Yasser Arafat. Fatah’s goal was to achieve Palestinian independence through armed struggle. To that end, it set up a number of training camps in

Jordan, West Bank with the funding it had received from Jordan, Syria and the Soviet Union.

The cross-border attacks of the Fatah from the neighboring countries against the Israeli settlements soon raised Arafat to the rank of a hero in the Arab world. In the aftermath of the

1967 Arab-Israeli war, Yasser Arafat became the Chairman of the Palestine Liberation

Organization and joined Fatah with the PLO, converting the former into the most radical military faction of the PLO (Milton-Edwards and Farrell 2010).

Under the leadership of Arafat, the PLO followed a similar path with that of Fatah. The goal was to defeat and destroy the state of Israel with terrorist attacks on its territory, which would be carried out from the neighboring countries. In line with this plan, during 1970s and

1980s, the PLO has operated and hit Israeli targets from various countries starting with Jordan.

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When the PLO was expelled from Jordan, it had moved its activities to Lebanon. When Israel invaded south Lebanon in 1982 because of these terrorist attacks, the PLO was relocated in

Tunisia. While the violent terrorist campaigns of the PLO under the leadership of Arafat had initially garnered some support from the Palestinian population, as the casualties on both sides continued to increase and the lives of the Palestinians had not gotten any better over time, the

Palestinian people have come to the conclusion that the activities of the PLO were counterproductive in serving the Palestinian cause. It was at this time that Yasser Arafat shifted gears and turned to more peaceful means such as the use of diplomacy and political dialogue to find a viable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem. Within this vein, Arafat’s recognition of the right of Israel to exist and denouncement of terrorism or use of armed struggle in exchange for diplomacy and negotiation led to an even greater outrage among some of the followers of the group.

When the uprising broke out in 1987, Palestinian people were already frustrated with the corruption and failed efforts of the PLO, the dire living circumstances under the occupation, and

Arafat’s newly adopted conciliatory approach as a “peacemaker”, which to many Palestinians was an act of betrayal (Milton-Edwards and Farrell 2010, Tamimi 2007, Post 2009). Hamas, therefore, has stepped into the political sphere in the ripest time and filled the void very effectively by offering people new hope and directions of action. It produced and distributed leaflets to the angry masses helping them coordinate their demonstrations and protests during the first Intifada: “Intifada was a gift from heaven. Hamas was determined to end the occupation and to ensure that this would be only the beginning of a long-term Jihad. They mobilized their members, employing the network of mosques and other institutions under their control…They called for civil disobedience and organized rallies, which almost invariably culminated in stone-

161 throwing at Israeli troops, burning the Israeli flag, and setting up improvised road blocks with burning tires” (Tamimi 2007, 53).

But, how could Hamas succeed in replacing the PLO as a powerful political alternative in the hearts and minds of a majority of the Palestinians in such a short time? The answer to this question lies in the historical evolution of Hamas as a religious and social welfare organization.

Hamas has not appeared on the political sphere out of the blue in the December of 1987. It has spent decades before this date increasing its popularity within the Palestinian community by engaging in charitable and social activities such as providing food, health care and education services in the impoverished villages of Gaza, and to lesser extent West Bank, which contributed dearly to its later political success (Mishal and Sela 2000, Bueno de Mesquita 2005) The following section will delve into the ideology and grass-root activities of Hamas before it transformed itself into a violent Islamist military organization.

Background

The Influence of the Muslim Brotherhood

From the first day since its formation, Hamas has distanced itself from the mainstream rival organizations that had a secular orientation. Hamas was an organization with an extremist religious-nationalist ideology motivated by two consecutive agendas. The short-term agenda was to remove Israel from the occupied territories and end the occupation; the long-term agenda was to create an Islamic state within the newly liberated territories of Palestine. The Charter of

Hamas, which was issued in 1988 and entitled “The Charter of Allah: The Platform if the Islamic

Resistance Movement” talked about Palestine as an Islamic state which Muslims have a full right to. It also delineated the group’s uncompromising mentality pertaining to the oneness of land and religion. For example, in the Article 13 of the Charter, it said: “Giving up any part of the

162 homeland is like giving up part of the religious faith itself” (Post 2009, 146). Within the strict boundaries of this religious and nationalist ideology, there was no place –at least initially- for a two-state solution. From the point of view of the leaders of Hamas, the way to liberate Palestine was only possible through a collective Jihad or an Islamic revolution. The source of inspiration for this idea came from the religious doctrine of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, which was very influential in the making of Hamas’ ideology and course of action (Hoffman 2006).

The religious underpinnings of Hamas can be traced back to the Muslim Brotherhood movement, which was originally founded in Egypt as a comprehensive reform movement in

1928 by Hassan Al-Banna (Tamimi 2007, Berman and Laitin 2008, Post 2009) and got so popular that it spread beyond the borders of Egypt. Since many leaders of Hamas were born into or forced to live in the refugee camps, where the doctrine of the Muslim brotherhood was very influential, Hamas’ leaders became affiliated with this movement very early on in their lives.

The Muslim Brotherhood sought to invigorate Islamic values and lifestyle through the establishment of an Islamic state where there would be no distinction between religion and state

(Post 2009). Hassan Al-Banna, the founder of the movement, was a primary school teacher who combined elements of spirituality with the teachings of Islam. His particular talent was to inspire masses and teach them how to act through grassroots activities. His target audiences were the groups of lay people whom he would meet in popular public places, not necessarily in mosques or cultural clubs. Al-Banna thought that the umma (the community of Muslims) should be revitalized and saved from backwardness and internal rifts. If the goal was to save the Islamic homeland from foreign occupation, then the entire Muslim world must have been unified under one roof:

His movement’s long term goals were, first to free the Islamic homeland from all foreign authority, and second to establish an Islamic state within this Islamic homeland. Neither

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objective could be achieved, however, without initially attending to the more immediate needs of the society. Al-Banna’s project was, above all, an endeavor to “rehabilitate” the umma, beginning with the individual, then going on to the family, and culminating with society as a whole, all through a process of gradual reform (Tamimi 2007, 4).

Even though the Muslim Brotherhood’s traditional focus was on social work and education of the society, the political issues and the concern for the plight of Palestinians were also at the top of their agenda; “the objective of the movement was to launch a comprehensive effort at cultural renaissance designed to instill true Islam in the soul of the individual and, following that renaissance, to embark on the path of liberation” (Roy 2011, 22).

In the pursuit of these goals, Al-Banna and his supporters would meet in small groups every week and brainstorm on how to deal with the issues that corrupt the society such as adultery, gambling and alcohol consumption and they would deliberate over how to sow the seeds of Islamic faith back in the heart of the society. In addition to these efforts, they also established a network of mosques, schools, clinics, and hospitals, which drew considerable support from different parts of the society. The charity work done by Muslim Brotherhood has increased the societal support they received, which would inspire Hamas to follow in their footsteps.

As the Muslim Brotherhood movement gained popularity in different parts of Egypt, similar branches were formed in other parts of the Middle East. Palestinian Brotherhood was among one of these new branches, which shared similar ideas and concerns with their Muslim brothers in Egypt. They believed that a renewed commitment to Islam would generate solidarity among the people of Gaza which would facilitate resistance against the Israeli occupation.

Ahmad Yassin, the principal leader of Hamas, was born near Askalon in 1936. Because of the

Arab-Israeli war of 1948, he and his family had to flee to a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip,

164 which came under the control of Egypt at the time. As a result of a childhood injury, Yassin lost his ability to walk, and was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life until he was killed by an Israeli missile attack in 2004.

The first time that Yassin came under the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood was when he went to Cairo in late 1950s to get a university degree. His affiliation with the movement came to the attention of the Egyptian authorities as a result of which he was expelled from Egypt and returned to the occupied territory of Gaza, where he became a leading spiritual leader of Islam.

Even though he was approached by the Fatah organization to join the armed struggle against

Israel, he refused to do so. According to Yassin, who was inspired by the teachings and activities of the Muslim Brotherhood, people of Gaza were not ready to fight the Israelis in an armed struggle yet. The first step towards that direction was to have an organization, which would bring the masses together under the same umbrella. Building an organization required the support of the Palestinian people, which could be achieved by the spread of Islamic ideology and the distribution of public goods.

In the aftermath of the Arab-Israeli war in 1967, the life under occupation had become even more difficult for the people in Gaza, which led to the revival of the influence of the

Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza. In light of the new political challenges, the Muslim Brotherhood slowly transformed itself into a prominent social movement in the Gaza Strip. Especially after the coming to power of the extremist right-wing Likud party in Israel in 1977, and the neutralization of Egypt with the signing of the Camp David Accords in 1979, the Palestinians in

Gaza were subject to even harsher conditions under the Israeli occupation. With the authorization of the establishment of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, Gaza and West Bank turned out to be prisons for most of the Palestinian Arabs. Those who were suspected of supporting the

165 civil resistance against the Israeli occupation were being consistently threatened and humiliated at the checkpoints. Traveling in and out of Gaza had become extremely difficult for the settlers of Gaza because of the newly imposed restrictions.

One alternative offered to Palestinians by the Israeli authorities was to make a living by working at the construction sites for the Israeli settlements: “The inability of the people of Gaza to resist the corrupting policies of the Israeli occupation authorities alarmed the Islamist leaders.

Only a morality based on Islam could equip a jobless or penniless inhabitant of Gaza to say no to an Israeli officer offering him or her a comfortable life, a good job or a permit to travel abroad for employment or education in exchange for collaborating with the authorities” (Tamimi 2007,

14). In other words, Israel had embarked on a process of creating beneficiaries of the occupation. By converting a group of Palestinians into spies who would work voluntarily to preserve the status quo, Israeli authorities were trying to consolidate their power in the occupied territories. Hamas would later incorporate these “visible symbols of oppression” into their political rhetoric in order to mobilize the young Palestinians against the Israeli occupation (Post

2009).

Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and his loyal colleagues such as Ibrahim al-Yazuri, Abd al-Aziz al-Rantisi, and Mahmoud al-Zahar, who were also inspired by the vision and the ideals of the

Muslim Brotherhood, knew that in order for people to resist against this ordeal and fight occupation, there was a need for an organization. The most crucial step toward the formation of a strong, unified and representative organization was to reach out to impoverished people of the occupied territories by responding to their needs through the spread of Islamic ideology, charity work and social services, all of which would unify people and help Hamas secure a popular base of support even before it was established.

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Provision of Public Goods and the Formation of Hamas

The Muslim Brotherhood viewed societal change as a gradually evolving process, the first step of which was to reform the individual based on the Islamic values and ethics. In order for a collective armed resistance to flourish and sustain itself over a long period of time, one needed a completely reformed and properly Islamized society. Based on this conservative yet reformist vision, the Brotherhood under the leadership of Ahmad Yassin, had established a variety of institutions in Palestine such as nursery schools, clinics, kindergartens, religious schools, youth sports clubs and orphanages from late 1960s until the breakout of the first Intifada in 1987.

The first public platform of the Palestinian Brotherhood was the creation of the Islamic

Society “Al-Jam’iyah al-Islamiyah” in 1967 whose goal was to pursue educational, recreational and sporting programs for the youth. The activities of the society were run from a small room in the al-Shati’ Mosque. In the meantime, using the donations collected from wealthy Palestinians,

Sheikh Ahmad Yassin reprinted and disseminated the last volume of Sayyid Qutb’s Quranic exegesis titled “In the Shade of the Quran.” The distribution of the copies of this volume was quiet important as it helped change the way the Muslim Brotherhood was perceived by the people of Gaza: “Qutb, as a leading Egyptian Ikhwan (Brotherhood) figure was introduced to the readers both as a revolutionary fighting for justice and as a scholar of the highest standing”

(Tamimi 2007, 36).

Emboldened by all these achievements, Yassin and the other members of the Muslim

Brotherhood in Palestine decided to establish another institution called the Islamic Center “Al-

Mujamma al-Islami” in 1973, which aimed at 1) providing other necessary social services that the state was unable to attend to such as youth programs, drug rehabilitation centers, nursery

167 schools, health clinics and play grounds for children, and 2) combining religion with education.

The leadership of the Center consisted of people who had similar educational and social backgrounds: most of them were born into or forced to live in refugee camps like Yassin himself, where they were introduced to and came under the influence of Muslim Brotherhood combining religion with politics. Some were also educated abroad in countries like Egypt and Kuwait, and they were very well acquainted in the Islamic values and ideas. Majority of them were sent into exile or incarcerated for a while because of their acts of commitment to the Palestinian cause, which elevated their status in the eyes of many Palestinians (Post 2009).

Operating in the poorest suburbs and refugee camps in Gaza, the Islamic Center built a number of mosques, religious schools, and football and martial arts centers to win over the young populations. In order to expand their influence, Yassin and his colleagues formed three- member cells throughout the entire Gaza Strip, which targeted majority, if not all, of the existing neighborhoods with a variety of social programs, subsidized services and activities for families, women and children (Roy 2011). The Islamic Center would assign physicians or medical service people, who are connected to Muslim Brotherhood to provide free medical consultation to the people in need on a regular basis. On particular days, volunteering pharmacists would distribute medicine at a low cost. The Islamic Center would also organize days during which boys of poor families would be circumcised free of charge and the celebrations would be paid in advance by the Brotherhood (Tamimi 2007, Roy 2011). All of these services were met with great zeal within the Palestinian population.

Interesting enough, the funding for the provision of these services and the creation of these institutions not only came from the Gulf donors and individual members of the

Brotherhood, but also from the Israeli authorities, which (in the early and mid-1980s) pursued a

168 policy of non-intervention toward the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza: “Beginning in the early 1980, Israel (like many Arab states) initially pursued policies that aimed to bolster the Islamists over the secular nationalists by allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to organize and mobilize politically and socially” (Robinson 2004, 119). According to some scholars, the reason that Israel has not culled the activities of the Brotherhood was because at the time the nationalist secular groups such as the PLO were the real threat for the rule of Israel in the occupied territories, not the religious ones. Therefore, the financial and other support given to Islamic groups such as the Brotherhood was considered as a necessary move to form a united front against these dangerous leftist organizations (Usher 1999, Abu-Amr 1993). Azzam Tamimi

(2007) explains that another reason that the Israeli authorities pursued a policy of non- intervention was that they wanted show their goodwill to the Palestinians by allowing them the freedom to enjoy their religious institutions as long as these institutions remained ‘non-political’.

In 1981, the Islamic Center also established the Jamm’iyyat al-Shabbat al-Muslimat -

“Young Women’s Muslim Association”- an institution which provided training to interested women in traditional skills such as sewing and needlework as well as technical skills and education such as computer training, religious instruction and literacy. During this time, the

Brotherhood relentlessly made efforts to base the movement’s social and religious activities on a legal platform. Finally in 1978, the Israeli authorities granted the Islamic Center a license, which was very important as it institutionalized the center on a legal platform and empowered it to influence the public discourse on a larger scale. Now, all the religious institutions and Mosques that belonged to the Brotherhood would legally be under the authority of the Islamic Center:

“Composed of seven committees working in preaching and guidance, welfare, education, charity, health, sports and conciliation, the Mujamma (the Islamic Center) became the base for the

169 development, administration, and control of religious and educational Islamic institutions in the

Gaza Strip under Yassin’s supervision” (Mishal and Sela 2000, 19-20).

Also in 1978, they established the first university in the Gaza Strip which was called the

Islamic University. There were some challenges during the initial stages of the university’s foundation as half of the committee members were the leading figures of the Brotherhood, the other half were comprised of Fatah leaders, who were selected because of their sympathy toward the Islamic ideals of the brotherhood. At times, there were serious rifts between the two groups regarding who would be in charge. All these issues were ultimately solved with the Islamic

Center’s takeover of the University. The foundation of the Islamic university greatly enhanced the prestige of the Palestinian Brotherhood and reinforced its central role in the region. Soon after its establishment, the university attracted more than five thousand students from the Gaza

Strip and West Bank all of whom were given a high quality education with an Islamic orientation

(Roy 2011). In other words, the movement’s ability to influence the younger populations of the society had greatly improved, and the preparation for a massive popular uprising against the occupation had officially started.

Even though the initial stance of Sheik Ahmad Yassin was to prioritize social welfare and development over armed resistance, this position had to be modified in response to some dramatic changes in the late 1970s and early 1980s such as the Islamic Revolution in Iran, and the rise of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the spread of political Islam throughout the region. The community development activities and social welfare programs proved out to be extremely helpful: they were embraced by most of the Palestinians and increased the popularity of the movement. However, with the dramatic increase in number of groups engaged in armed resistance, the passive activism of the Brotherhood had become a serious issue of concern by a

170 growing number of Palestinians from within and outside of the Islamic bloc over time.

Especially the younger recruits of the Palestinian Brotherhood were discontent with the lack of a dramatic action plan against the occupation. Why would the Palestinian Brotherhood insist on investing so much time and energy in the community development and societal reforms and not make any moves toward taking military action to fight the occupation?

In the early 1980s, the pressure on the Brotherhood increased even more as a similar rival

Islamic nationalist group emerged in Gaza as a violent offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood—the

Islamic Jihad organization. The Islamic Jihad was founded by Sheikh Abd al-Aziz and Fathi al-

Shaqaqi, both of whom were expelled from the Muslim Brotherhood for criticizing it for its reluctance to engage in armed struggle against Israel:

This group of activists, led by Fathi Shaqaqi and Sheikh Abd al-Aziz Awda, believed that the Muslim Brotherhood movement had become too moderate and had abandoned the Palestinian cause. Inspired by the Shi'a Islamic revolution in Iran; the PIJ blended Palestinian nationalism, Sunni Islamic fundamentalism, and Shi'a revolutionary thought into its ideological agenda. PIJ believes that the annihilation of Israel and liberation of all of Palestine are prerequisites for recreating a pan-Islamic empire. PIJ stresses that the Arab-Israeli conflict is not a national dispute over territory but rather a fundamentally religious conflict. The group rejects any political arrangements or diplomatic activity to solve the conflict. PIJ believes that jihadist violence will inspire Palestinians to action and lead to the eventual destruction of Israel (START Knowledge Base 2011).

