ABSTRACT
Observers are not imagining things. In a widely read article, Robert Pape identifies Sixteen suicide terrorism campaigns that occurred in various parts of the world between 1980s and 2001 (Pape 2003). We can add another if we include the one presently (2005) underway in Iraq. Of this total, 11 of the 17 campaigns appear to have been driven by religious considerations. And of those that were not, the cause of Chechen separatism and the efforts of the Liberation Tigers in Sri Lanka to carve out a separate country for the Tamils, religion seems to play a role at least. Only the two campaigns (Pape mentions) waged by the nominally Marxist Kurdish Worker’s party (PKK) against the Turkish government were motivated by exclusively non-religious considerations.
