{"id":13638,"date":"2016-03-25T16:15:26","date_gmt":"2016-03-25T21:15:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hcstx.org\/?p=13638"},"modified":"2016-03-25T16:15:26","modified_gmt":"2016-03-25T21:15:26","slug":"examining-terrorist-tactics-the-changing-logic-behind-suicide-bombings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2016\/03\/25\/examining-terrorist-tactics-the-changing-logic-behind-suicide-bombings\/","title":{"rendered":"Examining Terrorist Tactics: The Changing Logic Behind Suicide Bombings"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"defense-large\"<\/p>\n

(Note from Hammerhead<\/strong>: It was just announced that yet another\u00a0ISIS suicide bomber killed 29 people in a Football Stadium in Baghdad<\/a><\/strong>).<\/p>\n

What was once purely a strategic action has become a tactical move meant to help hold territory.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In October 2015<\/strong>, two suicide bombers killed\u00a0more than 100 people<\/a>\u00a0outside a railway station in the Turkish capital of Ankara. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in the country\u2019s modern history, but it was also something more, something not fully appreciated at the time, according to Robert Pape, a terrorism expert at the University of Chicago: The U.S.-led military campaign against the Islamic State\u2014a mixture of air strikes and support for local ground forces\u2014had turned ISIS<\/span>into a \u201ccornered animal.\u201d And the animal was lashing out.<\/p>\n

The group\u2019s suicide attacks in its sanctuaries of Syria and Iraq declined, displaced by complex acts of terrorism abroad: the Ankara attacks, followed by the\u00a0October 2015 downing of a Russian plane over Egypt<\/a>, the\u00a0November 2015 Paris attacks<\/a>,more explosions in Turkey<\/a>, and most recently\u00a0triple bombings<\/a>, at least two of them suicide blasts, in Brussels. All have appeared meticulously designed to kill as many people as possible in countries that are all, to\u00a0differing<\/a>\u00a0degrees<\/a>, fighting the Islamic State. The question is: Why is the animal suddenly flailing about? Why are bombs going off in Brussels\u00a0now<\/em>?<\/p>\n

On display in Belgium this week, Pape argues, is what he calls the \u201cstrategic logic of suicide terrorism<\/a>.\u201d Deciphering the logic of terrorists\u00a0is maddeningly difficult<\/a>, which is why the study of terrorism is anexercise in competing theories, all circling The Truth at varying\u00a0distances.<\/p>\n

Pape\u2019s theory is that suicide terrorism is fundamentally a response to military intervention\u2014in the form of a rival occupying territory that the terrorists prize. For \u201cnationalist\u201d reasons, the terrorists want to control that territory, as any state would, through a monopoly on force and exclusive political authority. The argument here isn\u2019t that all territorial occupations produce suicide terrorism, or that every individual terrorist is chiefly concerned with contested land, but rather that terrorist groups that today practice suicide terrorism tend to be grappling with dynamic losses of territory. Drawing on a\u00a0database of suicide attacks around the world<\/a>\u00a0since 1982, Pape claims that his geopolitical paradigm has more predictive power than, say, explanations for terrorism that focus on\u00a0religious fanaticism<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The idea that ISIS<\/span> is primarily driven by extreme Islamist ideology suggests that \u201cthe targeting logic of a group comes right from its [religious] doctrine,\u201d Pape told me. \u201cGiven thatISIS<\/span>\u2019s doctrine has not changed\u2014that is, it\u2019s still a religious group\u2014then there should never have been a shift of its targeting tactics.\u201d And yet a shift in who it targets seems to have occurred.\u00a0Why?<\/p>\n

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ISIS<\/span> Territorial Gains and Losses: January 1, 2015\u2013March 14,\u00a02016<\/h2>\n

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\nIHS<\/span> Conflict Monitor<\/a><\/em><\/small><\/p>\n

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In other words: In response to Ted Cruz\u2019s\u00a0statement<\/a>\u00a0on Tuesday, following the bloodshed in Brussels, that \u201cradical Islam is at war with us,\u201d Pape might agree that ISIS<\/span> is a radical Islamist group. But he likely wouldn\u2019t agree that the precepts of radical Islam are determining the course of the war that ISIS<\/span>is\u00a0waging.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ebbs and flows of territory are predictive of the group\u2019s targeting logic,\u201d Pape told me, and the evolution of that logic over the last six months might be the key lesson from the Brussels attacks, even if the violence may have more proximate causes as well, such as the\u00a0arrest last week<\/a>\u00a0in Brussels of one of the plotters of the Paris attacks. \u201cISIS<\/span> is now losing in Iraq and Syria\u2014they\u2019re losing actually quite badly\u2014and so they\u2019re now in a position where they\u2019re trying to change a losing game,\u201d he said. The less in control the organization is at home, the more it strikes at targets\u00a0abroad.<\/p>\n