For the founders and supporters of the Islamic Jihad organization, military resistance and society development along Islamic rules were not mutually exclusive; both of these tasks could be pursued and achieved simultaneously. However, instead of pursuing both tasks at the same time as suggested, the IJ advocated political violence and put more emphasis on terrorist attacks than social and educational services (Tamimi 2007). Hence, in the 1980s, even though the pressures were mounting against them, The Brotherhood still had the opportunity to maintain and enhance the breadth and scope of their influence. The PLO leadership, which was after a peaceful settlement, had already lost its credit in the eyes of the Palestinian society. Plus, the

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PLO was expelled from Lebanon in 1982. Hence, the young generations of Palestinians no longer considered the PLO as a credible and an able organization that represented their interests.

In an interview, Hassan Salama, one of the most prolific suicide bomb commanders of Hamas and the mastermind behind the suicide bombings that killed 70 people in Israel in 1996, explained why he chose to serve for Hamas among many others with the following words:

In general, any organization that fights for the liberation of Palestine is a good thing. But we need to distinguish between religious and secular organizations. Religious organizations understand that we also have to fight for Islam and not only for the nation and the land. Fatah is a good positive organization, but mistaken in its ideology and deeds. Fatah, in its concessions to Israel, its recognition of the state of Israel, and its joining the peace process, is totally unacceptable to me (Post 2009, 157).

The Islamic Jihad, on the other hand, could not compete with the Brotherhood in the areas of education and social welfare. In other words, with the popular base that it has created with years of hard work, the Palestinian Brotherhood could potentially be the only viable option for majority of the Palestinians as long as they were willing to engage in the armed struggle.

In light of these changes, Ahmad Yassin decided to bring the military action of the brotherhood to an end. From 1983 to 1987, a full-fledged preparation for armed resistance began. With this purpose in mind, Yassin started construction of the military apparatus and established two paramilitary wings in 1983. The first one of these was an intelligence unit responsible for surveillance and intelligence gathering called al-Majd, the second one was a commando unit responsible for attacking military targets of Israel called al-Mujahedeen (Roy

2011, 24). In 1984, Yassin and other leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood were imprisoned because of planning an armed operation against Israel. Even though Sheikh Yassin was given a

13 year sentence, due to a prisoner exchange situation, he was released ten months later. Now it

172 was clear to all the members of the Brotherhood that the time has arrived to transition from reformism to militarism.

Three years later on December 8, 1987, the first Palestinian uprising called the Intifada broke out, which was triggered by a fatal traffic accident in Gaza. According to the Palestinians, what the press called an “accidental traffic incident” was in fact a deliberate act of murder targeting the Palestinian workers. An Israeli military truck hit a car carrying laborers from the

Gaza Strip causing the death of three Palestinians and injury of seven others: “Rumors among the Palestinians had it that the victims of the accident had been killed in cold blood to avenge for the death of an Israeli in Gaza a few days earlier. Arabs newspapers and leaflets denouncing the murder of the four men were circulated among the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. The funeral of the victims turned into a riot and assault with stones and bricks on the Israeli army outposts and border police on the refugee camp” (El Hassan 2010, 75).

Along with the spread of the riots and demonstrations first from Gaza City to the southern part of the Strip then to West Bank, Brotherhood decided to seize this opportunity and

Hamas was formally established in December 1987 as a separate organization to resist the occupation with political action and armed struggle. This advent of Hamas provided a boost of morale for the younger generation of Palestinians.

Hamas was an acronym for “Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya” or “the Islamic

Resistance Movement” and it was a reorganization of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine,

“which effectively was subsumed to Hamas” (Roy 2011, 25). According to Glenn Robinson, the conflict between social reform and political action was resolved through an internal compromise within the brotherhood: the formation of Hamas would not stop the charity work that has been going on since 1970s, it would complement it with strategies of active resistance: “Those

173 brothers who did not agree with the formation of Hamas could remain within the brotherhood.

Those who chose resistance first could join Hamas without having to renounce their Brotherhood membership” (Robinson 2004, 123).

In short, the Palestinian Brotherhood set the stage for the creation of Hamas through the spread of Islamic ideology and social welfare activities, which created a sense of indebtedness among the Palestinians. When Hamas finally declared Jihad, it was time for the Palestinians to return the favor.

Hamas and the Transition to Terrorism

As previously explained, Hamas did not take root as a violent terrorist organization, but rather as a social and religious movement, which provided the impoverished Palestinians with free of charge social services and institutions. Years after developing extensive social, religious and educational services in Palestine, Hamas changed its course of action and embraced political violence as a strategy. On 18 August 1988, Hamas published its charter-- The Charter of Allah:

The Platform if the Islamic Resistance Movement-- the first written document that seeks to explain the group’s mentality and philosophy at the time of its establishment. In the Charter,

Hamas declared Jihad, which would continue until Palestine was entirely liberated and the state of Israel was eliminated. The Charter was, therefore, a declaration of Hamas’ military activism.

However, what triggered Hamas’s use of terrorist attacks were two key events that occurred in the early 1990s during the first Intifada: Temple Mount killings and the Israeli deportation of the Palestinian activists from the occupied territories to Lebanon. The first one of these, the Temple Mount tragedy that occurred on October 8, 1990 is considered to be a significant event that served as a catalyst for the escalation of the Intifada (Herzog and Gazit

2004). The Temple Mount is a holy site in the Old City of Jerusalem that is sacred for both Jews

174 and Muslims, and therefore, both Israeli and Palestinian authority claim sovereignty over it. In

Arabic, it is called Haram al-Sharif, and is home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque (along with the Dome of Rock) --- the third holiest shrine in Islam.

The Temple Mount incident started with the announcement of an extreme Jewish group- the Temple Mount Faithful- that on the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, they would march onto the

Temple Mount and takeover Haram al-Sharif only to build a Jewish temple on the site. Fearing the possibility that this could actually happen, “over 3000 Muslim worshippers gathered on the

Temple Mount to prevent the entry of the Jewish contingent, while over 20,000 Jewish worshippers were gathered at the Western Wall below the Sukkot holiday prayers. Palestinians at the Temple Mount started stoning both the Jews praying below as well as the police on the

Mount with heavy rocks” (Herzog and Gazit 2004, 400-401). It was at this moment that the

Israeli Border Police stormed the Temple Mount and shot 17 Palestinians to death.

This incident presented the Hamas leadership with a window of opportunity to turn to violence on a justifiable ground. Talk was cheap, and passive resistance was useless confronting a much capable and militarily strong enemy; liberation could only be achieved through armed resistance. In an effort to take advantage of the commotion and frustration that came about after the killing of the Palestinians, Hamas called for Jihad against the Zionist enemy. It prepared and distributed leaflets which read “all Jews are legitimate targets for killing to avenge the martyrs”

(Herzog and Gazit 2004, 401). While from Hamas leadership’s point of view, this transition from social services to violence was a necessary evil in order to move forward in the liberation of

Palestine, from a scholarly point of view, it also was an attempt to gain competitive edge over the rival organizations (Bloom 2005).

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However, transition to violence proved to be an arduous task for the leadership of Hamas.

As Bruce Hoffman writes: “Hamas activists were able to carry out just ten attacks during its first year of dedicated operations. While the movement managed to increase this number thirty-two attacks in the second year, it still had little effect on its targeted constituents who continued to favor the group’s better established, secular rivals” (Hoffman 2006, 147). Even though there were some initial attempts by Ahmad Yassin to establish small paramilitary structures to work for the brotherhood in early 1980s as was previously mentioned, none of these were resourceful or organized enough to be the military wing of Hamas. In other words, Hamas was in need of a well-structured and capable military unit at its disposal. With this purpose in mind, in 1991 the official military wing of Hamas, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, was established. The primary objective of this military organization was to support Hamas in systematically utilizing violence by recruiting, training and arming fighters, and funding, organizing and executing terrorists operations.

The first targets of Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades were the Palestinian collaborators, or the beneficiaries of the Israeli occupation in Palestine. After eliminating this group, they turned their attention to Israeli people. They took hostages, used car bombs, grenades and detonations to kill Israeli settlers and strike attacks against the military forces. The noticeable results of

Hamas’s terrorist campaigns soon attracted the attention of the rival organizations leading to a bloody competition (Victor 2003). Hamas raised the bar so high that the other groups had to strive harder to inflict just as much damage on Israel as Hamas did: “The Palestinian Islamic

Jihad in particular was driven to strike out in new directions, forging ties with Hezbollah and participating in attacks on IDF forces in south Lebanon” (Mishal and Sela 2006, 65). On 7

December 1992 an armed cell of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades operating in Gaza killed

176 three Israeli soldiers by ambushing an Israeli army patrol. A few days later on 12 December, another similar ambush killed three more soldiers. The last straw came with the kidnapping of

29-year-old Israeli border police Sergeant Nissim Toledano. The Hamas cell took him as hostage and delivered a message to the Israeli government asking for concessions. When the Israeli government refused to make any concessions, Hamas executed Nissim Toledano (Tamimi 2007).

After the kidnapping and murder of Toledano, Israeli authorities wanted to punish the responsible organization: Hamas. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin convened an emergency cabinet meeting and ordered the arrest of more than 400 Islamic Palestinian activists, most of whom were Hamas members, to be deported to Lebanon. On a cold December night, these 415 activists from different parts of Gaza Strip and West Bank--some taken straight from their homes, others, who were already detained, pulled out of prison--were driven to the Israeli border with Lebanon and literally dumped into a terrain outside of the Israeli security zone. Ironically the place was called ‘Marj al-Zuhur’, which means the Meadow of Flowers. The deportation drew considerable media attention from all over the world:

The entire world watched on television as the deportees, blindfolded and handcuffed, with their hands tied behind their backs, remained confined to their seats in the coaches, which were parked for up to 24 hours at the de facto border with Lebanon ...On a freezing December night, 415 Palestinians were left in the open in an inhospitable terrain covered with snow….With ages ranging between 16 to 67, the deportees were the cream of their society. Seventeen of them were university lecturers with doctorates; eleven were medical doctors, some of them senior specialists; fourteen were engineers, thirty-six were businessmen; and five were journalists. One hundred and nine were university students, many of them postgraduate students. And finally, 208 were imams from various mosques…Before this crisis, the name of Hamas had rarely been mentioned anywhere in the international media…Now, journalists and researchers from many countries around the world were filing reports, writing stories or filming documentaries about the movement (Tamimi 2007, 67-69).

The forced exile and the resulting suffering of the prominent leaders and members of

Hamas was a blessing in disguise for the organization. For the first time, Hamas was at the center

177 of the world’s attention. The leaders and influential members of Hamas appeared on TV news channels to explain to the world what their movement was about. Hamas had the chance to introduce itself to the international audience as a social welfare organization, not a terrorist group. Aiding their cause, the international media was condemning Israel for the deportation of hundreds of Palestinian civilians given that a considerable number of the deportees were academics and students. Israel’s initial plan was to push Hamas towards a natural end by deporting the most influential and inspiring leaders of the organization. However, the temporary power vacuum at home as a result of the deportation was quickly filled by young followers, who were just as radical and violent-minded, if not more, as the exiled leaders (Hoffman 2006).

Secondly and maybe more importantly, the exile provided Hamas leaders with a rare opportunity to communicate, brainstorm and devise a plan for what their next step was going to be. Because of strict Israeli measures such as isolation of entire neighborhoods or sieging of villages and towns, most of these people never really had a chance to have a face-to-face encounter with one another within the occupied territories. Now, they had ample time in their hands to exchange ideas and resolve their differences. Some of the issues that were discussed in these meetings were the utilization of available resources of the organization, including the human resources, establishing cooperation between the charities inside and outside of Palestine, and restructuring the leadership. During the ten months that they were in Lebanon, Hamas leadership grew stronger and carefully strategized their next modus operandi against Israel

(Mishal and Sela 2006, Hoffman 2006, Tamimi 2007).

Another opportunity that the deportation brought with it was the first-time cooperation between Hamas and Hezbollah. These two organizations grew closer and Hamas received tips from Hezbollah on how to organize cadres and how to devise a long-term military strategy. The

178 young deportees of Hamas also received training in combat techniques and bomb making in

Hezbollah’s military camps in southern Lebanon (Post 2009). According to Mishal and Sela

(2006), it was this interaction between Hamas and Hezbollah that presented a real milestone in the Hamas’s decision to use suicide terrorism as a method of attack: “It was no coincidence that

Hamas’s first suicide operation was carried out shortly after the deportees had returned to the occupied territories” (Mishal and Sela 2006, 65-66).

In other words, what Israel thought would be a punishment turned out to be a reward for

Hamas in every single aspect: Hamas gained international recognition, it grew stronger and even more popular and the lethality of its military wing, Izz al-Din al-Qassam, increased with the adoption of a new modus operandi: suicide terrorism.

Organizational Strategies and the Increase in the Use of Suicide Terrorist Attacks

While Hamas devised its plan to use suicide terrorism during the period its leaders were in exile in Marj al-Zuhur Lebanon, the triggering incident that initiated the first wave of Hamas’s suicide attacks was the Hebron massacre in 1994, which I briefly exemplified in Chapter 4. In the early morning of February 25, 1994 Palestinian Muslims gathered at the Ibrahim Mosque at the Cave of the Patriarchs for Ramadan prayers. Out of nowhere, a man named Baruch

Goldstein, who was a Brooklyn born Israeli medical doctor or in Bruce Hoffman’s (2006) words

‘an ultranationalist orthodox Jew’ (p. 150), wearing an IDF reserve uniform walked into the crowded mosque and opened fire randomly at the worshippers. As a result of this attack, twenty nine Palestinians lost their lives and over a hundred were wounded. According to the informational piece at Jerusalem Post (Omerman 2012), when Goldstein finally run out of his packs of ammunition, one of the survivors of the massacre hit him over the head with a fire extinguisher after which he was beaten to death.

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The massacre happened when Oslo Peace process was underway, which gave Palestinian authority limited self-rule in West Bank and Gaza Strip in exchange for their recognition of the state of Israel and renunciation of terrorist violence. Many scholars and experts alike concluded that this was an attempt to derail the peace talks (Bueno de Mesquita 2005, Kydd and Walter

2006). Whether the motivation was indeed to derail the peace process or not, the Hebron massacre definitely did lead to a crescendo of riots, societal unrest and violence, eroding both sides’ confidence in the peace process. Even though the first strike came from Baruch Goldstein,

Hamas had a problem with the Oslo peace process from the very beginning. According to Mishal and Sela (2006), the terms of the Oslo agreement were simply unacceptable to Hamas and caused it to encounter an existentialist problem. From the viewpoint of Hamas, the agreement was designed to kill the spirit of Intifada and tie the hands of the Palestinian leadership to stop taking military action against Israel. If Hamas wanted to be a genuine political alternative to the PLO, it had to resist to the implementation of the agreement the PLO was agreeing to.

In order to avenge the Hebron massacre, Hamas pushed the button for a series of suicide terrorist attacks. The first one of these targeted a commuter bus at the center of Afula, Israel. In the morning of April 6, 1994, a Palestinian suicide terrorist drove his vehicle rigged with explosives to downtown Afula, stopping it next to a commuter bus as the bus was boarding passengers at the stop. The attack killed eight Israelis and injured fifty-five others. Just a week later, a second suicide attack was carried out by Hamas, which also targeted a commuter bus in

Hadera, Israel. A third attack targeted the Dizengoff Shopping Center in Tel Aviv, killing a total of 22 civilians, and another one, at Nezarim Junction, killing three others. As I evidenced in detail in Chapter 3, the perpetrators of suicide terrorism prefer to carry out their attacks in

180 confined spaces or indoor locations, so that the blast will be much more effective. Hence, among the favorite targets of the Hamas activists were commuter buses, restaurants and shopping malls.

While the series of suicide attacks were taking place, one question came to the fore: where would Hamas find these people, who were so committed to the Palestinian cause and the ideals of the organization that they were willing to sacrifice their lives carrying out suicide missions? It is true that the provision of the free services and institutions created a considerable pool of domestic support for Hamas, which definitely increased the numbers of its recruits.

However, going back to the point I made earlier, just because people are sympathetic to the ideology or political agenda of an organization or because they are frustrated with the restrictive policies and brutality of the enemy do not mean that all these people will become suicide bombers. Hence, in order for Hamas to adopt suicide terrorism as its signature mode of attack, it needed a constant flow of volunteers who were determined to kill as they die. Supporting this line of thinking, when Hamas was accused of manipulating young people into becoming suicide bombers, one of the commanders of the Al-Qassam Brigades, Salah Shehade published a communique arguing that martyrdom operations take place on a voluntary basis and that there is nothing forceful or manipulative about the process. He further explained that if anything, Hamas had to carefully select from a wide pool of applicants, the right people, who would be endowed with the honor of being a martyr: “Hamas applies strict requirements in considering potential suicide bombers: recruits had to be Muslims, with a level of education, and could not be the only provider for their family” (Forest 1996, 198).

