IN 2002, there were reportedly only two suicide attacks in Pakistan, but at the end of 2010, 49 such terror attacks in the year have proven that modern Islamic militancy is a hydra-headed problem.

Intelligence services are in a quandary when it comes to short-term preventive strategies, with senior officials conceding that stringent public security measures at civilian and government institutions and places of worship including Sufi shrines do not act as deterrents.

The continuous flow of volunteers willing to train at militant camps in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq indicates that those involved are willing to travel continents, driven by a cause that hasn’t run dry of recruits and trainers.

Since 9/11, the surge in suicide bombings is said to be in reaction to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to poor economic conditions in the Muslim world. The effects of these events have catalysed a blend of global militant trends drawing potential suicide bombers.

The indoctrination of young men, angry and bereft of economic opportunities, is not based solely on religious and sectarian reasoning. And with recruitment, militant activism and venues varying after 9/11, the religious indoctrination package isn’t exclusive to a local mosque (no longer prime recruitment ground with private homes, cafés, Islamic centres attracting ‘self-starters’ searching for Taliban contact and training).

This widely available package includes the insertion of a global narrative infused with strong anti-western or anti-American sentiment.

In Pakistan or in Europe and America, suicide bombers are led to the process of radicalisation, often created by certain conditions. With many paths to radicalisation, whether it is a wide cultural generation gap that could either lead to radical secularism or extreme religiosity, or humiliation faced by communities when dehumanised by armed security forces, it has been difficult to determine the psychological portrait of a suicide bomber that fits all regions.

It has been claimed that they are driven by poverty, hopelessness and ignorance.

In fact, interviews with thwarted bombers, recruiters and family members from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine have shown how middle-class, devout and aggressive young men, many with a university degree, are drawn for various reasons to the process of indoctrination.

This contradicts the stereotype of the fanatic. However, it doesn’t hold true for child recruits as young as seven who are easy prey because of economic circumstances, especially in Pakistan’s tribal region where buying, (and bartering) children, who can come closer to their target or escape security checks, is not uncommon.

Since 9/11 there have been several hundred suicide attacks in Pakistan in which thousands have been killed.

In April this year, when Qari Hussain’s Fedayeen-i-Islam, also part of the Pakistan Taliban, claimed that its North Waziristan camp had 1,000 suicide bomber ‘graduates’, it boasted three separate facilities with 350 ‘students’ each. That was the same time when US rhetoric grew angrier about attacks orchestrated by the Haqqani network in North Waziristan.

In the same month, three would-be-suicide bombers were arrested in the Spinboldak district in southern Kandahar. Two of them, Pakistani boys aged 15, trained at camps in Quetta were more likely sent over the border through the Chaman route, a Taliban region that allegedly comes under Mullah Zakir, a former Gitmo detainee in Quetta.

The 2010 Bajaur suicide attack by a veiled woman killing 45 people at a World Food Programme distribution queue raised the question of security and easy access.

In August this year, the burka bomber re-emerged with a 17-year-old veiled girl in Peshawar attacking a police check post.

Similar attacks, many by girls as young as eight (June 2011, Uruzgan province) are examples of how the Taliban are using suicide bombers cleverly, ensuring vulnerability doesn’t attract attention. Failed female suicide bombers have alleged that either they were forced to or kidnapped and coerced to attack Pakistani troops.

Depending on the region, reasons include nurturing a volatile mix of bitterness and despondency at life and political governments (unemployment, or in the case of Palestinian bombers, the occupation has enraged many young people, most have lost family members).

Motivations differ but appear more political than faith-based. Most global recruits come ill-equipped in militant philosophy and combat training, wanting to act against injustices and make a change.

In The 9/11 Wars Jason Burke meets British-born Pakistani Hanif Qadir, a successful businessman who leaves London to fight alongside the Taliban, travels to Peshawar and then decides to turn back en route to Afghanistan. Qadir’s bus ride across the border makes him realise how international volunteers are treated as ‘cannon fodder’.

During the Intifada, reasons included the humiliations caused to Palestinians (Israeli-controlled check posts, curfews) that motivated many from Gaza to go to Israel on suicide missions. And with no shortage of recruits to die for the cause there was no typical profile of a suicide bomber: they were aged between 18 to 38 years, came from middle-class families and had jobs.

All were religious, and some gave up their luxurious lifestyles to kill.

Researchers say that typically men from broken homes, and under-achievers are more vulnerable but intelligence services have found that recruits (the 2004 UK Crevice Plotters and the 7/7 attackers) were educated and from stable backgrounds.

There was little that made the 7/7 bombers any different from other young men sharing similar backgrounds.

What has been noted was how militant handlers ensured recruits were isolated, spent time together alone; that taped sermons by extremists clerics and television images of Muslims suffering globally played an important role in their training.

Young ‘self-starters’ with profiles like the Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad are most vulnerable to adopting hard-line ideologies, making contact with senior militant figures for logistical aid and direction to carry out large missions.

This ‘raw material’ waiting to be exploited in the theatre of jihad must compel governments to chalk out strategies for political and economic progress, targeting the youth of their country before the cult of the suicide bomber becomes a celebrated violent alternative.

The writer is a senior assistant editor at The Herald.

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