Define and Analyze the five critical factors that constitute the necessary conditions for the success of a revolutionary movement.
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The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism
Author(s): Robert A. Pape
Source: The American Political Science Review , Aug., 2003, Vol. 97, No. 3 (Aug., 2003),
pp. 343-361
Published by: American Political Science Association
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Vol. 97, No. 3 August 2003
American Political Science Review
The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism
ROBERT A. PAPE The University of Chicago
S
uicide terrorism is rising around the world, but the most common explanations do not help us
understand why. Religious fanaticism does not explain why the world leader in suicide terrorism is
the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a group that adheres to a Marxist/Leninist ideology, while existing
psychological explanations have been contradicted by the widening range ofsocio-economic backgrounds
of suicide terrorists. To advance our understanding of this growing phenomenon, this study collects the
universe of suicide terrorist attacks worldwide from 1980 to 2001, 188 in all. In contrast to the existing
explanations, this study shows that suicide terrorism follows a strategic logic, one specifically designed
to coerce modem liberal democracies to make significant territorial concessions. Moreover, over the past
two decades, suicide terrorism has been rising largely because terrorists have learned that it pays. Suicide
terrorists sought to compel American and French military forces to abandon Lebanon in 1983, Israeli
forces to leave Lebanon in 1985, Israeli forces to quit the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in 1994 and
1995, the Sri Lankan government to create an independent Tamil state from 1990 on, and the Turkish
government to grant autonomy to the Kurds in the late 1990s. In all but the case of Turkey, the terrorist
political cause made more gains after the resort to suicide operations than it had before. Thus, Western
democracies should pursue policies that teach terrorists that the lesson of the 1980s and 1990s no longer
holds, policies which in practice may have more to do with improving homeland security than with
offensive military action.
T
errorist organizations are increasingly relying on
suicide attacks to achieve major political objecÂ
tives. For example, spectacular suicide terrorist
attacks have recently been employed by Palestinian
groups in attempts to force Israel to abandon the West
Bank and Gaza, by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam to compel the Sri Lankan government to accept
an independent Tamil homeland, and by Al Qaeda to
pressure the United States to withdraw from the Saudi
Arabian Peninsula. Moreover, such attacks are increasÂ
ing both in tempo and location. Before the early 1980s,
suicide terrorism was rare but not unknown (Lewis
1968; O’Neill 1981; Rapoport 1984). However, since
the attack on the U.S. embassy in Beirut in April 1983,
there have been at least 188 separate suicide terrorist
attacks worldwide, in Lebanon, Israel, Sri Lanka, India,
Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Turkey, Russia and the
United States. The rate has increased from 31 in the
1980s, to 104 in the 1990s, to 53 in 2000–2001 alone
(Pape 2002). The rise of suicide terrorism is especially
remarkable, given that the total number of terrorist
incidents worldwide fell during the period, from a peak
of 666 in 1987 to a low of 274 in 1998, with 348 in 2001
(Department of State 2001 ).
What accounts for the rise in suicide terrorism, esÂ
pecially, the sharp escalation from the 1990s onward?
Robert A. Pape is Associate Professor, Department of Political
Science, 5828 South University Avenue, The University of Chicago,
Chicago, IL 60637 ([email protected]).
I thank Robert Art, Mia Bloom, Steven Cicala, Alex Downs,
Daniel Drezner, Adria Lawrence, Sean Lynn-Jones, John
Mearsheimer, Michael O’Connor, Sebastian Rosato, Lisa Weeden,
the anonymous reviewers, and the members of the program on
International Security Policy at the University of Chicago for their
superb comments. I especially thank James K. Feldman and Chaim
D. Kaufmann for their excellent comments on multiple drafts. I
would also like to acknowledge encouragement from the committee
for the Combating Political Violence paper competition sponsored
by the Institute for War and Peace Studies at Columbia University,
which selected an earlier version as a winning paper.
Although terrorism has long been part of international
politics, we do not have good explanations for the growÂ
ing phenomenon of suicide terrorism. Traditional studÂ
ies of terrorism tend to treat suicide attack as one of
many tactics that terrorists use and so do not shed
much light on the recent rise of this type of attack (e.g.,
Hoffman 1998; Jenkins 1985; Laqueur 1987). The small
number of studies addressed explicitly to suicide terrorÂ
ism tend to focus on the irrationality of the act of suicide
from the perspective of the individual attacker. As a reÂ
sult, they focus on individual motives-either religious
indoctrination (especially Islamic Fundamentalism) or
psychological predispositions that might drive individÂ
ual suicide bombers (Kramer 1990; Merari 1990; Post
1990).