I would argue that the notorious frequency of the successful suicide terrorist attacks by

Hamas was possible through the deliberate and systematic use of some well-calculated organizational strategies. This final part of my analysis of Hamas will look at these particular

181 strategies in detail, namely the use of print publications, mass media and social media and the provision of private goods.

The Use of Mass Media by Hamas

Alex Schmid and Janny de Graaf (1982) once argued that “without communication, there is no terrorism.” Even though this statement was made decades ago, it captures the reality of the modern day terrorist movements. A terrorist group’s success and longevity depend on its ability to keep and expand its pool of recruits and supporters. One of the most efficient ways to achieve this is through a successful PR. As I explained in the previous chapter in detail, many terrorist organizations have their own websites; some have their own radio and TV stations, blogs, and social media accounts in order to share their ideology and political struggle with domestic and international audiences.

By having their own newspapers, online magazines, independent websites, media channels and social media accounts, terrorist groups have the ultimate control over the flow of information and mobilize political discourse in the direction that they want. They freely decide on the video footage that they will show, the photographs and the audio clips that they will display and the language of the statements that they will publish. They usually make websites in a myriad of languages tailored to speak to different audiences in distant parts of the world, who may have sympathy for the cause of the organization. The leaders of the terrorist groups also give interviews to explain their positions to larger groups of people. Hence, the use of different communication channels allows the terrorist groups to engage in propaganda warfare, as a result of which, they serve a number of their goals simultaneously: attract new recruits, increase the sympathy of their supporters and find financial contributors for their new and existing operations.

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The use of print publications and mass media strengthened the political and social activism of Hamas and gained the movement a more legitimate status (Balousha 2013). While the Hamas Charter was written to introduce the newly founded movement to the Palestinian people, it was definitely the beginning. In the years to follow, Hamas would use a variety of communication mediums to improve its outreach to larger groups of people more effectively, which in turn will increase the size and commitment of its recruits and supporters.

During the early years of the first Intifada, Hamas used a number of bayanats the Arabic word for leaflets in order to publicize and differentiate itself from other rival organizations. In order to make these leaflets more appealing to a larger group of Palestinian audiences, Hamas would even include verses from the Quran or the statements of Prophet Mohammad (Tamimi

2007). For example, in one of the leaflets produced and distributed by Hamas, the group made the following statement regarding a possible peace process with Israel: “The Palestinian people accuse all who seek this solution of weaving a plot against its rights and its sacred national cause.

Liberation will not be completed without sacrifice, blood and jihad that continue until victory”

(Post 2009, 148).

Hamas supporters also scrawled graffiti on walls of the Gaza Strip. The slogans images, and symbols representing the viewpoint and religious ideology of Hamas were drawn on the walls during the initial years of Intifada in order to make and spread political propaganda.

Especially during times when Palestinians did not trust the existing newspapers or media outlets to provide their side of the story, the walls served as a platform for them to express their opinions and convey political and social messages. Movie director Abdel Salam Shehadeh argues that the graffiti scribbles which started in 1980s were one of the most original and artistic ways to both communicate and spread news and rebel against the occupation, especially for the young

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Palestinians: “At the time, young resistance fighters used to write statements and warning on the walls of the refugee camps aimed at camp’s inhabitants, cautioning them about the use of Israeli merchandise, for example, or announcing the dates of business-closure strikes and the names of martyrs or informants” (Al-Ghoul 2013). The other messages shared on the concretes were things such as the formation of a new brigade, pilgrimage dates, and burial services.

Hamas was one of the primary beneficiaries of the graffiti writings and drawings.

Especially during long curfews throughout the first Intifada, “Hamas gave this art form great attention as far as the use of proper calligraphy and grammar, which helped it gain the upper hand over other competing factions that also resorted to writing graffiti on walls” (Al-Ghoul

2013). Hamas also used the graffiti on walls to impose its religious agenda. For instance, one of the graffiti read the following dress-code order for women: “Daughter of Islam, abide by sharia dress!” (Milton-Edwards and Farrell 2010, 188). The political slogans and other messages that refer to Hamas’s ideology and resistance such as “Are you friends with a Terrorist?” or

“Hamas’s hope flows through the veins of the nation” quickly struck the attention of the Israeli authorities. A special unit was formed with the name of “the Arabized Samson Unit” whose main task was to make sure that the walls were clean from graffiti. For that purpose, sometimes they would pursue graffiti writers and drawers and force them to clean the paint off the walls. Other times, they would assign cleaning crews, who would spray the Gaza walls with black tar. Under the strict supervision of Israeli authorities, many young Palestinians got into trouble because of writing or drawing on the walls of their houses in Gaza. Some were even arrested by the Israeli forces for having paint on their hands. However, none of these measures succeeded in preventing the spread of graffiti tradition in Gaza. Even today, most of the graffiti in Gaza still depict

Hamas’s ideology and resistance against occupation.

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As the communication technologies improved, Hamas adapted to these changes and moved away from leaflets and graffiti on the walls to other mediums of communication. We see that the leaders of Hamas greatly benefited from the Aljazeera effect and improved their outreach. As I mentioned previously, Hamas leaders’ first real opportunity to introduce themselves to the world in their own words came with the 1992 deportation of them to Lebanon.

As a result of this incident, Hamas’s members appeared on news channels, documentaries and exclusive interviews to talk about the movement. In the late 1990s, with the advent of Aljazeera and satellite television, Hamas leaders found another platform to influence political discourse and set the Palestinian agenda. Satellite television in general opened a new venue for political communication in the Arab political sphere and Aljazeera in particular helped shift the focus toward issues of significance for Arab audiences such as Palestine, Iraq and resistance.

According to Marc Lynch, Aljazeera “also fueled political protest movements” (Lynch 2013,

492) by spreading their messages and breaking though censorship. A series of testimonies and interviews of Hamas leadership were broadcast on Aljazeera in late 1990s (Tamimi 2007).

In January 2006, Hamas member, Fathi Admad Hammad, established the first private

Hamas-run television station in the Gaza Strip called Al Aqsa TV. Modeled after Hezbollah’s Al

Manar Television, Al Aqsa TV is aimed at spreading Hamas’s political and religious views, promoting its activities, martyrdom operations, and policies and finding new recruits for the organization. The news, political commentaries and teachings of Quran have been among the most favorable programs of the station. The specific programs that were geared toward children also pursue deliberate hate propaganda against Israel, extolling virtues of Jihad and honoring martyrdom operations, thereby spreading the web of violence to the hearts and mind of the youngsters. In November 2012, “Al Aqsa TV interviewed the children of Hamas members who

185 were killed in Israeli airstrikes. One of the girls said “I want to fire missiles at the Jews and be martyred like my father.” One of the boys also said that he wants to follow in his father’s path, “I want to follow the path of Jihad like daddy and I want to be martyred like daddy.” (Anti-

Defamation League website, 2013).

The music videos featured seek to radicalize the young children. One of the music videos tells the story of a little boy who joins the military unit of Hamas and becomes a martyr. Another show for children called ‘Tomorrow’s Pioneers’ “tries to relay noble Islamic concepts to the children by teaching them about life from our point of view’ says the founder of the TV station,

Ahmad Hamad (Anti-Defamation League website, 2013).

In addition to these programs in which children praise the virtue of suicide attacks and express their willingness to die as suicide bombers to liberate Palestine, Al-Aqsa TV also broadcast messages of women who are ready for martyrdom operations, final videotaped statements of the suicide terrorists before they are sent to their final missions, and celebrate important Hamas leaders, previous martyrs and detainees (Milton-Edwards and Farrell 2010).

One of these “martyrs” was Hamas’s bomb-maker, Yahya Ayyash, also known as the engineer, who was assassinated by Israel in 1996. Given all the effort by Hamas to keep its martyrs alive in the hearts and minds of Palestinians, Yahya Ayyash has become very popular after his death:

His skill in fashioning bombs from the limited materials available in the Palestinian territories earned him the soubriquet ‘the Engineer’. He was credited with assembling the first bombs that Hamas used on its suicide attacks against Israel between 1994 and 1996, and his success in eluding capture by Israel turned him into a hero for many young Palestinians. He was idolized by some children with the same fervor that Western youngsters revere sports stars such as David Beckham or pop singers such as Britney Spears (Milton-Edwards and Farrell 2010, 118).

Hamas also has a radio station called the Voice of Al Aqsa, a biweekly newspaper called

The Message, and an online magazine for children called “al-Fateh”, which means The

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Conqueror, all which were purposefully used to indoctrinate target audiences, incite hatred and violent resistance against Israelis (Levitt 2007).

Along with its TV and radio stations, Hamas also owned a number of internet sites, which were used for similar purposes such as sharing the official statements of the prominent leaders, reporting the activities of the organization, and educating the masses on the personal profiles of the martyrs, members of the political bureau and detainees. The official website of the military wing of Hamas, Izz al-Din Al- Qassam serves like an information hub for the visitors interested in Hamas’s reason of existence, values and strategies. There are also links that connect to online videos and dramatic photos of the life under occupation, the war in Gaza, and Al-

Qassam martyrs and prisoners. As I indicated in the previous chapter, all these websites only reflect the Palestinian perspective and encourage the visitors to help the cause and “to participate in demonstrations, write letters to the elected officials and newspapers, and boycott Israeli goods.

Instructions are given on how to add Hamas links and banners to one’s own site” (Hoffman

2006, 211).

The internet sites that Hamas owns also serve as platforms to build communication between Hamas members and its sympathizers, as a result of which the latter becomes even more radicalized. Hamas also uses its websites for technical instructions and educational purposes.

Jerrold Post (2009) quotes one of the exchanges that took place between two Hamas members over the internet. The first recruit asks for information over bomb-making, and the second one writes back within an hour with the relevant information:

The first recruit: -My dear brothers in Jihad…I have a kilo of acetone peroxide. I want to know how to make a bomb from it in order to blow up an army jeep; I await your quick response. The Second Recruit: -My dear brother….I understand that you have 1,000 grams of Om El Abad. Well done! There are several ways to change it into a bomb…(Post 2009, 158).

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Such discussions and instructions for building different kinds of weapons, explosives and rockets can easily be found on different websites operated by Hamas members. The Al-Qassam

Brigades also gives the interested Palestinians online courses on weapons training and target choice. One of the instructional guidelines posted online was called the Mujahideen Poisons

Handbook, a detailed description of preparing deadly poisons and gasses to be used in terrorist attacks (Forest 2006). Apparently these online courses were not enough that Hamas authorities very recently introduced a youth program into the school curriculum (as of September, 2012) which is intended to teach Palestinian schoolboys military skills such as throwing grenades, planting improvised explosive devices and firing assault rifles (Greenwood 2013).

Since the young generations that Hamas wishes to impress, address and win over, frequently use the internet-based social media such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter, Hamas had no choice but to maintain a presence in this new public sphere as well. Especially after the success of the Arab Revolution and the role that the social media played in this success, Hamas leaders decided to open Facebook and Twitter accounts, which they use more frequently than the traditional media outlets. For instance, the prime minister of Hamas Ismail Haniyeh has his own

Twitter account (Balousha 2013). In the words of Taher Al Nunu, who is the spokesman for the

Hamas government in Gaza, the importance of the social media is undeniable in a century like this:

Its importance lies in the fact that you can hear the pulse of the opinions of others—you can see their reactions immediately, without waiting for research, studies or opinion polls the way you have to with other forms of media. Very often I (use social media to try and get a sense of how events are unfolding and how people are thinking both here in Gaza and in the outside world…I would have never believed that what I post on my Facebook page could spread so quickly, that activists would circulate it so rapidly or to see it appear on the websites of traditional media (Balousha 2013).

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Given the effectiveness of the social media in reaching so many people all at once within seconds and the fact that one can express himself directly to people without going through the filter of the newspapers, the Hamas leadership and Al-Qassam Brigades now find it more convenient to post official statements and important updates on Facebook or simply tweet them.

Al Aqsa TV also maintains a presence on social media with official Facebook, Twitter, and

YouTube accounts, through which they provide the latest updates from Al Aqsa TV's broadcasts.

Some argue that the presence and overwhelming use of the social media carried the

Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a new level of psychological warfare, in which Israel and Hamas battle on the social media platforms and fire angry tweets against each other (Bohn 2012). For instance, in the immediate aftermath of the Israeli campaign that targeted and killed Hamas’s top military commander Ahmed Jabari in November 2012, the Twitter page of the Official Israel

Defense Forces, which has more than 200,000 followers (@idfspokesperson) made the following announcement: “We recommend that no Hamas operatives, whether low level or senior level, show their faces above ground in the days ahead”. Using their official Twitter account in

English (@AlQassamBrigade), the Hamas’s military wing retweeted: “Our blessed hands will reach your leaders and soldiers wherever they are (You Opened Hell Gates on Yourselves).”

(Bohn 2012).

All of these examples demonstrate that different sources of communication that range from graffiti on the walls to websites and Twitter accounts, were persistent strategic choices for

Hamas through which it sought to distinguish itself from rival organizations, and share its ideology, agenda and accomplishments with larger groups of people. Using the new and old media outlets, Hamas also attracted new recruits into its ranks and radicalized them. Especially

189 with its choice of strategic programs and indoctrinating films and videos, Hamas has enlarged its pool of volunteers who were willing and ready to die for the Palestinian cause.

Private Goods Provision by Hamas

The statistical analysis in the previous chapter showed that the terrorist organizations that are able to find and radicalize recruits through the use of mass media and to tie their hands through the provision of private goods are more likely to use suicide terrorism. In the previous section, I discussed Hamas’s use of mass media sources, which helped it to expand the size of its membership and support base. When the use of old and new media sources were accompanied by the well-organized benevolent work that Hamas has long been carrying out in the impoverished parts of the Gaza strip, it has gained a competitive edge over the more established rival terrorist organizations. As Beverly Milton-Edwards and Stephen Farrell (2010) argue: “If Hamas were only a network of armed cells, it would be nothing more than a violent, rejectionist splinter group on the fringe of the Palestinian society, with little to distinguish it from…rival Islamic Jihad.

Hamas gives a lot more attention to charitable work and popular activism, which ensures a mass public base” (p. 158)

While the use of social media and print publications along with provisions of public goods and services increased the availability of radicalized recruits for Hamas, these strategies were not sufficient to guarantee the successful execution of suicide terrorist attacks. As previously indicated, even when a suicide bomber is sent out to his/her final mission, these missions can fail either because of reasons that are not under the control of the suicide bombers such as when the switch fails to work and the bomb cannot be detonated, or because of reasons that can be avoided such as when the suicide bombers get nervous, arise suspicion and get caught before they carry out their attacks, when they panic and blow themselves up before they even get

190 to the previously agreed target location or when they simply ‘chicken out’ and change their minds (Benmelech and Berrebi 2007). Terrorist organizations use carefully crafted strategies in order to maximize the productivity of the suicide bombers and minimize the occurrences of these exemplified glitches.

Laurence Iannaccone (2006) likens terrorist organizations to business firms, which first and foremost seek to profit off of their employees. To profit, though, they must first sell their services to their own employees and make them believe that what they are doing serves the right cause. The commitment of martyrs is therefore a product of a combination of bribery and brainwashing tactics carried out by terrorist organizations. In other words, both indoctrination and rewards given by terrorist organizations can be extremely useful in increasing the commitment of the suicide bombers, thereby guaranteeing the success of their operations: “In every time, place and culture, many people are willing to die for causes that they value…The people who sacrifice their lives do not act spontaneously or in isolation. They must be recruited, and their sacrifices must be solicited, shaped and rewarded in group settings” (Iannaccone 2006,

2).

Hence, organizational strategies, which include but are not limited to recruitment, religious and military training, and spiritual or material rewards gain utmost importance in eliciting successful suicide attacks (Becker and Posner 2005, Iannaccone 2006). Then the question is: what are these organizational strategies that make suicide attacks profitable from the perspectives of suicide bombers so much that these people have a stake in the successful execution of the attack or in other words, a stake in dying?

In Chapter 5, I distinguished between public and private goods by saying that the former is non-exclusive and non-rival and the latter is exclusive and rival, benefiting only a select few.

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Bearing in mind this distinction, any organizational strategy that makes suicide attacks particularly attractive and exclusively beneficial to the suicide bombers can be classified as a private good provision. When we look at Hamas, we see that it provides a variety of these exclusive benefits to the suicide bombers and their families that can be considered as private goods which in turn further incentivize the suicide bombers and make them extremely committed to successfully carrying out their missions. While some of these benefits are tangible such as monetary rewards, scholarships for higher education, rent payments or food aid, some are more spiritual but no less effective such as afterlife rewards that await the suicide bombers, fame, honor, and societal veneration that comes as a result of engaging in suicide missions, and the satisfaction and joy every suicide bomber is promised to enjoy for giving harm to the enemy and doing something good for the society at large.

According to Iannaccone (2006), all these benefits derived from suicide-related activities are likely to increase the expected impact of suicide terrorist attacks. Related to this point of view, and as we shall see in the following pages, when Hamas-recruited suicide bombers successfully carry out their attacks, their pictures are hanged on the walls of Gaza, and their families receive the promised benefits. This encourages more Palestinians to follow in their footsteps, as a result of which the use of suicide terrorism increases. This last section of Hamas chapter will explain each of these private good provisions in detail starting with the intangible benefits.

Fame, Honor and Societal Veneration

Martyrdom is celebrated by Hamas with great enthusiasm and festivities. The organization spends a significant portion of their budget to make and distribute the videotaped statements of the suicide bombers to the media outlets, newspapers and local (religious and

192 social) organizations after they successfully carry out their attacks, which inspire young

Palestinians to follow the same path. Once a suicide attack is successfully executed, the martyr becomes a societal symbol of glory and a source of inspiration for the other Palestinians: the image of the martyr is “emblazoned on murals and wall posters, calendars and key chains, postcards and pennants throughout Palestine” (Hoffman 2006, 157). His/her name and pictures appear on the leaflets, posters, and online videos; photographs are hanged on the walls of the streets, biography is read during sermons at mosques and songs are written in his/her honor.

