Analysts Rethink Image of Suicide Bombers

The men who crashed passenger jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are a new breed of suicide terrorist, apparently linked in motivation to the young, often poorly educated men who conducted previous bombings but a world apart in training and technical skills.

Evidence about the 19 suspects suggests that at least some of them were older, better educated and far more sophisticated than earlier suicide bombers, according to terrorism experts in the United States, Israel and elsewhere.

“Sept. 11 wiped out all the presumptions,” said Brian Jenkins, a terrorism and intelligence specialist at Rand Corp. in Santa Monica. Jenkins said he and other analysts are abandoning long-held assumptions about the behavior and methods of suicide terrorists.

Those assessments, he said, helped form the basis of security measures for American government and civilian installations at home and abroad, many of which must be rethought. Suicide bombings were considered unlikely on U.S. soil because of the distance from world trouble spots and because potential attackers were believed unlikely to function easily in Western societies.

The Pattern Is Broken

Experts caution that it is naive--even dangerous--to speak of exact “profiles” of suicide terrorists. Nevertheless, patterns have emerged over many years and events--and last week’s hijackers, in some respects, do not appear to fit.

Investigators are focusing much of their attention on 33-year-old Mohamed Atta, who was among five suspected hijackers who crashed the first plane into the World Trade Center. Other hijackers are known to have taken flying lessons or studied aviation-related topics.

The investigation is examining whether Atta and his 23-year-old cousin, Marwan Al-Shehhi, both of whom studied electronics at the Technical University in Hamburg, Germany, might have held leadership roles in the plot.

Until last week’s attacks on American soil, perhaps no country had been more affected by suicide terrorism in recent years than Israel.

Ariel Merari, a Tel Aviv University professor of political psychology who has written extensively on terrorism, has found the average age of 34 Palestinian suicide bombers involved in attacks from 1993 to 2000 to be 22.

In contrast, several of the men involved in the trade center and Pentagon attacks seem to have undergone intense preparation. They spent months or years in this country, gaining knowledge and honing skills that they would later turn against Americans.

Perhaps even more striking, experts said, was the extent of planning and broad, organizational resources required to execute the attacks.

Ehud Sprinzak, an Israeli expert in political extremism, says the emerging picture of the trade center attackers caught him “totally by surprise.”

“The old profile was a relatively young, relatively uneducated kid, with no family ties and subject to very intense brainwashing or control by clerics and basically not allowed to be left alone because of fears he would chicken out,” said Sprinzak, who is dean of the Lauder School, a public policy institute in Herzliya, Israel.

“Here you have guys planning for two years or more, who trained [largely] with . . . freedom. You would expect people like that, with their education and age, to think twice about dying.”

Ziad Abu-Amr, a Palestinian legislator and expert on radical Islam based in Gaza City, said there are no clear rules on suicide bombing, but there are patterns.

“These are people who believe in a certain cause and are willing to die for it. Religious doctrine and the seeking of redemption to please God play the most important role.

“But in neither New York nor in Palestine can you separate the political goal,” Abu-Amr said. “They blame the United States for certain things, and it all enters into the calculation.”

The motivation may be nationalist or political as well as religious. Among the most lethal suicide bombers in recent history, according to several experts, is the secular Tamil Tiger group of Sri Lanka, which has killed two heads of state and wounded a third.

Experts said they were wary of drawing early conclusions about the significance of the shifting profile, pointing out that many details of the hijackers’ lives have yet to surface.

Analysts must examine whether virulent hatred of the United States and the West has spread across a much broader swath of Middle Eastern and Islamic society than previously believed, Jenkins said.

Another possibility, the Rand expert said, is that the United States’ own focus on Osama bin Laden has helped him attract more sophisticated, more educated disciples.

“We may have sent hundreds, if not thousands, of potential recruits to his tent, giving him a larger, deeper reservoir to draw from,” Jenkins said.

Although the demographic profile and methodology may have evolved, the basic, chilling concept of suicide attacks remains the same, said Vincent Cannistraro, former director of counter-terrorism operations at the CIA.

“It still comes down to the idea of one person, or a group of people, using an explosive device to penetrate a security system or barrier and killing himself in the process,” Cannistraro said. “It’s a frighteningly effective weapon.”

It’s also nothing new. Yoram Schweitzer, an Israeli counter-terrorism specialist, said that among those who have used suicide attacks were 1st century Jews and the 11th century Muslim Assassins of Persia, who used the tactic to eliminate rivals and spread Islam.

In the contemporary Middle East, the first major suicide bombing was carried out in 1983 by Islamic extremists against the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. Security was overhauled at scores of embassies, military and government facilities.

Later that year, however, the same group, Hezbollah, launched coordinated truck bomb attacks against the U.S. Marine compound and French paratroop headquarters in Lebanon. Nearly 300 people, including 241 Americans, were killed, leading months later to the withdrawal of American troops from Lebanon.

The Marine bombing, and its role in persuading the U.S. to give up its mission in Lebanon, became a “clarion call” for Hezbollah and its sympathizers, said Bruce Hoffman, terrorism specialist and director of Rand’s Washington office.

Other suicide attacks were to follow, including the 1994 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait and 1998’s devastating twin assaults on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in which 224 people died.

From 1983 to mid-2001, about 300 suicide attacks were documented worldwide, according to Schweitzer, a researcher at the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya.

Israel’s long occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the difficult lives experienced by tens of thousands of young Palestinian men helped give rise to suicide bombers.

The men shared similar characteristics, according to Merari and others who have studied them: They were young--generally 18 to 26 years of age--often were poor, and some had little education. All knew desperation.

Intifada’s Crop

The current intifada--the last year of daily bloodletting that has claimed about 800 lives, 80% of them Palestinian--has given rise to a new crop of suicide bombers. They share the anger and frustration of the earlier group and many of the same characteristics.

But there are variations.

Izzedine Masri, the 22-year-old Palestinian who blew himself up in a Jerusalem pizza parlor Aug. 9 and killed 16 people, was the son of a wealthy businessman. The Palestinian who tried to blow up a passenger bus in Jerusalem’s French Hill neighborhood was a college student.

This month, all stereotypes were shattered when a middle-age Israeli Arab, married and with children, killed himself and three others at a busy northern Israeli train station.

Although the idea of suicide is rejected by mainstream Islam, some Muslim leaders contend that the practice is allowed in a holy war.

Many of the young bombers evidently choose to die because they believe they will be assured a place in Paradise.

“They see glorification, heroism, rewards waiting in heaven,” Abu-Amr said. “And if they are poor and suffering and want to go to a better life, then it’s easy to understand how they become more receptive to alternatives.”

Survivors of bombings, including a border policeman who thwarted an attack in Jerusalem earlier this month, have reported seeing their assailant smile just before pushing the button.

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Trounson reported from Los Angeles and Wilkinson from Jerusalem. Times staff writer Mary Curtius in Jerusalem also contributed to this report.