Dying to Win: Why Suicide Terrorists Do It
by Robert A Pape (Gibson Square, £18.99)
At the University of Chicago, Pape has compiled a database of all acts of "suicide terrorism" around the world from 1980 to the present day: Hizbullah, Tamils, Sikhs, Chechens, al-Qaida and so on. What he finds may surprise ranting theorists of a clash of civilisations. Suicide terrorism is made more likely by a confluence of three factors. First, a military occupation of (or a direct military influence over) a homeland by a democracy. (The US military bases in Saudi Arabia were long Bin Laden's primary grievance, before they were mostly evacuated in 2003.) Second, a religious difference between occupier and occupied: the difference, rather than the content of any religion, is what counts. (Al-Qaida-type bombers overwhelmingly come from states under US military influence, not from countries with the biggest populations of "Islamic fundamentalists".) And third, "community support for martyrdom", including a supply of volunteers, who are generally well educated and not among their society's poorest.
The book, crisply readable, ends with a short section on US policy, which weirdly recommends a return to "off-shore balancing", of the type that saw the US prop up Saddam in the 1980s. This "ought" does not flow of necessity from the rest of the book's "is". In any case, from now on, writers making generalisations about terrorism will be obliged to take account of Pape's data, if only to argue with it, or they will risk forfeiting the right to be taken seriously.
What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Terrorist Threat
by Louise Richardson (John Murray, £12.99)
From a more sociological perspective, and using a wide variety of detailed case studies, Richardson arrives at a conclusion also supported by Pape: that people who commit suicide terrorism are not, by and large, crazed religious maniacs but rational actors, choosing a tactic that they suppose will further their particular political ends. Her book is calm, elegantly written and superbly researched: she writes illuminatingly about some historical precursors (the Zealots, Assassins and Thugi), and in the book's second half pays close attention to productive and counter-productive aspects of the west's response since 9/11. Her concluding policy recommendations focus on security and intelligence, rather than the moronic presidential goal to "rout terrorism out of the world" by force. She praises Tony Blair's first, unscripted speech in response to the July bombings of last year, in which "he spoke calmly of crimes and police work"; and makes some hard-headed statistical points: "The probability that terrorists will kill as many Americans as drunk drivers [will] in any given year is tiny." Possibly the most intelligent and readable contemporary one-volume account available.
Celsius 7/7
by Michael Gove (Orion, £9.99)
Prefer something to stoke a posturing fury? This will be perfect: a surreal screed, a perfervid pamphlet, claiming that "fundamentalist terror" is actually the fault of "the west's policy of appeasement". With Gove as our guide, we find easy answers to everything. The right response to terrorism, he says, is exemplified by the attack on Fallujah, which, he writes with fastidious approval, was "beneficial", an example of "military force" being "applied with [...] rigour" (chemical weapons are evidently the only language these people understand). Why do Arabs hate Israel? Only because Israel is an economically successful democracy. Say what you like about the Iraq war, meanwhile, but at least "it did not lead to [...] an inflamed Arab street". (Inflamed street? Never mind.) What universe is Gove living in? Why, the universe of "moral clarity", a phrase that resounds throughout the book and which, as usual, announces a jejune cowboys-and-indians worldview. Remarkably trite.
