...continued from part two
4. THE SUICIDE BOMBERS
Once a terrorist, it is often difficult to turn back. This
is particularly true for prospective suicide bombers. Once assigned to their
fatal missions, they become known as “walking martyrs.” Backing down would create
too much shame or humiliation.
Fathali M Moghaddam, a professor of psychology at Georgetown
University, describes a “staircase to terrorism,” as a way to understand the
process of radicalization. The stairs narrow toward the top. It becomes harder
to turn back with each step. As with killing, there are varying interpretations
among Muslims of Islamic doctrine on suicide.
The Koran prohibits suicide,
religious scholars say. But some Muslim groups insist that by classifying the
bombers as martyrs, their self-destruction becomes permissible because it is a
form of self-sacrifice, and because it is honorable to die in battle against
infidels. Much new research also ascribes the phenomenon to other motives that
are more personal or temporal, including a desire for honor, dedication to a
leader, vengeance, peer pressure (first identified as a motivation among the
Japanese Kamikaze fighter pilots), and the material support that a terrorist
group promises to extend to a martyr’s family after his death.
Arie W. Kruglanski, a professor of psychology at the
University of Maryland, College Park, who has studied videotapes of suicide
bombers’ final words and interviews with their mothers, argues that the
overarching motivation of suicide bombers is the quest for personal
significance, the desperate longing for a meaningful life that appears only to
come with death.
5. LEAVING TERRORISM
Dr. Horgan has led much of the research into what is known
as disengagement — a terrorist’s departure from the organization. He has
concluded that terrorists can disengage from violence without abandoning their
radical views, and he has also found that some leave after becoming intensely
disillusioned with the reality of life in terrorist movements.
The reasons terrorists leave the life provides great insight
into how their minds work, and their beliefs may be more subject to change than
previously thought, Dr. Horgan said.
Recruits are often promised an exciting, glamorous adventure
and a chance to change the world. But what they often find, Dr. Horgan said, is
that the groups they join are rife with jealousies and personal competition.
Also, the life, is boring. You end up in a safe house drinking tea. For those
who maintain an existence outside the group, the pressure of living a double
life can be exhausting. Some may, as they grow older, find that their own
priorities change — for example, they may want to start a family. They may see
that the group’s goals appear unattainable and they may find, as the group
becomes more extreme, that they have reached their internal moral limits.
In one case, a former Al Qaeda recruit told Dr. Horgan that
when he arrived to fight in Afghanistan, he was dismayed to find that children
and the elderly were being forced into battles. The man’s “image of this
all-seeing, all-powerful, all-noble movement was receiving its first hard
knock,” Dr. Horgan said.
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