Terror's ultimate weapon: suicide bombings have become the tactic of choice for terrorists. Their toll--in terms of death and psychological impact--is devastating.

• Author: Van Natta, Jr., Don
• Position: International

From Jerusalem to Jakarta and from Bali to Baghdad, the suicide bomber is clearly the weapon of choice for international terrorists. Terrorist groups now rely almost exclusively on this horrific tactic to carry out their attacks.

As devastating attacks on civilians in Israel and Iraq recently demonstrate, suicide bombings have become a grimly efficient terrorist industry. The practice is flourishing worldwide; bomb makers are in especially high demand.

Suicide bomb attacks were pioneered in southern Lebanon two decades ago by Hezbollah, a radical Islamic group whose name means "Party of God." These tactics were adopted as a routine tool by Hamas, a Palestinian terror group, and Al Qaeda--most notably in the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001. The suicide-bombing campaign started in Iraq last summer. Two particularly horrific attacks, a truck bomb at the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad on August 19 and a bombing at a mosque on August 29, left more than 100 people dead.

The terrorism industry requires just two raw materials--bombs and people. Of those, people are far easier to come by. In the militant corners of the Muslim world, signing up for such a mission infuses the volunteer with an urgent purpose and the promise of glory. It seems unlikely that the bombs will ever outnumber the people ready to deliver them.

EAGER BOMBERS

Ismail Abu Shanab, a Hamas leader who was killed by an Israeli missile in August, spoke to Jessica Stern, author of Terror in the Name of God, in 1999 about why so many people were eager to serve as suicide bombers. He said there was only one thing a person needs to qualify: "A moment of courage."

A person using a knife, Shanab explained, is usually "nervous." A gun takes training, and too much time. But a suicide Bomber only needs that moment of courage, which Shanab said was in abundant supply in Gaza. Young men and women who carried out such missions had usually seen what they viewed as "something terrible, some kind of atrocity," he said. "Islam says, 'an eye for an eye.' We believe in retaliation. When someone is killed in jihad, it is a joyful day."

His assessment led Stern to conclude that suicide bombers are a terrorist organization's most economically viable way to conduct its bloody business. "It's certainly cost-effective," Stern says, "both financially and in terms of the number of terrorist lives ultimately put at risk."

The Palestinians' suicide bombings--there have been more than 100 since the current intifada, an Arabic word meaning "uprising," began in 2000--have become so systemized that the infrastructure that supports the attacks, like the recruiters, the bomb laboratories, and the delivery systems, is typically not just accepted but embraced.

"The fact that they've been able to sustain the tactic suggests that this tactic is applauded in the community, and it reflects a society under considerable stress," says Brian Jenkins, a terrorism expert with the Rand Corporation. "I think we'd all agree, and it's not just a Western view, that suicide bombing is abnormal. The fact that abnormal behavior is applauded reflects abnormal conditions. If normal conditions are restored, then normal...