The first-wave explanations of suicide terrorism were
developed during the 1980s and were consistent with
the data from that period. However, as suicide attacks
mounted from the 1990s onward, it has become inÂ
creasingly evident that these initial explanations are
insufficient to account for which individuals become
suicide terrorists and, more importantly, why terrorist
organizations are increasingly relying on this form of
attack (Institute for Counter-Terrorism 2001 ). First, alÂ
though religious motives may matter, modem suicide
terrorism is not limited to Islamic Fundamentalism.
Islamic groups receive the most attention in Western
media, but the world’s leader in suicide terrorism is
actually the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE),
a group who recruits from the predominantly Hindu
Tamil population in northern and eastern Sri Lanka
and whose ideology has Marxist/Leninist elements. The
LTTE alone accounts for 75 of the 186 suicide terrorist
attacks from 1980 to 2001. Even among Islamic suicide
attacks, groups with secular orientations account for
about a third of these attacks (Merari 1990; Sprinzak
2000).
Second, although study of the personal characterÂ
istics of suicide attackers may someday help identify
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Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism
individuals terrorist organizations are likely to recruit
for this purpose, the vast spread of suicide terrorism
over the last two decades suggests that there may
not be a single profile. Until recently, the leading exÂ
perts in psychological profiles of suicide terrorists charÂ
acterized them as uneducated, unemployed, socially
isolated, single men in their late teens and early 20s
(Merari 1990; Post 1990). Now we know that suicide
terrorists can be college educated or uneducated, marÂ
ried or single, men or women, socially isolated or inteÂ
grated, from age 13 to age 47 (Sprinzak 2000). In other
words, although only a tiny number of people become
suicide terrorists, they come from a broad cross section
of lifestyles, and it may be impossible to pick them out
in advance.
In contrast to the first-wave explanations, this article
shows that suicide terrorism follows a strategic logic.
Even if many suicide attackers are irrational or fanatiÂ
cal, the leadership groups that recruit and direct them
are not. Viewed from the perspective of the terrorist
organization, suicide attacks are designed to achieve
specific political purposes: to coerce a target governÂ
ment to change policy, to mobilize additional recruits
and financial support, or both. Crenshaw (1981) has
shown that terrorism is best understood in terms of its
strategic function; the same is true for suicide terrorÂ
ism. In essence, suicide terrorism is an extreme form of
what Thomas Schelling (1966) calls “the rationality of
irrationality,” in which an act that is irrational for indiÂ
vidual attackers is meant to demonstrate credibility to a
democratic audience that still more and greater attacks
are sure to come. As such, modern suicide terrorism is
analogous to instances of international coercion. For
states, air power and economic sanctions are often the
preferred coercive tools (George et al. 1972; Pape 1996,
1997). For terrorist groups, suicide attacks are becomÂ
ing the coercive instrument of choice.
To examine the strategic logic of suicide terrorism,
this article collects the universe suicide terrorist attacks
worldwide from 1980 to 2001, explains how terrorist
organizations have assessed the effectiveness of these
attacks, and evaluates the limits on their coercive utility.
Five principal findings follow. First, suicide terrorism
is strategic. The vast majority of suicide terrorist attacks
are not isolated or random acts by individual fanatics
but, rather, occur in clusters as part of a larger campaign
by an organized group to achieve a specific political
goal. Groups using suicide terrorism consistently anÂ
nounce specific political goals and stop suicide attacks
when those goals have been fully or partially achieved.
Second, the strategic logic of suicide terrorism
is specifically designed to coerce modern democraÂ
cies to make significant concessions to national selfÂ
determination. In general, suicide terrorist campaigns
seek to achieve specific territorial goals, most often
the withdrawal of the target state’s military forces
from what the terrorists see as national homeland.
From Lebanon to Israel to Sri Lanka to Kashmir to
Chechnya, every suicide terrorist campaign from 1980
to 2001 has been waged by terrorist groups whose
main goal has been to establish or maintain selfÂ
determination for their community’s homeland by
August 2003
compelling an enemy to withdraw. Further, every suiÂ
cide terrorist campaign since 1980 has been targeted
against a state that had a democratic form of governÂ
ment.
