Taliban: The world's most incompetent suicide bombers?

I'm sure you've heard the alarming statistics. As Brian Glyn Williams, an Islamic historian at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, writes in this month's Terrorism Monitor:

Suicide bombing statistics from Afghanistan alarmingly demonstrate that, if the current trend continues, 2007 will surpass last year in the number of overall attacks. While there were 47 bombings by mid-June 2006, there have been approximately 57 during the same period this year. . .

But as he goes on to say:

An analysis of the attacks carried out in the last two years reveals a curious fact. In 43% of the bombings conducted last year and in 26 of the 57 bombings traced in this study up to June 15, the only death caused by the bombing was that of the bomber himself. Astoundingly, approximately 90 suicide bombers in this two year period succeeded in killing only themselves. This number exceeds 100 when you factor in those who succeeded in killing only one person in addition to themselves. There was one period in the spring of 2006 (February 20 to June 21) when a stunning 26 of the 36 suicide bombers in Afghanistan (72%) only killed themselves. This puts the kill average for Afghan suicide bombers far below that of suicide bombers in other theaters of action in the area (Israel, Chechnya, Iraq and the Kurdish areas of Turkey).

Now why would this be? After discounting theories that this is because as Pashtuns, the Taliban fedayeen have some higher moral standard than your average suicide bomber, Willams reports:

Members of the Afghan police, government and National Directorate of Security (NDS) who were interviewed about this trend during the months of April and May 2007 offered a surprisingly unanimous explanation for the Taliban bombers' poor showing [2]. The cause for the Afghan suicide bombers' underwhelming performance, they claimed, lay in the ineptitude of the people the Taliban were recruiting as fedayeen (suicide) bombers. Afghan officials continually told stories of lower class people who had been seduced, bribed, tricked, manipulated or coerced into blowing themselves up as "weapons of God" or "Mullah Omar's missiles." Afghan NDS officials also spoke of apprehended bombers who were deranged, retarded, mentally unstable or on drugs.

Another factor that may explain the Taliban bombers incompetence is that they are notorious for recruiting children for these deadly missions.

In one case, a powerful tribal chieftain in Khost province who discovered that his son had been recruited by Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani for a "martyrdom operation" managed to get him back (after threatening to attack the Taliban with his tribe); unfortunately, this is an exception, as is the recent case of a captured 14 year-old suicide bomber who was personally pardoned by President Hamid Karzai, who announced, "Today we are facing a hard fact, that is a Muslim child was sent to madrassa to learn Islamic subjects, but the enemies of Afghanistan misled him toward suicide and prepared him to die and kill." ...

As disturbing as this video is, it pales in comparison to the discovery Afghan security officials recently made in eastern Afghanistan. In an incident that caused tears of fury among local villagers, a six year-old street urchin approached an Afghan security checkpoint and claimed that he had been cornered by the Taliban and fitted with a suicide bomber vest. They had told him to walk up to a U.S. patrol and press a button on the vest that would "spray flowers" (Daily Mail, June 26). Fortunately, the quick thinking boy instead asked for help, and the suicide bomb vest was subsequently removed.

And yet the unnamed CIA officials who contributed to the recent National Intelligence Estimate say the Taliban and it's partner in crime, Al Qaeda, are stronger than ever. Frankly, I don't buy it.

Here's a theory as to why most suicide bombers are Muslims

In the latest issue of Psychology Today the authors of the book Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters, Alan S. Miller Ph.D., Satoshi Kanazawa Ph.D, make the following case:

What distinguishes Islam from other major religions is that it tolerates polygyny. By allowing some men to monopolize all women and altogether excluding many men from reproductive opportunities, polygyny creates shortages of available women. If 50 percent of men have two wives each, then the other 50 percent don't get any wives at all.

So polygyny increases competitive pressure on men, especially young men of low status. It therefore increases the likelihood that young men resort to violent means to gain access to mates. By doing so, they have little to lose and much to gain compared with men who already have wives. Across all societies, polygyny makes men violent, increasing crimes such as murder and rape, even after controlling for such obvious factors as economic development, economic inequality, population density, the level of democracy, and political factors in the region.

But polygamy alone is not sufficient to drive one to want to kill themselves - not to mention lots of others, the authors argue. This is why you don't see many suicide bombers coming from, say, sub-Saharan Africa. As the authors write:

The other key ingredient is the promise of 72 virgins waiting in heaven for any martyr in Islam. The prospect of exclusive access to virgins may not be so appealing to anyone who has even one mate on earth, which strict monogamy virtually guarantees. However, the prospect is quite appealing to anyone who faces the bleak reality on earth of being a complete reproductive loser. . .

