Under the Microscope: Prof William Reville One of the most disturbing aspects of war and terrorism is the suicide bomber. Suicide bombings are now regular occurrences in Iraq and in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
We commonly imagine that the typical suicide bomber is psychologically unlike the rest of us and, possibly, has a death wish.
However research shows that most suicide bombers are psychologically normal and the phenomenon is most readily explained as a community response set in a background of violence, aggression and revenge. Suicide bombing is examined from a psychological point of view by Paul Marsden and Sharon Attia in the March 2005 edition of the Psychologist.
Suicide terrorism is not new. From the 11th century on, Assassins invited almost certain death for themselves following their brazen public murder of rivals. More recently, in the Vietnam war, Vietcong supporters blew themselves up in order to kill American soldiers.
The most recent wave of suicide terror began in Lebanon in 1981. The 1983 truck bombings killed 241 US marines and 58 French paratroopers. US troops left Lebanon four months later. These suicide attacks brought much prestige to the organisations that arranged them. Terror organisations were inspired to emulate them worldwide.
Marsden and Attia dispose of several common ideas about suicide bombers. First they declare that there is no evidence to suggest that suicide bombers suffer from personality disorders or psychiatric conditions. Second, they point out that many groups employing the tactic of suicide bombing, including those in the Middle East, are secular. Third, most of the suicide bombings since 1980 have been carried out by the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers, from a predominantly Hindu culture, deflating the notion that Islamic belief is the root cause of suicide bombing.
Christine Huda Dodge in About's Guide to Islam points out that suicide is forbidden in Islam and that "harming innocent bystanders, even in times of war, was forbidden by the Prophet Muhammad".
Most suicide bombers in the Middle East are young men, but a significant minority are female. They come from a wide variety of backgrounds. A survey in 2001 showed that 47 per cent of suicide bombers have third-level education and about 20 per cent are married. Almost all are volunteers - 70 per cent of school children in Gaza, according to a recent survey, wish to become religious martyrs.
According to Marsden and Attia, scientific evidence suggests that the cause of behaviour "often lies more in the external context and group behaviour than it does in our own heads". Experiments have demonstrated that people will tend to behave violently when placed in violent environments and some researchers say that the cause of suicide bombing lies largely in "the pathological contexts and groups within which it takes place".
Suicide bombings are organised and managed by groups and are not the pure product of lone individuals. These groups are operating in a culture of violence, aggression, privation and revenge and, in this context, may conceive of suicide bombings as a rational and appropriate response to perceived gross persecution at the hands of a hated enemy.
In this context they will view suicide bombing as a flexible, adaptable, low-cost strategy of warfare that is highly cost-effective and of proven value in furthering political aims. It follows therefore that the threat of suicide bombing can only be fundamentally managed by understanding these groups and the conditions that produce them. However, some small amelioration may be achieved in another way that I will describe shortly.
Of course, understanding the reasons why terror groups employ suicide missions is not in any way to condone these actions, and in particular when civilians are the targets. Amnesty International examined Palestinian arguments for killing Israeli civilians in 2002 - basically that this is the only way to make an impression on a powerful enemy - and found them unacceptable. The report found that the deliberate killing of civilians was a crime against humanity. The report further declared that certain Israeli violations of human rights also met the definition of crimes against humanity.
The inducement of certain types of behaviour through mass media coverage is called media contagion. The power of media contagion is illustrated most effectively by the power of commercial advertising. There is no way commercial enterprises would spend all that money on advertising if it were not highly effective. Media contagion is also a well-established phenomenon in suicide. When suicide stories are prominently reported in the media, suicide levels can quickly increase by up to 10 per cent. Research also shows that media violence spreads violent behaviour.
Because of the known effect of media contagion on suicide there are generally accepted media guidelines for media coverage of suicide. Marsden and Attia propose that these guidelines, appropriately modified, should be adopted by the media when reporting suicide bombings. These guidelines would include the avoidance of
(a) extensive/repetitive reporting of suicide bombings
(b) concentrating on the events of suicide bombings
(c) presenting simplistic explanations for suicide bombings
(d) presenting these bombings as means to an end
(e) glorifying the suicide bomber and
(f) focusing on the bomber's positive characteristics.
Suicide bombing is a very effective tactic for striking terror into an enemy and the main targets are not the people who are killed and injured, but the people who will witness the attacks through media coverage. By reporting suicide bombings in an appropriate manner, the media can dampen the publicity effect and this should feed back to dampen the enthusiasm of the organising groups for using this terror tactic.