Suicide bombing

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Explosive belt, as worn by the Islamist group Haiʾat Tahrir asch-Scham

A suicide attack is an attack on people or objects by one or more perpetrators who are willing to accept their own death in the attack or who intentionally want to cause it.

“Attack” is synonymous with “assassination”; synonymous with 'suicide' also ' suicide ' used. Suicide attacks against tyrants are called tyrannicide .

If someone carries out an attack with an explosives belt, there is no doubt that he really wanted his own death and had calculated or planned it in advance. In some past attacks, this was not clear or certain.

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The sacrifice of one's own life for a certain goal can already be found in Roman historiography. Sometimes it was accepted as a possibility; in some cases the circumstances of the crime were such that the death of the perpetrator was highly probable or inevitable. The perpetrator intends (e) to drag people with him to death in the course of his act. Possible reasons are changes in the history of ideas. To a greater extent, suicide bombings are made possible by developments in weapons technology. Explosive weapons have long been easy to manufacture and use.

From a military strategic point of view, suicide bombings and other comparable actions such as asymmetrical warfare are of importance in terms of equipment inferior to enemies who are more highly armed (but have other weak sides).

In their modern form, which has developed since the 1970s and increasingly since 1981, suicide bombings have increasingly become a hallmark of Islamist terror . Christoph Reuter claimed in his book published in 2003 that suicide bombings originated in the Islamic world and that the Iranians prepared the ground for them. The Islamic scholar Elhakam Sukhni contradicted this thesis and wrote in a book published in 2011:

“The global communist solidarity, as well as the common struggle against US imperialism and the associated exchange with Korean and Japanese contacts, ultimately contributed to the fact that the self-bombing tactics found its way into the Middle East. Its application was later perfected by Islamic guerrilla groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas and developed into the modus operandi by al-Qaeda . "

Sukhni wrote that the first suicide attack in the Islamic world was the self-demolition of a member of the " Japanese Red Army " during the attack on Tel Aviv International Airport ( Ben Gurion Airport ) on May 30, 1972. Takeshi Okudaira intended to kill Israeli security personnel together with two other Japanese (including Kōzō Okamoto ) in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance , and after a long firefight he finally blew himself up with a hand grenade. The attack became known as the Lod Airport massacre .

Suicide bombings are a practice used by terrorist groups. There are some theses as to why their number Template: future / in 4 yearshas increased recently. Some believe that with economic and information globalization , a clash of competing ideologies has increased. Economic disparities are better known than, for example, in the 1970s.

Motif basics

Suicide bombers often have a supposedly higher aim and see themselves as resistance fighters or religious fighters. In suicide bombings, a group or organization is usually in the background; but there are also lone perpetrators.

The focus of attack by extreme political and religious groups on military and political targets shifted to more frequent attacks against civilians. This is explained by the tactical gain for the terrorists, which results from the important role of public opinion in shaping politics in the attacked democracies.

Related to this was the development of religious fundamentalism into a model that competes with the "liberal, democratic and secular modernity". The development of weapons technology also makes it possible more than before to fatally hit a comparatively large group of people with relatively simple weapons that can be operated by a single person or converted civilian devices (such as airplanes, tank trucks). The attack is being prepared without causing a stir, but it causes a large media presence. The goal of informal warfare is becoming increasingly important. In extreme cases, this is due to the growing miniaturization and privatization of weapons of mass destruction with an increasingly vulnerable complex environment.

Since the 1980s, Israel , Iraq , Afghanistan and Sri Lanka have been the main scenes of suicide bombings. Between 1980 and 2001, only three percent of all terrorist attacks worldwide were suicide bombings, but they were responsible for more than half of the deaths caused by terrorism during this period. The attacks on the World Trade Center go unnoticed. Suicide bombings are believed to be an effective method of killing people. Most people died in the September 11, 2001 attacks; there were also attacks in which only the assassin died.

Acceptance in the Muslim world

Polls by the polling institute Pew in 21 Muslim countries showed that the vast majority of the Muslim population rejects suicide bombings. It was asked whether suicide bombings against civilians in defense of Islam were "often or sometimes" justified. Views on this vary widely from country to country, ranging from 1% approval in Azerbaijan to 40% among Palestinians . Suicide bombings had the highest acceptance in South Asia ( Pakistan : 13%, Bangladesh : 26%, Afghanistan : 39%) and in North Africa and the Middle East ( Iraq : 7%, Morocco : 9%, Tunisia : 12%, Jordan : 15 %) %, Egypt : 29%, State of Palestine : 40%).

Classifications

Kind by which the death of the assassin occurs

  • The classic suicide attack, in which the perpetrator kills himself at the same time as the victims. Usually this is done with explosives that are deposited on the body in an explosives belt or in a vehicle and detonated by the assassin. This type of suicide bombing was not developed until 1982 in the area that would later become Hezbollah in Lebanon , and from there it spread throughout the world.
  • Another form is the assassination attempt, in which the perpetrator kills himself after being carried out.
  • The explosive device carried by the (alleged) main perpetrator is detonated by an accomplice using a remote control or a time fuse. For example, this type occurs in the black widows . The attack can take place with or without the knowledge of the explosives carrier, who can thus partially assume the role of victim.

