Two Facts About Suicide Terrorism
Fact 1: 95% of suicide terrorist attacks are targeted at occupying foreign militaries.
Fact 2: 0% of suicide terrorist attacks have been directed at countries not militarily involved in geopolitical disputes.
Robert Pape at the University of Chicago, with funding from the Department of Defense, created the first comprehensive database of every suicide terrorist attack in the world from 1980 until today.
Every suicide terrorist campaign has had a clear goal that is secular and political: to compel a modern democracy to withdraw military forces from territory the terrorists view as their homeland.
You station troops in their country. They ask you to leave. You refuse. They start blowing themselves up to make you leave. This pattern holds across religions, cultures, and continents. The confusion about causation is notable.
The Data
From The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism by Robert Pape:
As Table 1 indicates, there have been 188 separate suicide terrorist attacks between 1980 and 2001. Of these, 179, or 95%, were parts of organized, coherent campaigns, while only nine were isolated or random events. Seven separate disputes have led to suicide terrorist campaigns: the presence of American and French forces in Lebanon, Israeli occupation of West Bank and Gaza, the independence of the Tamil regions of Sri Lanka, the independence of the Kurdish region of Turkey, Russian occupation of Chechnya, Indian occupation of Kashmir, and the presence of American forces on the Saudi Arabian Peninsula. Overall, however, there have been 16 distinct campaigns, because in certain disputes the terrorists elected to suspend operations one or more times either in response to concessions or for other reasons.
Every suicide campaign from 1980 to 2001 has had as a major objective—or as its central objective—coercing a foreign government that has military forces in what they see as their homeland to take those forces out. Table 2 summarizes the disputes that have engendered suicide terrorist campaigns. Since 1980, there has not been a suicide terrorist campaign directed mainly against domestic opponents or against foreign opponents who did not have military forces in the terrorists homeland. Although attacks against civilians are often the most salient to Western observers, actually every suicide terrorist campaign in the past two decades has included attacks directly against the foreign military forces in the country, and most have been waged by guerrilla organizations that also use more conventional methods of attack against those forces.
Even Al Qaeda fits this pattern. Although Saudi Arabia is not under American military occupation per se and the terrorists have political objectives against the Saudi regime and others, one major objective of Al Qaeda is the expulsion of U.S. troops from the Saudi Peninsula and there have been attacks by terrorists loyal to Osama Bin Laden against American troops in Saudi Arabia. To be sure, there is a major debate among Islamists over the morality of suicide attacks, but within Saudi Arabia there is little debate over Al Qaeda's objection to American forces in the region and over 95% of Saudi society reportedly agrees with Bin Laden on this matter (Sciolino 2002).
The Iraq Effect
The popularity of suicide terrorism grew as a result of ground operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. 89 percent of all suicide terrorism around the world since the Iraq war is the direct result of troops on the ground.
Below is a graph using Global US Troop Deployment Data and data from the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism. The rise in US troop deployments in the Middle East precedes the rise in suicide terrorist attacks.
You invaded their countries to reduce terrorism. Terrorism increased. The desired end was eliminating terrorism. The means was military invasion and occupation. The means produced the opposite of the desired end. This is like using gasoline to put out fires while wondering why everything keeps burning.
The Public Believes Contradictory Things
According to Pew polling, a majority of the public (61%) believes that the ability of terrorists to launch a major attack is about the same (44%) or greater than (17%) it was at the time of the 9/11 attacks.
Yet 71% say the government has done very well (22%) or fairly well (49%) in reducing the threat of terrorism.
You believe the terrorist threat hasn't been reduced. You also believe the government did a good job reducing it. Both of these things cannot be true simultaneously. This requires noticing a contradiction, which humans claim to be capable of but rarely demonstrate.
How to Reduce the Terrorist Threat
The data clearly indicate that increasing US military occupation in majority-Islamic countries will increase the threat of terrorism.
Half of Americans (50%) in 2009 believed that decreasing the U.S. military presence overseas would be more effective, while just 31% said an increased presence would be more effective.
Source: Pew Research
More recent polling suggests people changed their minds:
Here's How You Reduce Terrorism
The data show a clear pattern. Foreign military occupation causes suicide terrorism. Countries without foreign troops don't experience suicide terrorism. The solution is obvious:
- Remove troops from territories where they're not wanted
- Stop invading countries to "reduce terrorism" (this increases terrorism)
- Notice when your strategy produces the opposite of its stated goal
- Stop doing that thing
This is not complicated. You put your hand on a hot stove, you get burned. You remove your hand, the burning stops. Third-grade cause and effect.
What do you think? How would you address the threat of terrorism? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
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