MAKING SENSE OF SUICIDE MISSIONS
edited by Diego Gambetta
OUP £25, 392 pages

THE ROAD TO MARTYRS’ SQUARE: A Journey Into the World of the Suicide Bomber
by Anne Marie Oliver and Paul Steinberg
OUP £14.99, 237 pages

DYING TO KILL: The Allure of Suicide Terror
by Mia Bloom
Columbia University Press $24.95, 272 pages

There are many reasons for the current fascination with suicide terrorism. It is disconcerting to encounter a person who is willing to sacrifice his or her life in furtherance of a cause. This does not quite fit the image we like to have of “terrorists” as one-dimensional evil-doers or deranged psychopaths. In taking their own lives, suicide terrorists are staking a claim to moral superiority that is quite incompatible with our notion of their moral depravity. It is, moreover, demoralising to find the principle of deterrence, quite simply, eviscerated.

This principle of deterrence was the edifice on which the postwar security of the west was built. It sufficed to defend us against the armed ranks of the Soviet Union yet has been rendered useless by a few hundred vagabond fighters. We are also frightened by its destructive power, seen most dramatically in the carnage of September 11 2001, but also in the daily pictures from Iraq, the West Bank and Gaza.

The authors who examine this subject employ a number of different datasets to compute how much more lethal suicide attacks are than conventional attacks. They differ on the order of magnitude, but all agree that suicide attacks are, indeed, significantly more lethal. Like hijackings in the 1970s, suicide attacks today seem to have become the terrorist weapon of choice. Their randomness and viciousness make us all feel vulnerable.

We are fascinated by suicide terrorism because we cannot understand it. How can so many young men (and, increasingly, women and parents) be willing to throw away their lives in an act of brutal destruction, murdering others in the process? This question has concerned observers for centuries. The most frequently cited precursors to contemporary suicide bombers (though there were, in fact, many others) were the Assassins of the Middle Ages. Their actions so fascinated others that it was widely believed for centuries afterwards that they were on hashish when carrying out their suicide missions. Only recently have we learned that they were intoxicated only by a ferocious commitment to their cause.

This is the question that three new books attempt to address. And reading Anne Marie Oliver and Paul Steinberg’s The Road to Martyrs’ Square is more likely to feed than satiate our fascination. This is a highly unusual and - its subject matter notwithstanding - thoroughly enjoyable book. Part memoir, part travelogue, part portfolio and review of street media - from graffiti to pre-mission videotapes - the book provides just what it promises: a journey into the world of the suicide bomber.

The book consists of three, not particularly well integrated, parts. The first provides an account of the authors’ time in Gaza and the West Bank, and their evolving relationships with members of Hamas during the first intifada. The second introduces a unique and quite fascinating collection of major scripts of the intifada, replete with the symbols of self-sacrifice, martyrdom, jihad and victory. Finally, they present scenes from the videotaped last words of a cell of Hamas suicide bombers, interwoven with interviews with their families.

Oliver and Steinberg are interested in drawing a portrait, not analysing a movement. They write with humour and often affection for their subjects, and keep their own personalities entirely out of the story. With a light hand they provide a cogent account of the distinctions and the tensions between the nationalists and the Islamists, and the gradual institutionalisation of Hamas over the course of the first intifada. They provide harrowing accounts of the interrogation of collaborators and the murder of an Israeli. They describe not a cult of martyrdom, but an entire social system that supports martyrdom. Without proffering analysis, they describe tight social networks, intense small-group loyalty and the motivating power of the desire for revenge.

The presentation of the final video is riveting. The authors describe the irrational exuberance - or what they call the “ecstatic obliteration” - of this group of young men, for whom life has never been better, more intense or so full of meaning, than on the night before they kill themselves and others. Far from being depressed, suicidal types, these are excited and happy young men revelling in being the centre of attention. Oliver and Steinberg write: “What the rank-and-file [of Hamas] seemed to live and die for, in the end, was neither hospitals nor politics nor ideology nor religion nor the Apocalypse, but rather an ecstatic camaraderie in the face of death on the path of Allah.”

The scholarly collection Making Sense of Suicide Missions, edited by Diego Gambetta, a professor of sociology at Oxford, is very different in tone. Gambetta brings together a remarkable group of academics from different disciplines and countries who bring a formidable array of research and analysis to their attempt to make sense of suicide missions.

This is an important book, and the best treatment of the subject I’ve read. Its value is due in part to the breadth of cases its authors consider. Unusually, a chapter is devoted to the Japanese kamikaze, and another to “Dying Without Killing”, which explores the history of self-immolations. A broad range of questions is asked, such as a chapter exploring “Killing without Dying”, which looks at terrorist campaigns that have not included suicide missions. The book also presents a powerful range of methodological approaches, from Stephen Holmes’s fascinating (and at times, fanciful) philosophical conjectures, to the Italian Luca Ricolfi’s painstaking compilation of quantitative data.

