Politics

The Origin of the Modern Day Suicide Bomber

Written by Gaurav Bhola, MSM, Managing Editor & Community Manager on November 9, 2007 5:58 pm EST

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The modern day suicide bomber owes his origin to the kamikaze pilots of World War II. A suicide bomber performs a terrorist attack by blowing himself up, by self or in a transport vehicle. The first occurrence of recorded Islamic terrorism by suicide bombing occurred in 1981, when Kurdish rebels targeted the Iraqi embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. However, it was the three bombings in 1983 that brought to international attention the lethality of the suicide bomber. The infamous 1983 suicide bombings were: Hezbollah’s bombing of the U.S. embassy in April 1983, attack on United States Marine and French barracks in October 1983. Nevertheless, it was the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the Indian Subcontinent that brought a new dimension to suicide bombing. A dimensional tactic later adopted successfully by Islamic Jihad terrorists with deadly consequences.

LTTE - Ethnic Terrorists

The LTTE is a terrorist group based in Sri Lanka which has waged a brutal secessionist campaign against the Sri Lankan government since the 1970s with a view to create an independent “Tamil Eelam” state in the north and east of Sri Lanka. Unlike, Islamic terrorism, an instrument of religion; LTTE fights the island’s Sinhalese majority, an instrument of ethnicity. I label the LTTE as “Ethnic Terrorists.”

Ethnic terrorism doesnt prescribe to religious ideology as the foundation of its terrorist agenda but ethnicity. However, ethnicity should not be confused with race. An ethnic group is a group of people sharing a common heritage, religion, or cultural tradition; while race is exclusive of belief or choice to belong to a group, but rather it’ a group composed of similar genetically transmitted physical characteristics.

In the case of the LTTE, it took up arms to secede from the ethnic Sinhalese dominated Sri Lanka for the cause of a separate, independent state of Eelam composed of the ethnic Tamil population. Founded in 1975 by Velupillai Prabhakaran, LTTE membership included disenchanted Tamil youth, who were discontent with policies of successive Sinhalese governments in Colombo (Sri Lanka’ capital) towards addressing a variety of concerns of the nation’s Tamil community.

Herein, their violent actions have earned them proscription as a terrorist organization by 32 countries, including the United States.

Global Terrorism, Dawn of the New Suicide Bomber

The LTTE has regularly used suicide bombers as instruments of terror. Unlike, previous suicide bombers who used bomb laden vehicles to carry out terrorist attacks, the LTTE pioneered the use of concealed suicide bomb vests for suicide bombings. Hence, it is this innovative terror tactic which is now used by Islamic terrorists as an instrument of Islamic terrorism worldwide.

The LTTE employed its lethal suicide bomber division, the Black Tigers using bomb vests and female suicide bombers to assassinate Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 and Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa, in 1993. The Black Tigers unit is ruthless, the best trained, and most efficient suicide squad in the world.

Jane’s Information Group reports that during 1980 and 2000, LTTE had carried out a sum of 168 suicide attacks on civilians and military targets. These suicide attacks exceeded the combined sum of Hamas and Hezbollah suicide attacks carried out during the same period.

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