Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It

by Robert A. Pape, James K. Feldman

Almost every week, suicide bombers attack. We know the danger—suicide attacks kill more people than all other forms of terrorism—and in response we have sacrificed the lives of soldiers and civilians, trillions of dollars, and America’s reputation abroad in a futile quest for absolute security. But do we really understand what drives people to deliberately kill themselves on a mission to harm the innocent?

Cutting the Fuse offers a wealth of new knowledge about the origins of suicide terrorism and strategies to stop it. Robert A. Pape and James K. Feldman have examined every suicide terrorist attack worldwide from 1980 to 2009. Their work fundamentally changes how we understand the root causes of the most important terrorist campaigns today and reveals why the War on Terror has been ultimately counterproductive.

Since 2004, the number of suicide attacks—whether within a country or transnational—has grown with shocking speed. Through a close analysis of suicide campaigns by Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Israel, Chechnya, and Sri Lanka, the authors provide powerful new evidence that, contrary to popular and dangerously mistaken belief, only a tiny minority of these attacks are motivated solely by religion. Instead, the root cause is foreign military occupation, which triggers secular and religious people alike to carry out suicide attacks.

Cutting the Fuse calls for new, effective solutions that America and its allies can sustain for decades, relying less on ground troops in Muslim countries and more on off-shore, over-the-horizon military forces along with political and economic strategies to empower local communities to stop terrorists in their midst.

Genres: Politics, Terrorism, Nonfiction, Political Science, Middle East, Sociology

360 pages, Hardcover

First published September 15, 2010

Reviews

[Alex Zakharov · Rating 3 out of 5]

The message and argument of the book is pretty well known by now - linking suicide terrorism to the perceived foreign occupation. Overall the book builds a good case for the argument. It starts out by pointing out that from 1980 to 2003 there were about 350 suicide attacks, largely by non-Muslim secular groups and mostly not anti-American. From 2003 to 2009 the number of attacks jumps to 1800+, with majority of the attacks executed by Sunni groups and mostly anti-American. Obviously, 2003 is when US invaded Iraq and additionally started stepping up the Afganistan campaign.

Pape systematically examines 7 suicide campaigns – Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel-Palestine, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Chechnya, Iraq and explains the patterns of suicide bombings in relation to the behavior/strategies/tactics and number of foreign troops on the ground. In all the cases there is a well-defined nationalistic struggle where invading country (rightly or wrongly) is perceived as an occupier. Pape does a terrific job dismantling the notion that "they bomb us because they hate our values and our freedoms". He also rightly plays down radical Islam as a root cause of suicide terrorism. After all the longest suicide campaign in history was executed by Marxist-leaning Hindus (Tamil Tigers).

Pape pays special attention to transnational suicide terrorism which is somewhat more difficult to explain but is clearly more visible to the public (e.g. 9/11 and Madrid, London, Bali bombings); he treats transnational terrorism as 'black swans' (in Taleb sense) of terrorism. He extends his framework of perceived foreign occupation to account for such bombings as well, although the recruitment, dynamics and demographic profiles of the attackers differ when compared to typical “in-house” suicide attacks.

Overall the book is a good read with plenty of material, statistics, and history, but it is certainly not without its faults:

– The writing is uneven, there were clearly different contributors to different chapters.

– The explanation for transnational terrorism, despite being in the ballpark of correctness, is only softly convincing. Its link to perceived occupation is decently supported in the text, but the dynamics of group formation, character and psychology of the attackers is a little weak.

– The chapter on Israel and Palestine lacks a lot of context, which makes many of chapter’s observations/conclusions misleading.

– Pape stated from the start that he is concentrating on suicide terrorism only, but completely omitting other forms terrorism from discussion presents a narrowed view of the problem and potentially takes away from his conclusions.

– And finally my biggest issue with the book is terminology conflation. The post 2003 explosion of suicide attacks as a function of foreign intervention is correct statistically speaking, however when a group employs suicide as one of the military strategies to attack foreign troops on its own land it moves suicide from the category of 'terrorism' into military tactic. For example, after invasion of Iraq there were plenty of suicide attacks on American soldiers inside Iraq – is that technically terrorism or is that simply a tactic of war? It seems to me that in the military context an argument could be made that suicide attacks are simply that - "attacks". In other words not every suicide attack is suicide terrorism (Were Japanese Kamikazes in WW2 terrorists?). Pape’s analysis seems to treat suicide attacks and suicide terrorism as one and the same which I believe is a big hole in his argument or at the very least - very sloppy reasoning.

That said, Pape’s main point stands – vast majority of suicide terrorism (and attacks) "in-house" or transnational can be linked to deploying troops into other countries (i.e perceived occupation). In that sense in case of anti-American terrorism - for the most part it is not about "them hating our way of life" but a direct response to our foreign policy. After reading the book, even if you don't fully buy the argument, you at the very least will have to acknowledge it as a significant factor.

And lastly, note that the book is not an argument against having national interests. Broadly speaking Pape recommends transitioning to the type of foreign-policy that US has practiced till 1990 ("offshore balancing"). It is only after first Gulf War that we changed course significantly and started deploying significant permanent troops into middle east starting with Saudi Arabia...

[Kirsten Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book that will probably become well read among the various security/law enforcment branches of the government. If nothing else it provides an empirical look in to the increased number of suicide bombings around the world and attributing those bombings to foreign military occupation. The authors examine the number of suicide bombings from 1980 to 2009. The project and the data collected is housed at the University of Chicago and provides the most complete set of data to date on suicide terrorist bombings.

The authors divide the dates they examine into two periods, 1980 to 2003 and from 2004 to 2009 when the number of suicide terrorist bombings jumped exponentially. From 1980 to 2003 there were 345 suicide terrorist bombings, of which roughly 15% of those were aimed at American. From 2004 to 2009 the number of suicide terrorist bombings jumped to 1,833. of these attacked 98.5% of them can be attributed to foreign military occupation and the deployment of American military forces account for 92%. The authors hope that their analyses will encourage the international community, and particularly the United States, to consider fundamental changes to how they are currently fighting terrorism using foreign military occupation.

The knowledge base can be found at cpost.uchicago.edu and contains data on "suicide attacks and attackers, martyr videos, terrorist group profiles, and multidisciplinary analyses confronting core international security challenges."

I enjoyed reading this book because the authors did a good job in my opinion of backing up everything they say using data. Some will obviously argue with their conclusions, but I am at the point where new suggestions or directions are needed for dealing with fight against terrorism and I don't think it is productive to turn our backs on any new additions to this field because they are so opposite to the means and methods currently being used to fight terrorism.

[Ifreet_Mohamed · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's the occupation assholes!! How many times do we need to tell you why people strap bombs to their chest and walk into market places? Do you think they give a shit about your "freedom" and "values"? Damn! Robert Pape just provided the incontrovertible evidence in this book that "suidcide terrorism" is linked to occupation and oppression. Thanks professor, now get our F*%#ed up leaders and pundits to actually listen.

We need to get rid of some of our 1,000 bases across the world.