Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism [Hardcover]

Robert Pape (Author)

Book Description

Release date: May 24, 2005

Suicide terrorism is rising around the world, but there is great confusion as to why. In this paradigm-shifting analysis, University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape has collected groundbreaking evidence to explain the strategic, social, and individual factors responsible for this growing threat.

One of the world’s foremost authorities on the subject, Professor Pape has created the first comprehensive database of every suicide terrorist attack in the world from 1980 until today. With striking clarity and precision, Professor Pape uses this unprecedented research to debunk widely held misconceptions about the nature of suicide terrorism and provide a new lens that makes sense of the threat we face.

FACT: Suicide terrorism is not primarily a product of Islamic fundamentalism.

FACT: The world’s leading practitioners of suicide terrorism are the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka–a secular, Marxist-Leninist group drawn from Hindu families.

FACT: Ninety-five percent of suicide terrorist attacks occur as part of coherent campaigns organized by large militant organizations with significant public support.

FACT: Every suicide terrorist campaign has had a clear goal that is secular and political: to compel a modern democracy to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland.

FACT: Al-Qaeda fits the above pattern. Although Saudi Arabia is not under American military occupation per se, one major objective of al-Qaeda is the expulsion of U.S. troops from the Persian Gulf region, and as a result there have been repeated attacks by terrorists loyal to Osama bin Laden against American troops in Saudi Arabia and the region as a whole.

FACT: Despite their rhetoric, democracies–including the United States–have routinely made concessions to suicide terrorists. Suicide terrorism is on the rise because terrorists have learned that it’s effective.

In this wide-ranging analysis, Professor Pape offers the essential tools to forecast when some groups are likely to resort to suicide terrorism and when they are not. He also provides the first comprehensive demographic profile of modern suicide terrorist attackers. With data from more than 460 such attackers–including the names of 333–we now know that these individuals are not mainly poor, desperate criminals or uneducated religious fanatics but are often well-educated, middle-class political activists.

More than simply advancing new theory and facts, these pages also answer key questions about the war on terror:

• Are we safer now than we were before September 11?
• Was the invasion of Iraq a good counterterrorist move?
• Is al-Qaeda stronger now than it was before September 11?

Professor Pape answers these questions with analysis grounded in fact, not politics, and recommends concrete ways for today’s states to fight and prevent terrorist attacks. Military options may disrupt terrorist operations in the short term, but a lasting solution to suicide terrorism will require a comprehensive, long-term approach–one that abandons visions of empire and relies on a combined strategy of vigorous homeland security, nation building in troubled states, and greater energy independence.

For both policy makers and the general public, Dying to Win transcends speculation with systematic scholarship, making it one of the most important political studies of recent time.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Robert A. Pape is associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago, where he teaches international politics and is the director of the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism. A distinguished scholar of national security affairs, he writes widely on coercive airpower, economic sanctions, international moral action, and the politics of unipolarity and has taught international relations at Dartmouth College and air strategy for the U.S. Air Force’s School of Advanced Airpower Studies. He is a contributor to The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, The New Republic, and The Washington Post and has appeared on ABC’s Nightline and World News Tonight, National Public Radio, and other national television and radio programs.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1

The Growing Threat

Suicide terrorism is rising around the world, but there is great confusion as to why. Since many such attacks—including, of course, those of September 11, 2001—have been perpetrated by Muslim terrorists professing religious motives, it might seem obvious that Islamic fundamentalism is the central cause. This presumption has fueled the belief that future 9/11’s can be avoided only by a wholesale transformation of Muslim societies, a core reason for broad public support in the United States for the recent conquest of Iraq.

However, the presumed connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism is misleading and may be encouraging domestic and foreign policies likely to worsen America’s situation and to harm many Muslims needlessly.

I have compiled a database of every suicide bombing and attack around the globe from 1980 through 2003—315 attacks in all.1 It includes every attack in which at least one terrorist killed himself or herself while attempting to kill others; it excludes attacks authorized by a national government, for example by North Korea against the South. This database is the first complete universe of suicide terrorist attacks worldwide. I have amassed and independently verified all the relevant information that could be found in English and other languages (for example, Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, and Tamil) in print and on-line. The information is drawn from suicide terrorist groups themselves, from the main organizations that collect such data in target countries, and from news media around the world. More than a “list of lists,” this database probably represents the most comprehensive and reliable survey of suicide terrorist attacks that is now available.

