Fighting suicide bombers

[Pekka]

I think a lot of people make the mistake of not trying to understand how people think and function. This would be very essential in the field of battle, to know your enemy.

War, is at its core, in some respect, a game. It's a game of outwitting your enemy, and to outwit, you have to understand what your enemy thinks and they try to do the same. To move, evade and to strike. Even more so today, for the usage of propaganda.


I find it interesting how the west is not picking up more on the suicide bombers more than just 'crazy fanatics'. Obviously from our perspective this would be true. But you see the mothers of these bombers, usually even age of less than 18, and they are proud. They think it's the best thing that happened to them.

Now, instead of going 'they're just insane', we shoudl realize it's a different discourse completely. To fight these bombers, we need to understand the cultural grounds for this action, so that we can fight it better.

Ignorance has never been a good weapon to fight your enemy. The worst mistake, I think, is that we start to give these bombers notoriety, as in get scared of that. Thinking they are fierce opponents. TO me, this is a mistake. So is underestimating them.

The difference between a western army and these suicide fighters is, that the western soldier goes there to fight, but tries to stay alive. He realizes he might die in the course of the battle, but still tries to stay alive, yet applying the current strategy (that is not just flee the first chance he gets).

The suicide fighters seems to be eager to die. This will lead to many mistakes, it is enivetable. This can never be a winning strategy, if facing a professional army of fighting soldiers.

I don't think we should give them any notoriety. The problem comes in urban warfare that is not all out fighting. Because one has to contain the situation and can not just go and fight like it's a total war. So a moment of inactive fighting is when these suicide fighters become more visible. So what can you do? Would it be viable to change the setting where the bombers become strong? Change the pace back to active fighting.

Since the bombers are highly ideological and proud, I think this can be used against them. I think we could draw them out, by using their pride and eagerness to be a martyr.

[MRT144]

or we could just kill the families of suicide bombers so that the message of "killing yourself kills everyone around you" is produced

[Spiffor]

Re: Fighting suicide bombers

Originally posted by Pekka
I think we could draw them out, by using their pride and eagerness to be a martyr.

"Bring it on" -- George W Bush

They did.

[Pekka]

I was thinking maybe some other methods than that.

Stop trolling.

[KrazyHorse]

I don't think we should give them any notoriety. The problem comes in urban warfare that is not all out fighting. Because one has to contain the situation and can not just go and fight like it's a total war. So a moment of inactive fighting is when these suicide fighters become more visible. So what can you do? Would it be viable to change the setting where the bombers become strong? Change the pace back to active fighting.

How?

[Pekka]

Well I think it's an interesting question and woudl like to see if anyone has any ideas on that one.

[KrazyHorse]

No, it's a question that doesn't make any sense.

[Pekka]

A question that doesn't make no sense is how to draw out suicide bombers? Why does it not make sense?

I don't mean that you would increase the amount of attacks. But draw them in the open and of course neutralize them.

[Sirotnikov]

You have tons of options to do that.

I can outline several principles, but your point about changing the pace is exactly right.

Swift and decisive military raids against bases and areas of training and production have a huge effect, since they change the pace from "low intensity" where the civilian-disguised guerilla fighter clearly has an upper hand, to "high intensity" where an army has a decisive upper hand.

Obviosly if one side is doing a routine guard duty, he has far less chances than the modern terrorist, which can make 99% of his preperations, and very often even the attack itself (until detonation) in covert unconspicious method.

Changing the pace, and making the hunter (suicide bomber) the hunted - making him run for his life, and spend every minute planning his escape for the next night, rather than planning an elaborate attack.

This is one of the main things that people don't get, when armies take up agressive actions, which are not a direct response to any specific terrorist plot - but are meant to generally disrupt 'normal terrorist activity".

Other stuff rely on constantly being alert and spreading out in perimeters of defence - at the target location (civil places), the main routes (creating check points and good borders) and the origins of terrorists (again employing raids and intelligence gathering).


Intelligence plays a critical connection on many levels.

Penetrating a group is not always possible, but there are patterns that can be found, and there are cues to an impending danger.

The local farmers in a certain place have not appeared to work in a normal schedule. That's odd.... Most likely they have been tipped off that there's gonna be something "big".

Some unknown teen has disappeared from home for a few days without trace, and his family doesn't know why, and his friends won't talk. He is very likely therefore in the last stages of mental preperation (which includes, just like in sects, rigorous praying and detachment from earthly possessions or otherwise important stuff - family, wife, property, parents).

Often civilians at the target areas have the best instincts and should be well relied on. A tip from a local taxi driver about 'an odd guy in a trench coat' is not high-tech intelligence - but it is often a great thing.

[GePap]

All you can do is limit the avilability of bomb making materials and tract any suspicious activities in order to disrupt plots and prevent them from coming to fruition.

What makes suicide bombing more effective is that the motivation of the bomber allows for more audacious plots that have the ability to be changed in the field, unlike with say a stationary bomb in a fixed locale. Obviously attacks with military style weapons would be much more damaging, but its much easier to keep track of those materials than more common explosives.

[Sirotnikov]

Originally posted by MRT144
or we could just kill the families of suicide bombers so that the message of "killing yourself kills everyone around you" is produced

Israel has tried wrecking the homes of suicide bombers, and forecfully migrating their family.

It worked for a while, but then the money the families recieve just increased. So this was like a great commercial. "Get rid of your old house - the terrorist organization will build you a new one, twice as big!".

Not to mention it is somewhat troublesome ethically, and not always easy to justify in court.

Killing the family would be effective, but that is really taking collective punishment, so it can't be done in modern times.

Also there is the mental aspect - if you believe you're a martyr - death isn't scary at all. It is honorable.

People name their kids after martyrs and have posters and trading cards. A family of a martyr gets a huge rise in its status in society.

