IT IS hard to imagine a worse public relations disaster for the US-led coalition in Iraq than the images of American soldiers abusing their Iraqi prisoners in the very prison where Saddam Hussein鈥檚 henchmen abused theirs. Yet in the long run, the political fallout we are now seeing in the US and the UK could be the least of the consequences.
As numerous studies have confirmed, a major reason why organisations turn to terrorism is the perception that their homeland is being occupied by a foreign power. This is especially true for suicide terrorism, which almost without exception has only been used as part of a systematic campaign to persuade a government to withdraw from territory the group considers its own.
Many Muslims tend to view the entire Islamic world as their homeland, and any western presence as an occupation. In Iraq, extremists have been targeting anyone associated with the coalition, even Iraqi Kurds and the newly re-formed Iraqi police force. The US and Britain insist their troops are not occupying Iraq, and that once they have helped Iraqis establish a democracy they will leave. But the images from Abu Ghraib prison send a very different message: an administration that sanctions such treatment of prisoners is surely more interested in conquest than democracy.
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That, at least, is how it will seem to millions in the Middle East, and militant groups can bank on getting many more volunteers as a result. As the psychologists and anthropologists we interviewed have discovered (see 鈥淭he making of a suicide bomber鈥�), it is remarkably easy for these groups to persuade such volunteers to martyr themselves for the cause. Contrary to popular myth, suicide bombers are no poorer, no less educated, no more suicidal and no more fanatical than most people. Abu Ghraib is not just bad PR. It plays right into the hands of those directing the suicide bombers.