Term Paper on Suicide Bombers - Psychological Aspect
Suicide bombers are ordered to die for a reason, killing as many people as
possible through their own deaths, the matter of the causal effectiveness of
their viewpoint needs to be considered. Potential bombers are provoked by
martyrdom, which, given a set of idea, can be a completely rational and reliable
position. As a result, the most pressing issue beyond physiological causes of
pathological behavior lies with meticulous belief systems putting great charge
on martyrdom "No man has greater love than this, that he lays down his life for
his friend" (Davis, Anthony, 2000), or which seek to weaken the capability for
the individual to act volitionally and independently of power. If individuals
are taught not to think separately of others and of their instructions, can they
be held entirely ethically responsible for living according to their viewpoint
in obedience and martyrdom? If an ethical and political position is given to
cultures rather than to individuals, it reasonably follows that accountability
for evil deeds falls on the culture, i.e., the civilization, and not on the
individual, who in this procession of reasoning becomes a simple product of
society. In this case, the bomber symbolizes a modus vivendi, a risk only to his
or her society's 'rivals', and as such not so much a pathological individual as
a usual warrior living according to his society's viewpoint.
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The chance that the bomber acts further than the pale of organization
responsibility by asset of the belief system which he or she is engrossed in
from childhood, rather than because of a physio-psychological trouble, poses a
apparently intractable problem for tolerance and the ethical theory. Suicide
bombers as skilled soldiers are part of a distinct society of enemies, who are
discernible from the society of non-combatants, by good quality of their
uniform, teaching, and carrying of arms (Kondaki, Christopher D, 2001). As
suicide bombers are combatants, it follows that the armies which make them can
be held cooperatively responsible, whilst the resident population remains
inviolable. The suicide bomber survives on the fringe of conservative warfare,
yet the strong incentive for martyrdom stands as a test for the ethical and
political ideology of tolerance. The bomber violates the war gathering when
civilians are targeted, which prompts the retributive to look for a target of
punishment.
Suicide bombers make up a cheap, clever, flexible and mobile weapon capable of
inflicting important physical and psychological harm on chosen targets. Such
realistic and planned considerations are often not completely appreciated in
analyses of suicide attacks. Possibly because the idea of self-sacrifice in the
name of political principles and objectives seems strangely self-destructive,
speculation frequently focuses on the psychological structure of the individual
attacker. Suicide bombing performed by an individual is often the result of a
combined strategic decision by an association, involving a wide support
structure dedicated to employment, authorization and planning. Certainly, the
disagreement has been made that the suicide bomber should be well thought-out no
more than a conscious missile, a convenient delivery alternative for the real
terrorists who take on for, plan and authorize the ultimate attack arms (Kondaki,
Christopher D, 2001).
The suicide bombers are usually unmarried men in their late teens and 20s.
Suicide attacks, as all other terrorist attacks, are first and chief aimed at
giving their perpetrators extensive media coverage, thus inflating their own
image. For this purpose, the terrorist organizations take advantage of diverse
media venues in order to progress their interests. It should be revealed that
suicide attacks by terrorists are nothing new; the occurrence appeared among the
Jewish Sicaris in the 1st century, between the Moslem Hashishiyun in the 11th
century, as well as among the Asians in the 18th century. In the Twentieth
Century too, members of the Palestinian associations and their colleagues from
the leftist associations committed high-risk attacks which almost cross the
border into the monarchy of suicide terrorism. On the other hand, the
perpetrators of these attacks nonetheless stood a chance, though small—to
survive; their remaining alive did not smudge their achievement in carrying out
the attack. Nevertheless, new suicide terrorism is unique and not like its
predecessors. In the previous two decades suicide attacks have been performed by
one or more persons who were conscious that they are human time-bombs (Marsden,
Peter, 2002).
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The suicide bomber carries the explosives on his body or in a vehicle driven by
him and, by own choice and with full self- consciousness; he approaches a
formerly chosen aim and blows himself up. The suicide bomber himself, in
agreement with the prevailing conditions, chooses the time and place to carry
out the blast so that it will cause the maximum damage to the target. Defining a
terror attack as a suicide bombing depends first and foremost on whether the
performer is killed. In the event that his mission is imperfect, it is not a
suicide bombing. The death of the doer is the key to the accomplishment of the
attack; and he knows in advance that accomplishment depends completely on this
death.
