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Vol. 97, No. 3

August 2003

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 isthe 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 of socio-economic backgroundsof suicide terrorists. To advance our understanding of this growing phenomenon, this study collects theuniverse of suicide terrorist attacks worldwide from 1980 to 2001, 187 in all. In contrast to the existing
explanations, this study shows that suicide terrorism follows a strategic logic, one specifically designed
to coerce modern 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 and1995, 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 withoffensive military action.

errorist organizations are increasingly relying on
suicide attacks to achieve major political objectives. For example, spectacular suicide terrorist
attacks have recently been employed by Palestiniangroups in attempts to force Israel to abandon the WestBank 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 topressure the United States to withdraw from the Saudi
Arabian Peninsula. Moreover, such attacks are increasing 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 theUnited 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 especiallyremarkable, given that the total number of terrorist
incidents worldwide fell during the period, from a peakof 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, especially, the sharp escalation from the 1990s onward?

T

Robert A. Pape is Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, 5828 South University Avenue, The University of Chicago,
Chicago, IL 60637 (r-pape@uchicago.edu).
I thank Robert Art, Steven Cı́cala, 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 especiallythank 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 asa winning paper.

Although terrorism has long been part of international
politics, we do not have good explanations for the growing phenomenon of suicide terrorism. Traditional studies of terrorism tend to treat suicide attack as one ofmany tactics that terrorists use and so do not shedmuch 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 terrorism tend to focus on the irrationality of the act of suicidefrom the perspective of the individual attacker. As a result, they focus on individual motives—either religious
indoctrination (especially Islamic Fundamentalism) or
psychological predispositions that might drive individual suicide bombers (Kramer 1990; Merari 1990; Post
1990).
The first-wave explanations of suicide terrorism weredeveloped during the 1980s and were consistent withthe data from that period. However, as suicide attacks
mounted from the 1990s onward, it has become increasingly evident that these initial explanations are
insufficient to account for which individuals becomesuicide terrorists and, more importantly, why terrorist
organizations are increasingly relying on this form ofattack (Institute for Counter-Terrorism 2001). First, although religious motives may matter, modern 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 isactually 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 characteristics of suicide attackers may someday help identify

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individuals terrorist organizations are likely to recruitfor 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 experts in psychological profiles of suicide terrorists characterized 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, married or single, men or women, socially isolated or integrated, from age 13 to age 47 (Sprinzak 2000). In otherwords, although only a tiny number of people becomesuicide terrorists, they come from a broad cross sectionof 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 fanatical, 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 government 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 terrorism. In essence, suicide terrorism is an extreme form ofwhat Thomas Schelling (1966) calls “the rationality ofirrationality,” in which an act that is irrational for individual 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 isanalogous to instances of international coercion. For
states, air power and economic sanctions are often thepreferred coercive tools (George et al. 1972; Pape 1996,1997). For terrorist groups, suicide attacks are becoming 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 politicalgoal. Groups using suicide terrorism consistently announce specific political goals and stop suicide attacks
when those goals have been fully or partially achieved.
Second, the strategic logic of suicide terrorismis specifically designed to coerce modern democracies to make significant concessions to national selfdetermination. In general, suicide terrorist campaigns
seek to achieve specific territorial goals, most often
the withdrawal of the target state’s military forcesfrom 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 selfdetermination for their community’s homeland by

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compelling an enemy to withdraw. Further, every suicide terrorist campaign since 1980 has been targetedagainst a state that had a democratic form of government.
Third, during the past 20 years, suicide terrorism has
been steadily rising because terrorists have learned thatit pays. Suicide terrorists sought to compel Americanand 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 and1995, the Sri Lankan government to create an independent Tamil state from 1990 on, and the Turkish
government to grant autonomy to the Kurds in thelate 1990s. Terrorist groups did not achieve their fullobjectives in all these cases. However, in all but thecase 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 thesegains. These assessments are hardly unreasonable given
the timing and circumstances of many of the concessions and given that other observers within the terrorists’ national community, neutral analysts, and target
government leaders themselves often agreed that suicide 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 ambitious suicide campaigns.
Fourth, although moderate suicide terrorism led tomoderate concessions, these more ambitious suicide
terrorist campaigns are not likely to achieve still greater
gains and may well fail completely. In general, suicide terrorism relies on the threat to inflict low to
medium levels of punishment on civilians. In other circumstances, this level of punishment has rarely caused
modern nation states to surrender significant politicalgoals, partly because modern nation states are often
willing to countenance high costs for high interests andpartly because modern nation states are often able tomitigate civilian costs by making economic and otheradjustments. Suicide terrorism does not change a nation’s willingness to trade high interests for high costs,
but suicide attacks can overcome a country’s efforts
to mitigate civilian costs. Accordingly, suicide terrorism 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 related to the physical security or national wealth of thestate. National governments have in fact responded
aggressively to ambitious suicide terrorist campaigns
in recent years, events which confirm these expectations.
Finally, the most promising way to contain suicide
terrorism is to reduce terrorists’ confidence in their ability to carry out such attacks on the target society. Statesthat face persistent suicide terrorism should recognizethat neither offensive military action nor concessions
alone are likely to do much good and should invest significant resources in border defenses and other meansof homeland security.

