A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Middle East by Dilip Hiro

Author:Dilip Hiro [Hiro, Dilip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781566569040
Publisher: Interlink Publishing

The method of being killed in “God’s way” has varied. During the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988) [q.v.], Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini [q.v.] ruled that any Iranian who died in the war was a martyr. On the other side, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein [q.v.], hardly a scholar of Islam [q.v.], issued similar statements. Since suicide bombing was a recent phenomenon, it led to controversy among Muslim scholars. Those who opposed it argued that it was un-Islamic to kill innocent civilians. Those in favor reasoned that suicide bombing enabled Muslims to overcome their general weakness vis-a–vis their enemies.

However, suicide bombing ceased to be the monopoly of Muslim fundamentalists [q.v.]. By 2001, it had been adopted by 10 organizations, both religious and secular, and used 160 times in 13 countries. Sri Lanka’s Tamil rebels—Hindu by religion—fighting for an independent state, were the most frequent practitioners of suicide bombing.

Whether sanctioned by religion or not, suicide bombing has proved effective. The conventional concept of security rests on deterrence, where the terrorist is killed or apprehended by the authorities. But the certain death of the suicide terrorist(s) precludes the captors’ extracting vital information, thereby enabling the terrorist group to undertake daring operations while protecting its cadres and organizational network.

In the case of the U.S. embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar as Salam in August 1998, the authorities had rapid success in apprehending the conspirators because in each instance one of the terrorists chose not to commit suicide at the last moment. Conversely, when both terrorists died in the ramming of USS Cole in October 2000, the Yemeni authorities took more than a year to arrest their coconspirators.

Similarly, the black boxes saved from the crash of the fourth 9/11 aircraft in rural Pennsylvania—instead of ramming the targeted Capitol Hill in Washington—provided useful clues to the American authorities in identifying the 19 suicide hijackers of the four planes.

During the Al Aqsa Intifada [q.v.] (September 2001–December 2004), 96 Palestinians, including three women, carried out suicide bombings. Those claiming these attacks were not only Hamas [q.v.] and the Islamic Jihad [q.v.] but also the Tanzim, affiliated to secular Fatah [q.v.].

Suleiman, Michel (1948–): Lebanese military and political leader; president, 2008- Born in a Maronite [q.v.] household in the town of Amsheet in Jbeil, he graduated from the Military Academy in 1970 as second lieutenant. He rose from being an infantry platoon leader to the army staff secretary–general in 1991. When he served as a brigade commander in southern Lebanon from 1993 to 1995, his force was involved in many skirmishes with the occupying Israeli troops. The next year he was put in charge of the vital Sixth Brigade. When General Emile Lahoud [q.v.] was elected president in 1998, Suleiman succeeded him as commander of the armed forces. After the Israeli pull–out from southern Lebanon in 2000, he supervised the army’s deployment near the Israeli border.

He scrupulously kept his troops out of the domestic political fights that broke out after the assassination of Rafiq Hariri [q.v.] in 2005 and again in May 2008, arguing that such an involvement served the interests of Israel.

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