from 'The Enemy Within', The Oz, 16th July -

IF their families did not know what they were planning, then how did the British secret service stand a chance? The London bombers have emerged as the West's worst nightmare, defying every stereotype and chilling the blood of those who thought they understood the psychology of the suicide bomber.

The killers were not born into poverty. They had not witnessed first-hand violence, war or injustice. These men were babies of Britain, second-generation British nationals of Pakistani descent, home-grown and nurtured on Leeds United and fish and chips.

...

We should not think of these individuals as crazed fanatics," says Jerrold Post, a CIA veteran who founded the CIA's Centre for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behaviour. "Mental illness is incompatible with being a political terrorist; it is a security risk to have an emotionally unstable individual in your terrorist group, just as it would be in the Green Berets."

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"They do not see London's population as civilians but as accomplices to acts of murder and violence," he writes. "The bombers have long forsaken any national identity and no longer consider themselves as anything other than members of the ummah, the global community of Muslims, on whose behalf they are waging war."

Most likely the London bombers - as with most suicide bombers - believed that their faith and their people had been humiliated by the West.

Terror expert Mark Juergensmeyer argues that suicide bombing is largely an act of "dehumiliation" and personal empowerment. In his book Terror in the Mind of God, he says the most important motivator "is the intimacy to which the humiliation is experienced and the degree to which it is regarded as a threat to one's personal honour and respectability".