Suicide bombing gaining new converts, expert says
Militants see no other solutions to despair
The Globe and Mail
By MICHAEL VALPY
Saturday, August 7, 2004 - Page A6

GENEVA PARK, ONT. -- Suicide bombers are rational, sane human beings whose choice to end their lives as they kill others is considered perfectly normal in the societies they grow up in, says a U.S. psychiatrist who worked for the CIA.

Jerrold Post has put together personality profiles for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency for more than 20 years and spoken to scores of accused Palestinian and al-Qaeda terrorists. In an interview yesterday, he said that the appeal of suicide bombing is broadening.

The practice was once limited to very young men, a huge percentage of them teenagers.

"Now women, mothers, have joined this pathway, and middle-aged men, a 43-year-old father. I see it as a trend," he said.

Dr. Post spoke yesterday at the Couchiching Institute on Public Affairs annual conference, held north of Toronto. This year's theme is "God's Back with a Vengeance: Religion, Pluralism and the Secular State."

He said his colleagues have given up asking people why they join their militant organizations to become suicide bombers. "Because we would get these weird looks: 'Why do we join? Everybody is joining. It's only the weird individuals who don't join,' " he said. "This is troubling to hear and understand."

Asked to explain why it has happened, Dr. Post responded with a single word: "Despair."

He said suicide bombers are people who see no other solution for the forces they see arrayed against them, no other way of avenging their family's losses.

"I think one has to look to the despair that they are experiencing. . . . These are not deviant, psychologically disturbed individuals. Every one of them I've talked to has made perfect sense," he said.

"Terrorists groups, in fact, carefully screen those who want to join -- people are lined up to join these groups -- and they do not allow emotionally disturbed people to join. They'd be a security risk."

He said that before "the broadening and deepening" appeal of suicide bombing took root, the profile of a suicide bomber was that of a man aged 17 to 22 -- an "uneducated, unmarried, unemployed and unformed youth looking forward to a life of despair.

"At the forefront of revolutions are youth, always. It's part of the psychological imperative of youth to overthrow the parental generation and become adults on their own and, when there is a corrupt authority internationally, that becomes a surrogate for the parent that they need to overthrow," he said.

"Youthful energy is very idealizing and very demonizing."

Dr. Post said the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist hijackers fit a different paradigm. They were older, comparatively well-educated men from middle-class backgrounds, who subordinated their personalities to a destructive charismatic organization and its leader.

"To use this metaphor of a war on terrorism is nonsense. It implies a winner and a loser and a surrender ceremony at the end of it. We need to be struggling . . . for hearts and minds," he said. "You can't win this war with smart bombs and missiles.

"We have abdicated the arena of ideas and values."