Third, during the past 20 years, suicide terrorism has
been steadily rising because terrorists have learned that
it pays. Suicide terrorists sought to compel American
and French military forces to abandon Lebanon in 1983,
Israeli forces to leave Lebanon in 1985, Israeli forces
to quit the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in 1994 and
1995, the Sri Lankan government to create an indeÂ
pendent Tamil state from 1990 on, and the Turkish
government to grant autonomy to the Kurds in the
late 1990s. Terrorist groups did not achieve their full
objectives in all these cases. However, in all but the
case of Turkey, the terrorist political cause made more
gains after the resort to suicide operations than it had
before. Leaders of terrorist groups have consistently
credited suicide operations with contributing to these
gains. These assessments are hardly unreasonable given
the timing and circumstances of many of the concesÂ
sions and given that other observers within the terrorÂ
ists’ national community, neutral analysts, and target
government leaders themselves often agreed that suiÂ
cide operations accelerated or caused the concession.
This pattern of making concessions to suicide terrorist
organizations over the past two decades has probably
encouraged terrorist groups to pursue even more amÂ
bitious suicide campaigns.
Fourth, although moderate suicide terrorism led to
moderate concessions, these more ambitious suicide
terrorist campaigns are not likely to achieve still greater
gains and may well fail completely. In general, suiÂ
cide terrorism relies on the threat to inflict low to
medium levels of punishment on civilians. In other cirÂ
cumstances, this level of punishment has rarely caused
modern nation states to surrender significant political
goals, partly because modern nation states are often
willing to countenance high costs for high interests and
partly because modern nation states are often able to
mitigate civilian costs by making economic and other
adjustments. Suicide terrorism does not change a naÂ
tion’s willingness to trade high interests for high costs,
but suicide attacks can overcome a country’s efforts
to mitigate civilian costs. Accordingly, suicide terrorÂ
ism may marginally increase the punishment that is
inflicted and so make target nations somewhat more
likely to surrender modest goals, but it is unlikely
to compel states to abandon important interests reÂ
lated to the physical security or national wealth of the
state. National governments have in fact responded
aggressively to ambitious suicide terrorist campaigns
in recent years, events which confirm these expectaÂ
tions.
Finally, the most promising way to contain suicide
terrorism is to reduce terrorists’ confidence in their abilÂ
ity to carry out such attacks on the target society. States
that face persistent suicide terrorism should recognize
that neither offensive military action nor concessions
alone are likely to do much good and should invest sigÂ
nificant resources in border defenses and other means
of homeland security.
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Vol. 97, No. 3
American Political Science Review
THE LOGIC OF SUICIDE TERRORISM
Most suicide terrorism is undertaken as a strategic efÂ
fort directed toward achieving particular political goals;
it is not simply the product of irrational individuals or
an expression of fanatical hatreds. The main purpose of
suicide terrorism is to use the threat of punishment to
coerce a target government to change policy, especially
to cause democratic states to withdraw forces from
territory terrorists view as their homeland. The
record of suicide terrorism from 1980 to 2001 exhibits
tendencies in the timing, goals, and targets of attack
that are consistent with this strategic logic but not with
irrational or fanatical behavior.
Defining Suicide Terrorism
Terrorism involves the use of violence by an organizaÂ
tion other than a national government to cause intimÂ
idation or fear among a target audience (Department
of State 1983-2001; Reich 1990; Schmid and Jongman
1988). Although one could broaden the definition of
terrorism so as to include the actions of a national govÂ
ernment to cause terror among an opposing populaÂ
tion, adopting such a broad definition would distract
attention from what policy makers would most like
to know: how to combat the threat posed by subnaÂ
tional groups to state security. Further, it could also
create analytic confusion. Terrorist organizations and
state governments have different levels of resources,
face different kinds of incentives, and are susceptible
to different types of pressures. Accordingly, the deÂ
terminants of their behavior are not likely to be the
same and, thus, require separate theoretical investigaÂ
tions.
In general, terrorism has two purposes-to gain supÂ
porters and to coerce opponents. Most terrorism seeks
both goals to some extent, often aiming to affect enÂ
emy calculations while simultaneously mobilizing supÂ
port or the terrorists cause and, in some cases, even
gaining an edge over rival groups in the same social
movement (Bloom 2002). However, there are tradeÂ
offs between these objectives and terrorists can strike
various balances between them. These choices repreÂ
sent different forms of terrorism, the most important
of which are demonstrative, destructive, and suicide
terrorism.
Demonstrative terrorism is directed mainly at gainÂ
ing publicity, for any or all of three reasons: to recruit
more activists, to gain attention to grievances from softÂ
liners on the other side, and to gain attention from third
parties who might exert pressure on the other side.