Consistent with this explanation, all studies of suicide bombers indicate that they are significantly younger than not only the Muslim population in general but other (nonsuicidal) members of their own extreme political organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah. And nearly all suicide bombers are single.

Would you be considered normal in Pakistan?

Take the following test.

What would be your first thought upon hearing that someone blew themselves up in a crowded restaurant in Peshawar, Pakistan at lunch time and killed 22 people, including two women and a child?


If the first thing that came to mind was this must have been an act of retaliation for the recent killing of the genocidal maniac Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah, consider yourself normal by Pakistani standards. According to the New York Times, this was the first possibility local police thought to discount.


But revenge wouldn't explain why this was the third such suicide bombing to hit this neighborhood just this year, bringing the total death toll from suicide bombings to 69.


According to police, what would explain this recent spate of bombings, would be a "reaction to the prevalent geopolitical scenario in the region,” as police chief Sharif Virk told The Times. As the Times goes on to explain:

Pro-Taliban militants are thought to have staged a series of suicide bombings in Pakistan in recent months, apparently in retaliation for airstrikes on their camps and compounds in the border area, and in opposition to the support of the United States by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president.

How to explain why the bomber targeted a restaurant frequented by Afghan refugees and hospital workers?


Here is where the revenge theory comes in. As the Times reports:

Witnesses and the police said the restaurant’s owner was an Uzbek of Afghan origin and was affiliated with a former Uzbek warlord, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, whose posters adorned the walls.

Afghan refugees of various ethnic groups and political factions have lived largely peacefully in Peshawar for nearly 30 years, but militants sympathetic to the Taliban are opposed to General Dostum, an important leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in Afghanistan.

Police denied reports that the bomber had left behind a note. According to the Times:

In interviews, Mr. Virk and other police investigators said all that they had recovered were the bomber’s legs.

“There is no suicide note or any writing on the legs,” said a police superintendent, Qazi Jamilur Rehman, who is the head of the investigating team.

"Don't miss out: become a suicide bomber in Algeria," al Qaeda leader urges Muslims

Financial Times reports that al-Qaeda's franchise in Algeria has released a video in which it announced a new suicide bombing campaign designed, no doubt, to win even more hearts and minds in north Africa.

The Times reports that in the new video, Abu Musab Abdul-Wadud, the purported leader of the group, can be seen urging Muslims to join "the list of martyrdom-seekers" as it is "long and is growing every day.”

“This is a crusader war on Islam and a battle of destiny between the infidels and believers so do not miss out,” Mr. Wadud is reportedly seen saying on the tape.

In what seems to be an attempt to induce wannabe-bombmakers in this new campaign, the video also shows footage of "militants" (as the Times calls them) making bombs - bombs that the Times gathered were used in the suicide attacks on April 11 in Algeria that left 33 people dead.

According to the Times report, "only one suicide bombing had been conducted in Algeria during a 10-year insurgency."

No doubt pious Muslims throughout Algeria are celebrating the advent of this new al-Qaeda jihad campaign and encouraging their sons and daughters to enlist. Yeah, right.

All lives apparently not equal

Qatar's leading English-language daily, The Peninsula, reports that Al-Jazeera's leading telecleric, Dr. Yousuf Al Qaradawi, is calling for "militant groups in the Islamic world to re-examine their concept of 'Jihad' and open a dialogue with Muslim scholars." From The Peninsula :

"There no justification for the suicide operation in Iraq where civilians are being killed, as Iraq has many developed weapon to fight the enemy. This was acceptable in Palestine in a certain time of period when the Palestinian people didn't have weapons to fight their enemies. Now, thank Allah, they do have some weapons and there is no much of that kind of operations," Qaradawi said answering a question from the audience.

Too bad he couldn't take the opportunity to issue a blanket condemnation of all terror attacks that target innocent civilians. Perhaps Dr. Qaradawi ought to re-examine his own concept of Jihad.

The opposition to the Baghdad Security Plan makes itself heard

Just as Baghdad seemed to be getting more secure, a female suicide bomber blew herself up at a Baghdad university on Sunday, killing herself and at least 40 others. This was among several explosions to hit the Iraqi capital today, making it one of the worst days in terms of violence since the start of the new Baghdad security plan according to a New York Times report.

Oddly, the radical Shiite cleric Moktada Al-Sadr took today's violence as the opportunity to distance himself from the Baghdad security plan up that up until this point he seemed to have been endorsing. He issued a written statement that was read to his supporters at a site near the blast in which he urged them to to cease cooperating with the United States military.

