Suicide Terrorism—A strategic psychological warfare
I stumbled upon a Science review article published in March of 2003, discussing suicide terrorism. This article caught my attention for two reasons: 1) I didn’t know that Science magazine, a first tier peer reviewed journal that mostly publishes basic science research, contains research from the social science discipline and 2) suicide terrorism is what the US is trying to prevent from happening within the states. This article can be accessed from the Link Page section and I highly recommend it. It is available in pdf format.
In this review article, Scott Atran, the author, discusses the historical significance of suicide terrorism and how “terrorism” is defined today. In it, he states that suicide terrorism is focus on affecting political policy and change and that it is intended to be a psychological warfare intended at the witnessing public. Atran suggests that suicide bombers are borned because of indoctrination and training under charismatic leaders and that they are bonded by a fictive kin relationship. This idea of a fictive kin reminded me of Freud and his theory on identification of ego; the idea of the charismatic leaders made me think of Max Weber and his discussion of types of legitimate domination where there are three types of claim to legitimize an authority: rational, traditional, and charismatic. Atran further points out that most people tend to misconstrue the social profile of a suicide bomber, ie poor, uneducated, and probably suffering from some psychological damage. Yet research has shown that most suicide bombers are in fact young, educated, normal being that just happen to have intense religious views. So while policy makers are trying to improve economic conditions of those in poverty, such as Bush, or educate people, Atran suggests that the best way to fight suicide terrorism is by understand what the recruiting organizations are doing to inculcate their recruits. Furthermore, Atran argues that we can’t continue to misperceive differences between group norms as more extreme than they really are, ie terrorists vs freedom fighters.
I learned a lot from reading this article and I agreed with Atran on a lot of the points raised. By increasing the level of awareness about the subject is often the way to minimize misunderstanding.
I stumbled upon a Science review article published in March of 2003, discussing suicide terrorism. This article caught my attention for two reasons: 1) I didn’t know that Science magazine, a first tier peer reviewed journal that mostly publishes basic science research, contains research from the social science discipline and 2) suicide terrorism is what the US is trying to prevent from happening within the states. This article can be accessed from the Link Page section and I highly recommend it. It is available in pdf format.
In this review article, Scott Atran, the author, discusses the historical significance of suicide terrorism and how “terrorism” is defined today. In it, he states that suicide terrorism is focus on affecting political policy and change and that it is intended to be a psychological warfare intended at the witnessing public. Atran suggests that suicide bombers are borned because of indoctrination and training under charismatic leaders and that they are bonded by a fictive kin relationship. This idea of a fictive kin reminded me of Freud and his theory on identification of ego; the idea of the charismatic leaders made me think of Max Weber and his discussion of types of legitimate domination where there are three types of claim to legitimize an authority: rational, traditional, and charismatic. Atran further points out that most people tend to misconstrue the social profile of a suicide bomber, ie poor, uneducated, and probably suffering from some psychological damage. Yet research has shown that most suicide bombers are in fact young, educated, normal being that just happen to have intense religious views. So while policy makers are trying to improve economic conditions of those in poverty, such as Bush, or educate people, Atran suggests that the best way to fight suicide terrorism is by understand what the recruiting organizations are doing to inculcate their recruits. Furthermore, Atran argues that we can’t continue to misperceive differences between group norms as more extreme than they really are, ie terrorists vs freedom fighters.
I learned a lot from reading this article and I agreed with Atran on a lot of the points raised. By increasing the level of awareness about the subject is often the way to minimize misunderstanding.
