After the Iran-Iraq war ended, the tactic was adopted in other wars — in particular, by Hezbollah, the Iranian-supported Shia fighters in southern Lebanon. The first and most spectacular demonstration came on October 23, 1983, when a yellow lorry approached the US Marine barracks in southern Beirut. Instead of stopping when challenged, the driver accelerated, smashed straight into the building and detonated a huge bomb that killed 241 American troops. Later, the only surviving American eye-witness said that the driver “looked right at me and smiled . . . As soon as I saw the truck over there I knew what was going to happen.”
The review, and to judge by it the book being reviewed, are strangely emotionless in their descriptions. We’re used to the most appalling cruelty being visited on enemies: that’s as old as history. And those in power sending the young to their death – as in the First World War – is sadly familiar. But children of 13 or so being sent to their deaths “with a plastic key for their entry into paradise” is surely about as low as it is possible to go.
In the Observer magazine, an article on one of the female Palestinian suicide bombers (“shahidas”), Wafa Idris, makes the point that these women are generally outcasts from their society in one form or another: in Idris’ case a divorcee and a “troubled young woman who was prone to bouts of melancholy and depression”.
Knowing this, the point that Reuter wishes to make, about the “compelling example” of the martyr, is rather vitiated. There’s nothing compelling or noble about sending children or vulnerable women to their death. Despicable is a more apt description.
Binyon closes his review:
Despite the worries of some Palestinian leaders at the global condemnation, Reuter sees no let-up by Islamist radicals; indeed, he scorns Bush’s claim that al-Qaeda is on the run. But he believes that no society can sustain suicide bombings in the long run. In the main non-Muslim conflict where the tactic has been copied, by the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, the use of child bombers has fallen. And in Iran itself there is now total disillusion; the child martyrs are no longer celebrated, and families openly question the point of the sacrifice.
This leads Reuter to the book’s thought-provoking conclusion: suicide bombers cannot be defeated by Western military might or the threat of reprisals. That only confirms their zealotry. “Global manipulators of resentment and fear like bin Laden can be defeated only from within, by their own societies and cultures,” he says. As events in the troubled Muslim world show, that is likely to take a very long time.
This is not a thought-provoking conclusion: it’s so obvious that it’s barely worth stating. Of course the ultimate defeat of terrorism will only come when attitudes within those societies that nurture it have changed. But force can have a considerable effect on these attitudes, particularly the belief that suicide bombing works: an attitude that gained some credence with the perceived success of Hezbollah in driving the Israelis out of Southern Lebanon.
Another step towards the end of suicide bombing would be a clear condemnation of this practice from the Western societies these attacks are aimed at: in particular an end to the fatuous notion that these crimes are understandable, or in any way justified.
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