Click to play videoSince the 1980s, 9,000 people have died in suicide bomb attacks in over 20 countries. But who are these suicide bombers? How do the terror outfits keep the supply chains of 'suicide bombers' going?
Most suicide bombers are invariably young men, and terrorist outfits are today increasingly using Information Technology to recruit, brainwash and train them.
The London bombings, for instance, were triggered by seven young men. The CCTV images of these unsuspecting men walking into the London Tube on July 7, 2005 with backpacks hanging from their shoulders are still fresh in the minds of those who have seen the footage.
In their backpacks, they carried homemade explosives which they had assembled from the know-how available on the Internet.
"It’s common on the Internet. If you want to make a bomb, anyone can visit these web sites," says Zakariya Zbeide, a terrorist trainer.
The oldest bomber in London was Mohammed Sadiq Khan, a 30-year-old teaching assistant, with a wife and a child. Each man boarded separate underground trains and within minutes, explosions rocked the London subway. The world was stunned. Meanwhile, in cyberspace celebratory messages poured in.
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Since 9/11, Evan Kohlmann has studied extremist Muslim websites and the sophistication of al Qaeda's media tactics.
Video of suicide missions is a powerful tool to win recruits. In 2004, al Qaeda played an unnerving video on the Net: Abu Harief Aldazari, an Iraqi suicide bomber, showed just how he would blow himself up while attacking an American military convoy in Baghdad.
Aldazari executed his deadly mission, killing two soldiers. And the pictures and video circled the globe instantly.
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Human bombs are being recruited and primed in cyberspace. Bin Laden's success lies in convincing suicide bombers like 22-year-old Addurehman Khadr, a Canadian, that they would become martyrs.
"To become a martyr is to go on the topmost level. It's the penthouse of heaven, you know. And to become a martyr is to go up there." This is what Khadr said of his mission.
In 1997, at just 14, Khadr's father enrolled him in an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan. He trained to fight bin Laden's war along with other children. Instructors selected Khadr to become a suicide bomber.
"As organisations, we don’t go searching for people. We don’t go up to someone and say 'we want to send you', because it’s not easy. Do you think it's easy to press a button and get blown into pieces?" explains Zbeide, a terrorist instructor.
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Terrorists are today increasingly exploiting the 21st century technology to propagate violence. This simply means that terror organisations like the al Qaeda can recruit a whole new generation of people from anywhere in the world and motivate and train them for terrorist acts
"Those people are young, are emotionally motivated. It’s romantic. They don’t really see what’s happening to them and they keep talking about death," says Ghaith Abdul Ahad, a photojournalist.
And the World Wide Web fires these images out to an ever-growing global audience. "They see the sense of anguish, of civilians in Iraq, of Faluja of Gaza, of Afghanistan. They dwell on this," Alastair Crooke, a former MI5 agent, says.
To get more insights into terrorism tune in to Nat Geo Investigates Terrorism from Sept 11 to 22 on weeknights @ 10 pm. You can also log on to www.nationalgeographic.co.in/explore/terrorism for the full schedule of Nat Geo Investigates Terrorism.
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