The data show that there is little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, or any one of the world’s religions. In fact, the leading instigators of suicide attacks are the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a Marxist-Leninist group whose members are from Hindu families but who are adamantly opposed to religion. This group committed 76 of the 315 incidents, more suicide attacks than Hamas.

Rather, what nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland. Religion is rarely the root cause, although it is often used as a tool by terrorist organizations in recruiting and in other efforts in service of the broader strategic objective.

Three general patterns in the data support my conclusions. First, nearly all suicide terrorist attacks occur as part of organized campaigns, not as isolated or random incidents. Of the 315 separate attacks in the period I studied, 301 could have their roots traced to large, coherent political or military campaigns.

Second, democratic states are uniquely vulnerable to suicide terrorists. The United States, France, India, Israel, Russia, Sri Lanka, and Turkey have been the targets of almost every suicide attack of the past two decades, and each country has been a democracy at the time of the incidents.

Third, suicide terrorist campaigns are directed toward a strategic objective. From Lebanon to Israel to Sri Lanka to Kashmir to Chechnya, the sponsors of every campaign have been terrorist groups trying to establish or maintain political self-determination by compelling a democratic power to withdraw from the territories they claim. Even al-Qaeda fits this pattern: although Saudi Arabia is not under American military occupation per se, a principal objective of Osama bin Laden is the expulsion of American troops from the Persian Gulf and the reduction of Washington’s power and influence in the region.

Understanding suicide terrorism is essential for the promotion of American security and international peace after September 11, 2001. On that day, nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four airlines and destroyed the World Trade Center towers and part of the Pentagon, killing nearly 3,000 innocent people. This episode awakened Americans and the world to a new fear that previously we had barely imagined: that even at home in the United States, we were vulnerable to devastating attack by determined terrorists, willing to die to kill us.

What made the September 11 attack possible—and so unexpected and terrifying—was that willingness to die to accomplish the mission. The final instructions found in the luggage of several hijackers leave little doubt about their intentions, telling them to make

an oath to die. . . . When the confrontation begins, strike like champions who do not want to go back to this world. . . . Check your weapons long before you leave . . . you must make your knife sharp and must not discomfort your animal during the slaughter. . . . Afterwards, we will all meet in the highest heaven. . . .2

The hijackers’ suicide was essential to the terrible lethality of the attack, making it possible to crash airplanes into populated buildings. It also created an element of surprise, allowing the hijackers to exploit the counterterrorism measures and mind-set that had evolved to deal with ordinary terrorist threats. Perhaps most jarring, the readiness of the terrorists to die in order to kill Americans amplified our sense of vulnerability. After September 11, Americans know that we must expect that future al-Qaeda or other anti-American terrorists may be equally willing to die, and so not deterred by fear of punishment or of anything else. Such attackers would not hesitate to kill more Americans, and could succeed in carrying out equally devastating attacks—or worse—despite our best efforts to stop them.

September 11 was monstrous and shocking in scale, but it was not fundamentally unique. For more than twenty years, terrorist groups have been increasingly relying on suicide attacks to achieve major political objectives. From 1980 to 2003, terrorists across the globe waged seventeen separate campaigns of suicide terrorism, including those by Hezbollah to drive the United States, French, and Israeli forces out of Lebanon; by Palestinian terrorist groups to force Israel to abandon the West Bank and Gaza; by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (the “Tamil Tigers”) to compel the Sri Lankan government to accept an independent Tamil homeland; by al-Qaeda to pressure the United States to withdraw from the Persian Gulf region. Since August of 2003, an eighteenth campaign has begun, aimed at driving the United States out of Iraq; as of this writing, it is not yet clear how much this effort owes to indigenous forces and how much to foreigners, possibly including al-Qaeda.

