Foundations of Terrorism: Military Sciences - Essay Example

Suicide terrorism refers to terrorist attacks in which terrorists blow themselves out to cause casualties or to cause damage to the infrastructure.
Today, almost every terrorist group makes use of suicide terrorism to some extent to cause terror and instability in the targeted place. However, the terrorist groups that have made the greatest use of this form of terrorism are Al-Qaeda (based in Afghanistan and operating mainly in Afghanistan and Pakistan), Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Hamas (based in Palestine), and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (based in Sri Lanka). The main aim of the suicide terrorist attacks is to make a democratic government withdraw its forces from the terrorists’ occupied areas (Pape, 2005). Similarly, some terrorist groups carry out suicide attacks in response to foreign occupation of their land (Pape, 2005).

We can take the example of suicide attacks on Pakistani civilians and military forces. Pakistan is a neighbor of Afghanistan and almost a second home to the Al-Qaeda terrorists. Al-Qaeda is still active despite the loss of its top leadership by the American forces on account of its attack on the World Trade Centre (Kugelman, 2014). The group is expanding rapidly and is becoming a big threat to the lives of thousands of people (Salama & Hansell, 2005, p. 615). Al-Qaeda has been targeting forces and civilians of Pakistan since the American occupation of Afghanistan. The reason they give for these terrorist attacks is the support that Pakistan has provided and is still providing to the NATO forces operating in Afghanistan. Similarly, Hamas has also carried out a number of suicide attacks on Israeli targets because of Palestine’s conflict with Israel and the Israeli occupation of some of the Palestinian territory. Another example is of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) which acted actively in two complete decades of the 1980s and 1990s and in the first half of the 2000s to get an independent state for Tamil people before being defeated and disbanded by the Sri Lankan armed forces.

The groups that are most likely to engage in suicide terrorism are those which have the aim to expel foreign forces from their homelands. Foreign occupation is the biggest factor that causes such groups (examples of Al-Qaeda and Hamas) to use suicide terrorism as a tool to cause threat and fear in the occupying forces. A comparatively low-scale factor that engages terrorist groups in suicide terrorism is the wish for independence from the mother country. We can take the example of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) which had been committing suicide attempts on Sri Lankan civilians and forces to bet an independent state. However, such cases are rare and occur when the mother country uses violence as a tool to put down the independence movement.

On the other hand, the groups that are least likely to engage in suicide terrorism are those which have the aim to keep carrying out their illegal activities without having any wish of getting independence from the state. Examples of such groups are Mexican and Colombian criminal groups. Some of the main illegal activities of such groups include kidnapping for ransom, drug trading, and the use of force against unarmed civilians.