The Banality of Suicide Terrorism

The Banality of Suicide Terrorism PDF Author: Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
ISBN: 1597976016
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Terrorist organizations have been able to market mass murder under hysteria's banner of alleged martyrdom. But when it comes to understanding Islamic suicide terrorism in particular, there is much more to it than martyrdom. In this groundbreaking book, Nancy Kobrin dismantles the psychological dynamics of suicide terrorism to help the reader gain a new perspective on one of the most destructive forces the world has witnessed to date. Until now, no one has explained why the mother-child relationship is central to understanding Islamic suicide terrorism. The Banality of Suicide Terrorism exposes the very ordinariness of one of the deepest yet most poorly understood causes of the suicide bomber's motivation: a profound terror of abandonment that is rooted in the mother-child relationship. According to Kobrin, this terror is so great in the would-be suicide terrorist that he or she must commit suicide (and mass murder in the process) in order to fend off that terror of dependency and abandonment. Suicide terrorists seek a return to the bond with the mother of early childhood-- known as maternal fusion--by means of a "death fusion" with their enemies, who subconsciously represent the loved (and hated) maternal figure. The terrorist's political struggle merely serves as cover for this emotionally terrifying inner turmoil, which can lead down the path of ultimate destruction.

The Banality of Suicide Terrorism

The Banality of Suicide Terrorism PDF Author: Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
ISBN: 1597976016
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 229

Get Book Here

Book Description
Terrorist organizations have been able to market mass murder under hysteria's banner of alleged martyrdom. But when it comes to understanding Islamic suicide terrorism in particular, there is much more to it than martyrdom. In this groundbreaking book, Nancy Kobrin dismantles the psychological dynamics of suicide terrorism to help the reader gain a new perspective on one of the most destructive forces the world has witnessed to date. Until now, no one has explained why the mother-child relationship is central to understanding Islamic suicide terrorism. The Banality of Suicide Terrorism exposes the very ordinariness of one of the deepest yet most poorly understood causes of the suicide bomber's motivation: a profound terror of abandonment that is rooted in the mother-child relationship. According to Kobrin, this terror is so great in the would-be suicide terrorist that he or she must commit suicide (and mass murder in the process) in order to fend off that terror of dependency and abandonment. Suicide terrorists seek a return to the bond with the mother of early childhood-- known as maternal fusion--by means of a "death fusion" with their enemies, who subconsciously represent the loved (and hated) maternal figure. The terrorist's political struggle merely serves as cover for this emotionally terrifying inner turmoil, which can lead down the path of ultimate destruction.

Suicide Terrorism

Suicide Terrorism PDF Author: Ami Pedahzur
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 9780745633831
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Suicide terrorism in its modern form made its first appearance in Lebanon in the early 1980s. Over the last quarter century, terrorist attacks perpetrated by suicide bombers have spread to many corners of the world and have become a major threat for both the governments and citizens of numerous countries. Can this devastating phenomenon be attributed to a specific religion or culture? What are the causes and motivations that lead ordinary people to embark upon suicide attacks? How are potential bombers trained for their mission? And is it possible for democratic governments to effectively cope with this challenge? In this compelling book, Ami Pedazhur investigates the root causes of suicide terrorism and its rapid proliferation in recent years. Drawing on a variety of sources, the book explores the use of human bombs in Lebanon, Israel, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Chechnya, Iraq, and the ostentatious attacks of Al-Qaeda and the global jihad. It is the only book to offer such an in-depth, up-to-date, cross cultural analysis of suicide terrorism in the twenty-first Century.

Penetrating the Terrorist Psyche

Penetrating the Terrorist Psyche PDF Author: Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781493729272
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
This groundbreaking book takes the reader to a different level of understanding the terrorist psyche as it explores the darkness of Islamic suicide terrorism and its global implications through the first-person lens of a psychoanalyst turned counter-terrorist expert. What informs this innovative psychological anthropologic study is the author's deepening awareness that within the highly popular field of terrorism studies, as well as journalistic writings on the subject, there has been little serious discussion concerning early childhood development and the terrors of the terrorist. Nor has there been much discussion of how terrorists infiltrate, interact, and engage their global targets, be they professional or lay. This book maps out the interlocking links that extend from domestic violence and intimate terrorism to domestic and global terrorism, including jihad. In this pioneering work, Dr. Kobrin distills her years of living in environments of domestic and intimate terror and her psychoanalytical and anti-terrorist expertise as she explores the interacting dynamics underlying the sadomasochistic/masochistic seduction of suicide bombings.

On Suicide Bombing

On Suicide Bombing PDF Author: Talal Asad
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231141529
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
Drawing on his extensive scholarship in the study of secular and religious traditions as well as his understanding of social, political and anthropological theory and research, Talal Asad questions Western assumptions regarding death and killing.

