Who wants to be a self-bomber?

"The startling irony is that the only antidote to the walking kamikaze is another one. The human bomber is the ultimate usable weapon in an asymmetric war. The fine art of the willingness to die in an act of collective murder was perfected nearer home in the land of Ravana and Ram by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) No one has forgotten the legendary Dhanu whose fatal embrace felled former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi when she detonated the garland of explosives strapped to her body."

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by Maj. Gen. Ashok K. Mehta

(February 05, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) The terror war in the Middle East, Sri Lanka and Jammu and Kashmir has helped to understand the anatomy of a suicide bomber. Easily the most climactic and catastrophic phase of the second Intifada was played out astride the West Bank last month culminating in a record seven suicide bombings in seven days by the Palestinian Hamas, Fatah and Al Aksa Martyrs’ Brigade. The savage Israeli reprisals were part of a cycle of violence that had no precedent.

Who wants to be a self-bomber? The mythology of martyrdom distinguishes the human bomber from the ordinary terrorist. Jammu and Kashmir’s fidayeen do not strictly meet the Qualitative Requirement (QR), though like other human ordnance of self destruct, they too are guaranteed a passage to heaven if they have not managed to escape. (They always keep open an exit route.) For those who hanker for the ultimate Nirvana, praise, honour, worship and wealth are assured for them and their families.

The startling irony is that the only antidote to the walking kamikaze is another one. The human bomber is the ultimate usable weapon in an asymmetric war. The fine art of the willingness to die in an act of collective murder was perfected nearer home in the land of Ravana and Ram by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) No one has forgotten the legendary Dhanu whose fatal embrace felled former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi when she detonated the garland of explosives strapped to her body. The LTTE’s record in human bombing and suicide attacks is unsurpassable. Their human bombers have accounted for one President, one former Prime Minister, two Defence Ministers, one future President, one Chief of Naval Staff, a couple of Generals and scores of rival Tamil leaders. President Chandrika Kumaratunga, who lost an eye, came within a whisker of death.

By the end of 2000, the LTTE had carried out 173 suicide attacks, but only 70 per cent of these were successful. The LTTE is the only guerrilla force where every cadre has a cyanide capsule strung around the neck, more an established proclivity to pop the capsule in the mouth when entrapped.

Barring the suicide squads of the LTTE and the Islamic jehad — whether Hezbollah, Hamas or Al-Qaeda — this human variety of kill-and-get-killed is not traceable elsewhere. Why for example, did the Red Brigade, the IRA or the ETA not throw up a human bomber? What about the Christian or Hindu human bomber? Will the Islamic jehad bomber go transatlantic? The grand gurus of terrorism have not found answers to these questions. The non-Islamic terrorist groups with the sole exception of the LTTE reportedly believe in violence with restraint — whatever that means.

The export of the human bomber to the USA is also in debate. The history of fidayeen attacks in Jammu and Kashmir is mixed. A fidayeen attack is a do-and-die mission against a security force post. As on date, there have been 42 cases of fidayeen attacks, four of these car bombs. Nearly 200 soldiers against 85 terrorists were killed. More than 50 per cent of the attacks were staged last year with 70 per cent in the Srinagar valley alone. The strapped human bomber, a la Dhanu is conspicuously missing.

Pakistani terror groups do not subscribe to instant martyrdom. That is why the Karachi attack against French technicians is an Al-Qaeda job. The pattern of fidayeen attacks indicates a striking identity of tactics: storm, strike and die. There was one case of an animal bomber. A mule strapped with camouflaged explosives was pushed into a security post and detonated by remote control causing damage and casualties. One of the sticking points of the latest ceasefire agreement between the Lankan government and the LTTE was the latter’s unwillingness to give up suicide attacks.

The terrorist attacks on New Delhi’s Parliament House and the State Assembly in Srinagar were extremely bold but the element of escape was not absent. It is the commandeering of four aircraft and ramming them into their targets that turns fiction into fact. The Attas and Dhanus have romanticised the cult of the human bomber but the fidayeen is in no hurry to go to heaven. The challenge for the Indian security forces is how to intercept the fidayeen before they reach their target and ensure their instant martyrdom.

(Maj. Gen Ashok K Mehta was commissioned in the 5th Gorkha Rifles in 1957. He took part in all the military operations undertaken by India except the 1947 war in Jammu and Kashmir and the 1962 China war when he was on a peacekeeping mission in Congo (Zaire) in 1962. He did courses at Fort Leavenworth (US) in 1975 and the Royal College of Defence Studies in UK in 1974. He is a founder member of the Defence Planning Staff, now the Integrated Defence Staff, of the Chiefs of Staff Committee. His last assignment was General Officer Commanding, Indian Peace Keeping Forces (IPKF) South, in Sri Lanka.)