The rise of a jihadi suicide culture

The Shiite group Hizbullah, which pioneered modern suicide bombings against Israel during its occupation of Lebanon, used the tactic fewer than 40 times. Palestinian militants, who adopted the tactic from Hizbullah, used suicide attackers 100 times in the 10 years until the end of 2002. Since, there have been 35 suicide attacks. And in Iraq, where suicide terrorism was virtually unknown before the US invasion, there have been 188 suicide bombings since August 2003, according to the Brookings Institute Iraq Index (although some research puts the tally as high as 400.)

That compares to 315 total suicide attacks carried out worldwide between 1980 and 2003, according to data compiled by University of Chicago professor Robert Pape in his book "Dying to Win."

Mr. Pape argues in his book that suicide attacks are far from exclusive to Muslims or religious radicals.

He points out that 76 of the attacks in the period he surveyed were carried by Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers, a secular separatist movement, while others point to the Japanese kamikazes of World War II.

"It's a tactic of desperation, of people who feel they're weak and have to take a stand against what they see as their enemy, so it's not just an act of fanaticism,'' says Wayne White, an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute and a retired senior official for the State Department's office of Analysis for the Near East and South Asia.

But while he says it would be wrong to identify suicide terrorism with Islam, he says that a radical subculture has emerged within Islam that has created a spreading problem.

"Let's face it, there's an intersection of two factors here, a significant rise in the past two decades of Islamic piety which sometimes extends to radical Islamic piety and feelings of hopelessness, a sense of helplessness in the face of what's seen as Western imperialism or aggression," he says.

While many Muslim preachers are speaking out against these terror tactics, the core beliefs of Al Qaeda and other groups that favor attacks on civilians are broadcast around the world every day. "You get many clerics who say it's haram [forbidden] to do this, but they have their own clerics that will justify whatever that they want to do,'' says Mr. White.

Evan Kohlmann, a terrorism consultant and author of "Al Qaeda's Jihad in Europe" says that on militant websites, stories of the bravery and heroism of suicide bombers in Iraq, Israel, and elsewhere are traded in ways that can prompt imitators.

"In the US there are young men who look up to sports stars, and in radical Muslim circles the heroes are these guys fighting in Iraq" and carrying out other attacks, he says.

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