It reveals a sickening disdain for human life, both other people’s and one’s own. It goes against most religious beliefs because if a God or a Supreme Being has brought us into the world so that we could dismember ourselves and one another in this grotesque manner, then surely there can be no hope whatsoever for salvation or redemption.
Suicide bombings are now being used even when they aren’t, strictly speaking, necessary. A few conventional bombs planted in the Moscow metro would have done just as much damage. Yet, the terrorists — young women no less — opted for suicide to heighten the effect of the massacres.
Terrorism has always been repugnant, but old-style terrorism suddenly starts to look almost respectable compared with the Moscow metro bombings. In the 19th century, Russian political groups such as Narodnaya Volya (The People’s Will) targeted individuals responsible for specific policies or those who personified the oppressive system. In the 1970s, Italy’s Red Brigades killed and kidnapped government officials and policemen to provoke harsh repressions by the authorities. They believed that the capitalist state would show its true face by establishing a fascist regime, after which the workers would stage a revolution.
IRA bombers targeted civilians in Britain to increase the cost of holding onto Northern Ireland, and early Palestinian factions blew up passenger airplanes to keep the world from sweeping their cause under the rug. The methods of traditional terrorists were ruthless and abhorrent, but at least there was some kind of logic behind their bloody actions, albeit a perverse one.
But the suicide bombings that hit Israel and Iraq have now come to Russia. Those who sent the two Chechen girls into the metro didn’t expect results. It was a simple act of vengeance that they knew would trigger reprisals by the Russian government. Thus the vicious circle: The harder Russia strikes back, the more widows there will be for future attacks.
Blaming Islam for encouraging such atrocities may be tempting, but it would be wrong. Until recently, suicide attacks were as rare in the Muslim world as anywhere else. In Iraq and Afghanistan, Muslims abhor suicide bombings no less than in other parts of the world, which is a normal human reaction.
Nor is it the work of a handful of deranged individuals. After suffering a series of astonishing suicide attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the United States declared a war on terrorism, promising to rid the world of this evil. But suicide bombings have since multiplied, and their geography has widened. There seems to be no shortage of volunteers to blow themselves up, suggesting that outside the confines of the rich, comfortable countries, and especially among the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims, hatred and despair have been steadily intensifying.
The start of the 20th century is often put at 1914. Inaugurated by a terrorist act, the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, it sparked World War I and paved the way for history’s bloodiest and repressive century. What can we expect of the new century, in which Sept. 11, Beslan, Dubrovka, Nevsky Express, Mumbai and last Monday’s metro bombings have become almost routine events?
**Alexei Bayer, a native Muscovite, is a New York-based economist.
