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Get Four
|  | JULY 6, 2005
By Stan Crock What Makes Suicide Bombers Tick?[Page 2 of 2]FEEDING THE ENEMY. The mere presence of foreign troops is the instigation for the attacks, so lengthy stays to secure democracy actually make attacks more probable and help boost recruitment. Substituting Iraqi security forces for U.S. troops is the only thing that will likely make a difference. Pape notes that arrests of al Qaeda and other insurgent leaders are rising, but the metric that counts is the number of attacks, and they're rising, too. That suggests al Qaeda is growing stronger, not weaker. Equally troubling is that even as the total number of terrorist attacks globally is declining, the number of suicide attacks is rising. The first five months of this year saw as many suicide attacks as all of last year. Yet there are some encouraging signs. Pape points to the sharp decline in attacks in Israel when it left southern Lebanon, as it prepares to leave Gaza, and as it builds a protective fence. The insurgents need public support to survive, and if the goal of getting the enemy out is achieved, support for such tactics evaporates. STRATEGIC PLANNING. Interestingly, Pape doesn't believe Uncle Sam should high-tail it out of Baghdad right away. He thinks the U.S. needs to turn the security responsibility over to the Iraqis as quickly as possible but says doing it immediately isn't feasible. And Pape isn't an isolationist. He suggests that long-term, America should revert to the strategy of the 1970s and 1980s, when the U.S. relied on local regimes but had forces ready to jump when needed -- but not constantly on the ground, poisoning the atmosphere with their presence on land. I find Pape's argument wholly convincing. He's the first to collect these data, so it's no surprise that Washington was operating on the blithe assumption that the suicide terrorists were all poor, young Islamic radicals. In fact, 42% have post-secondary educations, and they're part of concerted campaigns with coherent goals. FACT AND FANCY. The Kurds, for example, didn't use suicide tactics against Iraq but did use them against Turkey. Fanatics would have attacked both, but rational strategists recognized that the chance of success was better in a democracy than in an autocratic state. What's more, Fatah, a socialist group, used the tactic before Hamas, a more religious-oriented organization, was even created, Pape says. The goals and tactics of these groups are anathema to a democratic people, but we can't combat them if we don't understand them. Pape has briefed key lawmakers, and the executive branch is funding his continued work because it doesn't have the information he has. Let's hope that in the future, the Bush team can tell the difference between what's real and what's not.
 Crock is chief diplomatic correspondent for BusinessWeek in Washington Edited by Patricia O'Connell Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | |
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