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THE LOGIC OF SUICIDE TERRORISM
Most suicide terrorism is undertaken as a strategic effort directed toward achieving particular political goals;
it is not simply the product of irrational individuals oran expression of fanatical hatreds. The main purpose ofsuicide terrorism is to use the threat of punishment tocoerce a target government to change policy, especiallyto cause democratic states to withdraw forces fromterritory 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 notwith irrational or fanatical behavior: (1) timing—
nearly all suicide attacks occur in organized, coherent
campaigns, not as isolated or randomly timed incidents;(2) nationalist goals—suicide terrorist campaigns are
directed at gaining control of what the terrorists see
as their national homeland territory, specifically atejecting foreign forces from that territory; and (3) target
selection—all suicide terrorist campaigns in the last two
decades have been aimed at democracies, which makemore suitable targets from the terrorists’ point of view.

Defining Suicide Terrorism
Terrorism involves the use of violence by an organization other than a national government to cause intimidation or fear among a target audience (Departmentof State 1983–2001; Reich 1990; Schmid and Jongman1988). Although one could broaden the definition ofterrorism so as to include the actions of a national government to cause terror among an opposing population, adopting such a broad definition would distract
attention from what policy makers would most liketo know: how to combat the threat posed by subnational groups to state security. Further, it could also
create analytic confusion. Terrorist organizations andstate governments have different levels of resources,
face different kinds of incentives, and are susceptible
to different types of pressures. Accordingly, the determinants of their behavior are not likely to be the sameand, thus, require separate theoretical investigations.
In general, terrorism has two purposes—to gain supporters and to coerce opponents. Most terrorism seeksboth goals to some extent, often aiming to affect enemy
calculations while simultaneously mobilizing support
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 trade-offs between
these objectives and terrorists can strike various balances between them. These choices represent different
forms of terrorism, the most important of which aredemonstrative, destructive, and suicide terrorism.
Demonstrative terrorism is directed mainly at gaining publicity, for any or all of three reasons: to recruit
more activists, to gain attention to grievances from softliners on the other side, and to gain attention from third
parties who might exert pressure on the other side.
Groups that emphasize ordinary, demonstrative terrorism include the Orange Volunteers (Northern Ireland),National Liberation Army (Columbia), and Red

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Brigades (Italy) (Clutterbuck 1975; Edler Baumann
1973; St. John 1991). Hostage taking, airline hijacking,and explosions announced in advance are generally intended 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 demonstrative terrorism with his well-known remark, “Terrorists want a lotof people watching, not a lot of people dead.”
Destructive terrorism is more aggressive, seeking tocoerce opponents as well as mobilize support for thecause. Destructive terrorists seek to inflict real harmon members of the target audience at the risk of losing
sympathy for their cause. Exactly how groups strike thebalance between harm and sympathy depends on thenature of the political goal. For instance, the BaaderMeinhoft group selectively assassinated rich German
industrialists, which alienated certain segments ofGerman society but not others. Palestinian terrorists
in the 1970s often sought to kill as many Israelis as
possible, fully alienating Jewish society but still evoking sympathy from Muslim communities. Other groups
that emphasize destructive terrorism include the Irish
Republican Army, the Revolutionary Armed Forcesof Colombia (FARC), and the nineteenth-century
Anarchists (Elliott 1998; Rapoport 1971; Tuchman1966).
Suicide terrorism is the most aggressive form of terrorism, pursuing coercion even at the expense of losing
support among the terrorists’ own community. Whatdistinguishes a suicide terrorist is that the attacker does
not expect to survive a mission and often employs amethod of attack that requires the attacker’s death inorder to succeed (such as planting a car bomb, wearinga suicide vest, or ramming an airplane into a building). In essence, a suicide terrorist kills others at thesame 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 thelargest number of people. Although this maximizes thecoercive 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
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 indicatingthat he did not expect to return. My research relies on the narrow
definition, partly because this is the common practice in the literatureand partly because there are so few instances in which it is clear thatan attacker expected to be killed by others that adding this categoryof events would not change my findings.
2 Hunger strikes and self-immolation are not ordinarily consideredacts of terrorism, because their main purpose is to evoke understanding and sympathy from the target audience, and not to cause terror(Niebuhr 1960).

