arie albers's video: Inside The Mind of A Suicide Bomber

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOqnITZgb53UdYDNbVz6RHQ?feature=mhee Historical To counter the superior numbers of the Chola empire's army in the 11th century AD, suicide squads were raised by the Indian Chera rulers. This helped the Cheras to resist Chola invasion and maintain the independence of their kingdom from the time of Kulothunga Chola I. These warriors were known as the "chavers".[1] Later, these suicide squads rendered service as police, volunteer troop and fighting squads in the region. Now their primary duty was to assist local rulers in battles and skirmishes. The rulers of the state of Valluvanad is known to have deployed a number of suicide squads against the ruler of Calicut. In the late 17th century Qing official Yu Yonghe recorded that injured Dutch soldiers fighting against Koxinga's forces for control of Taiwan in 1661 would use gunpowder to blow up both themselves and their opponents rather than be taken prisoner.[2] However, the Chinese observer may have confused such suicidal tactics with the standard Dutch military practice of undermining and blowing up positions recently overrun by the enemy which almost cost Koxinga his life during the siege.[3] During the Belgian Revolution, on February 5, 1831, Dutch Lieutenant Jan van Speijk detonated his own ship in the harbour of Antwerp to prevent its capture by the Belgians. Another example was the Prussian soldier Karl Klinke on 18 April 1864 at the Battle of Dybbøl, who died blowing a hole in a Danish fortification. In the 18th century John Paul Jones wrote about Ottoman sailors setting their own ships on fire and ramming the ships of their enemies, refusing to leave their vessels, although they knew this meant certain death for them. Modern suicide bombing as a political tool can be traced back to the assassination of Tsar Alexander II of Russia in 1881. Alexander fell victim to a Nihilist plot. While driving on one of the central streets of Saint Petersburg, near the Winter Palace, he was mortally wounded by the explosion of hand-made grenades and died a few hours afterwards. The Tsar was killed by a member of Narodnaya Volya, Ignacy Hryniewiecki, who died while intentionally exploding the bomb during the attack. Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff intended to assassinate Adolf Hitler by suicide bomb in 1943, but was unable to complete the attack.[4] During the Battle for Berlin the Luftwaffe flew Selbstopfereinsatz against Soviet bridges over the Oder River. These missions were flown by pilots of the Leonidas Squadron under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Heiner Lange. From 17 April until 20 April 1945, using any aircraft that were available, the Luftwaffe claimed that the squadron destroyed 17 bridges, however the military historian Antony Beevor when writing about the incident thinks that this was exaggerated and that only the railway bridge at Küstrin was definitely destroyed. He comments that "thirty-five pilots and aircraft was a high price to pay for such a limited and temporary success". The missions were called off when the Soviet ground forces reached the vicinity of the squadron's airbase at Jüterbog.[5] Following World War II, Viet Minh "death volunteers" fought against the French Colonial Forces by using a long stick-like explosive to destroy French tanks. An Arab Christian military officer from Syria, Jules Jammal, used a suicide bomb attack to bring down a French ship during the Suez Crisis in 1956.[6][dubious -- discuss] The Irish Republican Army used proxy suicide bombers in a series of attacks in 1990s.[7][8] [edit] Modern Hezbollah's attacks in Lebanon in 1963 are the first examples of the modern suicide terrorism.[9] Workers Party of Kurdistan (PKK) used the first suicide attack in 1996, and al Queda in the mid-1990s.[9] The number of attacks using suicide tactics has grown from an average of fewer than five per year during the 1980s to 180 per year between 2000 and 2005,[10] and from 81 suicide attacks in 2001 to 460 in 2005.[11] These attacks have been aimed at diverse military and civilian targets, including in Sri Lanka, in Israel since July 6, 1989,[12] in Iraq since the US-led invasion of that country in 2003, in Pakistan since 2001 and in Afghanistan since 2005 and in Somalia since 2006.[13][14] Between 1980 and 2000 the largest number of suicide attacks was carried out by separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) of Sri Lanka. The first suicide attack by LTTE was in 1987.[9] The number of attacks conducted by LTTE was almost double that of nine other major extremist organizations.[15]