Sri Lanka attacks: why the wealthy and successful become suicide bombers

In the aftermath of the devastation of the Easter Bombings in Sri Lanka that killed more than 250 people, there has been widespread shock that two of the nine suicide bombers were the children of a millionaire spice merchant who grew up in luxury. Several of the bombers had studied abroad and their career prospects seemed bright.

This is not unusual. Psychologist Marc Sageman, writing about al-Qaeda, called terrorism a middle-class phenomenon. A 2016 Brookings Institution study showed that roughly 70 per cent of global recruits for Islamic State were middle class or wealthier. This is the trend we are seeing now across Asia.

Terrorist groups are ideological vanguards, usually far out ahead of their societies on issues that justify their violence. They tend to see the state as inherently violent towards their community, unwilling to defend their interests, or holding back the application of sharia law. Terrorists benefit from provoking a heavy-handed response from the state, that in turn vindicates them in the eyes of their constituents.

But the same groups are also representative of their societies with recruits from across the socio-economic and educational spectrum.

We have the tendency to assume that terrorists engage in acts of violence against soft targets out of weakness; they conduct asymmetrical violence because they lack other means. At the same time, we often assume that terrorists are marginalised and dispossessed, and as such they have nothing to lose. In this logic, terrorism is simply a rational choice. But that hypothesis ignores ideological motivation, and the concept of martyrdom, which necessarily entails sacrifice.

We need to turn that reasoning on its head. Rather than be surprised that wealthy and educated individuals sacrifice themselves, we need to understand that it is because they have so much to lose – including wealth, class privilege and opportunities – that they are best able to influence their constituency and inspire others to the cause. When sacrifice comes with the rejection of worldly accomplishments or accoutrements, the mission would appear all the more worthy and otherworldly to the perpetrators and their followers.

The classic example is Osama bin Laden, the scion of one of the wealthiest families in Saudi Arabia who lived in a cave in Tora Bora and fought for his deep-seated religious beliefs. That in itself was a source of legitimacy.

The strange lives of Sri Lanka’s Easter Sunday suicide bombers

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 11 attacks, studied in the United States, while his nephew – who perpetrated the 1993 attacks on the World Trade Centre and later tried to commit multiple plane bombings in the Philippines – studied electrical engineering in Britain.

Closer to home, here in Asia, we saw a similar phenomenon. While rank and file members of al-Qaeda’s regional affiliate, Jemaah Islamiah (JI), may have largely been straight out of madrassas, or radicalised while serving prison sentences for petty crime, or had limited options due to their low economic station, much of the leadership and many field commanders were fairly well educated.

Some of the most radical were educated overseas. Malaysian national Yaziid Sufaat, who was tasked to lead al-Qaeda’s anthrax programme, received a degree in biochemistry from an American university and served as an officer in the Royal Malaysian Armed Forces. Dr Azahari bin Hussin, believed to be behind the 2002 Bali bombing, was a member of the faculty at University Teknologi Malaysia.

Indeed, technical universities were key recruiting grounds for JI in both Indonesia and Malaysia. Graduating from a top-tier applied sciences school in today’s technological and digitalised economy should be a ticket to upwards mobility, and yet these people sacrificed it all in the belief that they were defending their religion.

The rise of Islamic State (IS) has changed some recruitment patterns. While in Indonesia the main process of recruitment is slow, personal and based on similar networks of madrassas and mosques that spawned JI, in Malaysia and Singapore online radicalisation and recruitment has broadened membership.

In Malaysia, recruitment has been across the socio-economic spectrum, and has included as many members of the professional middle class as the dispossessed or underemployed youth with limited prospects.

The 2016 Holey Bakery attack in Dhaka, Bangladesh has similar characteristics to the Sri Lankan cell. Several of the young men were from upper-middle-class families, all too familiar with the cafe they would lay siege to and hold hostages in. Several had studied overseas and one was about to be sent to join his brother in Canada before being recruited into the pro-IS Jumatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh.

On the one hand we will always see militants reach out to youth. As Abu Bakr Naji wrote in The Management of Savagery, a treatise for both al-Qaeda and Islamic State: “Capture the rebelliousness of youth, their energy and idealism, and their readiness for self-sacrifice, while fools preach moderation, security and avoidance of risk.”

In Sri Lanka, rising Islamic militancy was the elephant in the room

But the educated, wealthy and upwardly mobile often have other qualities that attract them to terrorist recruiters. They often fit into the surroundings they seek to target, they do not arouse suspicion, and rarely do they have criminal records or have warranted the attention of security forces.

Many come from very secular lives and become radicalised quickly, whether because they are seeking a sense of belonging or they are simply indoctrinated by a charismatic figure.

The sister of one of the Sri Lankan suicide bombers has recounted that her brother became radicalised while studying in Australia. There, it is believed, he came into contact with one of the country’s top IS suspects, Neil Prakash, who helped change the trajectory of that man’s life.

Sometimes it is simply a response to an injustice, institutional racism or other things that trigger a newfound desire to come to the defence of their religion.

As these young men with everything to lose seek to martyr themselves, the impulse and instinct is also influencing women.

One of the nine suicide bombers in Sri Lanka was a pregnant woman, the wife of another suicide bomber, who killed three policemen as they moved in to arrest her.

A very similar incident happened in Sumatra, Indonesia, in March 2019, when counterterrorism police moved in to search the house of an arrested member of the pro-IS Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD). The wife detonated a large bomb, killing herself and her infant son.

We saw the willingness of terrorists to make enormous sacrifices in May 2018, when two JAD members employed their entire families as suicide bombers in the Indonesian city of Surabaya.

In that attack, a family of six, including four children aged nine to 18, carried out three suicide bombings on three separate churches, killing 14 and wounding 40. It was the first successful female suicide bombing in Southeast Asia. Another family set off to detonate their IED at a police housing complex outside Surabaya. The bomb, which authorities said was made of a volatile acetone-based explosive, went off prematurely, killing the mother and their son; three other children survived. The father died in a shoot-out with police who rushed to their home at the sound of the blast.

Who is Zahran Hashim, the cleric linked to Sri Lanka bombings?

While sadly the world has become too conditioned to suicide bombings, the sacrifice of children seems absolutely barbaric and inexplicable.

In the Surabaya case, there is evidence that one of the children was crying on the way to the attack, clearly being forced against their will. How could someone intent on committing a mass casualty attack involve his or her own children?

The only answer that remotely makes sense is that the militants wanted to shame other JAD militants into action. They were not just sacrificing themselves, but the future of their entire families.

They were making the ultimate – albeit misguided – sacrifice to their cause and more. And that sacrifice has a much greater impact on their broader community in general, and their fellow militants in particular.

IS will continue to evolve following the loss of their caliphate in Iraq and Syria. It will transition to a model of global insurgency, seeking new sectarian schisms to exploit, and new fronts to open, especially in Asia.

In each of these new fronts, they will always have recruits with nothing to lose who can be used as cannon fodder. But what they really search for is leaders with everything to lose. That is the degree of sacrifice they and their supporters demand as they strive to recover their caliphate from the ashes. ■

Zachary Abuza is a professor at the National War College where he teaches Southeast Asian security. The views expressed here are his and do not reflect the opinions of the National War College or Department of Defence.