The Psychology Behind Suicide Bombing

The Psychology Behind Suicide Bombing is a very interesting article that I found courtesy of Seraphic Secret. Here is an excerpt, but I encourage you to read the whole article.

"Why suicide bombing?

Generally speaking, this question gets answered in terms of the "anger" and "desperation" of the bombers and the impossible nature of their cause. I don't give this any credence. Suicide bombing is entirely absent from most world communities who could be described as at the end of their tether - in sub-Saharan Africa, Aboriginal communities in the Anglosphere, in South America. We are looking at something that is specific to a very small number of situations. It has been in the interests of some writers to blur this point, and they have done this by identifying the Iraq/Israel/London/Sri Lanka suicide bombing with the political use of suicide where that suicide does not involve the death of bystanders. I see the involvement of bystanders as absolutely crucial in any attempt to understand what is going on, and any attempt to diminish it as insincere to put it mildly.

Suicide bombing has advantages over more conventional forms of attack in that:

1. It reinforces the inferior moral status and degrades the humanity of the victims, in the eyes of the community from whom the suicide bomber issues. One glorious death, many inglorious unplanned/unprepared ones.
2. It reinforces the political strength and influence within the originating community of the men (I expect) sending out the suicide bombers. They build an image of themselves as the leaders in the fight, and as men who can command that incredible degree of obedience and enthusiasm in their followers.
3. At the same time, because by its nature suicide bombing creates martyrs and not veterans, it is harder for rivals to emerge with respect to the leaders in the originating community.
4. Suicide bombing demonstrates to the originating community that their leaders are strong and ruthless in the fight - and that the fight is indeed going to continue.
5. Suicide bombing keeps battle losses within the originating community to a minimum. A conventional attack on a target might fail and yet lead to the deaths of some or all of the attackers. With suicide bombing, you know your losses in advance.
6. Suicide bombing involves sacrifice, of civilians, not soldiers; and that sacrifice makes the originating community unwilling to compromise or give up. It sanctifies the cause.

In short, I see suicide bombing as a product of an internal political situation - it's as much about maintaining and growing power within the originating community as it is about actually achieving an external political objective such as independence or the withdrawal of enemy forces. It grows a leader's power, whilst cementing the conflict into the psyche of the community - from the leader's point of view, this is very much a virtuous cycle.

It is also to do with child soldiers, in the sense that suicide bombers are selected from among the vulnerable - whether from the intellectual young, whose openness to ideas and comfort with absolutes is exploited, or from the disgraced within a traditional community, or from the (apparently dispensable) mentally ill. Suicide bombers do not come from the ranks of established middle-aged family men, or from among community leaders or the priesthood. Every complaint that is made about the recruitment and societal composition of Western volunteer armies can be made - and redoubled - when it comes to suicide bombing.

So much for the tactic of suicide bombing, and why it might be selected by community leaders. What brings people to actually go along with it? Why strap yourself up with bombs and go off to your death and the death of many bystanders, strangers to you, who do not have what you have in that they cannot prepare for a death they don't know is coming?"