Purpose of suicide bombing

  • It should have a very strong impact on public opinion .
  • The assassin wants to get the martyr status within the framework of religion in order to achieve the "life in paradise "
  • The high logistical effort to protect the life of the perpetrator during and after the attack is eliminated.
  • The (media) effect of the attack is to be reinforced by executing it as a suicide bombing.
  • By killing the assassin himself, the backers are to be protected, since no meaningful prisoners can be made. Countermeasures are therefore mostly limited to arrests in the event of unsuccessful suicide bombings.
  • The damage to the enemy can be increased significantly by the (internal) presence of the assassin.
  • The opponent is supposed to be unsettled by demonstrating extreme determination.
  • The opponent should be shown his powerlessness against such attacks.

Early examples

In the Old Testament in the Book of Judges , chapter 16, the suicide of Samson is described, in which over 3,000 men and women died. This by the writer David Grossman in his 2005 book Lion Honey. The myth of Samson interpreted as a mythical prototype of a suicide bombing.

There were early suicide attacks in ancient times among the Christian circumcellions in North Africa and in the Middle Ages among the Muslim assassins in the Near East .

In 1927 an indebted farmer carried out the Bath school massacre : he detonated a bomb in a school and shortly afterwards blew up his car filled with metal parts, killing him and two other people.

On March 21, 1943, the Wehrmacht officer tried Rudolf-Christoph von Gersdorff , Adolf Hitler killing by a suicide attack. On the occasion of the Heroes' Remembrance Day, Hitler opened an exhibition of Soviet looted weapons in the Berlin Zeughaus . Von Gersdorff was assigned to explain the exhibition as an expert. He wanted to blow up Hitler and the top management present ( Göring , Himmler , Keitel and Dönitz ) with two Clam mines that he carried in his coat pockets. After von Gersdorff activated the time fuse, Hitler ran through the exhibition without stopping in front of the exhibits and left the building unexpectedly early. Von Gersdorff therefore defused the 10-minute timer in a toilet in the armory.

During the Indochina War , on July 31, 1951, a Vietnamese assassin blew himself up with a grenade next to the French general Charles Chanson and the pro-French governor Thái Lập Thành, killing both of them. This is believed to be the first modern explosives-based suicide attack in a war zone.

On December 15, 1981, an assassin drove a vehicle loaded with explosives to the embassy of Iraq in Lebanon; more than 60 people died. Some scholars argue that the attacks were rooted in the left-wing extremist environment of the 1960s and 1970s. The massacre at Lod airport near Tel Aviv (on May 30, 1972) by three men of the " Japanese Red Army " may have been the first suicide attack in recent history.

The December 15, 1981 attack was not the only suicide attack on an embassy. For example, the US embassy in Beirut was badly damaged in April 1983 ; the new US embassy was attacked in September 1984 by an assassin in a delivery truck loaded with explosives.

Modern examples

In 1983 suicide attacks reached a previously unknown dimension: in that year five large attacks (three of them in Beirut) took place in which 503 people died. On April 18, 1983, 80 people (142 injured) died in the attack on the US embassy in Beirut, on October 23, 1983 331 people (96 injured) died in two attacks in Beirut , on November 4 they died in Tire (Lebanon) 88 people (69 injured) in the attack on a building used by the Israeli army and 4 people (15 injured) on December 12, 1983 in the US embassy in Kuwait.

In 1988, Strentz wrote that the typical Palestinian terrorist was between 17 and 23 years old, came from a large and impoverished family, and had little education. It was widely believed that many suicide bombers acted out of desperation about their poor situation and / or because they belonged to an excluded section of the population. In fact, they were mostly young and unmarried; But there were also married and elderly people as well as female perpetrators. After the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and other targets on September 11, 2001 , it became known that some of the attackers came from the middle class or from rich families. They had an above-average education (some university degrees) and showed no signs of psychopathology . For example, Mohammed Atta came from a middle class family and Ziad Jarrah came from a wealthy family.

Suicide bombers are not all men. According to a 2011 report by the US Army, women suicide bombers were responsible for 65% of successful attacks, even though only 15% of the attackers were women. 20% of women who carried out a suicide attack did so with the intention of killing a specific person - compared to just 4% of male attackers. According to the report is a motif of bombers revenge on those whom they have a responsibility for a personal loss attributed .

One of many theories was that female suicide bombers would act out their frustration at their subordinate role in society with a demonstration of their strength and power.

Palestinians

On April 11, 1974, three PFLP-GC men took hostages in the small Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona ; 21 people died. In 1974 and 1975 members of the PFLP-GC and DFLP carried out five more attacks.