These books were all written before the dramatic increase in the use of suicide bombers in Iraq. This massive escalation has rendered obsolete much of the carefully constructed quantitative data. The point that 80 per cent of all suicide missions have been undertaken either by the Tamil Tigers (200) or by Palestinian groups (224) needs to be revised. There appear to have been close to 100 suicide missions in Iraq this May alone.

There is little in these works that would lead us to anticipate such an extraordinary escalation - from, according to the political scientist Robert Pape, three a year in the 1980s, to 10 a year in the 1990s, to 25 a year in 2000 and 2001, to hundreds upon hundreds this year. The one trend that is confirmed is the increase in the number of Islamic terrorist groups using suicide tactics, from 43 per cent before September 11 2001 to 75 per cent soon afterwards (that figure would be considerably higher today). Moreover, one would have to argue that Sunni and Shia Muslims belong to different religions to sustain the view that 90 per cent of suicide missions are against people of a different religion.

The real significance of Making Sense of Suicide Missions, however, is not in the quantitatively driven conclusions, but in its treatment of the more difficult question of motivations. From different perspectives, and relying on assorted cases, several of the authors attack the myth that suicide terrorism is a religious phenomenon. The more empirically oriented point to the case of Sri Lanka, in which suicide attacks have long been part of the arsenal of the entirely secular Tamil Tigers. The more philosophical carefully parse the statements of Osama bin Laden and the perpetrators of September 11 and find them too wholly secular. As Holmes argues, they hit the twin towers not as icons of blasphemy but of arrogant power. Al-Qaeda is not fighting the west until it says “there is no God but Allah”, but until it gets out of the Middle East. He makes a compelling case that it was not religion, not Islam, but the pooled insurgencies of the Arab Middle East and a specific narrative of blame that made the US the target of al-Qaeda.

Gambetta has also noticed that all suicide missions are backed up by organisations. All are conducted by the weaker party in a conflict, often (as in the Japanese case) but not always (as in the case of the Tamil Tigers) when they are backed up against a wall. Very different types of organisation deploy suicide missions, but none do so exclusively. All who do have strong ties of group camaraderie. Suicide operations are invariably undertaken against democracies. The current wave of suicide missions, however diverse geographically and organisationally, can all be traced to Lebanon in 1973-1986.

Recognising the inherent complexity of the subject, Gambetta’s volume eschews the search for a single explanation for suicide missions. His authors see that the tactic, like terrorism itself, is employed by different groups, in furtherance of different objectives, in different parts of the world. They recognise that the motivation of the organisation is often quite separate from the motivation of the individual. Looking at institutional efforts to raise the barrier to defection, they point to practices such as the support planes on kamikaze missions, an elite Tamil Tiger’s pre-mission “last supper” with his revered leader, or the final video of Palestinian martyrs. They readily concede, however, that most organisations have more volunteers than they wish to deploy.

Compared to the rigorous analysis of the Gambetta volume, and the riveting storytelling of Oliver and Steinberg, Mia Bloom’s superficial and disorganised treatment in Dying to Kill has little to contribute to our understanding of the subject. By contrast, Luca Ricolfi’s careful analysis in Making Sense gives credence to Oliver and Steinberg’s observations. For the Palestinians the key is the social milieu; becoming a martyr is the quickest route to the highest status. A desire for glory, coupled with strong group ties, is often what it takes to translate a cocktail of emotions (humiliation, rage, vengefulness), metaphysical beliefs and the desire for financial rewards into a willingness to die in order to kill. (There is often more interest in the dying than the killing, as evidenced by the sometimes remarkable lack of attention to deploying the suicide bomb to maximum effect.) The sense of group loyalty rises from the pages of The Road to Martyrs’ Square, and finds support in Ricolfi’s tracing of the clustering of martyrs’ places of origin: in one extreme case, eight out of 11 members of a football team from Hebron, six of whom lived next door to one another, become Hamas suicide attackers.

In the end, one begins to wonder if suicide missions, or martyrdom operations, are indeed a unique phenomenon. Military historians long ago persuaded us that what drove young men over the trenches, and out of the foxholes, was loyalty to their small band of brothers. In all our societies we reserve the highest honours for those who have given their lives for their country. Having read these studies one is left wondering whether suicide bombers are so different. Had the members of the Hamas cell whose final videotape is depicted by Oliver and Steinberg ever learnt Latin, and had an eye for dramatic effect, one could imagine them ending their video reciting in unison Horace’s ode into the camera: “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” [It is sweet and proper to die for your country.]

Louise Richardson is executive dean at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.