Actually, a prime reason why many gays or troubled individuals, who don't get along well in a conservative muslim society, turn to suicide as a way to "minimize losses" or even "redeem" being a disgrace to their family.

[Sirotnikov]

Originally posted by GePap
All you can do is limit the avilability of bomb making materials and tract any suspicious activities in order to disrupt plots and prevent them from coming to fruition.

That's a very small fraction of what you can do.

If the policy is not agressive and disrupting in general, you sure are going to miss out alot of plots.

What makes suicide bombing more effective is that the motivation of the bomber allows for more audacious plots that have the ability to be changed in the field, unlike with say a stationary bomb in a fixed locale. Obviously attacks with military style weapons would be much more damaging, but its much easier to keep track of those materials than more common explosives.

You'd be surprised how easy it is to make cheap weapons or explosive off shoots. And explosives with a handful of bolts mixed in, are twice as deadly.

[MRT144]

Originally posted by Sirotnikov

Israel has tried wrecking the homes of suicide bombers, and forecfully migrating their family.

It worked for a while, but then the money the families recieve just increased. So this was like a great commercial. "Get rid of your old house - the terrorist organization will build you a new one, twice as big!".

Not to mention it is somewhat troublesome ethically, and not always easy to justify in court.

Killing the family would be effective, but that is really taking collective punishment, so it can't be done in modern times.

Also there is the mental aspect - if you believe you're a martyr - death isn't scary at all. It is honorable.

People name their kids after martyrs and have posters and trading cards. A family of a martyr gets a huge rise in its status in society.

Actually, a prime reason why many gays or troubled individuals, who don't get along well in a conservative muslim society, turn to suicide as a way to "minimize losses" or even "redeem" being a disgrace to their family.

then we paint the family as clowns!

[Pekka]

Swift and decisive military raids against bases and areas of training and production have a huge effect, since they change the pace from "low intensity" where the civilian-disguised guerilla fighter clearly has an upper hand, to "high intensity" where an army has a decisive upper hand.

Exactly, I don't see them being ready or willing to fight in raids, or even open field battle. WIth inferior weaponry and slim to none tactical ability, it's a suicide mission with no martyrs, and therefore no honour, and therefore for no point.

Other stuff rely on constantly being alert and spreading out in perimeters of defence - at the target location (civil places), the main routes (creating check points and good borders) and the origins of terrorists (again employing raids and intelligence gathering).

Hmm this is an interesting concept.. so instead of being constantly static, you'd become more like a living organism, moving constantly as well. The intel ability of suicide fighters is also inferior, and if you are not too static, you would have more info on your enemy than they on you? Possibly, possibly.. an interesting concept none of the less.

Penetrating a group is not always possible, but there are patterns that can be found, and there are cues to an impending danger.

Definitely. I'm assisting in research where.. I've been kind of 'stone' about it because I'm not allowed to talk about the details naturally and I won't, but as part of 'security' and my personal interest on surveillance, it's a new concept of modeling behaviour and building data models on that.. with those models you can search for patterns and make an analysis, so this can be applied to group movements also. I won't say what the detailed concept is though, I mean I can't. One of the applications of that data and analysis is, that you can look for those patterns and discover behaviour that is 'unconscious'. The basic result would then be, 'we know more about you than you knwo about yourself'. If this would be applied in studying group movements and behaviour, you would be able to tell if they are slacking off and repeating something, and thus strike and surprise.

Of course this is done by intel all the time with detailing physical movement, but the methodology we are using is a bit different and I'm ready to state that it is more comprehensive. But maybe it is used in the military as well.

Anyway, it would be better to get those good targets, because I doubt the suicide bombers decide the targets and the time. There must be a body of command that does that for them. There must be recruiters connected to them. Get to the bomber (before they act), get to the recruiter, get to the trainer, get to the command structure, get to the propaganda machine and get to the financing.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Pekka
Stop trolling.

Well, more seriously, I completely agree with you when you say we should try to understand them, instead of dismissing them as crazies. To dismiss them as mere raving lunatics is bound to be a strategy of failure. That's because, like any human being doing something terrible (killing civilians as they commit suicide), they have something in their mind that makes them do so, that makes them think it's justified.

And from the little glimpse I could gather (by hearing some of their supporters directly, or by hearing open-minded people who've interviewed supporters), some of these reasons are valid even, or at least would pass for valid if it was us having them: things like honour, resistance, showing the oppressor that they aren't submissive slaves/animals, etc.

Besides, it's not only those people we should try to understand, but the very notion of how to win a small-intensity guerilla war with a conventional army. It's completely different from ordinary wars between two conventional armies:
the new war is fought by civilians, who join and leave relatively easily, and mostly on a voluntary basis. Ergo, it's very hard to distinguish between an actual enemy, a supporter, a sympathiser, or a whooly harmless civilian. Besides, it's a war that cannot have a definitive winner and loser through pure military means, lest the conventional military exterminates every civilian that could potentially join the guerrila, which would be genocide. Understanding how the mindset of a guerrilerro works, leads to understanding on how to prevent more people to join the guerilla, through political means



Where I completely disagree with you, however, is when you want to scale up the intensity of the war. A high intensity war is ****ing ugly. Civilians die by the thousands in such a case, and that's when the conventional army is cautious about colateral damage. Since you advocate the army to step-up the intensity of the attacks against suicide bombers (who are civilians), you basically want it to fire at will on every civilian that looks it could be a suicide bomber. For each actual enemy killed, you'll kill thousands of innocents

Besides, the "bring it on" mentality strikes me as being off the mark. Sure, you can lure some juveniles who want to show off how manly they are. But mostly, the tacticians behind the suicide bombers won't want to lose their assets (disciplined and innocuous suicide bombers) by throwing them away uselessly.