Why the Taliban Still Love Suicide Bombing The group is normalizing death and despair in the Islamic

Soon after they seized control of Kabul in mid-August, the Taliban paraded their Istish-haadi (“seeking martyrdom”) or suicide bomber squadron on national television. The disturbing display exhibited an arsenal of suicide vests, suicide car bombs, and yellow plastic jerry cans—used to make the group’s signature improvised explosive devices (IEDs)—while a ballad glorifying the bombs and associated bombers played over the visuals.

On a separate occasion, the Taliban memorialized suicide bombers at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul. This time, the regime’s interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani—head of the notorious Haqqani network—addressed hundreds of men representing the family members of suicide bombers. Haqqani congratulated the men for their loved ones’ divine sacrifice and gifted them with clothes, cash, and the promised allocation of land plots. And in October, amid increasing tensions with Tajikistan, the group announced the deployment of 3,000 suicide bombers to the border between the two countries.

Clearly, the Taliban’s passion for suicide bombing did not end with their military victory. If anything, their love of suicide bombing seems to be taking a new turn, with Taliban officials publicly venerating the tactic and its agents in an apparent attempt to normalize it on a larger, societal scale.

Having now transformed from an insurgency to a regime tasked with running a country, it might seem odd if not outright irrational for the Taliban to still so fervently promote the use of one of the most disturbing and destructive forms of political violence. After all, suicide bombings might be effective at destabilizing the government you’re fighting an insurgency against, but it’s a different story when you’re the government and the one who has to clean up the mess afterward. Moreover, suicide bombings are not exactly useful for stabilizing a country and an economy in free fall, negotiating trade agreements with foreign countries, or dealing with an ongoing pandemic—all pressing issues for the Taliban government.

However, a closer look at the Taliban’s relationship with suicide bombing and how it has evolved since they first embraced the tactic in 2003 suggests deeper strategic and social reasons for why the group might still cling to—or even see continued value in—suicide bombings despite their new position.

First, suicide bombing is deeply institutionalized within the Taliban’s armed units, and keeping the suicide bomber corps operational and well supplied ensures the group retains a “just-in-case” capability to carry out such attacks if needed. The mandate for such use may involve domestic, regional, or even global reasons, including to fight potential domestic armed resistance, the Islamic State-Khorasan’s insurgency, or possible foreign intervention—or just to bully neighboring countries, mainly the Central Asian republics. The Taliban could also provide suicide bombers to other like-minded groups in distant theaters of operation, such as Indian-controlled Kashmir or Central Asia.

Second, glorifying suicide bombing serves power dynamics within the group itself. Now that war, the core unifying factor among the Taliban’s different factions, has disappeared (for now, at least) with Kabul’s collapse, the group’s rift seems inevitable. The Haqqani network that has carried out hundreds of well-planned, destructive, and coordinated suicide operations over the years seems to have a strong monopoly over the group’s suicide bombing enterprise. As such, the Taliban’s recent public display may be aimed at an internal power struggle. Having discord with the Kandahar-based Taliban leadership, the Haqqani network may use its monopoly over suicide bombings as a strategic advantage against its rival faction. Putting such power on display can serve as a bargaining chip and/or deterrence tactic.

Beyond these more prosaic aims, however, the Taliban may also use suicide bombing to achieve broader social-psychological goals both within the group and within Afghan society writ large: namely, the promotion of senseless violence and the discouragement of any emotional and physical attachment to life. The aim is to transform the social mindset toward a place where passion for destruction and violence overcomes reason and where the lack of war should not mean the normalization of life and living.

Studying the Taliban’s literature on suicide bombings reveals that such a passion constitutes the group’s fundamental socialization with violence, which has proven critical for the group’s rapid internalization and normalization of suicide bombings for its insurgency. After embracing the tactic in 2003, the Taliban quickly became one of the leading groups that claimed the most suicide bombings. Statistically, the Taliban claimed the most suicide attacks carried out by any terrorist organization ever. Such success in materializing one of the most brutal and indiscriminate forms of violence is embedded in the two narratives the group constructed: “Istish-haadi,” which encourages members to actively seek martyrdom, and “love to death,” which exhorts members to renounce the love of life on Earth, which is illusive, and instead embrace death, which is eternal and the true reality. Both narratives promote a passion for destruction and suppression of reason.

Dated: 19 Oct 2022 Source:FP