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suicide creates a debate and often loss of support
among moderate segments of the terrorists’ community, even if also attracting support among radical elements. Thus, while coercion is an element in all terrorism, coercion is the paramount objective 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: Suicide terrorism attempts to inflict enough pain on the
opposing society to overwhelm their interest in resisting the terrorists demands and, so, to cause either thegovernment to concede or the population to revolt
against the government. The common feature of all
suicide terrorist campaigns is that they inflict punishment on the opposing society, either directly by killing
civilians or indirectly by killing military personnel in circumstances that cannot lead to meaningful battlefieldvictory. 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 leverageboth from the immediate panic associated with eachattack and from the risk of civilian punishment in the
future.
Suicide terrorism does not occur in the same circumstances as military coercion used by states, andthese structural differences help to explain the logicof the strategy. In virtually all instances of international military coercion, the coercer is the stronger state
and the target is the weaker state; otherwise, the coercer would likely be deterred or simply unable to execute 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 valueof the interests in dispute. Denial seeks to coerce bydemonstrating to the target state that it simply cannot win the dispute regardless of its level of effort, andtherefore fighting to a finish is pointless—for example,
because the coercer has the ability to conquer the disputed territory. Hence, although coercers may initiallyrely on punishment, they often have the resources tocreate a formidable threat to deny the opponent victoryin battle and, if necessary, to achieve a brute force military victory if the target government refuses to change
its behavior. The Allied bombing of Germany in WorldWar II, American bombing of North Vietnam in 1972,
and Coalition attacks against Iraq in 1991 all fit thispattern.
Suicide terrorism (and terrorism in general) occurs
under the reverse structural conditions. In suicide terrorism, the coercer is the weaker actor and the target
is the stronger. Although some elements of the situation remain the same, flipping the stronger and weakersides in a coercive dispute has a dramatic change on therelative feasibility of punishment and denial. In thesecircumstances, denial is impossible, because military

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conquest is ruled out by relative weakness. Even thoughsome groups using suicide terrorism have received important support from states and some have been strong
enough to wage guerrilla military campaigns as wellas terrorism, none have been strong enough to haveserious prospects of achieving their political goals byconquest. The suicide terrorist group with the mostsignificant military capacity has been the LTTE, but
it has not had a real prospect of controlling the wholeof the homeland that it claims, including Eastern andNorthern Provinces of Sri Lanka.
As a result, the only coercive strategy available tosuicide terrorists is punishment. Although the elementof “suicide” is novel and the pain inflicted on civilians isoften spectacular and gruesome, the heart of the strategy 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’sinterest in the issue in dispute and so to cause it toconcede the terrorists’ political demands. What createsthe 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 themain task is less to destroy the specific targets than toconvince the opposing society that they are vulnerable
to more attacks in the future. These features also makesuicide terrorism convenient for retaliation, a tit-fortat 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 leaderof Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a militant group linked
to Yasir Arafat’s Fatah movement, said the goal of hisgroup 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 andothers against the United States reads, “The rulingto kill the Americans and their allies—civilians andmilitary—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 holymosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for theirarmies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeatedand unable to threaten any Muslim” (World Islamic
Front 1998).
Suicide terrorists’ willingness to die magnifies thecoercive effects of punishment in three ways. First, suicide attacks are generally more destructive than otherterrorist attacks. An attacker who is willing to die ismuch more likely to accomplish the mission and tocause maximum damage to the target. Suicide attackers
can conceal weapons on their own bodies and makelast-minute adjustments more easily than ordinary terrorists. They are also better able to infiltrate heavily
guarded targets because they do not need escape plansor 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 anaverage of 13 people each, not counting the unusuallyP1: HAUCJ206E-01

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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
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, because suicide itself is a costly signal, one that suggeststhat the attackers could not have been deterred by athreat of costly retaliation. Organizations that sponsor
suicide attacks can also deliberately orchestrate thecircumstances around the death of a suicide attacker
to increase further expectations of future attacks. Thiscan be called the “art of martyrdom” (Schalk 1997). The
more suicide terrorists justify their actions on the basisof religious or ideological motives that match the beliefs
of a broader national community, the more the status ofterrorist martyrs is elevated, and the more plausible it
becomes that others will follow in their footsteps. Suicide terrorist organizations commonly cultivate “sacrificial myths” that include elaborate sets of symbols
and rituals to mark an individual attacker’s death as acontribution to the nation. Suicide attackers’ families
also often receive material rewards both from the terrorist organizations and from other supporters. As a result, the art of martyrdom elicits popular support fromthe terrorists’ community, reducing the moral backlashthat suicide attacks might otherwise produce, and soestablishes the foundation for credible signals of more
attacks to come.
Third, suicide terrorist organizations are better positioned than other terrorists to increase expectations
about escalating future costs by deliberately violating
norms in the use of violence. They can do this by crossing thresholds of damage, by breaching taboos concerning legitimate targets, and by broadening recruitment
to confound expectations about limits on the numberof 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 theSeptember 11 hijackers did not, because Americans
would have to expect that future Al Qaeda attackers
would be equally willing to die.

