“Normalizing” Suicide Bombing: What the Assassination of Abu Khaled al-Soury Says about Jihadism Tod

http://www.juancole.com/2014/03/normalizing-assassination-jihadism.html

“Normalizing” Suicide Bombing: What the Assassination of Abu Khaled al-Soury Says about Jihadism Today
By Juan Cole | Mar. 11, 2014
(Jeffrey William Lewis)

On February 23 the Winter Olympics in Sochi Russia concluded peacefully. A terrorist attack by Chechen Black Widow suicide bombers—much feared and highly anticipated by many in the American government and media–never happened. Instead, a significant suicide bombing did take place, but elsewhere and in a different manner that was nevertheless very revealing about both suicide bombing and the state of the global jihadist movement that utilizes it today. That same Sunday, Abu Khaled al-Soury, a violent Islamist who had fought with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, was killed in a suicide bombing carried out by a rival jihadi group in Syria.

The attack that killed al-Soury is significant because in many ways it contradicts the standard popular understanding of suicide bombing. This understanding sees suicide bombing as irrational, a consequence of a fanatical interpretation of Islam that causes militant young men (or revenge seeking young Chechen women) to seek to inflict grievous harm on helpless (usually Western) civilians. The attack that killed Soury, however, was none of these things. It was certainly a brutal attack, but in military terms, the loss of one fighter to kill a leader such as al-Soury (and six of his followers) can only be seen as a rationally calculated success. In the context of the Syrian conflict, al-Soury was a legitimate target rather than a noncombatant. Finally, the attack is notable because al-Soury, a jihadi with good relations with bin Laden, was killed by the exact same weapon that made Osama bin Laden himself internationally famous.

This gap between how many in the US understand suicide bombing and how suicide bombing is being used in the world today is troubling and suggests that more than twelve years after the 9/11 attacks we have yet to move beyond the horror that such violence elicits in order to reach an understanding of what suicide bombing truly is. It is indeed a terrible form of weapon, but it cannot be dismissed as being solely the product of religious fanaticism since historically it has been used with brutal effectiveness by groups with ideologies ranging from the religious to the secular.

What suicide bombing in different periods and times does have in common is that it is always the product of human organizations. Fanatical individuals may—and often do—fulfill the role of bomber, but without organizations to train them, build the bombs, support the attacks, and exploit the media potential in the aftermath of the attacks suicide bombing would be a trivial rather than a significant security threat.