Driven to Death

Driven to Death PDF Author: Ariel Merari
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199720614
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Suicide attacks are the definitive form of terrorism. More than any other terrorist tactic, they convey the ruthless willingness of present day terrorists to kill themselves for killing others. Since September 11, 2001 the number of suicide attacks around the world has risen dramatically, causing on average far more fatalities per attack than other forms of terrorism. What drives a person to kill himself for killing others, in the name of a political or religious cause? This book is the first to report a series of studies in which failed suicide bombers and organizers of suicide attacks were subjected to systematic clinical psychological interviews and tests and were compared to non-suicide terrorists. This direct psychological examination enabled a first-hand assessment of the personality characteristics and motivation of suicide bombers. Additional interviews conducted by seasoned area specialists provided a comprehensive picture of the ways by which the suicide bombers were recruited, prepared and dispatched to their planned death, as well as how they felt and behaved along this road. This information was supplemented by data derived from interviews with the families of suicide bombers who died carrying out their attacks. The psychological makeup of suicide terrorists is put into context in other chapters of the book, so as to provide an inclusive understanding of this phenomenon, which takes into account public atmosphere and the ways in which terrorist groups influence the suicide candidates. The book examines the characteristics of suicide terrorists in light of the most influential theories of suicide and offers a critical and innovative analysis of current explanations of suicide terrorism.

Dying to Kill

Dying to Kill PDF Author: Mia Bloom
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231133203
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
What motivates suicide bombers in Iraq and around the world? Can winning the hearts and minds of local populations stop them? Will the phenomenon spread to the United States? These vital questions are at the heart of this important book. Mia Bloom examines the use, strategies, successes, and failures of suicide bombing in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe and assesses the effectiveness of government responses. She argues that in many instances the efforts of Israel, Russia, and the United States in Iraq have failed to deter terrorism and suicide bombings. Bloom also considers how terrorist groups learn from one another, how they respond to counterterror tactics, the financing of terrorism, and the role of suicide attacks against the backdrop of larger ethnic and political conflicts. Dying to Kill begins with a review of the long history of terrorism, from ancient times to modernity, from the Japanese Kamikazes during World War II, to the Palestinian, Tamil, Iraqi, and Chechen terrorists of today. Bloom explores how suicide terror is used to achieve the goals of terrorist groups: to instill public fear, attract international news coverage, gain support for their cause, and create solidarity or competition between disparate terrorist organizations. She contends that it is often social and political motivations rather than inherently religious ones that inspire suicide bombers. In her chapter focusing on the increasing number of women suicide bombers and terrorists, Bloom examines Sri Lanka, where 33 percent of bombers have been women; Turkey, where the PKK used women feigning pregnancy as bombers; and the role of the Black Widows in the Chechen struggle against Moscow. The motives of individuals, whether religious or nationalist, are important but the larger question is, what external factors make it possible for suicide terrorism to flourish? Bloom describes these conditions and develops a theory of why terrorist tactics work in some instances and fail in others.

Dying to Win

Dying to Win PDF Author: Robert Pape
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0812973380
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
Includes a new Afterword Finalist for the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award One of the world’s foremost authorities on the subject of suicide terrorism, the esteemed political scientist Robert Pape has created the first comprehensive database of every suicide terrorist attack in the world from 1980 until today. In Dying to Win, Pape provides a groundbreaking demographic profile of modern suicide terrorist attackers–and his findings offer a powerful counterpoint to what we now accept as conventional wisdom on the topic. He also examines the early practitioners of this guerrilla tactic, including the ancient Jewish Zealots, who in A.D. 66 wished to liberate themselves from Roman occupation; the Ismaili Assassins, a Shi’ite Muslim sect in northern Iran in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; World War II’s Japanese kamikaze pilots, three thousand of whom crashed into U.S. naval vessels; and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a secular, Marxist-Leninist organization responsible for more suicide terrorist attacks than any other group in history. Dying to Win is a startling work of analysis grounded in fact, not politics, that recommends concrete ways for states to fight and prevent terrorist attacks now. Transcending speculation with systematic scholarship, this is one of the most important studies of the terrorist threat to the United States and its allies since 9/11. “Invaluable . . . gives Americans an urgently needed basis for devising a strategy to defeat Osama bin Laden and other Islamist militants.” –Michael Scheuer, author of Imperial Hubris “Provocative . . . Pape wants to change the way you think about suicide bombings and explain why they are on the rise.” –Henry Schuster, CNN.com “Enlightening . . . sheds interesting light on a phenomenon often mistakenly believed to be restricted to the Middle East.” –The Washington Post Book World “Brilliant.” –Peter Bergen, author of Holy War, Inc.