From 1993 onwards, Hamas carried out suicide bombings . Other groups soon followed, such as Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aqsa Brigades of Al-Fatah . In around 140 attacks Template: future / in 4 years, the attackers and another 500 people were killed and over 3,000 people were injured.

Taking a period from November 2000 to November 2003 as a basis, during which 103 attacks took place, an average of 4.3 people were killed and 29.9 people injured in one suicide attack. The effectiveness of these attacks was very variable. During this period, only 15 attacks were responsible for 3,500 victims, 22 killed just the attacker. According to Tzahal statistics, not a single attack was prevented in the last four months of 2000; in 2001 there were 21, in 2002 112 and in the first eleven months of 2003 there were 179 prevented attacks. A cooperation between two assassins who attacked a target at the same time or at different times (e.g. to kill medical workers) did not lead to twice the number of victims, but only half more. During the period mentioned, the average age of the assassins was 21.7 years, the youngest was 16, the oldest 48 years old. Most of the attackers were between 17 and 26 years old. 7 of 112 assassins were women, 92 were men, and no gender was known of 4. Women could murder almost twice as many people as men. 87 of 103 attacks were carried out with explosive belts or similar instruments, in 14 cases a car was used. Auto bombers killed an average of 10.2 victims. The majority of the attacks (76 out of 103) were carried out against the more vulnerable, purely civilian targets, 10 cases were clearly aimed at soldiers. Most of the victims per attack were made in cafes or restaurants (an average of 68.3), while attacks on the streets caused an average of 31.2 deaths. When the suicide bomber was stopped at a checkpoint, the average death toll was only 1.2.

94 of 103 attacks were carried out by Hamas, the Al-Aqsa Brigades and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, two of which were carried out by Fatah itself, and one each by PFLP and Fatah Tanzim. The Hamas attackers were more successful than other groups in terms of the average number of victims. According to studies, this is due to both the technological and organizational superiority of Hamas and its selection of individual assassins. Eli Berman and David Latin suspect that Hamas' relative success is due to its positioning at the radical end of the political spectrum. This has enabled her to attract more confident and qualified volunteers. For all groups, the experience gained over time could not result in a higher number of victims per attack, probably because the Israeli side was even more successful in minimizing victims.

Ariel Merari from Tel Aviv University has empirically investigated suicide bombings in the case of Israel. He relied on media reports, interviews with captured unsuccessful perpetrators, interviews with the people behind them and questioning the families of the murderers.

In his study published in 2004, he defined suicide bombings as “intentional suicide with the purpose of killing others, in the service of a political or ideological goal.” Suicide bombings are to be distinguished from a high-risk mission and from unsuccessful bomb transports or suicide with a political statement . He examined several popular justification patterns such as religious fanaticism , poverty , ignorance , revenge for personal suffering, brainwashing, and psychopathological causes.

In the period examined from April 1993 to May 2004, mostly - in 89% of cases - civilian targets were affected (department stores, buses, restaurants), in 11% of cases Israeli soldiers were attacked. Where the perpetrator could be determined beyond doubt, it was Hamas (80 attacks), PIJ (44 cases), Fatah (36 attacks) and PFLP (9 cases). Several terrorist organizations cooperated in 13 cases. The perpetrators were on average 21 years old; the youngest was 16 years and the oldest 53 years. More than 90% were unmarried and not engaged. 95% of the Palestinian perpetrators were male. The perpetrators came from all walks of life, which is why Merari ruled out poverty as a cause. 77% of the perpetrators had attended high school and 20% had attended university, some with a full degree (12% of the average Palestinian population attended a university). The proportion of those who came from refugee camps was disproportionately high. Before the start of the Intifada , 56% of the attackers came from refugee camps, during the Intifada 40%. 21% of the Palestinian population live in these camps. According to Merari, religious fanaticism is neither a necessary nor a sufficient factor in explaining the attacks. Besides the fact that some of the groups are secular, members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad did not cite religion as the main reason. On the contrary: many very religious Palestinians reject the acts. Merari also ruled out personal revenge as the main reason, because 93% of the (potential) perpetrators did not spend time in prisons; 87% were not injured in clashes with the Tzahal . 93% would not have lost a first-degree relative through Tzahal missions and 80% would not have lost a good friend. Suicide bombers are not insane and show no usual risk factors for suicide candidates, at most half show suicidal symptoms. An exception to this was the handicapped Palestinian boy Jamas, who was only 10 years old and was supposed to kill himself at an Israeli checkpoint. He was rescued from his situation by the Israeli army.

From all this, Merari concluded that the typical assassin was a sui generis phenomenon and did not fit into widespread psychological and social explanations for suicides. On the other hand, suicide bombers usually have a weak personality with low self-esteem and are often socially excluded. Her thinking is rigid and concrete at the same time. When asked about their motivation, they said the reasons were national humiliation, 'doing God's will', personal vengeance, and hope for paradise.

