ABSTRACT
This study is a theoretical reflection on the causes of suicide terrorism. It is argued that suicide attacks are best understood when analyzed on three levels of analyses: an individual, an organizational, and an environmental level. A framework for analysis is introduced, and its value illustrated using examples from the Palestinian, Chechen, and Sri Lankan suicide bombing campaigns. The model can be redesigned as a framework to gauge risk factors for suicide terrorism, rendering the framework valuable from both a theoretical and practical point of view.
On December 15, 1981, a suicide car bombing against the Iraqi embassy in Beirut killed 61 people, including Ambassador Abdul Razzak Lafta, and injured over a 100 others. Together with three more well-known suicide car bombings that took place in the same city in 1983-the April 18 bombing at the US Embassy and the simultaneous October 23 bombings of the US Marine and French Paratroops Barracks-these incidents marked the beginning of the modern phenomenon of suicide attacks. Well over two decades later, suicide attacks have become a modus operandi employed by an increasingly diverse array of terrorist and insurgent groups in a growing number of countries.1 The 9/11 attacks in particular have highlighted how acts of suicide terrorism have the potential to cause considerable losses of human lives and damage to physical infrastructure, while influencing the course of global events. In order to develop policies vital to national and international security that will meet the challenges posed by suicide attacks-a phenomenon that shows no signs of subsiding in the near future-the need to understand the causes of this tactic appears evident.
