This morning's reports from Sri Lanka are describing the perpetrators of the tragedy there, suicide bombers, as being from well-educated middle class backgrounds. A web search for
well-educated middle class background bombers returned a fascinating collection of links, some of which on the first screen were dated 2010, 2011 and 2016 as well as a few minutes or hours ago. Clearly, this phenomenon is not unique. Like everyone else my opinion is not yet well-informed, but this web search told me more than I really wanted to know.
Because engineering is often the most prestigious vocation in developing countries, it makes sense that this new generation of well-educated terrorists would disproportionately come from that profession.
This was in fact the conclusion also reached by Peter Bergen and Swati Pandey in their 2006 study of madrassas (Islamic schools) and lack of education as a putative terrorist incubator. Using a database of some 79 jihadis who were responsible for the five most serious terrorist incidents between 1993 and 2005, they found that the most popular subjects amongst those jihadi terrorists who attended university was engineering followed by medicine.
Bergen and Pandey further observed that 54 percent of the perpetrators either attended university or had obtained a university degree. The terrorists they studied “thus appear, on average, to be as well educated as many Americans—given that 52 percent of Americans have attended university.
Finally, they observed that two-thirds of the 25 terrorists involved in the planning and hijacking of the four aircraft on September 11th 2001 had attended university and that two of the 79 had earned PhD degrees while two others were enrolled in doctoral programs.
The popularity of medicine as a terrorist vocation most recently surfaced in connection with the botched attempt to bomb a nightclub in central London and the dramatic, but largely ineffectual, attack on Glasgow’s International Airport in June 2007. Six of the eight persons arrested were either doctors or medical students; the seventh person was employed as a technician in a hospital laboratory; and the eighth member of the conspiracy was neither a medical doctor nor in health care, but instead had earned a doctorate in design and technology.
Medical doctors becoming terrorists is hardly new, either. George Habash, the founder and leader of a prominent 1960s-era Palestinian terrorist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was a medical doctor. As was the PFLP’s head of special operations, Wadi Haddad.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s chief strategist and bin Laden’s deputy, is a trained surgeon. Orlando Bosch, who was active in the militant Miami, Florida-based anti-Castro movement and was charged with the inflight bombing of a Cubana Airlines flight in 1976 that killed 73 persons, practiced as a pediatrician.
The more salient point may be that, contrary to the common place belief that poverty and lack of education breeds terrorism, to a large extent, those historically attracted to terrorism have in fact tended to be reasonably well, if not, highly educated; financially comfortable and, in some cases, quite well off; and, often gainfully employed.
The report added: ‘Where data is available, two-thirds came from middle or upper-middle-class backgrounds, showing there is no simplistic relationship between poverty and involvement in Islamist extremism.’
The study also found that half of the suspects it surveyed were married and some had children.
‘This indicates that having commitments to a spouse and children did not necessarily restrain these individuals from becoming involved in activity that may have resulted in lengthy imprisonment, if not death.’
The report adds: ‘The vast majority (90 per cent of those on whom we have data) are described as sociable, with a number of friends. Our data thus tends to contradict commonly held stereotypes of terrorists being “mad”, psychopathic or evil.
‘It also challenges the theory that individuals who turn to radical or extremist networks are those who are unable to make friends in normal life.’
Professor Anthony Glees, a terrorism expert at Buckingham University, said: ‘I am glad MI5 are privately accepting that terror suspects were sociable creatures because for a long time they gave the impression that terrorists and suicide bombers are lone wolves.
‘It is also encouraging that they believe most terror suspects come from middle-class backgrounds. Traditionally, there was a belief among the spooks and police that terrorists were caused by poverty.’
The whole history of political terror is marked by fanatics with advanced education who have declared war on their own societies. Khmer Rouge's Communist genocide in Cambodia came out from the classrooms of the Sorbonne in Paris, where their leader, Pol Pot, studied writings of European Communists. The Red Brigades in Italy was the scheme of wealthy privileged boys and girls from the middle class. Between 1969 and 1985, terrorism in Italy killed 428 people. Fusako Shigenobu, the leader of the Japanese Red Army terrorist group, was a highly-educated specialist in literature. Abimael Guzman, founder of the Shining Path in Peru, one of the most ruthless guerrilla groups in history, taught at the University of Ayacucho, where he conceived of a war against "the democracy of empty bellies." "Carlos the Jackal," the most infamous terrorist in the 1970s, was the son of one of the richest lawyers in Venezuela, Jose Altagracia Ramirez. Mikel Albizu Iriarte, a leader of the Basque ETA terrorists, came from a wealthy family in San Sebastián. Sabri al-Banna, the Palestinian terrorist known to the world as "Abu Nidal," was the son of a wealthy merchant born in Jaffa.
