[Mb-civic] Very thought-provoking Interview on understanding suicide bombers

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Interview with  Professor Richard Pape

Australian Broadcasting Corporation           Broadcast: 20/07/2005

TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT

LOCATION: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2005/s1418817.htm

Broadcast: 20/07/2005
US 'misread motivation' of suicide bombers

Reporter: Kerry O'Brien


KERRY O'BRIEN: Not everyone accepts the stereotype of suicide bombers
recruited by the Al Qaeda network, as religiously-inspired haters of
Western values, intent of destroying Western civilisation. One American
analyst has conducted a comprehensive study of every act of suicide
terrorism over the past 25 years to understand what drives suicide bombers
and why suicide terrorism is on the rise around the world. He says it's
too simplistic to assume Islamic fundamentalism in the central cause.

Associate Professor Richard Pape, from the University of Chicago, has
produced a book on that study called Dying to Win - The Strategic Logic of
Suicide Terrorism. And he says America has misread the primary motivation
of suicide bombers. I spoke with Robert Pape earlier today.

Robert Pape, after all of your studies, all of your trawling over hundreds
of cases of suicide terrorism over decades, how did you react to the
London bombings?

ROBERT PAPE, SUICIDE TERRORISM EXPERT: The London attacks 
were part of Al
Qaeda's strategic logic, which they have been pursuing with increasing
vigour since 9/11. Since 2002 Al Qaeda has carried out over 15 suicide and
other terrorist attacks killing nearly 700 people, more than all of the
years before 9/11 combined. Although many have hoped that our
counter-terrorism efforts would have weakened Al Qaeda by the measure that
counts the ability of the group to kill us, Al Qaeda is stronger today
than before 9/11.

KERRY O'BRIEN: You say America and its allies continue to make 
fundamental
errors in the way they read the strategic logic behind Al-Qaeda and
associated terrorists. In what way?

ROBERT PAPE: There's a faulty premise in the current strategy on the war
on terrorism. That faulty premise is that suicide terrorism and Al Qaeda
suicide terrorism in particular is mainly driven by an evil ideology
Islamic fundamentalism independent of other circumstances. However, the
facts are that since 1980, suicide terrorist attacks from around the world
over half have been secular. What over 95 per cent of suicide attacks
around the world [are about] is not religion, but a specific strategic
purpose - to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from
the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland or prize greatly
and this is in fact a centrepiece of Al Qaeda's strategic logic, which is
to compel the United States and Western countries to abandon military
commitments on the Arabian Peninsula.

KERRY O'BRIEN: You say that September 11, Bali, Madrid and now the 
London
bombings are not part of an Islamic fundamentalist attack on Western
civilisation, Western decadence, yet the kind of hate literature that
comes from Islamic extremists say exactly that, an attack on Western
civilisation, Western democracy.

ROBERT PAPE: We have strong evidence to the contrary. The British Home
Office just released a four-volume report that they conducted in 2004 -
and you can find it on the London Times web site - that four-volume report
is about attitudes in the British Muslim community.

There are 1.6 million Muslims in Britain. The Home Office found that 13
per cent of those Muslims believed that suicide attacks against the West
were justified. They further found that the central reason for why those
13 per cent believed those suicide attacks were justified was anger over
British military policies on the Arabian Peninsula. The link between anger
over American, British and Western military forces stationed on the
Arabian Peninsula and Al Qaeda's ability to recruit suicide terrorists to
kill us couldn't be tighter.

KERRY O'BRIEN: So how should America have responded to the September 
11
attacks?

ROBERT PAPE: Afghanistan was absolutely the right thing to do. After all,
it's crucial to deny terrorists a sanctuary where they can plan and train
for terrorist operations against us. Unfortunately, all of the gains we
made against Al Qaeda by going into Afghanistan were lost and we lost even
more when we went in to Iraq.

KERRY O'BRIEN: So how do you explain the strategic logic of the 
insurgents
in Iraq attacking Iraqis as well as Americans?

ROBERT PAPE: Al-Zarqawi himself has explained this strategic logic in his
famous letter to Osama bin Laden in January 2004. In that letter he said
that he intended to focus suicide attacks on security organs of the Iraqi
Government and Western agents in Iraq, which in fact he has done in the
last two years, and he said he was doing that because they were the eyes,
ears and hands of the American occupier.

KERRY O'BRIEN: When you look at the motivation of Osama bin Laden and
other extreme fundamentalists, isn't it their ultimate goal to establish
their particular brand of fundamentalism right through the Middle East?

ROBERT PAPE: There's no question that Osama bin Laden himself appears 
to
have goals beyond simply ejecting Western combat forces from the Arabian
Peninsula. The real question is whether he would be able to use suicide
attack to achieve those goals. We've seen in the case of Lebanon that
other suicide terrorist groups, also with such goals, such as Hezbollah in
Lebanon, which also had the goal to create an Islamic state, and also used
suicide terrorist attack to eject foreign combat forces from its
territory. What we've seen is once those combat forces left, the terrorist
group was not able to continue a suicide terrorist campaign. Once American
forces left Lebanon, Hezbollah attackers did not follow us to New York.
Once Israeli forces left Lebanon, Hezbollah suicide attackers did not
follow Israel into Tel Aviv. Instead, what's happened over time is,
Hezbollah has abandoned suicide attack and virtually abandoned terrorism
itself and become, since the early 1990s, more or less a mainstream
political party. It still has its goal of trying to pursue an Islamic
fundamentalist state but it's not using suicide attack or really violence
at all to achieve that end.

KERRY O'BRIEN: So what scope is there for growth in the recruitment of
potential suicide terrorists and who are these people being recruited
anyway?

ROBERT PAPE: Suicide terrorists are not mainly depressed, lonely
individuals on the margins of society. I've studied 462 suicide terrorists
from around the world since 1980. Few fit the standard stereotype of a
depressed, lonely individual on the margins of society. Half of those 462
are secular and therefore not religious fanatics.

In fact, most suicide terrorists are socially integrated, productive
members of their community like the London bombers. Most suicide
terrorists, and this is true including those in Lebanon and Palestine, are
working-class and middle-class like the London bombers. Most suicide
terrorists are walk-in volunteers who are not long-time members of the
terrorist organisation and, therefore, easy for intelligence services to
track for years. Most suicide terrorists join the suicide terrorist group
just a few months or even just a few weeks in order to do their very first
act of violence - their own suicide terrorist attack.

For most suicide terrorists, they don't have evidence as the London
bombers don't, that they hate Western values or that they hate being
immersed in Western society. What we have evidence for time and again
across the spectrum is that they are deeply angered by military policies,
especially foreign combat troops on territory that they prize and that
they believe they have no other means to change those policies.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Robert Pape, thanks for talking with us.

ROBERT PAPE: Thank you for having me.

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2005/s1418817.htm


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