More worrying, the raw number of suicide terrorist attacks is climbing. At the same time that terrorist incidents of all types have declined by nearly half, from a peak of 666 in 1987 to 348 in 2001, suicide terrorism has grown, and the trend is continuing. Suicide terrorist attacks have risen from an average of three per year in the 1980s to about ten per year in the 1990s to more than forty each year in 2001 and 2002, and nearly fifty in 2003. These include continuing campaigns by Palestinian groups against Israel and by al-Qaeda and Taliban-related forces in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, as well as at least twenty attacks in Iraq against U.S. troops, the United Nations, and Iraqis collaborating with the American occupation.

Although many Americans have hoped that al-Qaeda has been badly weakened by U.S. counterterrorism efforts since September 11, 2001, the data show otherwise. In 2002 and 2003, al-Qaeda conducted fifteen suicide terrorist attacks, more than in all the years before September 11 combined, killing 439 people.

Perhaps most worrying of all, suicide terrorism has become the most deadly form of terrorism. Suicide attacks amount to just 3 percent of all terrorist incidents from 1980 through 2003, but account for 48 percent of all fatalities, making the average suicide terrorist attack twelve times deadlier than other forms of terrorism—even if the immense losses of September 11 are not counted.3 If a terrorist group does get its hands on a nuclear weapon, suicide attack is the best way to ensure the bomb will go off and the most troublesome scenario for its use.

Since September 11, 2001, the United States has responded to the growing threat of suicide terrorism by embarking on a policy to conquer Muslim countries—not simply rooting out existing havens for terrorists in Afghanistan but going further to remake Muslim societies in the Persian Gulf. To be sure, the United States must be ready to use force to protect Americans and their allies and must do so when necessary. However, the close association between foreign military occupations and the growth of suicide terrorist movements in the occupied regions should make us hesitate over any strategy centering on the transformation of Muslim societies by means of heavy military power. Although there may still be good reasons for such a strategy, we should recognize that the sustained presence of heavy American combat forces in Muslim countries is likely to increase the odds of the next 9/11.

To win the war on terrorism, we must have a new conception of victory. The key to lasting security lies not only in rooting out today’s generation of terrorists who are actively planning to kill Americans, but also in preventing the next, potentially larger generation from rising up. America’s overarching purpose must be to achieve the first goal without failing at the second. To achieve that purpose, it is essential that we understand the strategic, social, and individual logic of suicide terrorism.

Our enemies have been studying suicide terrorism for over twenty years. Now is the ti...

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Random House; First Edition edition (May 24, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400063175
• ISBN-13: 978-1400063178
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (57 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #728,995 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

137 of 160 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Original--A Major Contribution to Understanding July 12, 2005

By Robert David STEELE Vivas HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

The University of Chicago is an extraordinary institution--the author, employed there, lives up to their reputation for methodical, scholarly, useful reflections grounded firmly in the facts. This work significantly advances our understanding of terrorism and of the three forms of suicidal terrorism: egotistic, altruistic, and fatalistic. The author documents his findings that most suicidal terrorists are altruistic, well-educated, nationalistically-motivated, and fully witting and dedicated to their fatal mission as a service to their community.

Of the 563 books I have reviewed--all in national security and global issues, and all but four among the best books in the field--this new work by Professor Pape stands out as startlingly original, thoughtful, useful, and directly relevant to the clear and present danger facing America: an epidemic of suicidal terrorism spawned by the "virtual colonialism" of the US in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and now Iraq as well as other countries.

I will not repeat the excellent listing of facts in the Book Description provided by the publisher--certainly that description should be read carefully. If you are a Jewish zealot, don't bother, you will not get over the cognitive dissonance. Everyone else, including Muslim, Protestant, and Catholic contributors to Congressional and Presidential campaign funds, absolutely must read this book.

