Human bombs versus Tomahawks

america has now prepared its people for a war unlike the antiseptic gulf conflict, in which the so-called smart bombs did most of the nasty stuff. in the new war, the us will have to get its hands dirty -- send the army in, conduct special operations, perhaps even the odd assassination. but it still won't have the weapon the other side deployed with such telling effect.inconveniently for the us, no smart weapon in the arsenal of the world's mightiest country can match the sophistication of a suicide bomber. unlike tomahawk missiles, which cannot distinguish a military installation from a milkpowder plant or a chinese embassy, a suicide bomber can pick his targets with precision. the tomahawk may hit an osama bin laden base in afghanistan, but the man may be somewhere else at that time. human bombs are the ultimate in smart bombs. the trigger of the bomb that killed sri lankan president ranasinghe premadasa was pressed months before the leader was blown up. the bomb ticked in the vicinity of the president's private residence in colombo, making friends with his household staff, reportedly plying them with money and women. this got him close enough one may day to do his job. which tomahawk missile will hang around that long? and do any special forces commandos have this kind of patience? in the terrorist's hands, the human bomb is a remarkably adaptable tool that can be used for a precision assassination strike as well as indiscriminate destruction. just two days before the attack on america, a suicide bomber got northern alliance commander ahmed shah masood. posing as journalists, the squad achieved what taliban forces had been trying for years. for new york, the human bombs needed a little change in the circuitry. instead of operating a video camera, they needed to train to fly - not necessarily how to land - large commercial airliners. a 150-tonne aircraft, a fourth of its weight in aviation fuel, is as good as a conventional missile. the downing of the twin towers might be the most spectacular and the bloodiest success achieved by human bombs. but it was not exactly unthinkable. america lost about 250 marines in a suicide truck-bomb attack at their barracks in beirut in 1983. at sea, a boat-packed with explosives rammed into the uss cole only months back, making america learn a lesson the tiny sri lankan navy knows by heart. clearly, it was too much to expect that terrorism, and its suicide bombers, would not move into the jet age. a suicide bomber exemplifies what terrorism is about and what makes it so difficult to fight militarily. terrorism chooses its time and place to strike, it hits and hides, it doesn't worry about collateral damage, and it doesn't need the senate passing an authorisation to use force. and young men willing to blow themselves up only make the fight between a military and a terror group more even. for groups that have them, they are a force-multiplier. in a west bank university, some classrooms are said to carry this sign: "israel has nuclear weapons, we have human bombs." to make things worse, most liberal democracies are not good at making human bombs. it is true that sometimes their men display exceptional, even suicidal, courage. like the jawans and officers who clawed their way up kargil peaks, knowing - as the letters they left behind showed - they will most likely not make it down the mountain. but that is how far they usually go. there is a difference between an operation that hinges on a man taking his life at the right moment, and one in which the attacker doesn't care about his life. unfortunately for most of us, terrorism produces a lot of the second kind as well. like the fidayeen of the lashkar-e-taiba, who in kashmir carry out audacious operations. two or three men will barge into an army camp, firing indiscriminately, and usually getting killed in the process. but even they don't fall in the category of human bombs. human bombs need special workshops. it is best that the raw material comes out of communities which share, right or wrong, a special sense of being wronged. good recruits come from a people who see themselves as a nation yearning for a state. and there is nothing like the perception that an ideology - better if it is their faith - is in danger. an occasional atrocity, like a tomahawk missile going berserk, helps. it is good to catch them young. the ltte often recruits from schools, and many islamic terrorists, though not perhaps the airline bombers, have moved in a seamless fashion from the madarasa to an arms training camp. work at it, till the potential human bomb reaches a point when he wants to die. for velupillai prabhakaran, for islam, and occasionally for his emperor. after the attacks in america, a failed kamikaze pilot, now an old man, told a newspaper that the 'real' volunteers among the kamikaze pilots in japan were almost as fanatic as those who crashed their hijacked planes into new york. it is unlikely that the new york bombers went into a huddle on theology before they bought their airline tickets. but does islam sanction killing oneself even if it is for the cause of islam? the quran does says, "do not kill yourself for verily allah has been to you most merciful." the prophet also warned whoever killed himself with an instrument will carry it in hell and keep stabbing himself with it for eternity, and whoever jumped off a mountain will keep falling down in the depths of hell. that's the moderate's version. a jehadi's interpretation is different. suicide might be sin in islam, he will concede, but not so a suicide bombing. that's self-sacrifice during the course of a holy war, martyrdom for the glory of god. it is this version 2 with which a suicide bomber is to be loaded, not the one which makes him falter before he presses the trigger. for making a smart bomb, the programme has to be kept simple. that, killing new yorkers too is jehad. and that, you reach paradise the moment you hit the north tower.