Merari concluded that the attacks were a group, not an individual phenomenon. Groups, not individuals, plan them. In the extremist groups, the assassins experience a sense of community and leadership from charismatic leaders. In addition to the indoctrination by the group and the built-up group feeling and group pressure, the general public atmosphere is also important, especially how it is expressed in the media or the educational system. They would affect the general number of volunteers as well as the timing and number of attacks. Often the background can only be explained in a specific mission.

The assassins were in equal parts volunteers and individuals who were approached by the group. The settlement was usually reached within a week, and in half of the cases immediately. In a third of the cases, it took less than 10 days from the agreement to the execution of the act. In 60% of the cases, the act was carried out within the first month.

After the assassins had put personal items behind them (e.g. gifts and photos), confessional videos were produced - usually one day before the attack. Before the execution, the perpetrators were mostly already in a tunnel ; some hesitated, however, and this urge increased with the proximity to the goal. On their way, escorts, instructions or cell phones served as mental companions. A justification or excuse was necessary for the act to be broken off.

Hezbollah

It was the Shiite Hezbollah , which - with massive support from the Islamic Republic of Iran - introduced the car bomb as a further instrument of suicide bombing in 1983 . However, most of the suicide attacks against the Israeli occupiers in Lebanon in the 1980s were carried out by members of pro-Syrian secular organizations.

They were the first to immortalize the suicide bombers known as martyrs on video immediately before they were deployed and to play the tape on television after the attack. In doing so, they built on the experience of the Palestinian left-wing Marxist terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command , to which the first systematic suicide bombings are attributed as a result of the Japanese Red Army attack in 1972 and whose suicide terrorists had already documented their suicide missions in a film.

Hezbollah used suicide bombings very carefully and sparingly, but managed to draw attention to itself around the world with spectacular videos. Their system of caring for the relatives of the suicide bombers, who enjoy high social status, also had a precursor in the fighting and propaganda system of the Palestinian fedayin. Although the Hezbollah suicide bombings led to the withdrawal of the Americans and French from Lebanon during the Lebanese civil war, they were by no means the direct cause of Israel's subsequent withdrawal from southern Lebanon .

In 2002, Krueger and Maleckova examined the economic and educational status of Hezbollah fighters who died in the battle with Israel between 1982 and 1994. From this, conclusions can be drawn about the status of their suicide bombers. It was found that they found slightly fewer poor among them than in the general population (28% compared to 33%), but that they enjoyed secondary school education significantly more often than the average general population (33% compared to 23%).

Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE, also Tamil Tigers ) in Sri Lanka carried out suicide bombings from 1987 onwards, the first being a fairly accurate copy of the 1983 attack on US headquarters in Beirut . In 1991 the Tamil Tigers killed the Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in a suicide bombing. The Sri Lankan opposition leader Gamini Disanyake was killed by a female suicide bomber on October 24, 1994 at an election rally . Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga , Sri Lankan President from 1994 to 2005, survived a suicide bombing in December 1999.

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The first suicide bombings were committed in Kashmir in 1989, but without spreading too much.

Chechnya

In Chechnya or by Chechens in Russia , suicide bombings have been committed since around 2000.

Iraq

US soldiers from the 978th ​​Military Police Company help Iraqi firefighters and police officers after a suicide bombing in Baqubah, Iraq
The Israeli police checked ten Palestinians, including a suicide bomber with a 5-kilo bomb, after a chase on the highway section Jerusalem with them - Tel Aviv has delivered. The police had previously been warned of an impending attack in the Jerusalem area through an intelligence message.

Since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 , there have been numerous suicide bombings in Iraq.

PKK

In June 1996, after Turkey had fought heavily against the PKK, activists or supporters of the PKK began suicide attacks. By July 5, 1999, they carried out a total of 15 suicide attacks in the fight against the Turkish state. In February 1999, PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan was arrested. He appealed to his supporters to limit themselves to defensive actions; In 2002, his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

Syria

In the course of the civil war in Syria , numerous suicide bombings were carried out by Islamist groups. In addition to military goals, they focused on institutions and representatives of the regime, but also on civilian goals.

One such group that has publicly admitted the use of suicide bombers as a common practice is the al-Nusra Front . The group, classified by the USA as a terrorist organization, claims that these attacks are limited to military targets. The attacks that the organization subsequently admitted to include the killing of two high-ranking officials of the Assad regime in July 2012, but also the attack on a textile factory of the regime in February 2013, which, according to human rights activists, 60 civilian workers fell victim.

In contrast, no one took responsibility for terrorist attacks by suicide bombers who primarily claimed civilian victims. For example, the attack on a shopping mile in Damascus in April 2013 with 15 dead and 58 injured, or the attack on a church service in a Shiite mosque in Damascus, in which a suicide bomber killed 42 believers and injured 84 others in March 2013.