There are many other books that support the author's key premises, all well-documented with case studies and the most complete and compelling statistics--known facts. I am persuaded by the author's big three:

1) Suicidal terrorism correlates best with U.S. military occupation of specific countries that tend to be undemocratic and corrupt, where the U.S. in collusion with dictators and one-party elites are frustrating legitimate national aspirations of the larger underclass and middle class;

2) Virtually all of the suicidal terrorists comes from allies of the U.S. (at least nominally--they actually play the U.S. as "useful idiots") such as Saudi Arabia, rather than Iran;

3) The three premises shared by Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Qaeda, the Tamil Tigers, and now the Iraqi insurgency, are all accurate and will continue to be so if the U.S. does not pull its military out of the Middle East, Pakistan, Indonesia, and other locations:

a) Occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and virtual colonialism everywhere else, demand martyrdom operations;

b) Conventional inferiority mandates self-sacrifice (not only suicidal terrorism, but other asymmetric attacks including the death of a thousand cuts against key energy, water, and transportation nodes in the USA; and

c) The US and its European allies are vulnerable to coercive pressure. The withdrawal of the Americans and the French from Viet-Nam and then Lebanon, of the Israelis from the West Bank, and other concessions itemized by the author, have all made the case for suicidal terrorism. It works and it will explode.

I will mention several other books to support this author, but wish to stress that alone, his work is spectacularly successful in documenting the fallacies of the U.S. national security policy.

Among the books that support him are
Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror
The Search for Security: A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century
Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions
The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
Tactics of the Crescent Moon: Militant Muslim Combat Methods
Understanding Terror Networks
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future - and What It Will Take to Win It Back
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People

This is a core reading for every officer at STRATCOM and SOCOM, and for anyone who wishes to be effective at either Public Diplomacy or Strategic Communication or Information Operations. This author should be an invited distinguished funded speaker at every single war college in the Western democracies. We cannot win without listening to him. Military withdrawals, combined with energy independence, are essential. Without them, we not only will not fully defeat the current crop of suicidal terrorists, but we will, in attempting to deal with the current threat with old counter-productive and heavy-handed means, give birth to hundreds of thousands in the next generation of suicidal terrorists.

There are not enough guns in the world to win this one, even if we had competent intelligence at the neighborhood level, which we do not. In keeping with the author's recommendations, it is clear that moral capitalism, informed democracy, equanimity toward bottom up movements for national liberation and an end to corruption, an honest policy process in Washington, D.C.--these are the keys to victory.

This is a towering accomplishment and a major contribution to strategic thinking.

155 of 183 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Throwing Stones is Throwing Stones June 6, 2005

By Sidney Frieden

Format:Hardcover

Pape's book takes a flinty-eyed look at the data and presents us with inarguable conclusions that many readers will not like. (Witness the ideological hatchet job below, masquerading as a reader review.) If you can't make yourself believe that US foreign policy (and the foreign policies of other powerful democracies) might somehow be a contributing factor in the proliferation of suicide bombing campaigns we are witnessing today, then don't bother reading this book. If you have to let yourself believe that Islam is the source of most suicide bombing in the world, even if the data shows that it isn't, then don't waste your time reading this book. But if you're tired of not understanding why hundreds of billions of dollars of military hardware, intelligence infrastructure and foreign aid, and hundreds of thousands of US soldiers posted overseas, seems only to buy us more suicide bombers, then perhaps you'd be interested in a fresh idea why this is the case. You may not like Pape's conclusions. You may not be happy about them. But you can't deny that they are based on the data, and that his analysis of the data is manifestly non-ideological in the best sense of that term. If we are going to win the war on terrorism, we had better be prepared to stop thinking ideologically from time to time, and take a look at the facts.

149 of 181 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful, Groundbreaking Work. + rebuttal to 1-star review June 16, 2005

By John K

Format:Hardcover

This new work by Robert Pape is a long awaited step forward in the understanding of the phenomenon of suicide terrorism that presently faces the Western world. In it, Pape makes his case in a straightforward and airtight argument based on his study of the global experience of suicide terrorism from 1980-2003. And by no means is this any run-of-the-mill examination. It is by far the most comprehensive, thorough, and methodical look at suicide terrorist attacks, the terrorists themselves, the societies that support them, the democracies that bear their cost, and the political circumstances surrounding them.