Groups that emphasize ordinary, demonstrative terrorÂ
ism include the Orange Volunteers (Northern Ireland),
National Liberation Army (Columbia), and Red
Brigades (Italy) (Clutterbuck 1975; Edler Baumann
1973; St. John 1991). Hostage taking, airline hijacking,
and explosions announced in advance are generally inÂ
tended to use the possibility of harm to bring issues
to the attention of the target audience. In these cases,
terrorists often avoid doing serious harm so as not
to undermine sympathy for the political cause. Brian
Jenkins (1975, 4) captures the essence of demonstraÂ
tive terrorism with his well-known remark, “TerrorÂ
ists want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people
dead.”
Destructive terrorism is more aggressive, seeking to
coerce opponents as well as mobilize support for the
cause. Destructive terrorists seek to inflict real harm
on members of the target audience at the risk of losing
sympathy for their cause. Exactly how groups strike the
balance between harm and sympathy depends on the
nature of the political goal. For instance, the BaaderÂ
Meinhoft group selectively assassinated rich German
industrialists, which alienated certain segments of
German society but not others. Palestinian terrorists
in the 1970s often sought to kill as many Israelis as
possible, fully alienating Jewish society but still evokÂ
ing sympathy from Muslim communities. Other groups
that emphasize destructive terrorism include the Irish
Republican Army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia (FARC), and the nineteenth-century
Anarchists (Elliott 1998; Rapoport 1971; Tuchman
1966).
Suicide terrorism is the most aggressive form of terÂ
rorism, pursuing coercion even at the expense of losing
support among the terrorists’ own community. What
distinguishes a suicide terrorist is that the attacker does
not expect to survive a mission and often employs a
method of attack that requires the attacker’s death in
order to succeed (such as planting a car bomb, wearing
a suicide vest, or ramming an airplane into a buildÂ
ing). In essence, a suicide terrorist kills others at the
same time that he kills himself. 1 In principle, suicide
terrorists could be used for demonstrative purposes or
could be limited to targeted assassinations. 2 In practice,
however, suicide terrorists often seek simply to kill the
largest number of people. Although this maximizes the
coercive leverage that can be gained from terrorism, it
does so at the greatest cost to the basis of support for
the terrorist cause. Maximizing the number of enemy
killed alienates those in the target audience who might
be sympathetic to the terrorists cause, while the act of
suicide creates a debate and often loss of support
among moderate segments of the terrorists’ commuÂ
nity, even if also attracting support among radical elÂ
ements. Thus, while coercion is an element in all terÂ
rorism, coercion is the paramount objective of suicide
terrorism.
1 A suicide attack can be defined in two ways, a narrow definition
limited to situations in which an attacker kills himself and a broad
definition that includes any instance when an attacker fully expects
to be killed by others during an attack. An example that fits the broad
definition is Baruch Goldstein, who continued killing Palestinians at
the February 1994 Hebron Massacre until he himself was killed, who
had no plan for escape, and who left a note for his family indicating
that he did not expect to return. My research relies on the narrow
definition, partly because this is the common practice in the literature
and partly because there are so few instances in which it is clear that
an attacker expected to be killed by others that adding this category
of events would not change my findings.
2 Hunger strikes and self-immolation are not ordinarily considered
acts of terrorism, because their main purpose is to evoke understandÂ
ing and sympathy from the target audience, and not to cause terror
(Niebuhr 1960).
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Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism
The Coercive Logic of Suicide Terrorism
At its core, suicide terrorism is a strategy of coercion,
a means to compel a target government to change
policy. The central logic of this strategy is simple: SuiÂ
cide terrorism attempts to inflict enough pain on the
opposing society to overwhelm their interest in resistÂ
ing the terrorists demands and, so, to cause either the
government to concede or the population to revolt
against the government. The common feature of all
suicide terrorist campaigns is that they inflict punishÂ
ment on the opposing society, either directly by killing
civilians or indirectly by killing military personnel in cirÂ
cumstances that cannot lead to meaningful battlefield
victory. As we shall see, suicide terrorism is rarely a one
time event but often occurs in a series of suicide attacks.
As such, suicide terrorism generates coercive leverage
both from the immediate panic associated with each
attack and from the risk of civilian punishment in the
future.