My Life Is a Weapon

My Life Is a Weapon PDF Author: Christoph Reuter
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691126151
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
What kind of people are suicide bombers? How do they justify their actions? In this meticulously researched and sensitively written book, journalist Christoph Reuter argues that popular views of these young men and women--as crazed fanatics or brainwashed automatons--fall short of the mark. In many cases these modern-day martyrs are well-educated young adults who turn themselves into human bombs willingly and eagerly--to exact revenge on a more powerful enemy, perceived as both unjust and oppressive. Suicide assassins are determined to make a difference, for once in their lives, no matter what the cost. As Reuter's many interviews with would-be martyrs, their trainers, friends, and relatives reveal, the bombers are motivated more by how they expect to be remembered--as heroic figures--than by religion-infused visions of a blissful life to come. Reuter, who spent eight years researching the book, moves from the broken survivors of the childrens' suicide brigades in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, to the war-torn Lebanon of Hezbollah, to Israeli-occupied Palestinian land, and to regions as disparate as Sri Lanka, Chechnya, and Kurdistan. He tells a disturbing story of the modern globalization of suicide bombing--orchestrated, as his own investigations have helped to establish, by the shadowy Al Qaeda network and unintentionally enabled by wrong-headed policies of Western governments. In a final, hopeful chapter, Reuter points to today's postrevolutionary, post-Khomeini Iran, where a new social environment renounces the horrific practice in the very place where it was enthusiastically embraced just decades ago.

Dying to Win

Dying to Win PDF Author: Robert Pape
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1588364607
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
Suicide terrorism is rising around the world, but there is great confusion as to why. In this paradigm-shifting analysis, University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape has collected groundbreaking evidence to explain the strategic, social, and individual factors responsible for this growing threat. One of the world’s foremost authorities on the subject, Professor Pape has created the first comprehensive database of every suicide terrorist attack in the world from 1980 until today. With striking clarity and precision, Professor Pape uses this unprecedented research to debunk widely held misconceptions about the nature of suicide terrorism and provide a new lens that makes sense of the threat we face. FACT: Suicide terrorism is not primarily a product of Islamic fundamentalism. FACT: The world’s leading practitioners of suicide terrorism are the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka–a secular, Marxist-Leninist group drawn from Hindu families. FACT: Ninety-five percent of suicide terrorist attacks occur as part of coherent campaigns organized by large militant organizations with significant public support. FACT: Every suicide terrorist campaign has had a clear goal that is secular and political: to compel a modern democracy to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. FACT: Al-Qaeda fits the above pattern. Although Saudi Arabia is not under American military occupation per se, one major objective of al-Qaeda is the expulsion of U.S. troops from the Persian Gulf region, and as a result there have been repeated attacks by terrorists loyal to Osama bin Laden against American troops in Saudi Arabia and the region as a whole. FACT: Despite their rhetoric, democracies–including the United States–have routinely made concessions to suicide terrorists. Suicide terrorism is on the rise because terrorists have learned that it’s effective. In this wide-ranging analysis, Professor Pape offers the essential tools to forecast when some groups are likely to resort to suicide terrorism and when they are not. He also provides the first comprehensive demographic profile of modern suicide terrorist attackers. With data from more than 460 such attackers–including the names of 333–we now know that these individuals are not mainly poor, desperate criminals or uneducated religious fanatics but are often well-educated, middle-class political activists. More than simply advancing new theory and facts, these pages also answer key questions about the war on terror: • Are we safer now than we were before September 11? • Was the invasion of Iraq a good counterterrorist move? • Is al-Qaeda stronger now than it was before September 11? Professor Pape answers these questions with analysis grounded in fact, not politics, and recommends concrete ways for today’s states to fight and prevent terrorist attacks. Military options may disrupt terrorist operations in the short term, but a lasting solution to suicide terrorism will require a comprehensive, long-term approach–one that abandons visions of empire and relies on a combined strategy of vigorous homeland security, nation building in troubled states, and greater energy independence. For both policy makers and the general public, Dying to Win transcends speculation with systematic scholarship, making it one of the most important political studies of recent time.

Terrorists and Suicide Attacks

Terrorists and Suicide Attacks PDF Author: Audrey Kurth Cronin
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 1437918417
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 25

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Book Description
Suicide attacks by terrorist organizations have become more prevalent globally, and assessing the threat of suicide attacks against the U.S. and its interests at home and abroad has therefore gained in strategic importance. This report focuses on the following questions: What are suicide attacks? What have been the patterns and motivations for terrorist organizations using suicide attacks in the past? What terrorist groups and other organizations are most likely to launch such attacks? How great a threat are terrorist suicide attacks to the U.S., at home and abroad? How can the U.S. counter such a threat? The report analyzes the key lessons of the international experience with suicide attacks and examines their relevance to the U.S.