22 October 2007
Profile of Suicide Terrorist Defies Common Stereotypes
Many attackers come from educated, middle-class backgrounds
This is the second in a series of articles on suicide terrorism.
Washington -- Suicide terrorists defy stereotypes. They may be young or middle-aged or even children, married or single, men or women, educated, religious or not, according to a growing body of information, experts say.
In a study of terrorism by Dr. Marc Sageman of Sageman Consulting in Maryland, terrorists like the ones who attacked the United States in 2001 came from middle-class backgrounds, not from poverty as sometimes is thought. "This has been true for most political movements, including terrorist movements, and al-Qaida is no different," he writes in a recent issue of eJournal USA.
Sageman, a forensic psychiatrist and terrorism researcher, cites a study in which he examined more than 400 al-Qaida-affiliated terrorists from the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Northern Africa, and Europe. The study showed only about 13 percent went to madrassas, or religious-based schools, often thought to be a source of new suicide attackers. Sageman said that the vast majority of terrorists in his study, about 84 percent, were radicalized in the West, rather than in their former countries.
Research also indicates that many new terrorists often are self-selected and self-radicalized, and follow kin and friends into terrorist organizations to commit suicide attacks, experts say.
Studies conducted by Harvard researcher Jessica Stern indicate that many young terrorists who have chosen to become suicide attackers developed a deepening radicalization from a perceived humiliation, a theme supported by Scott Atran, director of research in anthropology at France's Centre National de la Recherché Scientifique (CNRS) and a recent visiting professor at the University of Michigan.
Writing in the Washington Quarterly, Atran says understanding the theme of humiliation in terms of how they have been treated by foreign forces is important to understanding Islamists' rage. Individuals who choose to commit suicide bombing attacks often are influenced more by values and identity with the terrorist group than by other considerations for their own well-being, he says.
"The motivations for suicide attacks are not so different in many ways from the motivations for other types of terrorism, including attention to a cause, personal notoriety, anger, revenge and retribution against a perceived injustice," says Audrey Kurth Cronin, a former specialist in terrorism with the Congressional Research Service, which is part of the U.S. Library of Congress.
Cronin said that for some suicide bombers the act of "martyrdom" may offer a chance to impress others or offer an opportunity to be remembered. "Suicide attackers are sometimes widows or bereaved siblings who wish to take vengeance for their loved one's violent death," she said.
“Suicide bombing initially seemed the desperate act of lone individuals, but it is not undertaken alone," Bruce Hoffman, a professor of security studies at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service writes in "The Logic of Suicide Terrorism" in the magazine Atlantic Monthly.
For additional information, see “Suicide Terrorism on the Rise Worldwide, Experts Say.”
(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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