Over the past five years or so, the media has been saturated with attempts to explain the phenomenon of suicide bombing. Its roots have been traced to religious extremism (particularly to the famed "Shi’a penchant for martyrdom") and exploitation of religious beliefs (those 78 virgins awaiting martyrs in heaven), but also to poverty, insanity, desperation, and lack of education. Are any of those observations correct?

We may never know; the very idea of there being a common root to acts of suicide bombing is probably itself a dead end, given the extremely varied circumstances under which they arise. But such an answer is far less exciting than the idea that we might somehow find the "solution" to stop suicide bombing, by finding a common thread linking all such acts.

The Cult of the Suicide Bomber attempts to do just that. Produced by Many Rivers Films, the film first aired on the UK’s Channel Four in August 2005, and has now been picked up for US distribution by the Disinformation Company. The documentary follows ex-CIA agent Robert Baer as he traces the history of the suicide bomber from the Iran-Iraq war to a "global phenomenon" of similarly-minded "cultists" bent on destroying themselves in order to create chaos and terror.

The film is rife with problems, not the least of which is the fact that "suicide bombing" is never really defined, or put in context. The filmmakers’ website declares it to be the "definitive documentary history of the rise of an enemy against whom there is no real defence," conflating a tactic (suicide bombing) with a single "enemy" (Middle Eastern Muslims). It focuses exclusively on the Middle East and on Muslims, despite the fact that the lion’s share of modern suicide bombings have been carried out by the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka (who are neither Middle Eastern nor Muslim), and despite the fact that a number of modern terrorist groups have carried out suicide bombing attacks in Bangladesh, Turkey, Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Uganda, and many, many other countries.

Baer begins the film by explaining that he was one of the few agents in Lebanon in 1983 who was not killed in an attack on the US embassy by a suicide bomber, and that he has since taken it as his mission to find out who was responsible and why. Baer suggests that the attack was but one example of a "suicide bomber cult," one whose origins he traces to Iran—specifically, to Ayatollah Khomeini’s promise of eternal paradise to any fighters killed in battle during the Iran-Iraq war in 1980. Martyrdom was welcomed by the Iranian people, Baer says, because Khomeini succeeded in conflating Iran with Islam; that is, he convinced the Iranian people that in defending the Islamic state of Iran, they were defending Islam itself.

Inspired by this religious association, the "first suicide bomber," according to Baer, strapped explosives to himself and climbed under an approaching Iraqi tank, to halt the army’s advance. Hossein Fahmideh was 13 years old. When Baer interviews the boy’s family, he asks, "He was the first suicide bomber, wasn’t he?"

The sister-in-law immediately responds: "No, not at all. Yes, he did have a very strong belief, he was a martyr—it’s impossible to describe him as anything else." Baer then turns to the camera and explains that she and the boy’s mother both reject the use of the term "suicide."

"The word ’martyrdom’ means he understood what he was doing," the sister continues. "’Suicide’ implies that he did this out of desperation…. It was not for personal gain; it was for greater good."

Fahmideh’s act, whether "suicide" or "martyrdom," was an isolated one, and carried out spontaneously. While commended and celebrated by Iranians, suicide bombing didn’t exactly become a war tactic. That, Baer says, happened only when "the cult was exported abroad"—or rather, when suicide bombing began to appear in Lebanon.

The next "stage" of the suicide bomber evolved in Beirut, according to Baer, starting with the anonymous 1983 car bombing of the US embassy. He does not mention a similar suicide car bombing against the Iraqi Embassy, carried out two years earlier by the Islamic Dawa Party, nor the fact that Ahmad Qassir, an agent of the newly-formed Hezbollah, had driven a car bomb into Israeli military headquarters five months before the US embassy attack.

About nine months before the embassy bombing, a special unit of Iranian volunteers arrived in Lebanon to assist in the formation of Hezbollah. One of their first actions, carried out by the aforementioned Qassir, became a rallying tool for Hezbollah, and more car-bomb martyrs soon followed. Baer points out that "These were no random acts committed by religious madmen, but part of a well-planned campaign. As a tactic of war, it was highly efficient…. Hezbollah had invented the ultimate Smart Bomb." And indeed, a guide explains to Baer that martyrdom, at least within Hezbollah, is not an individual decision; individuals may be willing to martyr themselves, but the planning of actions is done within the Hezbollah council.

But while Baer may claim that suicide bombing is not an act of religious fanaticism, he also makes it clear that there is a reason why it appears "first" among Shi’a Muslims in Iran and only then in other (Muslim) countries: the appeal of martyrdom already established in the religion. He summarizes:

My journey to uncover the origins of the suicide bomber has already shown my how the Shi’a concept of martyrdom was used in Iran to send child soldiers to blow up Iraqi tanks, and how in Lebanon it was used to turn young resistance fighters into deadly car bombers against the well-equipped Israeli army. But these were all Shi’a Muslims, a minority sect in Islam for whom martyrdom was an integral part of their faith. For the majority Sunni Muslims, it was an alien concept. Its use as a weapon against the Israelis by Sunni Muslim Palestinians provoked a furious debate amongst Islamic scholars over the theological difference between suicide and martyrdom. It was the Palestinian struggle that finally legitimized it in the mainstream Islamic world.

