In executing the 'Bali bombers' – Amrozi, Mukhlas and Samudra – on 9 November 2008, the Indonesian government seems to have fulfilled their desire to become martyrs. However, the executions demonstrated a lack of understanding of the motivations of those who conduct such attacks. The 7 July bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, the 13 September blasts in Delhi, the 20 September bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, the recent 26 November attacks in Bombay…the list in Southasia is expanding rapidly. And of course it was the LTTE in Sri Lanka which first engaged in systematic use of suicide bombers. The understanding of what makes a 'terrorist' is now a subject of research among academia worldwide. Stuart W Twemlow is a professor of psychiatry at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. An author of a number of books on the psychoanalytic understanding of 'terrorism', he is also a founding editor and editor-in-chief of The International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, as well as president of the International Association for Applied Psychoanalytic Studies. In Delhi to attend a conference on hate and violence, he was interviewed by Rakesh Shukla about the making of a 'terrorist'.
How do you perceive 'terrorism' and 'terrorists'?
I see the 'terrorist' as an offspring of the prevalent social system. Fear, horror and shock which transfixes are characteristics of terror. I saw a woman four years after she had escaped from her husband who used to keep her chained to a chair, and she was still terrified that he would kill her. That is domestic terrorism, and the prevalence is 18,000 out of 100,000 families in the US alone. In the middle category are school shooters, classified by the FBI as 'anarchic terrorists'. On a bigger scale, terrorists consider themselves to be victims of humiliation by the enemy with incompatible political, religious or personal ideologies. The more terrifying the act, the more transfixing it becomes.
What are your thoughts on suicide bombers?
The 'suicide bomber' label, like 'terrorist', is always assigned to the other person – it is not a self-assigned role. Suicide bombers are like the kamikaze pilots of Japan during World War II. Similarly, during India's struggle for independence, thousands of people marched up as British soldiers fired on them. The individuals involved do not look upon the act as suicide, but as a mission of the group: the self ceases to exist and follows the leader, who is akin to a messiah. In the Jonestown incident in the US, more than 900 people, who hated the communists and the US, committed suicide at the behest of their leader. However, it is easier to control the minds of the young, and suicide bombers are generally in the 16-30 age group. I am yet to hear of a middle-aged suicide bomber.
How do you view terrorism from a psychoanalytical perspective?
I look upon terrorism as a process which involves conscious and unconscious group dynamics. From the rituals, myths and traumas of the past, the leader picks up what the psychoanalyst Volkan – who has worked for almost 50 years in conflict areas around the world – calls the 'chosen trauma'. The acts of violence are perpetrated from an 'avenging victim role', where a group as a collective entity feels wronged by another group, which it attacks to set the perceived injustices of the past right.