ISIS

Suicide bombings were often carried out by supporters of the terrorist organization IS , which was formed later in the civil war and which ruled parts of Syria as well as parts of northern Iraq. The use of such attackers was one of the group's standard tactics and was used in various compositions. In addition to individual male assassins on foot or in vehicles, adolescents and women were also used. A coordinated attack in staggered waves of suicide bombers and regular fighters was a common tactic against well-secured military targets. Based on the conquests since 2014, the fighters had captured numerous armored vehicles or had reinforced off-road vehicles with armor plates in their own workshops in order to use them as large car bombs in the defensive battles of 2016 and 2017 for Iraqi Mosul and Syrian ar-Raqqa , by the Americans SVBIEDS ( Suicide-Vehicle-Borne-Improvised Explosive Devices ) called. The armor protection helped the assassin to survive the defensive fire from rifles and machine guns longer and to detonate his vehicle in a group of enemies. An example of numerous attacks with IS suicide bombers to conquer military targets was the attack on Jalawla on the border between Iraq and Iran on August 11, 2014, which opened with a surprise attack with two car bombs in trucks, followed by twelve suicide bombers on foot destroyed the checkpoints, followed closely by the ground attack that eventually captured the place.

Causes and attempts to explain

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Who is "one"? And who defines “irrational” in this context?

It is generally assumed that a suicide bomber acts irrationally, that certain religious, political or social factors place him outside of common rationality, where the common sense of the self-preservation instinct has lost its effectiveness. In addition to the refuted notion that the perpetrators' hopeless situation is the cause of this final step, fanatical religiosity is the main reason for suicide attacks.

Religious fanaticism

Wahhabism in particular, which is considered a very fundamental movement in Islam, was named as the culprit in this regard.

The US Department of Defense found in a study of suicide bombers:

“His actions open up a scenario in which he, his family, his faith and his God can only win. The bomber secures salvation and the joys of paradise. He defends his faith and, remembered as a brave warrior, can join a long line of martyrs. And finally, by the nature of his death, he is guaranteed that he will be pleased with Allah. Against the background of these considerations, the selfless sacrifice of the individual Muslim, which he brings to the destruction of the enemies of Islam, becomes a suitable, feasible and welcome option. "

The Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) report cites a number of sources from the Qur'an relating to jihad (holy war), martyrdom, or paradise where beautiful mansions and virgins can be expected for the martyr. It is known that such passages from the Koran are usually recited by the terrorists before attacks.

The fact that suicide attacks do not have their roots in the Muslim religion per se is supported by the fact that there are also suicide bombers in non-Muslim societies, such as the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.

According to mainstream Islam, a suicide bombing is expressly prohibited. According to this, not only the killing of innocent people is considered a grave sin, but also suicide itself. Jihad (holy war) is advocated only in the event of an enemy attack. Such a jihad is bound by fixed rules. In particular, civilians, children and the elderly are to be spared in combat. Even the possible use of chemical weapons (such as poisoned arrows) and ballistic projectiles (catapults) is regulated.

For more than a millennium, these principles have been accepted and observed by both Sunnis and Shiites . At the beginning of the 1980s, however, militant Islamists in the fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan softened these traditional regulations with an idiosyncratic interpretation of the Koran in order to give the suicide bombings religious legitimacy. This interpretation found support from some religious scholars in the Islamic world.

The suicide bombing in response to occupation

Deviating from this theory, there are researchers who try to relativize the prominent role of religion on Muslim suicide bombers. Robert A. Pape of the University of Chicago assumes that the purposes of religious rhetoric are quite profane. He sees suicide bombings less as a product of Islamic fundamentalism and more as a reaction to foreign occupation. "Although she speaks of Americans as infidels, al-Qaeda is less concerned with our conversion than with removing us from Arab and Muslim countries."

This theory is again criticized for the fact that on the one hand it cannot explain why it is not primarily American soldiers but civilians of various Islamic denominations that are the victims of terrorist attacks in Iraq, and on the other hand that there are many occupation situations in which suicide bombings are not used as a tactic will. For example, there is no such thing as suicide terrorism by Tibetan Buddhists . The Japanese kamikaze were also not created in response to occupation. In his study, Pape also defined the term occupation very broadly: "The presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s also fell into this category in his presentation."

Individual offender psychology and group dynamic processes

Some approaches target individual perpetrator psychology, family dynamics, for which a frequent victim-perpetrator dynamic speaks, group pressure and organizational dynamics, or a combination of all of the above-mentioned factors. The individual motivation to carry out a suicide bombing depends, according to this theory, on organizational practices of recruitment and on ideological incentives. The ability of organizations to carry out suicide bombings, in turn, depends on structural possibilities, which include not only a weak state, but greater social acceptance of suicidal terror. This acceptance occurs when cultural norms and historical narratologies favor martyrdom , when legitimate authorities promote extreme violence , and when communities feel threatened in a political conflict .

