Author: Scott Atran
Publication: The New York Times
Date: May 5, 2003
One given in the war against terrorism
seems to be that suicide attackers are evil, deluded or homicidal misfits
who thrive in poverty, ignorance and anarchy.
President Bush, at last year's United
Nations conference on poor nations in Monterrey, Mexico, said that "we
fight against poverty because hope is an answer to terror." Senator John
Warner, the Virginia Republican, argued that a new security doctrine including
wars of preemption was necessary because "those who would commit suicide
in their assaults on the free world are not rational." A State Department
report issued on the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks said that development
aid should be based "on the belief that poverty provides a breeding ground
for terrorism."
As logical as the poverty-breeds-terrorism
argument may seem, study after study shows that suicide attackers and their
supporters are rarely ignorant or impoverished. Nor are they crazed, cowardly,
apathetic or asocial. If terrorist groups relied on such maladjusted people,
"they couldn't produce effective and reliable killers," according to Todd
Stewart, a retired Air Force general who directs the Ohio State University
program in international and domestic security.
In the suicide bombing of a cafe
in Tel Aviv last week that killed three bystanders, for instance, the bomber
and the man accused of being his accomplice grew up in Britain, in relatively
prosperous circumstances, and attended college.
The Princeton economist Alan Krueger
and others released a study in 2002 comparing Lebanese Hezbollah militants
who died in violent action to other Lebanese of the same age group. He
found that the Hezbollah members were less likely to come from poor homes
and more likely to have a secondary school education.
Nasra Hassan, a Pakistani relief
worker, interviewed nearly 250 aspiring Palestinian suicide bombers and
their recruiters. "None were uneducated, desperately poor, simple-minded
or depressed," she reported in 2001. "They all seemed to be entirely normal
members of their families."
A 2001 poll by the nonprofit Palestinian
Center for Policy and Survey Research indicated that Palestinian adults
with 12 years or more of education are far more likely to support bomb
attacks than those who cannot read.
Officials with the Army Defense
Intelligence Agency who have interrogated Saudi-born members of Al Qaeda
being detained at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have told me that these
fundamentalists, especially those in leadership positions, are often educated
above reasonable employment level; a surprising number have graduate degrees
and come from high-status families. Their motivation and commitment are
evident in their willingness to sacrifice material and emotional comforts
(families, jobs, physical security), to travel long distances and to pay
their own way.
The body of research shows that
over all, suicide terrorists tend not to have the attributes of the socially
dysfunctional (fatherless, friendless, jobless). They don't vent fear of
enemies or express hopelessness or a sense of "nothing to lose" because
of lack of a career or social mobility as would be consistent with economic
theories of criminal behavior. Suicide attackers don't opt for paradise
out of despair. If they did, say Muslim clerics who countenance martyrdom
for Allah but not personal suicide, their actions would be criminal and
blasphemous.
A study of world attitudes toward
America by the Pew Research Center in December 2002 and many other polls
of Muslims from Algeria to Indonesia show ever-rising support for "martyrs."
A United Nations report indicated that as soon as the United States began
building up for the Iraq invasion, Qaeda recruitment has picked up in 30
to 40 countries. Recruiters for groups sponsoring terrorist acts tell researchers
that volunteers are beating down the doors to join.
This allows terrorist agents to
choose recruits who are intelligent, psychologically balanced and socially
poised. Candidates who mostly want virgins in paradise or money for their
families are weeded out. Those selected show patience and the ability to
plan and execute in subtle, quiet ways that don't draw attention. Al Qaeda,
especially, is rarely in a hurry. It can wait years and then strike when
least expected.
It's the particular genius of the
institutions like Al Qaeda, Hamas or Hezbollah that they are able to make
otherwise well-adjusted people into human bombs. Intense indoctrination,
often lasting 18 months or more, causes recruits to identify emotionally
with their terrorist cell, viewing it as a family for whom they are as
willing to die as a mother for her child or a soldier for his buddies.
Consider the oath taken by members of Harkat al Ansar, a Pakistan-based
ally of Al Qaeda: "Each martyr has a special place - among them are brothers,
just as there are sons and those even more dear."
Brian Barber, a psychologist at
the University of Tennessee, has interviewed some 900 young adults from
Gaza and a comparison group of Bosnian Muslims who had also suffered through
violence but had not become a source of suicide bombers. The Bosnians had
markedly weaker expressions of self-esteem and less hope for the future.
Faith was the largest difference: the Palestinians routinely invoked religion
to invest personal trauma with social meaning, whereas the Bosnians did
not consider religion significant to their life.
This overall pattern was also captured
in a white paper by the Parliament of Singapore concerning captured operatives
from Jemaah Islamiyah, a militant group allied with Al Qaeda: "These men
were not ignorant, destitute or disenfranchised. Like many of their counterparts
in militant Islamic organizations in the region, they held normal, respectable
jobs. As a group, most of the detainees regarded religion as their most
important personal value."
Like the best Madison Avenue advertisers,
but to ghastlier effect, the charismatic leaders of terrorist groups turn
ordinary desires for family and religion into cravings for what they're
pitching.
How do we combat these masters of
manipulation? President Bush and many American politicans maintain that
these groups and the people supporting them hate our democracy and freedoms.
But poll after poll of the Muslim world shows opinion strongly favoring
America's forms of government, personal liberty and education. A University
of Michigan political scientist, Mark Tessler, finds Arab attitudes to
American culture most favorable among young adults (regardless of their
religious feeling) - the same population that recruiters single out.
It is our actions that they don't
like: as long ago as 1997, a Defense Department report (in response to
the 1996 suicide bombing of Air Force housing at the Khobar Towers in Saudi
Arabia) noted that "historical data show a strong correlation between U.S.
involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks
against the United States."
Shows of military strength don't
seem to dissuade terrorists: witness the failure of Israel's coercive efforts
to end the string of Palestinian suicide bombings. Rather, we need to show
the Muslim world the side of our culture that they most respect. Our engagement
needs to involve interfaith initiatives, not ethnic profiling. America
must address grievances, such as the conflict in the Palestinian territories,
whose daily images of violence engender global Muslim resentment.
Of course, this does not mean negotiating
with terrorist groups over goals like Al Qaeda's quest to replace the Western-inspired
system of nation-states with a global caliphate. Osama bin Laden seeks
no compromise. But most of the people who sympathize with him just might.
(Scott Atran, a research scientist
at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris and at the University
of Michigan, is author of ``In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape
of Religion.'')