And yet, Baer does go on to discuss another Lebanese group for whom martyrdom was a crucial tactic—the Syrian Socialist National Party, whose members are largely, if not entirely, atheists. Baer interviews Tawfiq Muhanna, one of the party’s leaders, and asks what he can promise martyrs if not the reward of heaven, paradise in the afterlife. Muhanna answers that while Muslims commit acts of martyrdom in search of paradise in the afterlife, his comrades did so because they believed "their country [was] paradise on earth, and worth dying to protect."

In the 18 year campaign against Israel’s occupation of Lebanon, there were 30 suicide bomb attacks, killing more than 350 soldiers. Almost half of them, Baer neglects to mention, were carried out by secular socialists.

The "suicide bomber cult" next spread ("like a pathological virus") to Palestine, Baer claims, where suicide bombing is now most frequently used in the Middle East: In 11 years, the region has seen over 200 suicide attacks.

Fortunately, Baer is no apologist for Israel—he shows "hate-filled graffiti" throughout the town of Hebron, written by Israeli settlers telling Arabs to get out, and talks to Palestinian children who tell him that the settlers throw rocks and boiling water from their apartments onto Palestinians walking below. He also notes that while there have been some 750 Israelis killed as the result of Palestinian suicide bombing, 4,600 Palestinians have died from Israeli attacks.

The start of suicide bombing in Israel began, he claims, with an incident on February 25, 1994, when a fanatical Jewish settler opened fire at a Hebron mosque, killing 29 worshippers and injuring more than 100. The attack sparked riots, and Hamas vowed revenge. After the traditional 40 days of mourning, a suicide bomber blew up a bus, the first such attack in Israel. Unlike Lebanon, targets were now mainly busses, restaurants, and discos. It was transformed from a weapon of war to one of terrorism.

This transformation is a profound and subtle one, and is incredibly understated in this film. Baer recognizes suicide bombing as a tactic of war when carried out by Hezbollah and the Socialists to halt invading Israeli troops, and makes the case that suicide bombing was indeed the only effective weapon available to the Lebanese, in the face of the third largest military in the world. He muses: "If he had dropped a bomb on the Israeli Military Headquarters from a plane, would we think of him any differently?"

Baer remains ambivalent about whether or not religion is significant in "the cult," pointing out secular or non-Muslim bombers here and there, but then returning to the importance of martyrdom in Shi’a Islam, and asking his subjects if Islam doesn’t forbid suicide. In an Israeli prison, a prisoner tells him, "The sin that is the occupation creates an abundance of those who want to resist, who are ready to commit an act of martyrdom to regain the rights of the people….the martyrs are all graduates from the university of the occupation." He asks another prisoner if the passage of the Qur’an that forbids suicide means nothing to him; the prisoner retorts, "We didn’t call it suicide—you did. In the language of the occupier, this is called suicide; in our language, this is called martyrdom. In the end, all martyrs are fighters. But we don’t have rockets to send against Israel, or cruise missiles to attack Tel Aviv. But we do have martyrs with bombs who are willing to blow themselves up. This is war, not suicide."

Baer disagrees with his subject—for him, once suicide bombings began targeting civilians instead of more traditional military targets, it can no longer be seen as a war tactic. Instead, it is an "indiscriminate weapon of terror." And yet, despite his earlier suggestion that suicide bombing could, in some cases, be seen as a legitimate, precise weapon of war (specifically, Hezbollah fighting against an Israeli invasion), Baer now claims that it is no more than "a popular cult which hailed the bombers as glorious martyrs, an attempt to give some meaning to their bloody acts…. It has lost any attachment to a cause. The target is not an oppressor or an occupying army. There is no apparent meaning to what they have done—death is the only aim."

Baer notes that "the cult of the suicide bomber is no longer confined to the Middle East or one particular conflict…. It is now a global phenomenon; any group with a grievance can copy this incredibly cost-effective weapon." Only then, at the tail end of the film, does he briefly mention the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka (for whom suicide bombing is certainly nothing new—they’ve been using it as a tactic for two decades) and the Black Widows of Chechnya. "The world now faces a pitiless enemy," Baer says, suggesting a connection between suicide bombers the world over- but again, that connection is never articulated. "A person without fear of death is one of the deadliest weapons available," he concludes. "No where and no one is safe."

The question that naturally arises from such a documentary, and receives not one word of commentary, is whether modern suicide bombing is significantly different from other suicidal acts of warfare that have been committed many, many times over, across cultures, in a wide variety of circumstances. Is the specific act of strapping explosives to oneself and detonating them at a target significantly different than the actions of Japanese kamikaze pilots? What about the "death volunteers" of the Vietnam People’s Army, who willingly died while detonating explosives to destroy French tanks in their fight against the colonial army?

The concept of self-sacrifice has long been a part of war, yet Baer makes the claim (far too often heard) that the suicide bombing tactics of the Middle East are somehow unique. That claim, in itself, would make for a fascinating documentary—if it were backed up by any sort of factual evidence. Unfortunately, Baer relies only on repetition and the support of mainstream media interpretations of suicide bombing (most viewers will already have heard the same argument a hundred times before) to drive home his point. And so, The Cult of the Suicide Bomber becomes just another oversimplified attempt to "understand the enemy" while simultaneously positing the Muslim-Arab-Middle Eastern terrorist as a wholly alien being whose tactics are brutal and incomprehensible. The obsession with proving a distinct lineage of suicide bombing, linking all such attacks with a singular "cult," can only result in pigeonholing and stereotyping, and never in resolution.

This article originally appeared in LiP Magazine. All rights are reserved to the author. Please do not reproduce without her permission. Just ask. Chances are pretty good she'll let you do it.