20/04/2015 - The main purpose of terrorists is to spread anxiety and fear among the civilian population; the methods used are many, the important thing is that their actions achieve results both at a political and propaganda level. The more the actions are striking, the greater the message of fear that organizations spread around the world.

The doctrine speaks of terrorism as a war conducted by a group of people who pursue a political purpose, but who do not have the possibility to confront their adversary by conventional methods. Terrorists certainly do not have the military capabilities of a sovereign state, yet they can cause deeper and more dangerous damage than a regular army. Suicide attacks are the deadliest weapon available to terrorist organizations and the most difficult challenge for counter-terrorism.

For the traditional Islamic religion, suicide is a very serious sin, the Koran forbids a Muslim to take his own life, yet the Islamists justify the extreme act with the term "martyrdom", thus trying to legitimize it with the religious community (istishhad sacrifice in the name of Allah). The historical roots of martyrdom for Allah are scarce, there is no official tradition in this sense, but Michael Taarnby, in his Profiling Islamic Suicide Terrorism, try to identify two episodes that the Islamists refer to: the sacrifice of Ussein ibn'Ali at the Battle of Karbala in 800 BC and the practices of the known sect of the Assassins active between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. If this theory has raised doubts among several scholars, the one on which everyone agrees is that suicide terrorism, as we understand it today, has more recent roots, traceable among the Iranian Shiites. The Islamic revolution of the 1979 and the birth of Hezbollah marked, in fact, an important step in the history of terrorism. Let's think for a moment about the fanatical waves of the Basij-e Mustazafin (Mobilization of the Oppressed) in the war against Iraq: men, old and young, who hurled themselves at the enemy aware of their death. For the Iranians, the ideological fervor of Khomeni's words was decisive in pushing them to extreme acts.

The first suicide bombing of contemporary terrorism dates back to 18 1983 April when the US embassy in Beirut was demolished by 910 kg of explosives causing 63 deaths.

The war in Lebanon and the arrival of the multinational peace force marked a new escalation of suicide attacks: the killing of 241 marines and 56 French soldiers marked the end of the American commitment in that region, effectively decreeing the victory of Hezbollah .

Until the eighties no Islamist group could boast the same number of suicide attacks by the Iranians; things began to change in the 1990s with Hamas and al-Qaeda which quickly raised the average in their favor.

Definition

What is a suicide attack?

Boaz Ganor (photo below), Executive Director of the'International Insitute for Counter Terrorism of Herzliya in Israel, has given the most correct definition: the suicide attack is an operative method in which the real action of attack depends on the death of the one who performs it. This is the only situation in which the terrorist is sure that if he does not kill himself, the operation will fail and the plan will not be concluded.

Features, motivations and benefits

Among the various common places on suicide attacks, the most widespread is that the attackers are crazy, asocial and fanatical. Nothing could be more false.

In agreement with the words of Boaz Ganor, whoever commits a suicide attack, far from being unreasonable, is the author of a rational act and never the result of personal initiative.

Robert A. Pape, one of the leading terrorist scholars of the University of Chicago, agrees with the doctrine of ICT explaining how the attacks follow a strategic logic that has a beginning and an end, determined by the results achieved.

On why organizations increasingly adopt this type of aggression, the unanimous answer is simple: because it works.

The same Ganor defines the suicide bombers "smart bomb"(Smart bombs) in the hands of organizations: an attacker with his death load can decide where and when to blow up, can change goal at the last moment and in any way you try to stop it will still cause irreparable damage. Terrorist organizations then rely on the spasmodic attention of the mass media, which greatly amplify the gravity of what happened by making a megaphone to their message.

But what drives a man to become one shahid? But above all, who are the martyrs of the jihadist cause?

Regarding the first question, we specify that there are common motivations, while others derive from the particular situation in which the future martyrs of Allah grow. Obviously Islamist terrorism is driven by a strong religious drive resulting from a distorted interpretation of the word Jihad. Abdul Hadi Palazzi, director of the Cultural Institute of the Italian Islamic Community, recalls how the Islamic religion was kidnapped and bent by the wahhbiti to endorse their barbarism.

Tracing a profile that unites suicide terrorists is problematic; as Michael Taarnby pointed out, what was true for the past is no longer valid today and it would be imprudent to create categories. In the common vision, typically Western, we imagine the "martyrs" as deeply religious, isolated, socially marginalized or desperate and in this description everything is true, but also nothing.