Suicide terrorism does not occur in the same cirÂ
cumstances as military coercion used by states, and
these structural differences help to explain the logic
of the strategy. In virtually all instances of internaÂ
tional military coercion, the coercer is the stronger state
and the target is the weaker state; otherwise, the coÂ
ercer would likely be deterred or simply unable to exÂ
ecute the threatened military operations (Pape 1996).
In these circumstances, coercers have a choice between
two main coercive strategies, punishment and denial.
Punishment seeks to coerce by raising the costs or risks
to the target society to a level that overwhelms the value
of the interests in dispute. Denial seeks to coerce by
demonstrating to the target state that it simply canÂ
not win the dispute regardless of its level of effort, and
therefore fighting to a finish is pointless-for example,
because the coercer has the ability to conquer the disÂ
puted territory. Hence, although coercers may initially
rely on punishment, they often have the resources to
create a formidable threat to deny the opponent victory
in battle and, if necessary, to achieve a brute force miliÂ
tary victory if the target government refuses to change
its behavior. The Allied bombing of Germany in World
War II, American bombing of North Vietnam in 1972,
and Coalition attacks against Iraq in 1991 all fit this
pattern.
Suicide terrorism (and terrorism in general) occurs
under the reverse structural conditions. In suicide terÂ
rorism, the coercer is the weaker actor and the target
is the stronger. Although some elements of the situaÂ
tion remain the same, flipping the stronger and weaker
sides in a coercive dispute has a dramatic change on the
relative feasibility of punishment and denial. In these
circumstances, denial is impossible, because military
conquest is ruled out by relative weakness. Even though
some groups using suicide terrorism have received imÂ
portant support from states and some have been strong
enough to wage guerrilla military campaigns as well
as terrorism, none have been strong enough to have
serious prospects of achieving their political goals by
conquest. The suicide terrorist group with the most
significant military capacity has been the LTTE, but
August 2003
it has not had a real prospect of controlling the whole
of the homeland that it claims, including Eastern and
Northern Provinces of Sri Lanka.
As a result, the only coercive strategy available to
suicide terrorists is punishment. Although the element
of “suicide” is novel and the pain inflicted on civilians is
often spectacular and gruesome, the heart of the stratÂ
egy of suicide terrorism is the same as the coercive
logic used by states when they employ air power or
economic sanctions to punish an adversary: to cause
mounting civilian costs to overwhelm the target state’s
interest in the issue in dispute and so to cause it to
concede the terrorists’ political demands. What creates
the coercive leverage is not so much actual damage
as the expectation of future damage. Targets may be
economic or political, military or civilian, but in all
cases the main task is less to destroy the specific tarÂ
gets than to convince the opposing society that they are
vulnerable to more attacks in the future. These features
also make suicide terrorism convenient for retaliation,
a tit-for-tat interaction that generally occurs between
terrorists and the defending government (Crenshaw
1981).
The rhetoric of major suicide terrorist groups reflects
the logic of coercive punishment. Abdel Karim, a leader
of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a militant group linked
to Yasir Arafat’s Fatah movement, said the goal of his
group was “to increase losses in Israel to a point at
which the Israeli public would demand a withdrawal
from the West Bank and Gaza Strip” (Greenberg 2002).
The infamous fatwa signed by Osama Bin Laden and
others against the United States reads, “The ruling
to kill the Americans and their allies-civilians and
military-is an individual duty for every Muslim who
can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it,
in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy
mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their
armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated
and unable to threaten any Muslim” (World Islamic
Front 1998).
Suicide terrorists’ willingness to die magnifies the
coercive effects of punishment in three ways. First, suiÂ
cide attacks are generally more destructive than other
terrorist attacks. An attacker who is willing to die is
much more likely to accomplish the mission and to
cause maximum damage to the target. Suicide attackers
can conceal weapons on their own bodies and make
last-minute adjustments more easily than ordinary terÂ
rorists. They are also better able to infiltrate heavily
guarded targets because they do not need escape plans
or rescue teams. Suicide attackers are also able to use
certain especially destructive tactics such as wearing
“suicide vests” and ramming vehicles into targets. The
188 suicide terrorist attacks from 1980 to 2001 killed an
average of 13 people each, not counting the unusually
large number of fatalities on September 11 and also
not counting the attackers themselves. During the same
period, there were about 4,155 total terrorist incidents
worldwide, which killed 3,207 people (also excluding
September 11), or less than one person per incident.
Overall, from 1980 to 2001, suicide attacks amount to
3% of all terrorist attacks but account for 48 % of total
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American Political Science Review
deaths due to terrorism, again excluding September 11
(Department of State 1983-2001).