Even the graffiti on the walls praise his/her bravery and martyrdom (Hassan 2001, Hoffman

2006).

Nasra Hassan went to Gaza to interview the Palestinian (failed and would-be) suicide bombers and to understand why they decide to blow themselves up in the first place. Her interviews reveal that this notion of fame and societal glorification are important motivating factors that increase volunteerism for martyrdom operations. She writes that:

In Palestinian neighborhoods, the suicide bombers’ green birds appear on posters, and in graffiti—the language of the street. Calendars are illustrated with the martyr of the month. Paintings glorify the dead bombers in Paradise, triumphant beneath a flock of green birds. This symbol is based on a saying of the Prophet Muhammad that the soul of a martyr is carried to Allah in the bosom of the green birds of Paradise. Children who cannot read chant the names of the heroes, and make the Islamist sign for victory—right fist with raised forefinger—as they play in narrow alleys (Hassan 2001, 3).

While the martyr is idolized, the status of his/her family is also elevated in the eyes of the

Palestinian society. Hamas does a phenomenal job at convincing the families and friends of the martyrs that it is not the organization that chooses the martyrs, it is Allah that sees them fit for these operations and chooses them. After the 20-year-old Darine Abu Aisha, Hamas’s first female suicide bomber, detonated her explosives at an Israeli checkpoint near Jerusalem in 2002, her mother said the following in an interview: “It is the duty of every Palestinian mother to

193 encourage her sons and daughters to become martyrs. I adore my children, but if I help them achieve martyrdom, it only means that Allah has chosen them because he loves them more than I do” (Victor 2003, 102).

The ‘proud’ parents of the martyr then hold ceremonies in the honor of their children.

The mourning ceremony usually takes place at the house of the martyr, where people come from all over Gaza and West Bank, to share the pain and joy of the family as well as to congratulate them and praise the bravery of their martyred child. The family usually serves sweets and juice to the guests, which are purchased by the organization. Often times, the mother elegizes the loss of her child and thanks Allah for the honor that he has bestowed upon her family. Moreover, the families of the martyrs announce the accomplishment of their children “in local newspapers not on the obituaries page but in the section announcing weddings” (Hoffman 2006, 157).

Hence, it is no surprise that part of Hamas’s indoctrination strategy is to present fame and societal glorification as private goods to all those who choose to die a martyr’s death so that many more will follow and volunteer for suicide attacks. That is why Hamas puts serious time and effort to immortalize its martyrs through all these celebrations, which according to Bruce

Hoffman (2006) helps bring a sense of normality to the act of suicide. All these festivities reflect suicide terrorism in a more positive light, as a result of which societal acceptance and support for suicide attacks increase. Mohammed Hafez (2006) makes a similar argument by suggesting that these routine practices, performative traditions and redemptive actions create a ‘culture of martyrdom’ (p. 14).

Religious Rewards

Another private good that Hamas extends to its suicide bombers and ironically also to their families is the religious rewards, which comes in a package of afterlife promises. When

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Nasra Hassan was interviewing the Palestinians suicide terrorists, there was one condition under which they would give an interview. The condition was for Hassan to not refer to their deeds as

‘suicide’ but as “sacred explosions”. Similarly, an anonymous member of the Hamas’s military wing, Al-Qassam brigades, preferred to refer to the suicide terrorists recruited by Hamas as

“arsenal of believers”: “We do not have tanks or rockets, but we have something superior---our exploding Islamic human bombs. In place of a nuclear arsenal, we are proud of our arsenal of believers” (Hassan 2001, 3).

All of these efforts to call suicide terrorist attacks something other than what they are result from the fact that the act of committing suicide is a disgrace according to Islam. There is nothing brave and honorable about it. In Islamic tradition, suicide is a sin; it is a way to escape one’s mundane problems and therefore, a cowardly thing to do. Only weak, deviated minds would engage in suicide, whereas martyrdom is an honorable act carried out only by the chosen ones: “Martyrdom is about noble sacrifice by strong-willed individuals. Suicide is a pathetic end to depression and despair; martyrdom is a new beginning for hope and deliverance. Suicide is shameful and something to be discouraged; martyrdom is honorable and worth emulating”

(Hafez 2006, 40). All the Imams, sheiks and spiritual leaders associated with Hamas whose words are taken at a face value given their revered status within the society, interpret the readings of Koran in such a rewarding way for the suicide bombers. According to this interpretation, by being a martyr, a person guarantees a seat in paradise not only for himself but also for his family members (Israeli 2003). Paradise is supposedly a place of joy, where all martyrs will be exalted with wine, silk, virgins, and jewels. It is also the place where the martyrs would get to meet the Prophet Mohammad and his companions. All of these statements come to suggest that God approves of these martyrdom operations.

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In an interview, the spiritual leader of Hamas, Ahmad Yassin argues that one of the primary gains of successfully engaging in an act of martyrdom is to win Allah’s satisfaction

(Hassan 2001). An Imam explains the afterlife rewards that await the martyrs in detail with following words: “From the moment the first drop of the blood is spilled, the martyr does not feel the pains of his injury, and his absolved of all his bad deeds; he sees his seat in Paradise; he is saved from the torture of the grave; he is saved from the fear of the Day of Judgment; he marries seventy-two beautiful black-eyed women; he is an advocate for seventy of his relative to reach Paradise; he earns the Crown of Glory, whose precious stone is better than all this world and everything in it” (Victor 2003, 112). For female suicide bombers these rewards are somewhat different. While they also get a chance to open the doors of paradise to 72 of their relatives, based on the words of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, the benefits listed for female martyrs when they successfully carry out their missions are: eternal beauty and a pure husband in paradise (Victor 2003, 112).

All this religious indoctrination serves to strengthen the commitment of the would-be suicide bombers. That is why the spiritual training of Hamas that takes place before the execution of the suicide attack is also predominantly religious-based. Nasar Hassan explains that when a person’s candidacy for a martyrdom operation is approved, s/he is first transferred into a tightly grouped and secret cell called ‘martyrdom cell’. The cells usually comprise of three to four people—one leader and the would-be suicide bombers— and are dissolved after the attack is executed. In the cell, the living martyr undergoes a strict regimen of spiritual exercises for a few months. These exercises include abstaining, memorizing verses and recitations from Koran, and attending religious lectures for hours every day, teaching the importance of religious faith, waging jihad, and fulfilling one’s duty toward God. The days preceding the martyrdom

196 operation, the candidate reads his final testament from a piece of paper in front of a camera: “The video testaments, which are shot against a background of the sponsoring organization’s banner and slogans, show the living martyr reciting the Koran, posing with guns and bombs, exhorting his comrades to follow his example, and extolling the virtues of jihad” (Hassan 2001, 5).

Studying the final testaments of the Palestinian suicide bombers, Muhammed Hafez

(2006) concluded that religious self-sacrifice is interpreted as a way to as to achieve national salvation as well as to prove one’s commitment to religious faith. Hence, many of the statements of the suicide bombers consistently refer to the redemptive nature of martyrdom. The recruits of

Hamas believe that by engaging in martyrdom operations, they kill two birds with one stone: they satisfy God’s will and do something good for collective betterment of all Palestinians. Prior to her suicide attack, Darine Abu Aisha, the female suicide bomber of Hamas, was recorded saying: “I give my humble self in the path of God….because the body and soul are the only things we possess, I give of myself in the path of God to be the bombs that scorch the Zionists, and destroy the myth of God’s chosen people” (Hafez 2006, 89).

As can one seen, given the important place of religion in the lives of Palestinian people,

Hamas strategically uses religious indoctrination and afterlife awards to motivate and incentivize its would-be suicide bombers. As recruits are convinced that these benefits are exclusively bestowed upon the select martyrs, their commitments to martyrdom operations increase, which explains why Hamas is so much better at carrying out the most frequent and lethal suicide attacks. Going back to the firm metaphor used by Iannaccone (2006), one can conclude that: “in the market for martyrs, a faith-based firm that credibly offers immense personal rewards in exchange for death enjoys an obvious ceteris paribus advantage over its non-religious competitors” (p. 14).

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Material Benefits

While fame, honor, elevated family status and heavenly rewards are all important motivating factors that increase the commitment of the suicide bombers to their missions, Hamas also uses a variety of tangible benefits to bribe its living martyrs. Financial contributions and other material rewards are given to the families of the suicide bombers. However, the provisions of all these benefits are conditional upon the successful execution of the suicide attacks.

According to one account, Hamas organization awards a monthly amount of approximately

$1000 to the families of suicide bombers for life as well as distribute other beneficial services such as educational scholarships for their siblings, or food/coal aid for the families in need

(Winkates 2009). Bruce Hoffman (2006) explains that until 2001, Hamas had paid the families of suicide bombers a death benefit worth of somewhere between $3,000 to $ 5,000, which is much more than what the families of non-suicide terrorists are paid. Hamza Hendawi (2002) argues that during Al-Aqsa Intifada this money was increased to $10,000 when the Iraqi leader

Saddam Hussein decided to send money transfers to the families of Palestinian suicide terrorists.

According to Shaul Shay (2004), while Saddam’s regime has always been supportive of

Palestinian suicide attacks, after 2001, the funds sent by Iraq to the families of the shahids

(martyrs) distinguished between regular martyrs, who died as a result of non-suicide terrorist attack, and martyrs who died during a suicide attack. The latter category received substantially higher grants than the former.

One particularly striking example regarding how the life of martyrs’ families changes as a result of suicide attacks comes from the Gaza Strip. Joseph Lelyveld (2001) from New York

Times visits the apartment of Bashir al-Masawabi in Gaza, whose son Ismail al-Masawabi, blew himself up and killed three Israeli soldier and wounded a few others, just days before his

198 graduation from college. On the website of Izz al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, one page is dedicated to the martyrdom of Ismail praising his courage and dedication. Lelyveld describes the transformation of al-Masawabi family’s living conditions after Ismail’s suicide attack as follows:

The family had been living in a refugee-camp hovel when Ismail became a secret candidate for martyrdom. Now the circumstances of their lives had completely changed. The apartment, spacious by Gaza standards, had plastic grapevines running along the top of tiled walls. Everything in it looked new -- the appliances, rugs and stuffed furniture, the gaudy wall clocks, even the bracelet and rings Ismail's mother was wearing -- all made possible by supporters of Hamas, the organization that recruited Ismail. His father, a glazier, had a haunted look as he told how the community had turned out to congratulate him on his son's advent in paradise. His wife, completely covered except for her hands and her resolutely cheerful countenance, betrayed not a hint of sadness as she spoke of her departed son. ''I was very happy when I heard,'' she said. ''To be a martyr, that's something. Very few people can do it. I prayed to thank God. In the Koran it's said that a martyr does not die. I know my son is close to me. It is our belief (Lelyveld 2001, 50).

As other recruits that volunteer to be suicide terrorists see how the families of the previous martyrs are treated and the kinds of benefits that they receive, this serves as a powerful motivation for them to also want to succeed in their attacks. Hamas, therefore, devotes a significant portion of its budget to offer exclusive benefits to the families of the suicide bombers.

Conclusion

Between 1993 and 1998, there were a total number of thirty-seven suicide terrorist attacks in Palestine; twenty-four of which were identified as the work of Hamas, thirteen as that of Islamic Jihad. From 2000, which is the beginning of the second Intifada to 2001, there had been twenty-six suicide bomb explosions, nineteen of which were claimed by Hamas and the rest by Islamic Jihad (Hassan 2001). The suicide attacks predominantly targeted shopping malls, busy streets, commuter buses or cafes, all of which were locations where people heavily congregated. According to the estimates, an approximate number of two hundred and fifteen

Israelis had lost their lives and many more had been injured as a result of these explosions.

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In the previous chapter, I argued that the terrorist organizations that make frequent use of the media sources, websites and print publications to attract and radicalize recruits, and that provide private goods to increase their recruits’ commitments are more likely to use suicide terrorism than those that do not. This qualitative case study of Hamas demonstrates how particular strategies deliberately pursued by Hamas such as charity work, the use of old and new media sources and private good provisions, actually facilitated its use of suicide terrorism by increasing the size and commitment of its pool of recruits.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)

The second case study that will be discussed in this chapter is the Liberation Tigers of

Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which emerged in mid-1970s as a radical movement dedicated to achieving an independent Tamil state in the north and east of Sri Lanka. The reason that I chose

LTTE as a second case is that Tamil Tigers had been one of those rare terrorist groups, which had used suicide terrorism so strategically, consistently and unprecedentedly that its record of suicide attacks has yet to be broken: “..since the LTTE adopted this tactic in 1987, its suicide cadres are reported to have been responsible for as many as two hundred attacks. The LTTE’s elite suicide units comprise men, women and children, operate both on land and sea, and according to some reports, have also aspired to develop an airborne suicide attack capability”

(Hoffman 2006, 136).

In addition to that, while both Tamil Tigers and Hamas used suicide terrorism very effectively and frequently, the two groups are still different from one another on a number of grounds, which makes it possible for me to compare and contrast the similarities and differences among them. First, Hamas has operated in the Middle East, whereas Tamil Tigers’ base of operation was in South Asia. Hence, by looking at these two popular cases of terrorist

200 organizations, I will have covered the two regions that I empirically studied in my third chapter.

According to the Global Terrorism Database (2011), both the Middle East and South Asia also happen to be the most dangerous regions of the world where terrorist incidents are the most lethal and widespread.

Second, Hamas had an extremist religious-nationalist ideology. While the leaders of

Hamas sought to achieve an independent land for Palestinians, the liberation, from their perspective, would come after the societal embracement of Islamic values and ethics. Tamil

Tigers, on the other hand, was a nationalist-separatist group with a Marxist-Leninist ideology, and therefore, religion has never had a place on their agenda. Hence, unlike previous research that suggests that religion, especially Islamic extremism breeds terrorism, the case of Tamil

Tigers proves otherwise. Therefore, it is an important case to study.

The case of Tamil Tigers will be analyzed in a similar fashion to that of Hamas. I will first go over the historical background and organizational characteristics of the Tamil Tigers. In particular, I will discuss the hierarchical leadership structure, as the leader Vellupi Prabhakaran held a heroic position for a majority of the Tamils, the method of political indoctrination, and the ways in which organizational capabilities were utilized. While doing that, I will elaborate more on the differences between Hamas and Tamil Tigers. Despite their differences in background and experience, I try to illustrate that both organizations took advantage of similar strategies which in turn facilitated the effective use of suicide terrorism and the accumulation of popular support.

Background

Overview of the Sri Lankan Conflict and Formation of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam

Sri Lanka is an island located in the north of Indian Ocean in South Asia, whose northern province is separated from the mainland India by the Palk Strait. There are two major ethnic

201 groups in Sri Lanka; the Sinhalese and the Tamils, both of which represent the parties of the Sri

Lankan conflict as we know today. The Tamils, which make up the largest minority group in Sri

Lanka, migrated to the island from the southeast India in the early in the 13th century settling in the northern and eastern parts of Sri Lanka. In the south of the island, the Sinhalese kingdoms remained dominant (Wickremesekera 2007).

When British colonized the island in 1769 after the Portuguese and the Dutch, they enhanced the Tamil presence on the island through tea and coffee plantations, which helped the economy of the island, flourish. Thousands of Tamil workers at the time were brought to Ceylon, which used to be the name of Sri Lanka at the time, from the Tami Nadu state of India to work in these plantations. Mia Bloom emphasizes the significance of the geographic distribution of ethnic groups in Sri Lanka for the evolution of the conflict with the following words:

The Tamils “traditional homelands” are in Jaffna, Vavuniya, Batticaloa, and Trincomalee. “Estate” or Indian Tamils are noticeably present in the central highlands of Nuwara Eliya and Badulla districts. In the capital of Colombo and surrounding areas, the presence of both Estate and Sri Lankan Tamils reaches over 11 percent of the population. The populations break down in the following manner: 74 percent Sinhalese, 16 percent Tamils---divided between the Estate/ Indian Tamils (6 percent) and Sri Lankan Tamils (10 percent)—and almost ten percent Muslims. Tamils are the majority in the north and east (Bloom 2005, 46).

In order to increase the productivity of the Tamil laborers, the British provided them with other opportunities. A number of educational institutions were established in the coastal areas under the British colonial rule, which predominantly benefited the Tamil populations. As a result of this, a considerable number of Tamils became gainfully employed in the civil service under the rule of the British. Many of them soon began running wealthy businesses using the opportunities provided by the colonial economy (Wickremesekera 2007). One group that was not particularly content with the employment and educational opportunities granted to Tamils were

202 the Sinhalese, who were ethnically, religiously and linguistically different from the Tamils, which increased the amount of intolerance between the two groups of people, deepened the political polarization of the country and contributed to the onset of the conflict.

On February 4, 1948, Ceylon gained independence from the British rule. It had everything it needed to be successful after decolonization such as a high human development index, a vibrant economy and a parliamentary system to fairly represent the diversity so that no group will be shut out of the political arena. In fact, it was known as the ‘Lucky Country’

(Hashim 2013, Ollapally 2008). Below the surface though, there were irreconcilable differences between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils. After the independence, the tables were turned against the Tamils. Sinhalese majority gained power and dominance in all aspects of civil and political life in Sri Lanka. When Solomon Bandaranaike became the prime minister of

Ceylon in 1956, he assumed a self-assigned role as the defender the ‘besieged Sinhalese culture’ and introduced a very controversial Sinhala Only Act, as a result of which Sinhala became the official language and Buddhism was recognized as the official religion as opposed to Hinduism, which was practiced by Tamils (Post 2007, Bond 1992, Hashim 2013).