Muhammad Atta, leader of the September 11 terrorists, was not a pimp: he had grown up in Germany, had a good life, had a medium-high culture and drank alcohol, yet his gesture was guided by a deep religious conscience. The evening before crashing on one of the Twin Towers, he solemnized the event by writing to his brother horrias (the 72 virgins of Islamic paradise) and the imminent atonement of his sins thanks to death.

The case of Muhammad Atta is not different from that of other attackers who have similar stories: birth and Western formative process, acceptable living conditions, medium-high culture, but above all a sudden and irrepressible search for themselves and their own origins. They are what analysts call "reborn Arabs", ie people born and lived in Europe or America, with a Western lifestyle in which they have not been able to identify themselves.

This disorientation causes several questions such as: "Who am I really?". The action of Islamist propaganda is based on this precariousness and desire for answers. These are the people who swell the ranks of al-Qaeda that provides them with a new moral identity and ideological feedback to their existential doubts. From this moment begins a sort of isolation and / or voluntary marginalization of the veolontary from the rest of society, dictated above all by the needs of the organization. Among the dynamics that drive a person to turn into a martyr, the group's logic plays a substantial role, not the individual characteristics. Scott Aran, anthropologist and author of The Moral Logic and Growth of Suicide Terrorism, identifies the "cell" as the main embryo within which matures the desire to commit suicide for the cause.

Otherwise, this succession of events does not involve Afghan Arabs who, conversely, are the group least likely to blow themselves up for jihad. It is statistically proven that trained mujaheddin with direct experience on the battlefield, repudiate suicide as a method of struggle, thus representing the lowest percentage among the bombers.

Of different shape are the attacks of Palestinian matrix where the individual is dominated by a sense of frustration and irrisolutezza that favors a self-destructive attitude. According to Khalil Shikaki, of the Center for Palestine Research and Studies of Nablus, the Palestinians are crushed between the oppressive presence of the Israeli army and the violence of Hamas. The continuous friction between these two poles creates, in fact, an intolerable situation, erasing all hope for a different future. In addition we must consider a peculiar characteristic among the Palestinians, patriotism; their suicide actions are, in fact, supported by a strong sense of honor (present in all Muslim society), but above all by love for their land. A profound religiousness, although distorted, is common to all the attackers, who however have characteristics that vary according to the place where they were born and raised, by the family, experiences and friendships.

He who offers his life for the Prophet, enjoys heavenly favors, but also land: the first are traceable between the lines of the Koran, while the latter are closely connected to terrorist organizations. In all cases the bomber is seen as a hero, especially for his family because the latter will derive the greatest benefits from his martyrdom. One's family shahid immediately acquires the favors of the organization, tangible in the form of money and social prestige. Therefore, those who take their lives do not only make a political and religious gesture, but also altruistic with respect to their relatives. The chosen ones also have the opportunity to leave a will that supports their gesture; the martyrs often record videos in which they tell the sacrifice for Allah by being portrayed near the place where they will explode.

Suicide terrorists are therefore deadly weapons and the real challenge of anti-terrorism is to prevent or thwart these gestures, far from crazy.

Technology and targeted training of security personnel certainly helps to cope with the situation, but when this kind of threat is fought, a good number of victims must always be counted.

Conclusions

The data resulting from accurate research such as that of Michael Taarnby become one of the crucial issues for trying to understand the phenomenon of suicide terrorism; the cases analyzed explain how the motive is always the same, despite the personal stories are profoundly different. Even more alarming is the news, confirmed by the ICT studies, which points to Europe as the main recruitment center for future bombers and the events that have recently happened in Paris prove this. The Islamic communities of Paris, London or Berlin are potential terrorist factories; the conditions in which certain young people live, those who have not known or been able to exploit the great "Western" occasion, is one of the keys to understanding not only suicidal terrorism, but jihadism in a wider sense.

Marginalization, integration, racism are all words that are comfortable in the living rooms of the European Community, but that take on a different meaning among the population of cities increasingly oppressed by a ruthless economic dynamism. The search for one's own origins through religion is not a condemnable fact, yet it seems very strange how the message of Islamists sounds stronger than that of traditional Islam.

To conclude, Palazzi's statement on the abduction of his religion is fitting, but does not answer the question of how good Islam, that of the majority, can free itself from its "dark side".

Paolo Palumbo