Pape argues that interpreting incidents like the Brussels attacks as a sign of weakness rather than strength is critical. He worries that if people conclude from the Belgium bombings that ISIS<\/span> is stronger than ever, they\u2019ll be more likely to support a major American or European ground offensive against the group. Such an offensive, he believes, will greatly increase the risk of suicide terrorism against Western targets beyond what\u2019s likely to result from the current air campaign, without offering a higher probability of success in the fight against\u00a0ISIS<\/span>.<\/p>\n

In defending the link between fierce struggles for territory and the use of suicide bombing as a strategy, Pape cites historical examples ranging from\u00a0Chechen terrorists in Russia<\/a>\u00a0to the\u00a0Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka<\/a>. In 2010, he applied the theory to America\u2019s occupations of Afghanistan starting in 2001 and Iraq starting in 2003. \u201cFrom 1980 to 2003, there were 343 suicide attacks around the world, and at most 10 percent were anti-American inspired,\u201d he\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0Foreign Policy<\/em>. \u201cSince 2004, there have been more than 2,000, over 91 percent against U.S.<\/span> and allied forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries.\u201d The invasion of Iraq, hehas argued<\/a>\u00a0in the past, \u201cproduced the largest suicide campaign in\u00a0history.\u201d<\/p>\n

But if the occupation of territory spurs terrorism, why does it take the form of suicide<\/em>\u00a0terrorism specifically? Suicide attacks, Pape explained, are particularly well-suited to accomplishing two goals. One is \u201cto coerce the target government to pull back its military forces, and suicide attacks kill more people\u2014it\u2019s the lung cancer of terrorism\u2014than non-suicide attacks by a factor of ten.\u201d The public will be terrorized by the scale of the carnage and the sinister nature of the suicidal act itself, the logic goes. Under pressure, their government will be forced to retreat from the territory that the terrorists\u00a0desire.<\/p>\n

Second, in the regions where terrorist groups operate, \u201csuicide attacks are excellent against security targets to hold territory.\u201d Those security forces\u2014be they American or Iraqi or Sinhalese\u2014are usually better armed and equipped than the terrorists. \u201cSuicide attacks are a way to level that tactical advantage,\u201d Pape\u00a0explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re just going to go up against a tank with a handgun, it\u2019s a lot less effective than some coordinated suicide attacks,\u201d he continued. \u201cThat\u2019s why, when there was a pitched battle for [the Iraqi city of] Ramadi last May, there were complex suicide attacks [by ISIS<\/span>] used in coordination with other non-suicide attacks to basically seize and hold territory against an opposing force. That\u2019s not something that we see in El Salvador with the [guerrilla group] FMLN<\/span> [during the Salvadoran Civil War]. We don\u2019t see that with the [Viet Cong] in South Vietnam [during the Vietnam War]. They\u2019re not holding territory in a pitched way. \u2026 Suicide attack allows for more aggressive, coercive punishment and it allows for more aggressive territorial strategies.\u201d While these strategic considerations have remained fairly constant across time and place, he says, what\u2019s changed in the last 10 or 15 years is that in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, suicide bombing has increasingly been used as a\u00a0tactic<\/em>\u00a0to take and hold\u00a0territory.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, ISIS<\/span>\u00a0justified<\/a>\u00a0its suicide attacks as retaliation against \u201cthe Crusader states\u201d for \u201ctheir aggression against the Islamic State,\u201d adding that it had targeted \u201cCrusader Belgium\u201d in particular because it would \u201cnot stop targeting Islam and its people.\u201d The statement had all the trappings of a religious message, but its essential argument echoed Pape\u2019s secular thesis: Brussels was being targeted for the participation of Belgium, and European countries more broadly, in the anti-ISIS<\/span>coalition. What if we take the jihadists at their\u00a0word?<\/p>\n

Read the Original Article at Defense One<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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(Note from Hammerhead: It was just announced that yet another\u00a0ISIS suicide bomber killed 29 people in a Football Stadium in Baghdad). What was once purely a strategic action has become a tactical move meant to help hold territory. In October 2015, two suicide bombers killed\u00a0more than 100 people\u00a0outside a railway station in the Turkish capital…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1583,1704,5072,13,74,5699,5539,1894,17,272,3321,1898],"tags":[2779,1083,10458,10618,10619],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13638"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13638\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}