After the assassination of S. Bandaranaike, his wife, Sirimavo Bandaranaike became the leader of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party and took office as the new prime minister in 1960. She was a Sinhalese herself, and naturally, she continued to favor her own people over the Tamils.

Soon enough, the Tamil-dominated provinces were inhabited by Sinhalese farmers, which led many Tamil plantation workers to permanently lose their jobs. For the well-educated Tamil youth, there were no promising job prospects, which aggravated their dismay. Frustration and hopelessness grew when the new government passed a highly discriminatory legislation “which gave preference to Sinhalese over Tamils in government hiring, university admissions, and the

203 attainment of key professional qualifications. Although these laws were deeply resented, Tamil opposition was largely kept in check until 1972, when the legislation was reinforced and further institutionalized in the Republican Constitution of the newly renamed state of Sri Lanka”

(Hoffman 2006, 137-138).

For instance, until 1970s, the admission to Sri Lankan universities depended solely on academic merit. However, since a majority of the Sinhalese population lacked the Western-style education enjoyed by the Tamils during the colonial rule of Britain, Tamils had an advantage in college admissions compared to Sinhalese people; the percentage of Tamils enrolled in universities substantially exceeded that of Sinhalese. According to Russell Ross and Andrea

Savada as of 1969, “50 percent of the students in the country's faculties of medicine and 48 percent of all engineering students were Tamils” (Ross and Savada 1988, 3). In order to correct this discrepancy, the Sri Lankan government passed the Standardization of Education Act, which replaced the merit-based university admission criterion with a geographically-based one. In lieu of this policy, 70% of the university quotes were allotted to students that come from revenue districts, and 15% of this 70% were reserved for students who came from educationally underprivileged districts. The remaining 30% were open to those students with outstanding academic qualifications.

The Act did not really correct the discrepancy but turned it completely in the opposite direction. While the university admissions of the Sinhalese students increased significantly and the Tamil students became under-enrolled: “in 1983, only 22 percent of medical students and 28 percent of engineering students were Tamils” (Ross and Savada 1988, 3). As well as limiting the educational opportunities for the Tamils, the policy also led to a severe decline in the number of

Tamil employees in public services. The percentages of the state-employed Tamil physicians,

204 engineers, clerical workers dropped significantly. In other words, the government intervention in the university admission process was a huge disappointment for the Tamil youth. This was primarily because Tamil people had no other option to make a good living other than getting an education “due to the lack of economic alternatives in their stronghold Jaffna in the north, a terrain that was singularly inhospitable for most traditional farming, and distant from the commercial centers of the country” (Ollapally 2008, 150). In the repressive environment of the

1970s, the Sri Lankan government banned the import of films, books and magazines in Tamil language from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, which many Tamils regarded as a deliberate attempt by the government to cut the ties between them and the Tamils in India.

The Sri Lankan government also sponsored the development of Sinhalese settlements in the traditionally Tamil-dominated areas of Sri Lanka in the mid-1980s. According to this new plan, a number of Sinhalese people were brought to the northern and eastern parts of the island, and were given land and government funds to build their homes in these areas. The Sinhalese communities were provided with armed protection against Tamil intrusions. The government insisted that these measures were promoting ethnic diversity and making sure that no part of the island was a homeland to a specific ethnic group. Tamils, on the other hand, looked at the situation from a completely different perspective, according to which, the government was not promoting equality but a form of colonialism; the new policies and legislation were stifling the rights and ethnic identity of the Tamil people. In other words, the parliamentary system inherited from Britain did not turn out to be that representative of the political rights and civil freedoms of the Tamil people; only the majority group was represented. Just like the Palestinian people,

Tamils felt insecure, alienated and marginalized in territories that they considered to be their own, which led them to demand greater autonomy in northern and eastern Sri Lanka that Tamils

205 inhabited. A number of Tamil political parties and organizations were formed from 1970 to

1975, to serve this purpose such as Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO), Eelam

Revolutionary Organization of Students (EROS), People’s Liberation Organization for Tamil

Eelam (PLOTE) and Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF).

While all of these groups were driven by nationalism and desired to achieve an independent Tamil homeland in the eastern and northern parts of Sri Lanka, some were more radical than others in the methods they used to pursue the same goal (Marston and Sundaram

2007, Post 2007). For instance, Tamil United Liberation Front which was formed in 1972 as a political party, wanted to achieve Tamil independence constitutionally. They thought they could make a difference for Tamil people by using the ballot box, not violence. However, even though they won every Tamil area seat in the general election that took place in July 1977, the ruling party United National Party banned the Tamils from claiming their seats in the parliament, which triggered a wave of resentment and civil unrest in the Tamil populated areas of Sri Lanka. One year after the foundation of the Tamil United Liberation Front, a more radical group in the name of Tamil New Tigers emerged and became popular for its extremist policies and hardline nationalist platform on the way to liberation: “The TNT…provided the foundation of a nationalist separatist movement—proclaiming an independent, autonomous Tamil homeland and declaring the necessity of violence against government, security and military officials” (Post

2007, 85).

According to Bruce Hoffman (2006) the TNT was founded by Chetti Thanabalsingham in

1974 to silence the pro-government Tamils, to eliminate the rival Tamil organizations and

Sinhalese police force, and to engage in armed demonstrations against the Sinhalese government.

According to Hoffman, one of the young radical Tamils recruited by the TNT was Vellupillai

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Prabhakaran, who was soon promoted as a deputy of Thanabalsingham. The TNT became well- known in 1975, when its gunmen murdered Alfred Duraiappa, the Tamil major of Jaffna, because of his suspected allegiance to the ruling United National Party instead of the Tamil

United National Liberation Front. After the murder of the major, the leader of the TNT,

Thanabasignham was arrested, which immediately brought Prabkaharan to power on May 5,

1976. He then changed the name of the organization from the Tamil New Tigers to the

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Other scholars such as Jerrold Post (2007) and Mia Bloom

(2005) argue that the Tamil New Tigers emerged in 1973 under Vellupillai Prabhakaran from the very beginning and was renamed by him as LTTE in 1976.

Regardless of whether the TNT was initially founded by Prabhakaran himself or someone else, the consensus is that after he renamed the organization the LTTE, he had redesigned the organization according to his own vision and ideas and transformed the old TNT into “an elite, ruthlessly efficient, and highly professional fighting force” (Hoffman 2006, 139), which would soon become the most prominent and formidable Tamil extremist nationalist group in Sri Lanka. Since the leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran himself was extremely important in the development and transformation of the LTTE, the next section will take a closer look at him as a leader.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam under Vellupillai Prabhakaran

Vellupillai Prabhakaran was born in 1954 as the youngest of four children to a middle- class family in the northern coast of Jaffna peninsula, the center of the Tamil people’s cultural heritage. His father was known to be a tax commissioner, which is an indicator that he might have acquired some formal education as a kid (Hoffman 2006). While there is not much written about his childhood period, some claim that his first introduction to the conflict between Tamils

207 and Sinhalese was through the stories told by his relatives when he was a little boy, which awakened his political and ethnic consciousness as a Tamil (Post 2007). Just like the spiritual leader of Hamas, Ahmad Yassin, who was personally affected by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as he had to grow up in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, Prabhakaran’s anger and frustration were also rooted in his memories as a child, which formed the basis for his radical ideas, political and military activism. In an interview that he gave in 1994, Prabhakaran explained that he both witnessed and experienced the subjugation and the discrimination that Tamils had suffered at the hands of Sinhalese at an early age. But what inspired him most were the words of his eighth- grade teacher, who underlined the need for an armed struggle and encouraged his students to take up arms against the Sinhalese oppression (Thottam 2009).

In a different interview quoted by Jerrold Post, Prabhakaran justified the use of violence for the cause of Tamil people with the following words:

It is the plight of the Tamil people that compelled me to take up arms. I felt outraged at the inhuman atrocities perpetrated against an innocent people. The ruthless manner in which our people were murdered, massacred, maimed and the colossal damage done to their property made me realize that we are subjected to a calculated program of genocide. I felt that armed struggle is the only way to protect and liberate our people from a totalitarian Fascist state bent on destroying an entire race of people (Post 2007, 84).

An interesting detail that is relatively well-known regarding Prabhakaran’s personality was his fascination by power and the stories of great kings, military leaders and conquerors such as Alexander the Great and Napoleon (Post 2007, Hoffman 2006). While he is not known to have received any formal military training, many of his followers argued that Prabhakaran was a military genius. He read voraciously about history and military struggle, and according to some sources, he was inspired by these readings while he was devising his military strategy, tactics and even weapons. It was Prabhakaran’s idea to create different LTTE attack units such as Air

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Tigers or Black Tigers specialized in different operations, which in my perspective, makes the

LTTE very unique as a terrorist organization. For instance, inspired by the Britain’s elite unit of the Royal Marines and the US Navy Seals, he created a maritime commando unit called Sea

Tigers, which was responsible for terrorist attacks against naval targets (Hoffman 2006).

He also had a particular liking for war movies and action thrillers. It is argued that after he saw the movie a Death Wish, he designed the first suicide vest to be used in operations, where there is only once chance to destroy the target: “In the movie, a beautiful girl apparently presents a bouquet of flowers to the president of the United States. As she offers the bouquet, she kills herself and the president with a bomb concealed beneath her clothing. The 1991 assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by a female LTTE suicide terrorist was carried out in a similar manner” (Hoffman 2006, 143).

For many Tamils especially the recruits themselves, Prabhakaran was an inspiring and charismatic leader. His speeches resonated with the Tamil people, who saw him more than a mere representative of the Tamil struggle. His fanatic followers took an oath of loyalty to his words and orders. Hence, his cult-like presence had a vital importance for the cohesion and success of the LTTE. A high rank official described the influence of Prabhakaran on Tamil people as ‘higher than a god’ (Post 2007, 92). The question is how could one man be so powerful? Why would the majority of the Tamils support him wholeheartedly and not another leader? The answer to this question is two-fold.

First, unlike how his cadres thought of him, he had a paranoid personality. According to raft of bibliographical research, Prabhakaran had an elusive mind, always suspicious of the people around him, even his most trusted commanders. He was very rarely seen in public and moved between hideouts in secrecy. He also allegedly had a secret pistol group that would

209 brutally kill the ‘suspected’ traitors and enemies within the organization (Swamy 2003, Post

2007). When we look at the operations of the LTTE, we see a similar pattern. The group used violence not only against the Sinhalese politicians, military forces and people, but also against the rival Tamil groups in order to systematically eliminate and push them out of the competition.

He refused to compromise or to share his leadership with anyone else.

Second, Prabhakaran was rhetorically gifted. In his speeches to his cadres, he would incorporate themes of determination, perseverance, and self-sacrifice for the independence of the homeland, and cultivate an image of powerfulness and invincibility, all of which strongly motivated and glued the cadres together: “Prabhakaran’s real genius was in creating a historical narrative for the LTTE and the Tamil people that was tailored to support suicide terrorism”

(Hoffman 2006, 141). For example, in one of his rare public speeches addressing the Tamil people, Prabhakaran proudly talked about his elite suicide unit, the Black Tigers, and carefully selected words that would portray them in a very positive light. All these efforts instilled a profound sense of commitment and dignity in their hearts and minds of his recruits as well as gather Tamils’ sympathy for the LTTE’s cause. The Black Tigers were not only ready to die for their cause, they were proud and happy, looking forward to their final missions:

I have groomed my weak brethren into a strong weapon called Black Tigers…(they) constitute the armor of self-defense for our ethnic group, and also serve to remove the barriers coming in the way of struggle. They are the balls of fire smashing the military prowess of the enemy with sheer domination. The Black Tigers are different and unique human beings. They possess and iron will, yet their hearts are so very soft. They have deep human characteristics of pursuing the advancement of the interest of the people through their own annihilation. The Black Tigers have cast aside fear from its very roots. Death has surrendered to them. They keep eagerly waiting for the day they would die. They just don’t bother about death. This is the era of Black Tigers. No force on earth today can suppress the fierce uprising of the Tamils who seek freedom (Swamy 2003, 233).

Hence, besides his military genius, his talent in inspiring people also distinguished

Prabhakaran from other Tamil leaders. As I said, both Ahmad Yassin and Vellupillai

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Prabhakaran had abrasive childhood memories that hunted them and got them involved in the political struggle of their people. However, there was a major difference between the two leaders, which manifested itself in the timing of the use of violence. As previously explained,

Ahmad Yassin preferred to take action slowly. Hamas first emerged as a social and religious movement, not a violent militia. Long before Yassin pushed the button for the use of terrorist attacks, he reached out to the impoverished people of the occupied territories and tried to unite them under the roof of Islam. Therefore, religious indoctrination played a very significant role in the formation, evolution and military success of Hamas, as the organization itself was founded on religious ideology.

This was not the case for the Liberations Tigers of Tamil Eelam: “In the Middle East, extremism is framed in religious terms. In Sri Lanka, the LTTE has never made the conflict about religion” (Bloom 2005, 46). Instead of religious indoctrination, LTTE’s indoctrination strategy revolved around the Marxist-Leninist ideas and teachings. This is majorly because

Marxist rhetoric with a class struggle at its core, and the ideals such as economic and social justice for all people goes very well with what the Tamils were trying to achieve: an independent land that is exempt from oppression of man by man. One of the captured LTTE terrorists claimed that: “The leaders always spoke out about Marxism. They wanted a Marxist Eelam. That was their main idea” (Post 2007, 86). Some leaders who were second or third in command in the

LTTE’s hierarchy were similar to Ahmad Yassin, meaning, before taking any action, they wanted to spread the Marxist ideology and blend Tamil nationalism with socialism. Only when the recruits could understand political objectives of the conflict within a Marxist framework, would they be enlightened and ready to take action against the injustices. Prabhakaran was not on the same page with them. Unlike the leaders of Hamas, who thought reformation of society

211 based on religious values came before anything else, Prabhakaran was a man of action and did not have patience to wait until Tamil recruits were completely politicized and emancipated based on Marxism. Jerrold Post (2007) argues that Prabhakaran was not really too concerned about the

Marxist-Leninist ideology: “The ideology of Marxist-Leninism admirably fit the political landscape of Sri Lanka and was utilized by Prabhakaran but probably did not reflect his core ideas; in fact he perceived it as tedious. Indeed, he considered ideology of little value, but nevertheless incorporated Marxist-Leninist rhetoric in the group discussions with new recruits”

(p. 86). To him, every struggle needed action and blood, which would lead people to follow.

And Prabhakaran did as he believed.

After he renamed the group LTTE in May 1976, he followed his own rules religiously and imposed a harsh discipline on all levels of the organization (Hoffman 2006). The LTTE had a hierarchical structure with two wings: the political and the military wing. Both of these were subject to orders from a Central Governing Committee headed by Vellupialli Prabhakaran and other key leaders. The political wing was responsible for the civil administration of the Tamil territory through the involvement of various departments such as administrative offices and radio and broadcasting stations. The military wing was comprised of non-commissioned and commissioned officers and approximately eight to ten thousand armed combatants (even though this number had reportedly dwindled over the years) all of whom were very well trained and sufficiently equipped with armored and artillery units, water navies, light aircrafts, and a number of surface to air missiles (Hoffman 2006).

The military wing of the LTTE was compartmentalized into special operation units:

“…attack units including Sea Tigers, Air Tigers, Leopold Bridge (orphaned children), Freedom

Birds (female unit), Internet Black Tigers (the first cyber-terrorist group), and the most elite

212 force of all, the Black Tigers” (Post 2007, 93). The Black Tigers were the special suicide squad of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, and comprised of only the best of the best. They were carefully selected from within the most skilled and dedicated LTTE cadres and trained accordingly to carry out suicide attacks against military and civilian targets.

The traditional military cadres of the LTTE were also exposed to a very strict military regimen under Prabhakaran’s domineering leadership. The numbers of the cadres were kept relatively small so that everyone could get a high level of training. Even the personal affairs of the recruits were under surveillance. For example, Bruce Hoffman (2006) writes that the unmarried Tamil Tiger recruits were not allowed to have relationships or sexual contact with each other. When they reached a certain age, which was determined arbitrarily by Prabhakaran himself, the recruits could marry one another. The marriage would take place upon the approval of their commanders. The influence of Prabhakaran was further strengthened by daily rituals during which all the cadres would pledge loyalty to their leader. Such ceremonies strengthened the standing of the Prabhakaran within the organization. In the end, Vellupillai Prabhakaran succeeded in fully consolidating his power and turning the LTTE into a very disciplined, ruthless, and action-oriented terrorist group dedicated to achieving an independent Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka.

The LTTE and the Use of Terrorism

The anti-Tamil policies undertaken and actively encouraged by the Sri-Lankan government since the day of independence had frustrated the Tamil populations and caused small skirmishes between them and the Sinhalese groups. However, the major event that triggered a wave of terrorist attacks by the Tamil Tigers was the Prevention of Terrorism Act promulgated by the Sri Lankan government in 1979. In response to the riots of the Tamil plantations workers

213 who had lost their jobs, the Sri Lankan government declared a state of emergency and introduced a strict set of anti-terrorism laws. In lieu of these laws, the army and the police were given extraordinary powers and authority to arbitrarily arrest people whom they think represent a threat to societal order and stability, and keep them under detention without trial as long as 18 months:

Unlawful including speaking or writing words intended to cause religious, social or communal disharmony or feelings of ill will or hostility between communities or racial or religious groups. It also undermined an existing British law that no confession made in police custody was admissible unless made in the presence of a magistrate. The PTA allowed for confessions, made under the duress or torture to become admissible (Bloom 2005, 51).