Second, suicide attacks are an especially convincing
way to signal the likelihood of more pain to come, beÂ
cause suicide itself is a costly signal, one that suggests
that the attackers could not have been deterred by a
threat of costly retaliation. Organizations that sponsor
suicide attacks can also deliberately orchestrate the
circumstances around the death of a suicide attacker
to increase further expectations of future attacks. This
can be called the “art of martyrdom” (Schalk 1997). The
more suicide terrorists justify their actions on the basis
of religious or ideological motives that match the beliefs
of a broader national community, the more the status of
terrorist martyrs is elevated, and the more plausible it
becomes that others will follow in their footsteps. SuiÂ
cide terrorist organizations commonly cultivate “sacÂ
rificial myths” that include elaborate sets of symbols
and rituals to mark an individual attacker’s death as a
contribution to the nation. Suicide attackers’ families
also often receive material rewards both from the terÂ
rorist organizations and from other supporters. As a reÂ
sult, the art of martyrdom elicits popular support from
the terrorists’ community, reducing the moral backlash
that suicide attacks might otherwise produce, and so
establishes the foundation for credible signals of more
attacks to come.
Third, suicide terrorist organizations are better poÂ
sitioned than other terrorists to increase expectations
about escalating future costs by deliberately violating
norms in the use of violence. They can do this by crossÂ
ing thresholds of damage, by breaching taboos concernÂ
ing legitimate targets, and by broadening recruitment
to confound expectations about limits on the number
of possible terrorists. The element of suicide itself helps
increase the credibility of future attacks, because it
suggests that attackers cannot be deterred. Although
the capture and conviction of Timothy McVeigh gave
reason for some confidence that others with similar
political views might be deterred, the deaths of the
September 11 hijackers did not, because Americans
would have to expect that future Al Qaeda attackers
would be equally willing to die.
Vol. 97, No. 3
ination of the universe shows that suicide terrorism
has three properties that are consistent with the above
strategic logic but not with irrational or fanatical beÂ
havior: (1) timing-nearly all suicide attacks occur in
organized, coherent campaigns, not as isolated or ranÂ
domly timed incidents; (2) nationalist goals-suicide
terrorist campaigns are directed at gaining control of
what the terrorists see as their national homeland terÂ
ritory, specifically at ejecting foreign forces from that
territory; and (3) target selection-all suicide terrorist
campaigns in the last two decades have been aimed at
democracies, which make more suitable targets from
the terrorists’ point of view. Nationalist movements
that face nondemocratic opponents have not resorted
to suicide attack as a means of coercion.
3 This survey sought to include every instance of a suicide attack in
Timing. As Table 1 indicates, there have been 188 sepÂ
arate suicide terrorist attacks between 1980 and 2001.
Of these, 179, or 95 % , were parts of organized, coherent
campaigns, while only nine were isolated or random
events. Seven separate disputes have led to suicide terÂ
rorist campaigns: the presence of American and French
forces in Lebanon, Israeli occupation of West Bank
and Gaza, the independence of the Tamil regions of
Sri Lanka, the independence of the Kurdish region of
Turkey, Russian occupation of Chechnya, Indian ocÂ
cupation of Kashmir, and the presence of American
forces on the Saudi Arabian Peninsula. Overall, howÂ
ever, there have been 16 distinct campaigns, because
in certain disputes the terrorists elected to suspend opÂ
erations one or more times either in response to conÂ
cessions or for other reasons. Eleven of the campaigns
have ended and five were ongoing as of the end of 2001.
The attacks comprising each campaign were organized
by the same terrorist group (or, sometimes, a set of
cooperating groups as in the ongoing “second intifada”
in Israel/Palestine), clustered in time, publically justiÂ
fied in terms of a specified political goal, and directed
against targets related to that goal.
The most important indicator of the strategic orienÂ
tation of suicide terrorists is the timing of the suspenÂ
sion of campaigns, which most often occurs based on a
strategic decision by leaders of the terrorist organizaÂ
tions that further attacks would be counterproductive
to their coercive purposes-for instance, in response to
full or partial concessions by the target state to the
terrorists’ political goals. Such suspensions are often
accompanied by public explanations that justify the
decision to opt for a “cease-fire.” Further, the terrorÂ
ist organizations’ discipline is usually fairly good; alÂ
though there are exceptions, such announced ceaseÂ
fires usually do stick for a period of months at least,
normally until the terrorist l