In a comparative study on the attitudes of Lebanese and Palestinian societies to suicide bombings, Simon Haddad ( Notre Dame University of Beirut) found that women in both societies were more likely than men to support suicide bombings. In Lebanon he found a correlation with the low income of the surveyed population; among the Palestinians there was a correlation with the place of residence in a refugee camp. The most important single prognostic indicator for positive attitudes towards suicide bombings was approval of political Islam ( Islamism ). This was even more true of the Palestinians than it was of the Lebanese. A 2001 survey by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) found that support for terrorist acts against Israeli civilians was higher among skilled workers than unskilled workers (43.3% versus 34.6%) ); it was also more prevalent among Palestinians with higher education than among illiterate people (39.4% and 32.3%, respectively).

Dawud Gholamasad's research on motivation from process sociology has a holistic approach as a frame of reference. He attributes suicide bombings to the struggle for (collective) self-worth that cannot be explained from an individualistic perspective and cannot be reduced to religious motives.

In 2002 the journalist and war reporter Christoph Reuter interpreted the international spread, staging and political impact of suicide bombings from 1983 (Lebanon) to 2001 as a Werther effect taking place on a social level .

The suicide bombing as a regressive human sacrifice

In a further step, Takeda sees the terrorist suicide attack as a human victim who has returned in modern clothing . Talking about “suicide bombing” in news and everyday language can easily be misleading, as the expression turns the speaker's attention away from the inhumane practice and towards the terrifying subject. This primarily avoids suicide and assassination , i. H. in both cases the killing of people, condemned, but less so what happens in the larger context, namely the sacrifice of people for terrorist purposes. In order to adequately grasp the phenomenon from the practical side, Takeda advocates speaking of “victim attack” instead of “suicide bombing”.

Psychodynamic Considerations

In May 2017, the psychoanalyst Klaus Grabska, who has also been chairman of the German Psychoanalytical Society (DPG) since 2017 , presented a publication in which he dealt with perpetrators using the example of Anders Breivik . According to Grabska, the terrorist acts could be understood on the one hand as a “narcissistic-destructive externalization of a threat of annihilation originally directed against the self in need of love and as a malignant attempt at self-rescue”, but on the other hand, in order not to leave it at a psychopathologization of the phenomenon, becomes “the terrorist subject as a personified social symptom of dehumanization ”. Two years earlier, the cultural scientist Katharina Schipkowski had invited Grabska to an interview for the taz and spoke to him about the psyche of suicide bombers. In this conversation, Grabska emphasized that such an event always involves a personal, a political and a cultural dimension of destructiveness and that globalization also plays a role. On the individual level it becomes noticeable that “behind this perversion of the destructive” there is ultimately “a very deep despair”.

Literary and cultural studies aspects

Arata Takeda takes action against the culturalist othering of the phenomenon of the suicide bombing and examines a number of examples from Western literature that contain, negotiate, affirm or even condemn comparable phenomena ( Sophocles : Aias , John Milton : Samson Agonistes , Schiller : Die Räuber , Albert Camus : Les Justes ). In doing so, he counteracts the orientalizing or even Islamizing tendencies of public perception with the thesis that the suicide attack is a potentially universal pattern of behavior that - regardless of culture or religion - occurs under certain situational variables and systemic determinants. Takeda includes "the suffering perceived as injustice, the total asymmetry of power relations, the pathologically increased desire for justice, identification and solidarity with all those who suffer injustice and [...] the suicidal aggression against typical enemy images ".

Medical aspects

In particular, suicide bombings by self-explosions raise various new medical problems, since the injury patterns, especially of those who were injured, are very specific and the first aid for the injured is particularly difficult. In addition to the direct effects of the explosion ( burns , cuts , bruises , bone fractures ), injuries to bystanders are also characterized by the penetration of various tissues (especially bone fragments) by the assassin. Foreign tissue parts that are not completely removed can lead to encapsulation , rejection reactions and inflammation, which is why they must be removed immediately after penetration, but also after several months if identification is difficult as foreign tissue. Fragments of tissue, blood and, above all, invading bone fragments can lead to injuries and additional infections with parenterally transmitted viruses such as HIV , hepatitis B virus (HBV) or hepatitis C virus (HCV). Since congenital, chronic HBV infections are common in the Middle East, the infections caused by suicide bombers are significant there.

Since the predominant intention of a suicide attack is to kill and injure as many people as possible, the management of first aid as a mass casualty of injured people and the triage of injured survivors is very difficult due to the often high number of injured people . The often uniform but multiple injuries often cause capacity problems in the medical care facilities, especially if they occur in medically underserved areas. Identifying victims is not easy in severe mutilations and burns. The identification and assignment of body parts is mostly based on genetic examinations , whereby genetic traces of the perpetrator are also used to find relatives and thus for criminal investigation.