The Sri Lankan army and police forces had exercised their newly assigned power with enthusiasm, which escalated the violence between the two groups to unprecedented levels. To avenge for the discriminatory anti-terrorism act and emergency regulations, Tamil Tigers engaged in their first terrorist attack by ambushing a Sri Lankan troop convoy in the Jaffna district. They killed thirteen Sinhalese soldiers on July 23, 1983. When the bodies of the soldiers were returned to Colombo and displayed publicly, a new wave of anti-Tamil violence began. A

Sinhalese mob went on a rampage and took their frustrations out on the civilian Tamil populations in Jaffna. Within three days, the angry mob slaughtered more than 300 Tamils, set their homes and businesses on fire and engaged in a variety of atrocities from looting to rape: “A

Norwegian woman tourist recalled with horror how a mob halted a mini bus in Colombo, splashed petrol over it and set it on fire. Even as its 20 odd Tamil occupants begged to be spared, the doors were pushed back into the burning vehicle. All the passengers were burnt to death, as screams and cries rent the air” (Post 2007, 89). The level of violence got so intense that thousands of Tamils had to flee to Tamil Nadu in Southern India or to seek safety in refugee camps in overseas countries such as Malaysia, Germany, Canada, United Kingdom and Lebanon.

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The forced migrations helped the group gain international recognition and the Tamil expatriates helped solicit funds for the operations of group (Bloom 2005, Post 2007).

The Sri Lankan government not only turned a blind eye to atrocities committed against the Tamils, but also passed an amendment, which effectively banned the opposition parties that promote secessionist goals permanently from the parliament. Violating the law would come with a cost of loss of professional license, passport or property. This amendment left little room for the formation of alternative political parties and violence became the only plausible option in so far as the Tamils were concerned. As a result of the repressive laws and unabated violence, the support for the LTTE increased considerably. Previously indifferent or reluctant Tamils began to embrace the organization and its violent tactics, which helped the Tamil Tigers to expand their resources, size of membership and the initial list of targets. The circumstances also strengthened

Tamils’ already existing conviction that there would never be safe without a Tamil Eelam.

Another crucial factor that changed the flow of the conflict was India’s support, or lack thereof in the later stages, for the Tamil cause. Given India’s geographical proximity to Sri

Lanka and the fact that it is home to more than 50 million Tamils, India had always had a stake in the Sri Lankan conflict. While the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was concerned about the plight of Tamil people, she was not necessarily in favor of a completely separate Tamil state in

Sri Lanka, as this would most definitely have repercussions for India. The Indian Tamils could have been injected with a similar surge of nationalism leading to a backlash at home. Mia Bloom posits that, “Tamil Nadu was conscious of its cultural heritage and its role vis-à-vis Tamil communities in other parts of the world. It had also been the scene of separatist demands for an independent state in the 1960s. Although these demands died down, the embers of Tami nationalism were kept alive” (Bloom 2005, 55).

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For all these reasons, Indira Gandhi wanted the conflict between the two sides to be resolved peacefully through negotiation (Wickremesekera 2007). That being said, during the late

1970s and early 1980s, India was more sympathetic to and supportive of the Tamil cause in general. A key factor that contributed to this sympathy was the rapport between Vellupillai

Prabhakaran and a senior Indian Tamil Nadi politician named Pazhaniyappan Nedumaran, who was the leader of the Tamil National Movement in India. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the Tamil militancy was newly picking up, Nedumaran allowed the Tamil Tigers to establish a training camp in his farmland in Madurai, India. He also helped Prabhakaran develop a network of contacts in India. Through the financial support and services of these contacts, the

LTTE army expanded its scope and capabilities. Hence, during late 1970s and early 1980s, the

Indian government provided the Tamil fighters with safe heavens, weapons and financial support

(Jeyaraj 2011). Also, according to a testimony by Frank Cilluffo (2000), a homeland security and counter-terrorism expert, the operations of Tamil Tigers were also funded through narcotics trafficking and organized crime in which Indian traffickers were also involved.

The rapport between LTTE members and the Indian government would significantly plummet on October 31, 1984 when the prime minister of India Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards in her New Delhi residence. She was succeeded by her son Rajiv

Gandhi. Rajiv Gandhi was on the same page with his mother about the conflict in Sri Lanka. He too was concerned about the possible repercussions of an independent Tamil state for the domestic security of India and was very much in favor of a negotiated settlement between the two groups. However, the prospects for peace looked very bleak without a third party intervention.

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In April 1987, Tamil Tigers exploded a car bomb at a bus station in Colombo, which killed 113 people, all of whom were civilians. The Sri Lankan government’s reaction was not unexpected: an all-out offensive against the Tamil inhabitants. It was at this point that Indian government decided to take matters into its own hands (Powell 2011). It first got involved by sending humanitarian relief aid at the expense of violating Sri Lankan sovereignty. The real deal came when the Indian government convinced the Sri Lankan government to negotiate and sign the Indo-Sri Lankan Peace Accord in July 1987. The Peace Accord essentially shifted the position of India from that of a mediator to a direct participant in the conflict, which became most evident with the deployment of the Indian Peacekeeping Forces (IPKF) to the Tamil territory in Sri Lanka in 1987. Deepa Ollapally summarized the significance of this accord as follows:

The Indo-Sri Lanka Accord of July 1987 was a milestone in Sri Lanka’s domestic and international politics. The Accord was to serve as the basis for a negotiated settlement, with India as the guarantor. It committed both parties to supporting a multi-ethnic, multi- religious plural society while preserving the territorial integrity of Sri Lanka. Meanwhile, India agreed to ensure that its territory was not used for activities against the Sri Lankan government, even permitting naval cooperation in this regard. Militants were expected to give up their arms, with Indian troops based as peacekeepers in the north and east. In return, India was reportedly able to extract a commitment vital to its geopolitical interests, contained in an exchange of letters between the leaders. Sri Lanka purportedly agreed that the port of Trincomalee or any other port in Sri Lanka would not be made available for military use in a way that was prejudicial to Indian interests (Ollapally 2008, 170).

While the accord was prepared with the intention of providing a feasible institutional framework for the resolution of the ethnic conflict, the implementation proved to be very difficult, as Indian peacekeeping forces started fighting the very Tamils whom they came to protect. From the point of view of the LTTE, India had defied the Tamils’ demand for a homeland, which pitted the LTTE against India. In response to India’s betrayal, Tamils resisted

217 to the requests of disarmament and chose to do the one thing that they do best: they fought the

Indian peacekeeping forces. After some fifty thousand troops and more than one thousand casualties, the IPKF had to withdraw from the Tamil territory in 1990, leaving a large portion of northern Sri Lanka under the control of the Tamil Tigers. Now with the Indian troops gone, the

Sri Lankan military forces would have to carry out the fight alone.

The LTTE and the Use of Suicide Terrorism

As mentioned briefly, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was one of those rare terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, that had an elite suicide squad called the Black

Tigers, which was comprised of extremely qualified recruits who were carefully selected from within the traditional military cadres. Just like Hamas, the LTTE leaders had to rely on specific criteria to draw from a wide pool of applications the ones who would be given the special status of a black tiger. In his 2009 interview at NPR, Robert Pape argued that the recruits for the elite suicide unit of the LTTE were hired based on their military skills, the history of success in previous military operations, the level of dedication and emotional stability and their personal and family backgrounds. Once they were recruited as part of the suicide squads, they would then be put through one year long intensive training program, which was designed to psychologically and physically prepare them for their suicide missions.

Women recruits also had a special role within the LTTE organization; the use of women especially in suicide operations was particularly important for the LTTE leadership as women proved to be good fits for suicide operations in general: “A female suicide bomber has several strategic advantages over males. Besides arousing less suspicion, she is less subject to search and can hide explosives inside her body or under the guise of pregnancy, which reduces the chances of detection even further” (Bloom 2005, 82). The female suicide squads of the LTTE were

218 known as the Black Tigresses. While Hamas also had female suicide terrorists, for LTTE, women’s inclusion in terrorist operations was not just an impulsive decision; it was very strategic and rationally-calculated choice.

From 1987 to 2003, the LTTE had launched the highest number of female-launched suicide attacks in the world with remarkable successes. According to Debra Zedalis (2004), of the (approximately) 200 suicide attacks by LTTE, 30 to 40% were committed by female suicide bombers. Julie Rajan (2013) exemplifies some of the most noticeable women-involved suicide attacks carried out by LTTE as follows:

Women bombers targeted the offices of the then Sri Lankan Prime Minister Siramavo Bandaranaike in January 2000, killing thirteen others. On November 28, 2007, an LTTE woman bomber attempted to kill Sri Lankan Cabinet Minister of Social Services and Welfare, Douglas Devananda, also then leader of the EPDP (Eelam Democratic Party). On February 9, 2009, an LTTE woman bomber targeting SLA (Sri Lankan Army) blew herself up at an IDP rescue center in Mullaittivu, killing thirty and injuring sixty-four (Rajan 2013, 196).

Female suicide squads were assigned the same military duties and had to go through the exact same physical and mental training as their male counterparts. With the use of skillfully trained and devoted men and women for suicide operations, the LTTE became the world’s most notorious killing machine, whose tactics were admired, envied and copied by many terrorist organizations around the world.

As suggested, what triggered a wave of LTTE terrorism were the Sri Lanka’s government violent anti-Tamil policies and regulations that sought to disempower Tamil populations by ridding them of the educational and employment opportunities. In the interviews made with four

Tamil fighters in June 2006, one can see that vengeance was the common motivation that caused them to join the cadres of the Tamil Tigers:

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Male, 28, Tiger for eight years: In the late 1990s, when I was in school, the Sri Lanka military bombed my village. An elderly woman lost both legs, one person died and two students were injured. I was angry with the military and joined the Tigers one year later.

Female, 28, Tiger for 11 years: I was nine and the Indian peacekeeping forces came to my village and started to round people up. Then they brought out a masked man who started identifying certain people who were removed from the others. Shortly after, we heard gunshots and crying. Among those taken away was my aunt, who was nine months pregnant. Seventeen were killed altogether that night; fourteen were related to me. The bodies were in the morgue the next day. It was said on the news that these people were terrorists, so they were even denied a decent burial. We don’t even know what happened to those bodies. I know they weren’t terrorists (Post 2007, 92-93).

The first suicide terrorist attack carried out by the Tamil Tigers was on July 5, 1987 when an LTTE recruit in the name of Vallipuram Vasanthan drove a truck rigged with explosives into a Sri Lankan Army camp. The attack killed both the perpetrator himself and approximately 100

Sri Lankan soldiers. The numbers of fatalities were remarkable that the attack paved the way for many more similar suicide terrorist attacks.

It is also important to note that unlike the initial attacks of Hamas that predominantly targeted civilian populated commuter buses, restaurants or shopping malls, the initially executed suicide attacks of the LTTE were designed to assassinate a very select group of high-profile targets such as prominent political figures like government or party leaders and high-level military and police commanders. One can say that it was LTTE’s deliberate decision to employ suicide terrorism over conventional terrorist attacks given that former was a better fit for discriminate killings such as the assassination of such VIP targets. One of these targets was the

Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi during whose term a breakdown in the relationship between

India and the LTTE occurred. As I explained in the previous section, Indian government was considered an ally by the Tamil Tigers for a long time; only after the singing of the 1987 Indo-

Sri Lankan agreement and the deployment of the Indian peacekeeping forces to Sri Lanka, India

220 became an external enemy along with the Sri Lankan government. Holding Rajiv Gandhi as solely responsible for the crimes perpetrated by the IPKF and fearing that the Indian forces would return to Tamil territory in the event that he gets reelected, the LTTE orchestrated a suicide terrorist attack in order to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi.

On 21 May 1991, during the election campaign rally of Gandhi, while he was making his way through a large crowd in the Tamil Nadu state of India, a woman named Thenmozhi

Rajaratnam, also known as Dhanu, approached him. As she stood before the prime minister, she extended a garland towards him and kneeled before him with respect. As soon as Dhanu was on her knees, she exploded the plastic explosives strapped around her waist killing herself, the prime minister and sixteen others. As it turned out, Dhanu was recruited, trained and dispatched by the LTTE; she was a Black Tigress (Bloom 2005).

After the successful assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, the LTTE increased the frequency of its suicide terrorist attacks. In May 1993, just two years after the assassination of Indian Prime

Minister Rajiv Gandhi, another LTTE-linked suicide bomber, later identified as Babu, assassinated the President of Sri Lanka Ranasinghe Premadasa, during his political campaign, which killed more than twenty other people. Several years later in December 1999, during an election meeting at the Town Hall of Colombo, a female suicide bomber sent by the LTTE attempted to assassinate another President: Chandrika Kumaratunga. The Sri Lankan President lost an eye due to shrapnel injuries, yet still survived the suicide attack. Twenty others were not as lucky. More than one hundred other people including a Japanese television crew and some other foreign journalists were also severely injured by the attack.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam had consistently claimed that their suicide attacks were pointed at the state leaders and military personnel, not civilian populations. By making such

221 claims like Hamas did, they tried to get the international community on their side to substantiate their position that the LTTE could not be portrayed as a terrorist group. However, as exemplified, even their high-profile assassinations ended up killing more than just the designated suicide bomber and the target; there were always other fatalities including the innocent spectators.

When one reviews the history of the LTTE-linked suicide attacks listed chronologically in the South Asia Terrorism Portal, it becomes clear that as well as army camps, police stations and municipal buildings, the LTTE also attacked numerous civilian-packed, non-military locations. For instance, in January 1998, multiple suicide bombers, who were later identified to be Black Tigers, attacked the holiest Buddhist Shrine in Sri Lanka, killing sixteen people as well as damaging a cultural heritage site. In April 1999, an LTTE suicide bomber blew himself up in a passenger bus in Kandy town of Sri Lanka. In September 2000, another suicide bomber dispatched by the LTTE detonated his bombs in front of a busy hospital in Colombo, killing seven people and injuring 28 others. In July 2001, a Black Tiger squad of twenty suicide bombers attacked the Bandaranaike International Airport in Sri Lanka, which is located just 22 miles north of capital Colombo as well as an adjacent military airbase. Using anti-tank weapons, mortars, grenades, rockets, they destroyed: “eight military aircraft, including Kifr jets, two Mi-17 helicopters, one MiG-fighter, and six Airbus passenger aircraft…Bodies of 13 LTTE cadres were found subsequently including two of those who had blasted themselves” (Sahni 2013, South Asia

Terrorism Portal). Hence, despite their best efforts to claim otherwise, Tamil Tigers deliberately carried out suicide attacks against non-military targets, killing defenseless people either on purpose or as collateral damage. That is the very reason that they are proscribes as a terrorist organization by more than thirty countries in the world.

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Organizational Strategies by the LTTE

While discussing Hamas, I referred to the empirical findings drawn from the previous

chapter and suggested that the increase in the number of successfully executed suicide attacks is

a function of some deliberately pursued, well-calculated organizational strategies, particularly

the use of mass media and the provision of private goods. Even though my empirical analysis in

the preceding chapter only looked at terrorist groups in the Middle East and North Africa, I argue

that my results can travel across different cases. Given that the LTTE is considered as the most

prolific terrorist group when it comes to suicide terrorist attacks, I posit that similar

organizational strategies might have enhanced the capabilities of the Tamil Tigers to keep a

constant stream of volunteers, who were able to deliver lethal suicide terrorist attacks. In this

final part of my analysis, I will discuss how the LTTE had taken advantage of similar strategies

employed by Hamas, and how these strategies facilitated the group’s use of suicide terrorism.

The Use of Media Sources by the LTTE

As previously discussed, the role of effective communication in the process of

organizational recruitment is undeniable. If terrorist groups do not communicate their agenda,

goals, and ideology, or publicize their revered leaders and militants to their sympathizers, they

will not be able terrorize for long periods of time. Just like Hamas that had used printed leaflets

and mass media, Tamil Tigers also had a wide range of pro-Tamil publications both in print and

online. One of the prominent regional Tamil newspapers published and distributed daily in the

city of Jaffna was called Eela Murasu. While the main office of the newspaper was attacked and

destroyed by the Indian Army in late 1987, the paper continued to be circulated underground.

Tamil Tigers was also one of the first terrorist groups to have an online presence

(Hoffman 2006). In 1995, they established their first network called Tamilnet.com whose

223 success paved the way for similar websites to emerge, which were also operated by the LTTE such as eelamweb.com. or eelam.net. These websites could easily be accessed by Tamils expatriates in countries such as Germany, Canada, Lebanon and United Kingdom. For the Tamil

Tigers, there were two reasons for using internet excessively: the first one was to avail alternative ‘reliable’ news sources to the people intrigued by Tamil cause; the second was to deny the Sri Lankan government full control over the media.

By using websites and feeds, Tamils sought to mobilize support from every corner by connecting with the Tamil diaspora abroad, international relief organizations and other NGOs.

