'Suicide bombings linked with occupation, not religion'

Robert Pape, associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago, said most suicide terrorists were well-integrated and productive members of their communities from working-class or middle-class backgrounds.

"Technicians, waitresses, security guards, ambulance drivers, paramedics ... few are criminals. Most are volunteers whose first act of violence is their very own suicide attack," Pape told Reuters in an interview.

A broad misunderstanding of the issue, he said, is taking the US-led war on terrorism in the wrong direction and could in fact be fuelling an increase in suicide terrorism.

Pape has created what he calls the first comprehensive database on every suicide terrorist attack in the world since 1980, using Arabic, Hebrew, Tamil and Russian-language sources.

The US Departments of Defence and Homeland Security, as well as the UN Secretary General's office were looking at the information, he said.

Some insurgent leaders in Iraq have cast suicide attacks in holy-war terms. President Bush has called such attacks a tactic of "enemies of freedom" driven by a "thirst for absolute power."

"Islamic fundamentalism is not the primary driver of suicide terrorism," Pape said. "Nearly all suicide terrorist attacks are committed for a secular strategic goal -- to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory the terrorists view as their homeland."

"Yes, it's true we're killing terrorists day by day, but the real measure of suicide terrorism is simply the number of attacks," said Pape. "The problem with suicide terrorism is that it's not supply limited, it's demand-driven."

Pape cited suicide terrorism campaigns from Lebanon to Israel, Chechnya and Sri Lanka, where he said major democracies -- the United States, Israel, France, India, Russia -- had been the principal targets.

In "Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism," Pape writes that the world's most prolific suicide terrorist organisation is the Tamil Tigers -- a secular, Hindu group in Sri Lanka which he said invented the "suicide belt."