This article reviews theories on why some terrorist groups adopt the tactic and gives special attention to groups that could have, but did not, adopt suicide tactics. It concludes the “culture of martyrdom” explanation best accounts for an organization’s choice to use this tactic.
Whether by carbomb or hijacked airplane, why terrorist groups carry out suicide attacks, or attacks that necessitate the death of their perpetrators, remains puzzling to counterterrorism experts. These attacks require bombmaking expertise and strenuous effort to plan. The necessary death of a trustworthy operative puts up added moral and public relations barriers.
Still, many terrorist organizations have shown not only a willingness to use, but also an affinity for suicide attacks. I critique existing theories by examining why many organizations opt against using the tactic and the case study of the Tamil Tigers. I find support for the explanation that a “culture of martyrdom” encourages terrorist groups to employ suicide attacks.
The Threat and Causes of Suicide Terrorism
According to the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), less than 4% of terrorist incidents since 1970 are suicide attacks, but the latter account for over 16% of deaths from terrorism and about five times more fatalities on average than non-suicide attacks. Some of the deadliest and most infamous attacks, including the 1983 U.S. Marine barracks bombing and 9/11 attacks were suicide attacks. In fact, suicide terrorism incidents increased dramatically following the exceptional lethality of the attacks on the World Trade Center, which killed over 3,000 people. More recently, the Islamic State group has pioneered the use of suicide bombing in military operations. The proliferation and deadliness of suicide attacks make them a serious national security threat worth special attention.
Counterterrorism experts have made efforts to uncover why terrorist groups have turned to suicide terrorism. One popular explanation for suicide terrorism is that it is simply an effective low-cost tactic. Terrorist organizations must operate against technologically and materially superior adversaries, namely state military and police forces. Suicide bombing offers a relatively cheap means of achieving high numbers of deaths, especially in the context of asymmetric warfare against “hard” military targets. Indeed, the Marine barracks bombing arguably succeeded in causing the U.S. government to withdraw its forces from Lebanon; the 9/11 attacks achieved al-Qaeda’s goal of provoking the United States to war.
Another explanation is militant groups use suicide terrorism to garner support and outbid rivals. Mia Bloom proposes the outbidding thesis in her analysis of Palestinian extremist suicide bombing, in which she argues radical religious groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad use the tactic to at once delegitimize the secular Palestinian Authority and appeal to Palestinians by attacking Israel. As Palestinian animosity toward Israel increased in the early 2000s, so too did support for radical groups and suicide tactics.
Culture of Martyrdom
The most convincing explanation is that suicide terrorism exploits a transnational ideological reverence for martyrdom. Assaf Moghadam outlines this theory in his analysis of the “globalization of martyrdom,” in which he shows suicide bombing has, at times, led to alienation of local populations, as with suicide attacks by al-Qaeda that have killed Iraqis during the Iraq War. Rather than localized entities turning to the tactic to fight perceived foreign invaders, as outbidding and rationalist theories predict, groups increasingly recruit suicide bombers from countries outside their areas of operations and execute attacks in places where there is no conflict. For these suicide bombers, who are often born, raised, and educated in the West, martyrdom is part of allegiance to a transnational political awakening.
This explanation illuminates why suicide terrorism is particularly popular among jihadist groups, or organizations claiming to fight in the name of Islam. Using data from the GTD, almost 70% of organizations that use suicide terrorism – as well as almost 80% of groups that have conducted more than three suicide attacks – are jihadist. Benjamin Acosta traces the development and transmission of a jihadist theology for martyrdom that enshrines suicide bombing. Early adopters, most notably the jihadist groups Hezbollah, Hamas, and al-Qaeda, disseminated the tactic and concept to like-minded groups with which they allied. Thus rose a “suicide-attack network” among jihadist organizations and their associates.