Some of the British terrorists who have joined the Islamic State come from wealthy families and attended the most prestigious schools in the UK. Abdul Waheed Majid made the long journey from the English town of Crawley to Aleppo, Syria, where he blew himself up. Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the mastermind of the kidnapping and killing of the American journalist Daniel Pearl, graduated from the London School of Economics. Kafeel Ahmed, who drove a jeep full of explosives into the Glasgow airport, had been president of the Islamic Society at Queen's University. Faisal Shahzad, the failed terrorist of Times Square in New York, was the son of a high official in the Pakistani military. Zacarias Moussaoui, the twentieth man of the 9/11 attacks, had a PhD in International Economics from the London's South Bank University. Saajid Badat, who wanted to blow up a commercial flight, studied optometry at London University. Azahari Husin, the terrorist who prepared the bombs in Bali, studied at the University of Reading.
Nine suicide bombers, including a married couple, carried out the devastating Easter attacks in Sri Lanka that killed 359 people, authorities said Wednesday, revealing new details about the network behind the string of bombings.
Eight of the attackers have been identified, said police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekera. The group included two brothers and a woman, who blew herself up on Sunday when police closed in on a house in the capital, Colombo.
Ruwan Wijewardene, the state minister for defense, told reporters that the bombers used two safe houses in Colombo and Negombo. They came from middle-class and upper-class backgrounds, he said, and some were “quite well-educated people.” One of them had studied in Britain and Australia
Sixty people have been arrested in connection with the attacks on churches and hotels, including Mohamed Ibrahim, a wealthy businessman who imported spices and owned the home in Colombo’s Dematagoda neighborhood where the police conducted a raid on Sunday.
Two of his sons were suicide bombers, and it was his daughter-in-law who detonated explosives when police officers came to the house, killing three of them and herself.
Wijewardene said the bombers had split from the National Thowheed Jamaath, an obscure Islamist extremist group based in the eastern part of the country. The leader of the splinter group carried out the suicide attack on Colombo’s Shangri-La hotel, he said.
More will be added as the hours and days unfold, but this part of the backstory should not be forgotten.
Addendum, April 30...
Two days ago yet another young man with an AR-15 attacked a synagogue in California, killing one victim and injuring others, apparently limited in the number of victims because his gun jammed and the quick action of others who intervened. The details are a matter of record but the mystery to me, as with the question about suicide bombers above, is what makes young men into anti-social creatures, filled with so much hate they are driven to become mass killers?
The perpetrator of the synagogue attack appears to have been (and may still be) an exceptionally good student as well as a talented piano player.
California State University, San Marcos, also confirmed that Earnest was a nursing student there who had earned dean’s list honors. The school released a statement saying it was “dismayed and disheartened” that he was suspected in “this despicable act.”
USA Today also reported that Earnest graduated in 2017 from Mt. Carmel High School in Poway, where his father taught science. Earnest was an honor student who took multiple AP classes, swam on the varsity swim team, and played the piano. “The words and actions of this individual are in no way representative of the beliefs held by our school community nor by his father, a long-time teacher at MCHS,” Poway Unified School District Communications Director Christine Paik said in a statement. “Mt. Carmel is a No Place for Hate campus.”
San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore said authorities continue to pore through Earnest’s social media accounts and a “manifesto” posted just before the attack. Gore said law enforcement officials were attempting to verify the authenticity of the letter, which reportedly details the shooter’s hatred of Jews.
Aside from their all being white, the assault rifle (AR) attackers do not all have the same profiles. Most but not all of them acted alone, and most were relatively young. In some cases there was social maladjustment but they were all able to come into possession of the most popular and effective firearm needed to kill the maximum number of victims as rapidly as possible.
