Published in May 2005, Pape's volume has been widely noticed by the press, the public, and policymakers alike, and has earned praise from the likes of Peter Bergen, Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas),[1] and Michael Scheuer.
[2] Dying to Win is divided into three parts, analyzing the strategic, social, and psychological dimension of suicide terrorism.
Three historical episodes are introduced for purposes of comparison: the ancient Jewish Zealots (11–12; see also 33–34), the 11th-12th-century Ismaili Assassins (12–13; see also 34–35), and the Japanese kamikazes (13; see also 35–37).
Pape had graduate students fluent in many languages scour the international press for incidents of suicide terrorism.
These included the Tamil Tigers (July 1990), the Israeli occupation of Palestine (1994), Persian Gulf (1995), Turkey (1996), Chechnya (2000), Kashmir (2000), and the U.S. (2001) (14–15).
Pape claims that his research reveals that the key to understanding the phenomenon of suicide attacks is not religion, but that they "compel democracies to withdraw military forces from the terrorists' national homeland" (38).
"At bottom, suicide terrorism is a strategy for national liberation from foreign military occupation by a democratic state" (45).
But suicide terrorism has failed "to compel target democracies to abandon goals central to national wealth or security" (75–76).
"Al-Qaeda is less a transnational network of like-minded ideologues ... than a cross-national military alliance of national liberation movements working together against what they see as a common imperial threat" (104).
He offers detailed analyses of Lebanon (129–39), Sri Lanka (139–54), the Sikhs in Punjab (154–62), and the Kurdish PKK in Turkey (162–66).
His conclusion: "Religion plays a role in suicide terrorism, but mainly in the context of national resistance" and not Islam per se but "the dynamics of religious difference" are what matter (166–67).
Altruistic suicide is a socially constructed phenomenon (187–88): e.g., Hezbollah in Lebanon (188–91), Hamas (191–93), Tamil Tigers (193–95); al-Qaeda (195–96).
"[T]hey resemble the kind of politically conscious individuals who might join a grassroots movement more than they do wayward adolescents or religious fanatics" (216).
Pape looks at three individual cases: Mohamed Atta (220–26); Dhanu, a young woman from Jaffna, "the most famous Tamil Tiger suicide bomber" (226–30); and Saeed Hotari, of Hamas (231–34).
He calls for a policy of "'off-shore' balancing": establishing local alliances while maintaining the capacity for rapid deployment of military forces (247–50).
Non-Salafi Sunni Countries: Albania, Burkina Faso, Chad, Guinea, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Libya, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan (274–77).
In a criticism of Pape's link between occupation and suicide terrorism, an article titled "Design, Inference, and the Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism" (published in The American Political Science Review), authors Scott Ashworth, Joshua D. Clinton, Adam Meirowitz, and Kristopher W. Ramsay from Princeton charge Pape with "sampling on the dependent variable" by limiting research only to cases in which suicide terror was used:[3] Pape's analysis has no control group.
In response, Pape argues that his research design is sufficient because it collected the universe of known cases of suicide terrorism.
[5] In a debate hosted by the Washington Institute, Martin Kramer argued that Pape's thesis was less relevant to Al Qaeda than to Lebanon and Palestine and that there were only 12,000 American troops in Saudi Arabia in 2001 and they had not caused any deaths.