Homepages of the various Tamil-linked websites provided information on the background and history of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka and their suffering. They contained links to download the recordings of the press releases, daily clips and news, and to access a gallery of photographs of the Tamil victims. Most of the LTTE websites also included the biography of the founder and the leader of the LTTE, Velupillai Prabhakaran, and the profiles of the prominent Tamil fighters, suicide bombers, and other key personalities within the organization: “Features include LTTE’s feared women fighters. ‘freedom poems’, and even an online quiz…merchandising—serving the dual purposes of fundraising and morale boosting cum solidarity building—occupies a prominent place on the site. A variety of terrorist kitsch, including flags, calendars, videos pamphlets, is available for sale” (Hoffman 2006, 205-206). Since LTTE was also involved in charity work, though to a lesser extent compared to Hamas, some of the Tamil operated webpages had links to request and collect donations for the tsunami disaster of 2004, which devastated parts of Sri

Lanka’s coast. Through online information centers, the affected parties were directed to the offices of the Tamil Rehabilitation Organizations, which were established to provide disaster relief to those in need.

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The Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka also relied on the internet sources to urge their followers not to trust the state-controlled media as the information it disseminated was allegedly biased, therefore not accurate or reliable. In one example that Bruce Hoffman (2006) writes about, the

Sri Lankan army shares an online report about thwarting a Tiger attack at the Mullaitivu base in the summer of 1996. The report claims that there were only 70 casualties on the side of the government. On the websites of the Tamils, the facts depicted were entirely different; the camp was not captured and the numbers of soldier casualties were around 1000 not 70: “As it turned out, Tamil Tigers were more accurate…. This was a major breakthrough for TamilNet and the alternative news channels. Newspapers such as the Washington Post and the International Herald

Tribune began quoting bulletins from the LTTE statements and were extremely suspicious of the official Sri Lankan army news dispatches” (Hoffman 2006, 206). Not surprisingly, the success of the LTTE-run websites generated attempts by the Sri Lankan government to shut them down.

One of these attempts in November 1997 backfired and resulted in denial-of-service attacks in

Sri Lankan embassies worldwide because of which the diplomatic personnel could not access their emails for one week.

Similar to Hamas, the LTTE also had its own radio and TV stations, using which the group would broadcast official statements of their leaders, and general activities and grievances of the Tamil Tigers to larger groups of audiences. The radio station called the Voice of Tigers was established in 1990 in Jaffna and was operating in the Northern Sri Lanka. In November

2007, Sri Lankan Air force bombed the radio station while the annual speech of leader

Prabhakaran was on air.

Tamil Tigers also owned several television channels such as “Tharisanam TV”, Paris- based “Tamil Television Network”, “Makkal TV” and “Euro TV”, all of which were used to

225 counter the power of the state-run media outlets, and make pro-Tamil propaganda across Europe, the Middle East and South Asia. The television broadcasts helped the Tamil Tigers to keep their audiences informed about the conflict and to reduce the ability of the state-controlled media to disseminate false accusations against the Tamil Tigers. John CK Daly (2007) argues that in

March 2005 the LTTE attacked and hijacked a satellite in orbit called “Intelsat-12” over the

Indian Ocean in order to directly broadcast beyond the eastern and northern parts of Sri Lanka.

Many members of the Tamil diaspora in Europe and the Middle East admitted that they were able to receive direct Tamil Tiger television broadcasts:

The LTTE's four-hour daily broadcasts used Intelsat-12's transponder 2 and were accessible to any of the 30,000 Sri Lankan citizens with a Direct to Home (DTH) satellite dish. Sri Lankan intelligence officials believe that the LTTE uplink transmissions were probably done from a secret location in Vavuniya in LTTE-controlled northern Sri Lanka. Intelsat has five high-performance beams covering Europe, Southern Africa, the Middle East, India and Southeast Asia. The LTTE's NTT network was a free channel in Asia while the TTN was an encrypted paid subscription channel in Europe, where the LTTE used the service provider Globecast, a subsidiary of France Telecom… Intelsat-12 is a bent-pipe satellite, whose "dumb" transponders rebroadcast anything that they receive within their frequency band. Bent-pipe satellites remain the most common technology today, with no real defenses against such attacks. Part of the reason for the continued reliance on bent pipe satellites is economic, as they cost half the price of satellites equipped with onboard processing technology. Following the revelations of the LTTE broadcasts the French authorities moved quickly; French police raided the TTN's studio in Paris and Globecast confirmed to the Sri Lankan Embassy in France that on 2 May it had halted TTN broadcasts on its Eutelsat satellite, which had 22,000 subscribers generating €330,000 monthly (Daly 2007, 1).

Jerrold Post (2007) also notes that given the propaganda and recruitment value of suicide attacks, the LTTE filmed most, if not all, of their suicide operations especially the human wave attacks clearing the minefields. Today, Tamil communities have their own online news sites, and newspapers that give information on politics, sports and business such as Tamil Nadu News,

Eelam View and Tamil Daily. Hence, just like Hamas organization, the LTTE also took advantage of the information technologies especially TV and radio broadcasting and websites,

226 which allowed the group to disseminate the information that it wanted to thereby targeting the audience that it sought to reach.

The Use of Private Goods by the LTTE

In the previous chapter, I used quantitative data to show the link between private goods provisions and the increase in the organizational propensity to use suicide terrorism. The logic was straightforward: the successful execution of suicide attacks does not solely depend on the presence of would-be suicide bombers but their psychological and mental preparedness or determination to carry out these attacks. To boost the morale of their recruits and increase their loyalty and commitment to their missions, organizations purposefully use some strategies, one of the most prominent of which is the provision of private goods. In the case of Hamas, I discussed societal celebrations, religious and material rewards, which have exclusively been offered to the successful suicide bombers and their families. The LTTE similarly offered exclusive benefits to its carefully recruited and elite Black Tigers and Tigresses, which will be the focus of the last part of my analysis.

Fame, Honor and Societal Veneration of Martyrdom

Just like Palestinian suicide bombers, the Black Tigers of the LTTE were socially and culturally glorified. Since the first Black Tiger attack was perpetrated on 5 July 1987 in Jaffna, this day has been marked and celebrated as the Day of the Black Tigers every year (Chandran

2001). To honor the memory of their martyrs, Tamil people would organize special cultural events and hold grand public meetings during which significant Tamil leaders give speeches.

People would light traditional lamps in front of the tombstones of the Black Tigers, who had lost their lives for the Tamil homeland. The LTTE flag would be hoisted and the LTTE radio and TV would broadcast the details of the personal backgrounds and bravery of the Black Tigers. In the

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Tamil neighborhoods, pictures of the martyrs would be distributed as pamphlets with specific information about them such as their names, dates of birth, operational details, time and location of their attacks: “Young Tamils know the names of the martyrs the way young American kids know the names of their sports starts. They look up to them and want to emulate what they have done” (Bloom 2005, 64).

Posters of the successful Black Tigers would also be displayed on the walls of the streets of Northern and Eastern Sri Lanka as well as on taxis, public buses and privately owned cars.

Tamil residents place garlands on these portraits to show their respect and veneration. On July 5,

2007, a children park was opened in the town of Kilinochchi in the name of an ex-Black Tiger.

Also, the portraits of Black Tiger martyrs would be framed, garlanded and hung on the wall of their training camps so that the other recruits could remember and glorify them. While the martyrs themselves were idolized, their parents and families were also honored for raising kids who were willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good of the Tamil people. Arjuna

Gunawardena (2006) argues that this supportive collective environment which has been cultivated by the LTTE was one of the most important motivational imperatives for the Black

Tigers.

As suggested before, religion had never been a part of LTTE’s agenda. It is because

Tamil Tigers was a grievance-based organization with a separatist-nationalist stance. Therefore, religious indoctrination or exclusive rewards offered by Hamas to its martyrs such as afterlife promises were out of question in so far as the LTTE was concerned. However, given the central role of the leader Prabhakaran for the LTTE, a total devotion and commitment to him was presented as a way to elevate the status of the Black Tiger in death (Hoffman 2006). Hence, a blind, unquestioned devotion to the leader Prabhakaran, his vision, ideas and command was

228 believed to benefit all the Tamil Tigers cadres but especially the Black Tigers as they would die an honorable death by doing so.

Cyanide Pill

Different from the recruits of Hamas, who were offered material benefits, Tamil Tigers were given a glass capsule that contained potassium cyanide to wear around their necks. In case of an arrest, the designated bomber would bite down on the glass vial, drink the poison and die in a few seconds. By this way, the Black Tigers would avoid being captured alive, and the related risks of potential torture, and interrogation. I consider the provision of cyanide pill chain as a private good since it was exclusively distributed to the Tamil Tigers in order to increase their motivations. The strategy created the intended effect: the recruits wore it with enthusiasm as a symbol of pride. Knowing that they would die for a noble cause without being humiliated at the hands of their enemy had increased their commitment to their missions. Bruce Hoffman writes that in response to Prabhakaran’s order to wear the capsule “the LTTE’s rank and file responded with alacrity. The cyanide capsule, which is suspended on a leather thong around each fighter’s neck, has become a badge of honor and source of pride among LTTE cadres, each of whom receives the capsule amid great ceremony at passing out exercises” (Hoffman 2006, 141).

Dinner with the Leader

Before departing for their final missions, the Black Tigers were given the chance to have their last suppers with the leader Prabhakaran (Bloom 2005, Post 2007). Since Prabhakaran’s public appearances were rare, a private dinner with the leader was considered to be a great honor for the suicide squads. An anonymous ex-Black Sea Tiger explains the day before his mission:

“It is a very interesting and historic day for us and our generation. In the evening before the operation, we receive an invitation from V. Prabhakaran for dinner…During dinner the mission

229 is discussed with the group. When the dinner is over we pose for a final photograph with our leader. That photograph will be published in some Jaffna based newspapers. After that we set off on the mission. After that final meeting with Prabakaran we wait for Death because it’s the only way to glory for ourselves and our families” (Irrp 2007). Hence, another reward that was exclusively offered to the suicide squads of the LTTE was this private dinner with the leader himself, which put extra pressure on their shoulders to be successful on their final missions.

Conclusion

On May 19, 2009, the founder and leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam

Velupillai Prabhakaran, was killed in a military ambush organized by the Sri Lankan government forces, which brought the terrorist attacks of the LTTE to an end (Thottam 2009). In his emailed statement to the Associated Press, one of the few surviving Tiger leaders Salvarasa Pathmanatan officially announced the silencing of the Tamil Tiger’s guns (Hashim 2013). More than 70,000 people have been killed during 26 years of ongoing violence in Sri Lanka. As I mentioned in the introductory part of this section, Tamil Tigers was one of those terrorist groups that used suicide terrorism with brutal efficiency.

Second, unlike many terrorist groups for which there is not enough research, LTTE is reasonably well-documented and well-studied. Relying on the existing books and scholarly articles on the LTTE, one could easily see whether and how the previously mentioned organizational strategies such as use of media sources and selective incentives indeed facilitated the use of suicide terrorism. Hence, both Hamas and LTTE were illustrative cases to see how the organizational mechanisms and strategies actually work. Similar to Hamas, the Liberation

Tigers of Tamil Eelam took advantage of the old and new media sources and private good provisions to allure the aspiring young Tamils toward its ranks and enhance the loyalty of its

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Black Tiger cadres. Looking at these cases of Hamas and LTTE, it is convenient to argue that two organizations that operate in two different regions and that have opposite ideologies can employ similar strategies to incentivize and motivate their recruits to carry out suicide terrorist attacks. Therefore, these two cases bring illustrative evidence to what has been empirically stated in the previous chapter.

Asbat Al-Ansar

In chapter 5, I argued that the terrorist organizations that make frequent use of the media sources, websites and print publications to attract new recruits and that provide private goods to increase their recruits’ commitments are more likely to use suicide terrorism than those that do not. The previous two cases of Hamas and LTTE were used to support the first part of this argument; they illustrated that by making use of these specific organizational strategies, two terrorist organizations with different structural and ideological make up could motivate their recruits to successfully carry out suicide terrorism. Hence, case study evidence has so far demonstrated how organizational propensity to use suicide terrorism increases along with the successful use of well-calculated organizational strategies.

Now the question is: is there a terrorist group that has used suicide terrorist attacks only very rarely or not at all? If the above theory is correct, then, for a terrorist organization that does not use suicide terrorism, we should see counterevidence, meaning a lack of the aforementioned organizational strategies that were heavily used by Hamas and the LTTE. Under these circumstances, this case could also be used to reinforce the already established link between the use of media sources and provision of private goods and the likelihood of organizational use of suicide terrorism. Relying on the observations of the two terrorism datasets used in the previous chapters, one example that stood out was Asbat al-Ansar.

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Asbat Al-Ansar, aka the Band of Helpers or the League of Followers, is an extremist

Sunni group, which is referred to as a terrorist organization in the Global Terrorism Database, the MAROB dataset and the US State Department list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

According to the START Knowledge Base (2011), Asbat Al-Ansar was established in late 1980s or early 1990s in Lebanon with the goal of getting rid of anti-Islamic and Western influences and creating a Sunni Islamic state by using force. The group has had a hierarchical leadership and a loose military structure. Just like Hamas’s spiritual leader Sheik Ahmad Yassin, the founder and the primary leader of Asbat Al-Ansar, the Islamic cleric Sheik Hisham Shreidi was born into a

Palestinian refugee camp in South Lebanon called Ain Al-Hilweh. Therefore, he was similarly influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood movement. In the early 1980s, Shreidi first established the Islamic Association which was an urban-based Sunni fundamentalist group in Lebanon.

However, as soon as his close ties to Iran were discovered, he was expelled from the group in

1986. That is when he formed Asbat Al-Ansar. In 1990, the newly founded group backed a failed uprising against Al-Fatah, which led one of Fatah’s recruits to assassinate Shreidi. After the incident, Asbat Al-Ansar split into three factions: Asbat al-Nour, Jama’at al-Nour and Jund as-

Sham:

Asbat al-Nour was allegedly founded by Hisham's eldest son Abdullah in a dispute over leadership with Ahmad Abd al-Karim al-Saadi (a.k.a. Abu Mohjen). Abu Mohjen was Sheik Hisham Shreidi's top lieutenant and widely accepted successor. Abdullah and his younger brother Mohammed, who also led the splinter group, were killed by al-Fatah gunmen in 2003 and 2004 respectively, and it is suspected that Asbat al-Nour has now rejoined Asbat al-Ansar. The other faction, Jund as-Sham, would later be incorporated into Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad network, and some reports have this faction at odds with the other two sectors of Asbat al-Ansar. However, Abu Mohjen was reportedly named a top deputy by al-Zarqawi in Iraq, and any disputes between the three factions of Asbat al-Ansar are believed to be minor. Abu Mohjen has been sentenced to death in absentia several times by the Lebanese government and is believed to be operating in Iraq or Lebanon (START Knowledge Base 2011).

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Like Hamas, Asbat al-Ansar has had a religious ideology but based on Salafi school of thought, which is a branch of Sunni-Islam that seeks to return to the original, purest form of

Islam emulating the life and teachings of Prophet Mohammad (Rainey 2011). Hence, the followers of Salafism believe in a unified Islamic state and Sharia law. According to what is written about Asbat Al-Ansar, the group has not used religious extremist ideology to find recruits, in fact, it drew its members from Palestinian refugees or the group of individuals who were cast out from other extremist groups: “While Hamas, Hezbollah, and al-Fatah generally dominate, smaller groups such as Asbat al-Ansar operate on the fringes and draw membership from individuals alienated by the larger outfits” (START 2011). While some sources argue that the group has had connections to the existing extremist terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda, some other sources like the US Department of State (2012) claims that such a formal connection between AAA and Al Qaeda has never existed yet the former has supported the ideology and course of action of the latter. Hence the funding for the terrorist activities of the Asbat al-Ansar is believed to have come from these larger, more established terrorist groups and international

Sunni extremist networks.

During mid-1990s, Asbat Al-Ansar’s terrorist activities included sporadic attacks against soft targets such as social clubs, fast food restaurants, liquor stores, bars, casinos and movie theaters. After they got more resourceful, they turned their attention to hard targets such as rival militant and religious leaders or influential politicians. For example, one of their attacks in 1999 killed four Lebanese judges. In January 2000, they launched a rocket attack on the Russian

Embassy in Lebanon as a sign of solidarity with Chechen Rebels. They also targeted foreign diplomats. In 2000, an Asbat al-Ansar recruit named Mahir al-Sa’di tried to assassinate then-US

Ambassador to Lebanon David Satterfield. The attempt was unsuccessful and Al-Sadi was

233 sentenced to life imprisonment. There were also several other thwarted attempts against embassies and government offices including the Italian Embassy, the Ukrainian Consulate

General, and Lebanese Government offices in the early 2000s. Some of the Asbat al-Ansar recruits also went to Iraq in 2005 to fight against the Coalition Forces. In the past few years,

Asbat al-Ansar has been responsible for the bombings of the fast food restaurants in Lebanon, and involved in an ongoing battle with al-Fatah over control of Ain al-Hilwah, the largest

Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon. While the group has not engaged in any incidents since

2012, according to the US Department of State (2012), it is still active and dangerous.

Based on the information extracted from the available datasets and online sources, Asbat al–Ansar has never been involved in the planning and execution of suicide terrorist attacks.

Despite its religious ideology and embracement of terrorist violence, the group has not recruited, indoctrinated, trained, or dispatched any suicide bombers. My own internet-based research also revealed that the group does not have an online presence; it does not have any newspaper, radio, television stations or websites. Also, organizational provision of private goods to increase the commitment of its recruits has never been mentioned in any of the internet-based sources browsed. Given the limitations of the available data and online sources, one could question the reliability of my conclusion regarding the Asbat al-Ansar terrorist group. While this is a fair concern, I try to minimize the biases by relying on a combination of scholarly writings, open sources, and two different datasets. As I indicated before, in both GTD and MAROB, this organization is reported to have never used suicide terrorism. Both of these datasets are university-based projects administered, monitored and updated by renowned experts and researchers in the terrorism field. Hence, they are credible sources of information. I am confident that, based on the available sources on terrorism, Asbat al-Ansar can be used to as a case study to

234 illustrate and strengthen the statistical evidence presented in the previous chapter. I conclude that terrorist groups that do not frequently use media sources or fail to distribute selective incentives to their recruits are less likely to use suicide terrorism compared to those organizations that do use these strategies.