See also

literature

  • Christoph Reuter: My life is a weapon: suicide bomber, psychogram of a phenomenon . Bertelsmann, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-570-00646-8 .
  • Elhakam Sukhni: The "Martyrs' Operation " in Jihad: Origin and Inner-Islamic Discourse . Munich 2011
  • Thorsten Gerald Schneiders : Today I'm going to blow myself up - Suicide attacks in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: A scientific contribution to the question of why . Lit, Münster 2006, ISBN 3-8258-8763-4 .
  • Julia Jusik: The Brides of Allah. Suicide bombers from Chechnya. NP, St. Pölten / Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-85326-373-9 .
  • Lorenz Graitl : masses, murderers, martyrs. On the social psychology of suicide bombings. In: IZ3W. No. 293, pp. 10-13, 2006 sopos.org
  • Ami Pedahzur: Suicide Terrorism . Polity, 2005, ISBN 0-7456-3383-8 .
  • Arata Takeda: Aesthetics of Self Destruction. Suicide bombers in Western literature . Fink, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-7705-5062-3 . ( Full text at Digi20 of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek )
  • Lorenz Graitl: dying as a spectacle. On the communicative dimension of politically motivated suicide. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2012, ISBN 978-3-531-18461-6 .
  • Jörg Fisch : Suicide bombers are not suicides. And whoever turns his own life into a weapon shows no strength . Article, in: NZZ , April 1, 2017, p. 23

Web links

Wiktionary: Suicide bombing  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Commons : suicide bombing  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