Finally, while outbidding and rationalism may partially explain why organizations adopt suicide attacks, they fall short in illuminating individual reasons for committing suicide attacks as outbidding has little individual relevance and from a purely rationalist perspective, suicide bombing is nonsensical for individuals. According to culture of martyrdom, suicide bombing bestows prestige and strategic advantage upon groups that use the tactic while allowing individuals and their families to gain honor, respect, and sometimes material benefits from a like-minded sponsoring organization or rogue state.
Why Some Groups Do Not Use Suicide Terrorism
Examining why groups refrain from suicide bombing reveals more support for the culture of martyrdom theory. First, if rationalism were the main driver behind an organization’s decision to use suicide bombing, then only material capability, namely the requisite bombmaking expertise and organizational capital, would constrain the tactic’s employment. However, there are scores of terrorist organizations since 1970 with the necessary expertise that do not use the tactic. Notable examples include the Irish Republican Army, Basque Fatherland and Freedom, and New People’s Army. Despite their living through various examples of highly lethal suicide attacks and capability to adopt the tactic, these groups did not.
Second, if outbidding is the main driver, then one should observe resort to suicide bombing when intragroup power struggles or intergroup conflicts emerge. However, this has not occurred for a significant amount of organizations. For example, the Irish Republican Army experienced bouts of leadership issues and competition with other nationalist groups; the New People’s Army and other militant communist groups around the world virtually never resorted to suicide bombing despite leadership crises and competition with nonviolent communist movements.
The Tamil Tigers
One possible challenge to the culture of martyrdom thesis is the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. This Sri Lankan secular nationalist group not only made ample use of suicide bombing, but also established a unit dedicated to suicide attacks, the “Black Tigers,” and invented the suicide belt. The organization used suicide attacks to assassinate Indian prime minister, Rajiv Ghandi, and Sri Lankan president, Ranasinghe Premadasa.
However, the Tamil Tigers began conducting suicide attacks only after receiving training from Palestinian militant groups in Lebanon in the late 1970s and early ‘80s. Robert Pape, a principal defender of the rationalist theory, even admits the connection between the Tamil Tigers and these groups influenced the former’s adoption of suicide bombing. Indeed, according to the Revolutionary and Militant Organizations Dataset, the Tamil Tigers executed their first suicide attack in 1987 – only after their training in Lebanon – and increasingly used the tactic thereafter. Hence, while the Tamil Tigers were ideologically and geographically disconnected from the suicide-attack network, their ties to it through their training in Lebanon, in fact, reflect the culture of martyrdom theory’s view of the tactic’s transmission among groups.
Conclusion
A transnational culture of martyrdom sustained by ties between like-minded or associated organizations best explains the dissemination and proliferation of suicide terrorism, the deadliest form of terrorism. Rationalism and outbidding may explain certain aspects of suicide terrorism, but they fall short in explaining certain groups’ particular affinity for the tactic, individual motivations for suicide bombing, and why so many groups have not adopted the tactic.
For policymakers, this presents a difficult challenge. The recent rise of Islamic State and its affiliated groups likely presages the expansion of the suicide-attack network. Stopping suicide attacks remains particularly difficult due to bomb concealability, the ability of bombers to adapt to changing situations, and the need to only detonate a bomb to complete an attack (as opposed to the risk of prolonged engagement and capture for other forms of terrorism).
Still, counterterrorism forces may prevent suicide attacks by disrupting them in the vulnerable planning phase, since bombmaking and operative recruitment and indoctrination can be time-consuming. Disrupting ties between groups may prove more difficult, but can be achieved by targeting individual particularly well-connected operatives. Robust intelligence gathering and kinetic counterterrorism operations will remain crucial to these objectives.
Image by Staff Sgt. James L. Harper Jr. via Holloman Air Force Base.
Ido Levy is the editor-in-chief of Georgetown Public Policy Review. He is a second-year MPP student at the McCourt School of Public Policy. He earned a BA in government from Israel’s IDC Herzliya. He has completed research work for the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, Institute for National Security Studies, Council on Foreign Relations, and Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. After graduating, he hopes to enter the security research world through a think tank or academia.
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