Based on all the information provided in this chapter, the following table summarizes the major similarities and differences between the three terrorist organizations.

Table 9: Similarities and Differences between Hamas, LTTE and Asbat Al-Ansar Hamas: The Islamic The LTTE: The Asbat Al-Ansar: The Organization Name Resistance Liberation Tigers of Band of Helpers Movement Tamil Eelam

Year of Foundation 1987- still active 1974- 2009 Late 1980s/early & Current Activity 1990s- still active

Base of Operation Gaza and West Bank/ Sri Lanka/South Asia Lebanon/Middle East Middle East

Ideology Religious-nationalist Nationalist-Separatist: Religious Marxist-Leninist

Most Prominent Leader Sheik Ahmad Yassin Velupillai Sheik Hisham Shreidi Prabhakaran

Leadership Structure Hierarchy Hierarchy Hierarchy

Public Good Provisions Yes, Frequently: Yes, Infrequently: None to be known Islamic Society, Charity work, Tamil Islamic Center, Young Rehabilitation Women’s Muslim Organizations, Association, Islamic Disaster Relief University, free medical and social services

Private Good Provisions Yes, Frequently: Yes, Frequently: None to be known Fame, Honor, Societal Fame, Honor, Societal Veneration; Martyr of Veneration; Day of the the Month and Black Tigers, Private mourning ceremonies, Dinner with the Religious Rewards, Leader, Cyanide Pill Material Benefits

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Media Use Yes, Frequently: Yes, Frequently: Not Used leaflets, graffiti, Tamil newspapers, newspapers, Hamas TV and radio stations, Charter, online websites magazine, TV and radio stations, websites, social media

Use of Suicide Terrorism Yes, Very Frequently Yes, Very Frequently Not Used

Conclusion

This chapter looked at case study evidence of terrorist organizations in order to see whether real life evidence would support the conclusions drawn from statistical findings in the previous chapters. Previously, I have argued that terrorist groups have an advantage in the organization and execution of suicide terrorist attacks as their attacks are much more lethal than those of the lone-wolf terrorists. Then, I have tried to understand why only some and not all terrorist organizations take advantage of this superiority. Using empirical evidence, I have demonstrated that this is because organizational use of suicide terrorism requires the adoption of some costly organizational strategies such as the systematic and frequent use of communication technologies and the exclusive provision of private goods (especially) to suicide bombers and their families. This chapter has built on these previous findings and sought to 1) illustrate the link between organizational strategies and the use of suicide terrorism using qualitative cases, and 2) to show whether and how other previously discussed casual mechanisms operate given the experiences of different terrorist organizations.

Looking at how terrorist groups such as Hamas and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam operate, it is possible to conclude that terrorist organizations that use suicide terrorism do in fact target civilian-populated areas as well as military checkpoints, diplomatic and political targets.

So, the definition made in the second chapter that terrorist attacks do not practice restraint in

236 terms of targets holds true. Second, the qualitative analysis in this chapter backs up the quantitative findings presented in the preceding chapter: two particular organizational strategies stand out in enhancing the organizational propensity to use suicide terrorism, which are the use of social media and the private goods. The former strategy is heavily used to make organizational propaganda, find new recruits, and to educate, indoctrinate and radicalize them. The latter strategy is predominantly used to further incentivize and motivate the would-be suicide bombers to successfully carry out their attacks by increasing their levels of commitment.

As I have shown in detail in this chapter, both Hamas and LTTE were able to increase the size of their pool of radicalized recruits by using old and new media sources such as organizationally-owned websites, TV and radio stations, even twitter and facebook accounts (in case of Hamas) through which they made constant propaganda of the ideology, grievances and the agenda. In both cases, organizations enhanced the loyalty of their recruits by providing them with material benefits, or promising them exclusive awards such as fame, honor and an enhanced status in the next life. Finally, a third case of relatively less-known terrorist group Asbat al-Ansar is presented to show how the absence of these organizational strategies was followed by a lack of suicide terrorism.

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Chapter 7: Conclusion

My dissertation research was motivated by a desire to understand the lethality, perpetrators and organizational choice of a unique type of terrorism-- suicide terrorism-- which terrorizes indiscriminately leading to considerable numbers of fatalities without years of intensive training of the recruits or the use of high tech weapons. How could such a simple tactic of blowing one’s self up be extremely lethal and effective? This was the initial point of departure for my research. Using both quantitative data and qualitative case studies from the Middle East-

North Africa and South Asia, I examined the phenomenon of suicide terrorism. Specifically, I asked three different but logically connected questions: 1) Why are some suicide attacks deadlier than others? 2) Does the involvement of terrorist organizations in the planning and execution of suicide terrorist attacks compared to lone wolf terrorists enhance the lethality of suicide terrorism? 3) Given the lethal effectiveness of suicide terrorist attacks, why do some terrorist organizations choose to use suicide terrorism while others do not?

In this final chapter of my dissertation, I will revisit my answers to these questions and summarize the major arguments I have presented in my previous chapters. While doing that, I will also highlight the contributions of my research and identify the theoretical and policy implications of my findings. Finally, I will discuss the limitations of my research and conclude my dissertation by elaborating directions for future research.

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Summary of my Arguments and Contributions of my Research

I began my dissertation with a conceptual chapter (Chapter 2), which defines and classifies terrorism. Terrorism is defined as the use or the threat to use violence by politically motivated non-state actors against non-combatants. However, the definition is more complicated than it seems. Scholars diverge on a number of consequential questions such as: Who is a non- combatant? How can we know the motivations of the perpetrators? How is a guerrilla fighter, who is also a non-state actor, different from a terrorist? I reviewed and addressed all these conceptual problems in this chapter. I then looked at different types of terrorism with an emphasis on how suicide terrorism, which requires the death of the perpetrator along with the victims for the attack to succeed, is different from non-suicide terrorism. Synthesizing this discussion, one major argument I made in this chapter is that, despite what perpetrators would have us believe, the use of any kind of terrorism, including suicide attacks, is not merely an outcome of hopelessness or infuriating social and economic conditions; there is a strategic rationale behind these attacks, which demonstrates itself in the choice of location, the timing of the attack and the target selection.

Having defined what suicide terrorism is, in Chapter 3, I have moved onto my first research question regarding variation in fatalities among suicide terrorist attacks. In this chapter,

I argued that it is the fatal attraction of suicide terrorism that makes it an effective strategy, and that the deadliness of these attacks is due to the unique tactical advantages of suicide terrorism.

Suicide bombers, unlike stationary bombs, are essentially self-guided human weapons; they can deliver and detonate explosives at the right time and place with precision -- in the middle of a crowded restaurant, or right next to the intended target. Given this immense control that perpetrators have, as long as the tactic is properly utilized, suicide terrorist attacks are very likely

239 to kill large numbers of people. By proper utilization, I mean maximizing the intended effect of the blast by targeting indoor locations, easily accessible and densely populated areas during rush hours, as well as using multiple perpetrators. While the tactical advantage argument is heavily referenced in the current literature (Sprinzak 2000, Pedahzur 2005, Hoffman 2006), none of these studies have empirically tested the validity of this intuitive knowledge. I did exactly this in

Chapter 3 and established a foundation for the subsequent empirical chapters.

As previously explained, using the terrorist incidents in the Global Terrorism Database

(2011), I coded the location, target and perpetrator-specific tactical details of 567 suicide terrorist incidents that took place between 1998 and 2010. My analysis confirmed that the expected lethality of suicide terrorism is in fact driven by the proper utilization of tactical advantages of suicide terrorism; suicide terrorist attacks that seize upon targets and locations of opportunity are in fact much more lethal than those that do not. Particularly, suicide attacks that take place in heavily crowded locations, enclosed target sites, and that are undertaken by multiple perpetrators constitute the most lethal attacks.

While these findings formalize and confirm an intuitive point, they do so by relying on original quantitative evidence and rigorous analysis not previously implemented with respect to suicide terrorism. Hence, one major contribution of this chapter to the existing literature on suicide terrorism is the collection of new data that quantify tactical characteristics of suicide terrorist attacks. As I indicated in my introductory chapter, empirical research on terrorism is very much limited by scope and breadth of the existing datasets. Here, I have expanded the

Global Terrorism Database through my own coding efforts. To the best of my knowledge, my research is the first study to date that uses original data to test the hypothesized tactical advantages of suicide terrorism. While doing that I also accounted for the variation within

240 suicide terrorist incidents in terms of tactical differences and their association with fatal outcomes.

In Chapter 4, I explored another variation among suicide terrorist attacks based on two groups of perpetrators: terrorist organizations and lone wolves. The goal was to answer my second research question pertaining to the distinct influence of organizational involvement on the lethality of suicide terrorist attacks. Here, I compared suicide terrorist attacks that are carried out and openly claimed by designated terrorist organizations with attacks launched by lone wolf terrorists, who are inspired by the ideology of a given terrorist organization but carry out their attacks on their own without the backing of terrorist groups.

This is an important distinction to make because in the absence of a perpetrator-based distinction, the implicit assumption is that all perpetrators of terrorism are the same: terrorist organizations. However, this is not the case. In fact, there are a number of suicide terrorist incidents where there is no openly-stated and claimed organizational involvement. I categorized these incidents as cases of lone-wolf terrorism. Relying on this perpetrator-based distinction, I argued that despite the freedom of lone wolves to carry out their attacks without being constrained by orders from an organization, organizationally-linked attacks should still lead to more lethal outcomes. Theoretically speaking, this is because organizations nurture their recruits, psychologically and physically prepare them for their missions and act like coercive commitment tools tying the hands of the recruits through the distribution of private goods and other selective rewards. Hence, organizationally-trained suicide bombers are less likely to fail at their missions.

My analysis suggests that organizational involvement indeed makes a difference in terms of the lethal effectiveness of suicide terrorist attacks; when terrorist organizations are involved, suicide attacks claim twice as many casualties as lone wolf-perpetrated attacks. Moreover, my

241 findings also show that in addition to increasing the lethality of suicide attacks, terrorist organizations also accentuate the strategic advantages of suicide terrorism. When a suicide bomber who is recruited, indoctrinated and trained by a terrorist organization is sent out to a crowded location, the numbers of fatalities are more than doubled compared to those that are generated a lone-wolf perpetrated attack in the same high-density location.

These findings are important for both their scholarly and policy implications. First, they contribute to the recent studies on lone wolf terrorism (Michael 2010, Simon 2013) by making a comparison between self-radicalized perpetrators and organizationally-linked suicide bombers in terms of their influence on fatal outcomes. Second, despite the new threat posed by the rising incidents of lone wolf terrorism, my findings illustrate that the most lethal form of terrorism is still institutionalized terrorism. Terrorist organizations are much more professional and systematic in their approach to carrying out suicide terrorist attacks, which is particularly relevant to counter-terrorism experts and national security specialists. We cannot peer into the minds of lone wolf perpetrators or track down where their next attacks would be, given their lack of communication and collaboration with existing networks. However, we can systematically investigate and analyze terrorist groups; we can track down their target profiles and frequent attack locations, bases of operation, leadership structures, ideological orientation and financing.

In other words, terrorist organizations, while being more lethal, are also easier to deal with compared to lone wolf terrorists. Governments and policy makers can concentrate their resources and intelligence services on the real source of danger and come up with policies that will weaken organizational unity, reduce its popularity or eliminate the reasons that attract people to the ranks of the terrorist organizations. Current shifts in attention toward lone wolf terrorism among scholars and policymakers thus represent an inefficient use of limited resources.

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Inspired by the findings of Chapter 3 and 4, which illustrate that suicide terrorism has a fatal attraction and terrorist organizations are the perpetrators that make the best use of it, in my last quantitative chapter, I question why some terrorist organizations are more likely to use suicide terrorism than others. Here, I shift my focus from what causes or increases the lethality of suicide terrorism to what increases the probability of organizationally-perpetrated suicide terrorism. My main argument in this chapter is that recruitment is a necessary but not sufficient condition for suicide terrorism to take place. In order for recruits to successfully carry out their suicide attacks, terrorist organizations need to engender both radicalization and commitment on the part of their recruits. To that end, they systematically pursue certain strategies: 1) the use of media sources and print publications to reel in, indoctrinate and radicalize their recruits 2) the distribution of private goods (especially to the suicide bombers and their families) as positive reinforcements to increase their loyalty to their missions.

Theoretically, this chapter builds on the previous scholarship in the field that connects public good provisions by terrorist organizations to the successful execution of their attacks

(Ghandour 2002, Berman and Laitin 2008). While providing public goods like social services and programs for the people in need might increase the domestic popularity of terrorist organizations, popularity alone may not be enough for organizations to recruit motivated suicide bombers. The size of domestic support might increase the numbers of recruits at the disposal of the terrorist organizations, but organizations still need to convert those recruits into active suicide bombers. This radicalization requires indoctrination and training videos, reading verses from

Koran or the Charter of the group, and forcing the recruits to engage in daily rituals where they pledge allegiance to the leader or organization. All of these activities serve to increase the radicalization of the recruits over time. Second, terrorist organizations exclusively offer suicide

243 bombers and their family private goods, most of which are to be received after they successfully carry out their attacks. These rewards could range from material benefits and educational opportunities to promises of heaven, fame and honor. These promises tie the hands of the would- be suicide bombers, who then strive harder to successfully carry out their final missions.

Using the MAROB dataset (2008) and focusing on terrorist groups in the Middle East-

North Africa, my analysis has confirmed that there is indeed a positive association between employment of these strategies and the organizational propensity to use suicide terrorism. As suggested before, the policy implications of this analysis are complementary to those of the previous chapter. Being informed about the most systematically and frequently used organizational strategies that increase the likelihood of suicide attacks can help the counter- terrorism researchers and security specialists generate measures for addressing and eliminating the risk of organizationally-sponsored suicide terrorism.

Finally, in chapter 6, I shift my focus from quantitative analysis to qualitative case studies by looking at the background, formation and evolution of different terrorist organizations. The main goal was to illustrate how the statistically significant tactical advantages and organizational strategies arguments could be supported by case study evidence. Cases of Islamic Resistance

Movement (Hamas) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) demonstrated that both groups attacked civilian and military targets as they saw fit and utilized the tactical advantages of suicide terrorism with maximum efficiency in order to generate high numbers of fatalities and media attention. In both of the cases, we saw frequent and systematic utilization of the two key organizational strategies –media use and provision of private goods-- in order to increase the enthusiasm, motivations and commitment of the recruits to their final missions. The third case of

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Asbat Al-Ansar was introduced to show that in the absence of these organizational strategies, suicide terrorism was unlikely to be utilized.

Directions for Future Research

My dissertation research has examined the lethality, perpetrators and organizational strategies of suicide terrorism in the Middle East and South Asia. While I used new data to show how unique suicide terrorism is, and what fatal outcomes this could lead to once the tactic is properly utilized, my findings are limited in terms of their explanatory power as they allow me to make a comparison only within suicide terrorism. In other words, since the new data that I coded only account for suicide terrorist incidents, my results cannot tell whether it is these tactical advantages of suicide terrorism that makes it more deadly than non-suicide terrorism.

As we have seen, there are considerably more incidents of non-suicide terrorism in the world than suicide terrorism (See Figure 1, Chapter 1). However, if we have data on the location and perpetrator-specific details of a representative sample of non-suicide terrorist incidents, it would then be possible to explain whether a lack of precise human control in conventional terrorist attacks is what causes these attacks to be less fatal compared to suicide terrorist attacks.

Such data would also allow the researcher to account for the variation among different terrorist attacks based on tactical advantages and perpetrators. Hence, in my future research on terrorism,

I will work to build on and further expand the existing datasets, so that available data will be more adequate to answering a wide range of research questions and making comparisons across different cases.

Second, my research contributes to the broader counter-terrorism literature. Counter- terrorism aims to combat the existing terrorist groups and networks to reduce the numbers of terrorist incidents, and to prevent new terrorism from occurring. However, there is research that

245 suggests that some counter-terrorism measures fall short of their purpose and increase the intensity, frequency and duration of the acts of terrorism (Bueno de Mesquita and Dickson

2007). Future research on terrorism should analyze when counter-terrorism succeeds in preventing new terrorist attacks and when it fails and encourages more terrorism, specifically taking into account different types of terrorism. While the current literature examines the usefulness of different types of counterterrorism, most of these studies treat terrorism as a homogenous act, but as my research has shown, it is not; in fact, terrorism is a diverse phenomenon that requires similarly diverse responses. As there is more than one type of terrorism, it is reasonable to conclude that some counter-terrorism measures will be more effective than others for varying types of terrorist attacks. Future research should address this gap.

Finally, literature on the motivations of suicide bombers should be explored using not only interviews, or qualitative cases but also quantitative data to isolate what social, political and economic factors are most influential on people’s decisions to become suicide bombers because after all, suicide terrorism does not happen in the absence of radicalized and motivated human bombs.

In conclusion, this dissertation sought to understand the uniqueness of suicide terrorism by looking at variations in the utilization of the tactic, different perpetrators, and organizational strategies. However, producing solutions requires an eclectic scholarly approach to the problem and a collective response as suicide terrorism is a lethal problem that transcends national boundaries. By looking at the issue from individual, organizational and societal levels, we can comprehend a fuller picture of the problem and find ways to eliminate some of the root causes behind suicide attacks.

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