When Terror Needs no Weapons

More than 700 civilians are dead in Iraq. Not a bomb exploded, not a shot was fired. We have almost become used to high civilian death tolls reported as a consequence of explosions. But this incident, being billed as the highest single loss of life in Iraq since March 2003, was triggered by wide spreading panic among Shi’ite worshippers, running for cover when rumours travelled among the crowd that there was a suicide bomber in the procession. The mob may have been primed by mortar attacks hours earlier. Many people plunged nine metres from a bridge into the Tigris river, or died trampled by the rushing crowd trying to escape. “Most of the dead were women and children.”

Crushing mobs have killed before. It has happened among pilgrims in Saudi Arabia during Ramadan, or among Rock concert goers in Seattle or in Ohio at a The Who concert in 1979. From my limited experience and readings about crowd behaviour, in such instances, people try to run away from a single focal point identified as the threat. But if people think that there is a suicide bomber about to detonate among them, the chaos must be many times greater. Anyone standing next to you could be the killer; there is no place to feel safe until you find yourself well away from the mob, and so the rushing sense to get away must be that much greater. It must have quickly become a multi-focal chain reaction, moving in all directions, having every mouth rumouring the bomber as an epicentre. The scale of death stands as evidence of the magnitude of the chaos it must have been.

The tragedy is a sad but real reminder that terrorism also kills, and in very large numbers, by exploiting people’s fears of violent death without having to smuggle explosives or weapons into a crowd. Whether the rumour of a suicide bomber in the crowd was set off accidentally or was planted by insurgents, the insurgency will draw lessons from it (You can see why authorities don’t like talk about bombs in airports and airplanes). My guess would be that the insurgents will again try to use the murdering effectiveness of a panicking crowd against itself. Hopefully, Iraqi authorities will learn from it too, but in a land of rumours and of large worshipping crowds it won’t be easy.

Cross posted from Civitatensis