A critique of Robert Pape's Dying To Win

Abstract

Robert Pape's recent book Dying to Win is one of the most important statistical studies of the global phenomenon of suicide attacks to appear in the recent past. While Pape's basic thesis of the formula of occupation in addition to religious/cultural differences between the occupier and the occupied causing these suicide attacks holds up, there are a number of cases in which it does not. Additionally, some of Pape's historical and Islamic examples are weak. Before proceeding to an over-arching theory of suicide attacks it is important not to ignore the exceptions to Pape's theory.

Key words:

• Terrorism
• suicide bombing
• violent extremism

Notes

¹Robert Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (New York: Random House 2005), 10.

²Ibid., 12.

³See Sadr al-Din al-Husayni, Akhbar al-dawla al-Saljuqiyya (Beirut: Dar al-Afaq al-Jadida 1984), 66–7; ‘Imad al-Din al-Isfahani, Ta'rikh dawlat Al Saljuq (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-'Ilmiyya 2004), 226–7; Ibn al-Jawzi, al-Muntazam fi al-ta'rikh (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, nd), xvi, 302–7.

⁴Ibn al-Nahhas, Mashari' al-ashwaq fi masari' al-'ushshaq (Beirut: Dar al-Basha'ir al-Islamiyya 2003), i, 557f.

⁵Sa'd Abu Diyya, Dirasa tahliliyya fi al-'amaliyyat al-istishhadiyya fi janub Lubnan (Beirut: Jami'at al-'Ummal 1986), cf.107–11.

⁶But not elsewhere. It is curious that Pape does not list the suicide attack against the Jewish Center in Buenos Aires on 18 July 1994 as part of the Hizballah campaign against Israel.

⁷It is curious, however, that he does not discuss the Iranian suicide campaign of 1980–82. Perhaps this is because it was associated with a state in the Iran–Iraq War and not with a terrorist entity.

⁸Nawaf al-Takruri, al-'Amaliyyat al-istishhadiyya fi al-mizan al-fiqhi (Damascus: al-Takruri, 2003), 54. In the Sudan during Jan. 2005 I interviewed high-ranking members of the Mujahidin organization in Juba. When asked about suicide attacks such as those described by al-Takruri they denied that any such tactics had ever been used.

⁹See Musa Khan Jalalzai, Dying to Kill: Suicide Bombers, Martyr Operations and Terrorism in Pakistan

¹⁰Documented in Pape, Dying to Win, 258 (Appendix 1, Campaign 14).

¹¹Imam Samudra, Aku Melawan Teroris (Solo: Jazera 2004), 171 where he is actually resentful of the Arab-centered aspect of radical Islam and those radicals who try to limit suicide attacks to specifically Arab conflicts (like Palestine or Iraq) or Afghanistan.

¹²Pape, 84.

¹³Pape, Dying to Win, 60. Today that statement would have to be modified by the sheer number of suicide attacks carried out in Iraq, but as far as blanket characterization of the relative harshness of occupation I think that it still stands.

¹⁴Pape, Dying to Win, 125.

¹⁵For example, it is surprising that he does not adduce the dozens of fatwas coming from all over the Muslim world supporting suicide attacks (especially in Israel, but also in Chechnya and the Kashmir). See Takruri, ‘Amaliyyat, 137–79.