German

English

Footnotes

  1. ↑ compound words : suicide bombing, suicide attack, suicide attack, suicide attempt.
  2. ↑ Schneiders (2006), p. 59 (online)
  3. ↑ Christoph Reuter: Suicide bomber: Why people become living bombs . Munich 2003, p. 18f.
  4. ↑ Elhakam Sukhni: The "Martyrs' Operation " in Jihad: Origin and Inner-Islamic Discourse . Munich 2011, p. 66.
  5. ↑ Elhakam Sukhni: The "Martyrs' Operation " in Jihad: Origin and Inner-Islamic Discourse. Munich 2011, p. 17f.
  6. ^ W. Laqueur: The new terrorism: Fanaticism and the arms of mass destruction . New York 1999. Also: W. Enders, T. Sandler: Is transnational terrorism becoming more threatening? Atime series investigation. In: Journal of Conflict Resolution. 44, 2000, pp. 307-332. And: B. Hoffman: Inside terrorism. New York 1998.
  7. ↑ Table Q89 ( Memento from August 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ Pew Research Center (2013) THE WORLD'S MUSLIMS: RELIGION, POLITICS AND SOCIETY. Chapter 2: Religion and Politics , April 30, 2013.
  9. ^ David Grossman: Lion Honey. The myth of Samson. Berlin Verlag, Berlin 2006, p. 122f.
  10. ^ Adam Dolnik: Understanding Terrorist Innovation: Technology, Tactics and Global Trends. Routledge, 2007, ISBN 0-415-54516-1 , p. 43.
  11. ↑ According to the Vietnamese police, the assassin was a member of the communist Việt Minh militia (Thorsten G. Schneiders: Today I will blow myself up. P. 58 ( online )).
  12. ↑ Schneiders points out on p. 53 that several authors overlooked this attack and wrongly named 1982 (not 1981) as the year in which the development began.
  13. ↑ Thorsten G. Schneiders: Today I will blow myself up. P. 54 ff.
  14. ↑ Thorsten G. Schneiders: Today I will blow myself up. P.56.
  15. ↑ Lebanon: “We will finish off the devils”. In: Der Spiegel. 39/1984, p. 128 f.
  16. ↑ welt.de: Chronicle (1979 to 2007): Attacks on US embassies
  17. ↑ Thorsten G. Schneiders: Today I will blow myself up. P. 60 (online)
  18. ↑ Thomas Strentz: A terrorist psychosocial profile. Past and present . FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 57, 1988, pp. 13-19.
  19. ↑ a b p. 71.
  20. ↑ US Army Female Suicide Bombers Report. (PDF; 2 MB) Public Intelligence, p. 71 , accessed on January 30, 2013 (English).
  21. ↑ Clara Beyler: Messengers of Death - Female Suicide Bombers. International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, February 12, 2003, accessed January 30, 2013 .
  22. ↑ Thorsten G. Schneiders: Today I will blow myself up. P. 57 (online)
  23. ↑ CV (English)
  24. ↑ See G. Thorsten Schneiders: Today I'll blow myself up. Suicide attacks in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A scientific contribution to the question of why . Münster 2007, p. 54 ff.
  25. ↑ a b A. B. Krueger, J. Maleckova: Education, poverty, political violence, and terrorism: Is there a connection? Working Paper No. w9074, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2002. In: online version .
  26. ↑ see also en: Gamini Dissanayake # Assassination
  27. ↑ BBC.co.uk
  28. ^ Julian Madsen: Suicide Terrorism: Rationalizing the Irrational. ( Memento from August 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) In: Strategic Insights. Volume III, Issue 8, August 2004, p. 2.
  29. ↑ according to Madsen there were 14
  30. ↑ Thorsten G. Schneiders: Today I will blow myself up. P. 66 (online)
  31. ↑ Ami Pedahzur: Suicide Terrorism. P. 94 ( books.google.de )
  32. ↑ US condemns Syria suicide attacks . Foxnews (AP) May 10, 2012; Retrieved July 15, 2013.
  33. ↑ a b Ruth Sherlock: Inside Jabhat al Nusra - the most extreme wing of Syria's struggle . In: The Telegraph. December 5, 2012; Retrieved July 15, 2013.
  34. ↑ Bomb kills Syria defense minister, Assad's brother-in-law and key aides ( Memento of July 19, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Alarabia, July 18, 2012; Retrieved July 15, 2013.
  35. ↑ Syria jihadists claim bus bombing on Hama factory . February 24, 2013, accessed July 15, 2013.
  36. ↑ Reuters: At least 15 killed in Damascus suicide bombing . The Telegraph. April 8, 2013; Retrieved July 15, 2013.
  37. ↑ At least 42 killed in suicide bombing at Syria mosque . foxnews, March 21, 2013; Retrieved July 15, 2013.
  38. ↑ Syria: Suicide attack in mosque kills numerous people . deutsch-tuerkische-nachrichten.de, March 21, 2013; Retrieved July 15, 2013.
  39. ↑ Malcom Nance: Defeating ISIS: Who They Are, How They Fight, What They Believe Skyhorse, 2016, ISBN 978-1510711846
  40. ^ Charles R. Lister: The Syrian Jihad: Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Evolution of an Insurgency , 2016, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0190462475
  41. ↑ Erich Follath: Saudi Arabia. The stepchildren of terror . In: Der Spiegel . No. 40 , 2001 ( online ).
  42. ^ A b Bernard Lewis, Buntzie Ellis Churchill: Islam: The Religion and the People . Wharton School Publishing, 2008, pp. 145-153.
  43. ^ Noah Feldman: Islam, Terror and the Second Nuclear Age. The New York Times online October 29, 2006, accessed September 20, 2012 .
  44. ↑ David Bukay: From Muhammad to Bin Laden: Religious and Ideological Sources of the Homicide Bombers Phenomenon . Transaction Publishers, 2008, ISBN 978-0-7658-0390-0 , pp. 295f. (Google Books; accessed August 19, 2012).
  45. ↑ Abstract ( A Comparative Study of Lebanese and Palestinian Perceptions of Suicide Bombings: The Role of Militant Islam and Socio-Economic Status. In: en: International Journal of Comparative Sociology October 2004 45: 337-363)
  46. ↑ Christoph Reuter : My life is a weapon. Suicide bomber - psychogram of a phenomenon . Bertelsmann 2002, p. 23.
  47. ^ A. Takeda: The regressive human sacrifice. On the actual scandal of contemporary terrorism (PDF; 114 kB). In: processes . 197, 51/1, 2012, pp. 116-118.
  48. ↑ Klaus Grabska: hatred and violent fantasies in times of negative modernization. Anders Breivik: one of us? In: Forum of Psychoanalysis . tape 33 , 2017, ISSN  0178-7667 , p. 171–184 ( springer.com [accessed October 2, 2020] abstract).
  49. ↑ Katharina Schipkowski: Look into the psyche of the terrorists. "A cruel superego". What makes suicide bombers give their lives to spread terror? Psychoanalyst Klaus Grabska deals with the inner world of assassins . In: The daily newspaper . December 1, 2015 ( taz.de [accessed October 2, 2020]).
  50. ^ A. Takeda: Aesthetics of Self-Destruction. Suicide bombers in Western literature . Munich 2010, p. 44.
  51. ↑ DM Weigl et al .: Small-fragment wounds from explosive devices: need for and timing of fragment removal . In: J. Pediatr. Orthop. 25 (2), 2005, pp. 158-161. PMID 15718893
  52. ^ I. Braverman et al.: A novel mode of infection with hepatitis B: penetrating bone fragments due to the explosion of a suicide bomber. In: Isr. Med. Assoc. J. 4 (7), 2002, pp. 528-529. PMID 12120465
  53. ↑ H. Zafar et al .: Suicidal bus bombing of French Nationals in Pakistan: physical injuries and management of survivors. In: Eur. J. Emerg. Med. 12 (4), 2005, pp. 163-167. PMID 16034261
  54. ↑ TO Malik et al: Mass casualty management after a suicidal terrorist attack on a religious procession in Quetta, Pakistan. In: J. Coll. Physicians Surg. Pak. 16 (4), 2006, pp. 253-256. PMID 16624186
  55. ↑ J. Hiss, T. Kahana: Trauma and identification of victims of suicidal terrorism in Israel. In: Mil Med. 165 (11), 2000, pp. 889-893. PMID 11143441
  56. ↑ Reading sample
  57. ^ Abstract