Pape lays out his ideas in what he terms as the "Nationalism Theory of Suicide Terrorism." One sees, through his analysis, that almost all suicide terrorist attacks since the advent of the tactic have had several similarities. 1) They exist as part of a larger organized campaign 2) they target democracies 3) they seek a strategic political objective (national liberation). This is a cursory explanation of the author's ideas that are elucidated in the book. He then concludes with recommendations stemming from his study's findings.

These ideas are simply novel, well thought-out, and groundbreaking. If they do not find wide acceptance in short order they will certainly be the subject of important debate and any future scholarship will be obliged to address them. The author and all those that worked with him did a great job.

The concluding prescriptions for future foreign policy decisions are quite reasonable and based on sound footing, but, of course, always debatable. Foreign policy has to be one of the most convoluted and difficult issue areas in any field and it is a matter of dire importance because, unlike in domestic policy, you only get one chance.

That is the end of my review. I would like to take a minute to address a previous 1-star review entitled "A Misleading Work" June 6, 2005 by "Anonymous."

Though the anonymous reviewer's complaints about the book lacked coherence and organization, though probably not more than their thought process, there seems to be three main issues in Pape's study that they object to:

1) Too much reliance on graphs/statistics, along with statistical errors

2) The LTTE (Tamil Tigers) existing as a statistical outlier

2a) All other suicide terrorist attackers were Muslims

3) Definition of foreign occupation too broad

3a) Al-Qaeda organization does not fit into Pape's model

I will briefly show that these objections are faulty.

1) Too much reliance on graphs/statistics, along with statistical errors

"Pape provides 14 pages of charts..."

The author conducted the largest study of the subject in history and drew his conclusions from the data. It is obviously necessary to use those facts/statistics to present the argument.

"...factoring 315 suicide terrorists into a billion people is just foolishness..."

There are roughly one billion Muslims in the world, Pape did not use this statistic in his analysis. There were a total of 315 suicide attacks during the period covered by the study, 48-57% were secular and even less were Muslim. (Pape 210)

"...with such a small set --only 15 total campaigns over 30 years -- one group can easily flood the average."

There have been only 18 campaigns in the 23 years covered in the study. 13 have been completed, five are ongoing, and all are included. The "small set" is comprised of all suicide terrorist campaigns in modern (relevant) history.

2) The LTTE (Tamil Tigers) existing as a statistical outlier

2a) All other suicide terrorist attackers were Muslims

"...if they are excluded, it is clear from Pape's own charts that every single other suicide attack since 1980 was committed by a Muslim."

The LTTE is the most prolific suicide terrorist organization in history and has succeeded in assassinating the two highest ranking officials through suicide attacks (heads of state). Any study that did not include the organization would be seriously flawed. It is just plain false that all other attacks were committed by Muslims. Did you read the book?

3) Definition of foreign occupation too broad

3a) Al-Qaeda organization does not fit into Pape's model

"The definition, however, is too broad to be useful."

Pape's definition is apt, especially in the minds of the people living in the countries in question. Your definition may differ but that is irrelevant.

"If a risk can only be calculated by taking into account a potential enemy's subjective experience..."

Understanding the "subjective experience" of the people in question is the ultimate purpose of the book. Achieving that understanding is necessary for calculating risk, developing strategies, and making decisions.

"...it isn't at all obvious that al Qaeda, the group we are really concerned about, qualifies."

Based on your definition of occupation, whatever that may be, the group may not qualify. However, Pape shows that this is exactly how Osama bin Laden defines it. It is the foundation of his organization's propaganda and mobilization efforts and, as is shown in the book, 95% of people in Saudi Arabia agree with him. (Pape 82)

The errors in your analysis and criticism reveal several things about you. You have an entrenched view of Muslims as terrorists, you don't understand anything about Islam or the Middle East (in either contemporary or historical terms), and you apparently do not understand that not all people in "Muslim" areas/countries are Muslims. You are also suspicious that Pape is some sort of liberal/socialist despite the non-political nature of his book (he does not use George Bush's name once). Finally, you are likely a conservative, a fact which is disheartening and embarrassing for a proud neo-con like myself due to your sub-par presentation and mistaken/uniformed positions.

In conclusion, I would just like to say, don't listen to that person. They don't know what they are talking about and the book does not deserve the 1-star review. It's a great book, go read it.