According to psychologist the most unsafe terrorist is possible to be the
religious terrorist. Post has gave details that, not like the average political
or social terrorist, who has a distinct mission that is to some extent
measurable in terms of media concentration or government reaction, the sacred
terrorist can give good reason for the most heinous acts "in the name of Allah,"
for instance. One could add, "in the name of Aum Shinrikyo's Shoko Asahara." (Marsden,
Peter, 2002)
They act in the faith that they will go straight to heaven, where they will get
places of honor next to God. Most of the bombers are associated to the
Palestinian militant groups Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Such attacks are, according
to psychoanalysts, planned scrupulously, along the lines of a military
operation. In some cases, hold up teams transport the bomber by van or car to
the location minutes before the explosion. Psychologist describes six
psychological types who would be most possible to threaten: paranoids, paranoid
schizophrenics, average mental defectives, schizophrenic types,
passive-aggressive character types, and sociopath personalities. Some thinks
sociopaths the most possible actually in suicide bomber. A nuclear terrorism
expert disagrees. They consider that "Schizophrenics and sociopaths, for
example, may want to give acts of mass obliteration, but they are less possible
than others to succeed. They points out that large-scale distribution of
chemical, biological, or radiological agents need a group effort, but that
"Schizophrenics, in particular, frequently have complicatedness functioning in
groups”. (Nojumi, Neamatollah, 2002)
The number of worldwide terrorist incidents has declined in the 1990s, but the
latent threat posed by terrorists has augmented. The increased threat level, in
the shape of terrorist actions intended at achieving a larger scale of
obliteration than the conventional attacks of the previous three decades of
terrorism, was fundamentally established with the bombing of the WTC. The World
Trade Centre bombing demonstrated how terrorists with technological cleverness
are increasingly being employed to carry out lethal terrorist bombing attacks.
The WTC bombing may also have been a forerunner of more critical attacks of
international terrorism in the United States.
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The social psychology of political terrorism has received widespread analysis in
studies of terrorism, but the individual psychology of political and religious
terrorism has been mainly ignored. Comparatively little is known regarding the
terrorist as an individual, and the psychology of terrorists’ remains badly
understood, in spite of the fact that there have been a number of individual
biographical accounts, as well as far-reaching sociopolitical or psychiatric
sweeping statement. According to researchers of Muslim culture, so-called
suicide bombings, though, are seen by Islamists and Tamils similar as instances
of martyrdom, and should be understand as such. The Arabic term used is istishad,
a sacred term meaning to give one's life in the name of Allah, as opposed to
intihar, which refers to suicide resulting from personal suffering. The latter
form of suicide is not overlooked in Islamic teachings. Psychological factors
connecting to terrorism are of exacting interest to psychologists, political
scientists, and government bureaucrats, who would like to be able to predict and
put off the emergence of terrorist groups or to thwart the understanding of
terrorist actions.
Unable to achieve their impractical goals by conservative means, international
terrorists attempt to send an ideological or sacred message by terrorizing the
common public (Rashid, Ahmed, 2000). Through the option of their targets, which
are often symbolic or delegate of the targeted nation, terrorists effort to
create a high-profile collision on the public of their targeted enemy or enemies
with their act of violence, in spite of the limited material resources that are
frequently at their removal. In doing so, they hope to reveal various points,
such as that the targeted government cannot guard its own citizens, or that by
killing a specific victim they can teach the common public a lesson about taking
up viewpoints or policies adversative to their own.
According to psychologist Maxwell Taylor (New York Times, 1988), have tried to
address what motivates terrorists or to explain personal characters of
terrorists, on the supposition that terrorists can be recognized by these
attributes. Conversely, although an understanding of the terrorist state of mind
would be the key to understanding how and why an individual turns into a
terrorist, numerous psychologists have been not capable to sufficiently define
it. Indeed, there appears to be a common agreement among psychologists who have
studied the topic that there is no one terrorist state of mind. This view,
though, itself needs to be elucidated.
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Within this field of psychology, the character dynamics of individual
terrorists, including the reasons and inspirations behind the choice to join a
terrorist group and to entrust violent acts, have also received attention. Other
small group dynamics that have been of meticulous interest to researchers take
in the terrorists' decision-making patterns, problems of management and
authority, target selection, and group state of mind as a pressure tool on the
individual.
In conclusion, suicide bombers can be viewed as a most hazardous but possibly
well-meaning terrorist who is acting out of truthful love for his own kind and
who has a stubborn hatred of his enemies and all who support them. There is
little that can be done to defend society from their acts of terrorism distant
from teaching a broader, more embracing religious belief that exceeds the
current narrow-minded religions. Belief systems that function in a blinkered
manner stimulate fanaticism and intolerance, a hazardous combination.
References
Davis, Anthony. Struggle for Recognition (of Afghanistan's Taliban). Jane's
Defence Weekly 34:21 October 4, 2000.
Kondaki, Christopher D. The Taliban: A Primer. Defense & Foreign Affairs
Strategic Policy 29:6-10 2001.
Marsden, Peter. The Taliban: War and Religion in Afghanistan. New York, Zed
Books, 2002. 162 p.
Nojumi, Neamatollah. The Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan: Mass Mobilization,
Civil War, and the Future of the Region. New York, Palgrave, 2002. 260 p.
Rashid, Ahmed. Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia.
New Haven, CN, Yale University Press, 2000. 274 p.
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