“There is no good that comes from a security plan controlled by our enemies, the occupiers,” the statement said. “If you stay away from them, God will protect you from horror and harm. Make sure your plans are purely Iraqi and not sectarian.”

Go figure.

Meanwhile at the university site where the blast occured, the Times went on to report:

Hussain Ali al-Mousawi, a middle-aged blacksmith who said he lived across the street from the university, collected body parts on a notebook, placing severed fingers, pieces of skull and bloody flesh on pages covered with a student’s jottings notes on subjects like income brackets. His shirt was covered with blood. He said he had been carrying bodies; the sleeves of his beige cotton, striped shirt were soaked bright red.

...“We are burying here the minds of our society,” he said, pointing to the ad hoc graves dug by Mr. Mousawi. “We are planting them anew. How many of our great minds have they killed? They are targeting the students who are carrying pencils — our dirty neighbors.”

“We shall reconstruct the great Iraqi mind from the beginning,” Mr. Hasan said. “This land will produce more minds than ever.”

How do these foreign fighters end up killing themselves in Iraq?

The Washington Post has a fascinating article today on how young Moroccans are being recruited to fight jihad in Iraq.

"The big state for al-Qaeda is Iraq," said Mohamed Darif, a political science professor and terrorism expert at Hassan II-Mohammedia University in Morocco. "Al-Qaeda has the same strategy as the United States: It wants to win in Iraq so it can transform the whole region. They are fixated on Iraq."

According to the Post's sources, Al Qaeda has focused its recruitment efforts in Morocco in a small village in a hill station in the Rif mountains called Tetouan. As the Post reports:

Designated "watchers" hang around radical mosques and other places to look for young men angry about the conflicts in places such as Iraq and the Palestinian territories. For months, the watchers try to whip up the potential volunteers' emotions further and convince them that they have a religious duty to intervene.

"The recruitment does not exclusively take place in the poorest parts of society, nor in the category of illiterates," said Benmoussa, the interior minister. Instead, he said, recruiters "target a category of people that is extremely sensitive to what they consider international injustice."

Candidates are subjected to psychological assessments from a distance to determine if they are really willing to die for the cause.

This is because these Moroccan recruits are primarily used to carry out suicide missions once they get to Iraq. As Nick Pratt, a retired Marine colonel and terrorism expert at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in Germany told the Post, "Suicide bombings are embraced by networks affiliated with al-Qaeda because they are more lethal and generate more publicity. He said a suicide attack, on average, causes six times as many deaths and 12 times as many injuries as a conventional attack, such as a roadside bomb explosion."

Moroccan authories believe that some 50 Moroccans have been lured to fight jihad in Iraq since 2003. According to the Post's sources, "the problem is worse in other Arab countries."

Is it because I'm an Other

as Edward Said would have labeled me that I can't see the logic behind the recent string of suicide bombings in Pakistan?

Yesterday yet another man blew himself up. This time, the suicide bomber detonated inside a small district court in Quetta, killing himself and 15 others, including a judge who was hearing a property dispute, the litigants, their relatives who were in attendance, and the six lawyers who were debating the case. Thirty-five people were wounded.

This was the sixth attack in a series of suicide bombings in the area that have left some 40 people dead.

As the New York Times reports:

A militant leader, Baitullah Mehsud, vowed to use suicide bombers to take revenge [for an airstrike against suspected militants in the tribal area of South Waziristan on Jan. 16]. Pakistani officials have not directly implicated Mr. Mehsud in the bombings while the investigations are under way, and he has denied any involvement, saying that his threat was an emotional outburst.

Mr. Mehsud is believed to have trained suicide bombers and sent them into Afghanistan, where there were 127 suicide attacks last year."

South Waziristan, for those of you whose Pakistani geography might be a little vague, is part of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas. This is an area that is only nominally under Pakistan's control, and as Wikipedia notes, about 30% of the FATA is inaccessible both politically and administratively. In other words, the Pakistani central government has no authority in about a third of this Tribal Area.

This is the area in Pakistan, incidentally, in which many experts believe bin Laden may be hiding. The Waziris are a subset of the Pashtuns, the primary ethnic group of the Taliban, the Afghan government that so kindly gave bin Laden refuge up until they were forced out of power by the U.S.-led coaltion in 2001.

Map courtesy of Wikipedia

Now while I suppose I can see why "militants" in the neighboring province of Baluchistan might want to avenge any act that aimed to harm their friends in Al Qaeda, I really can't see the logic in why they would have targeted a courtroom in Quetta.

I wonder if anyone who isn't an Other could kindly inform me of the strategy here. My email address is at the top of this page.