The Record of Suicide Terrorism, 1980
to 2001
To characterize the nature of suicide terrorism, thisstudy identified every suicide terrorist attack from 1980
to 2001 that could be found in Lexis Nexis’s on-line
database of world news media (Pape 2002).3 Examination of the universe shows that suicide terrorism
3 This survey sought to include every instance of a suicide attack inwhich the attacker killed himself except those explicitly authorized

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has three properties that are consistent with the above
strategic logic but not with irrational or fanatical behavior: (1) timing—nearly all suicide attacks occur inorganized, coherent campaigns, not as isolated or randomly timed incidents; (2) nationalist goals—suicide
terrorist campaigns are directed at gaining control ofwhat the terrorists see as their national homeland territory, 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 fromthe terrorists’ point of view. Nationalist movementsthat face nondemocratic opponents have not resorted
to suicide attack as a means of coercion.
Timing. As Table 1 indicates, there have been 188 separate 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 terrorist campaigns: the presence of American and French
forces in Lebanon, Israeli occupation of West Bankand Gaza, the independence of the Tamil regions of
Sri Lanka, the independence of the Kurdish region ofTurkey, Russian occupation of Chechnya, Indian occupation of Kashmir, and the presence of American
forces on the Saudi Arabian Peninsula. Overall, however, there have been 16 distinct campaigns, because
in certain disputes the terrorists elected to suspend operations one or more times either in response to concessions 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 organizedby the same terrorist group (or, sometimes, a set ofcooperating groups as in the ongoing “second intifada”
in Israel/Palestine), clustered in time, publically justified in terms of a specified political goal, and directedagainst targets related to that goal.
The most important indicator of the strategic orientation of suicide terrorists is the timing of the suspension of campaigns, which most often occurs based on a
strategic decision by leaders of the terrorist organizations that further attacks would be counterproductive
to their coercive purposes—for instance, in response to
full or partial concessions by the target state to theterrorists’ political goals. Such suspensions are often
accompanied by public explanations that justify theby a state and carried out by the state government apparatus (e.g.,
Iranian human wave attacks in the Iran–Iraq war were not counted).
The survey is probably quite reliable, because a majority of the incidents were openly claimed by the sponsoring terrorist organizations.
Even those that were not were, in nearly all cases, reported multiple
times in regional news media, even if not always in the U.S. media. To
probe for additional cases, I interviewed experts and officials involvedin what some might consider conflicts especially prone to suicide
attacks, such as Afghanistan in the 1980s, but this did not yield more
incidents. According to the CIA station chief for Pakistan from 1986
to 1988 (Bearden 2002), “I cannot recall a single incident where an
Afghan launched himself against a Soviet target with the intention of
dying in the process. I don’t think these things ever happened, thoughsome of their attacks were a little hare-brained and could have been
considered suicidal. I think it’s important that Afghans never eventook their war outside their borders—for example they never tried
to blow up the Soviet Embassy in Pakistan.”5

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TABLE 1.

August 2003

Suicide Terrorist Campaigns, 1980–2001
Date

Terrorist Group

Terrorists’ GoalNo. ofNo.
Attacks Killed

Target Behavior

Completed Campaigns
1. Apr–Dec 1983
Hezbollah
2. Nov 1983–Apr 1985
Hezbollah
3. June 1985–June 1986 Hezbollah
4. July 1990–Nov 1994
5. Apr 1995–Oct 2000
6. Apr 1994

LTTE
LTTE
Hamas

U.S./France out of Lebanon
Israel out of Lebanon
Israel out of Lebanon
security zone
Sri Lanka accept Tamil state
Sri Lanka accept Tamil state
Israel out of Palestine

7. Oct 1994–Aug 1995

Hamas

Israel out of Palestine7

8. Feb–Mar 1996

Hamas

4

9. Mar–Sept 1997

Hamas

Retaliation for Israeli
assassination
Israel out of Palestine

10. June–Oct 1996
11. Mar–Aug 1999

PKK
PKK

12. 1996–
13. 2000–
14. 2000–
15. 2001–
16. 2000–
Total incidents
No. in campaigns
No. isolated

Al Qaeda
Chechnen Rebels
Kashmir Rebels
LTTE
Several
188
179
9Turkey accept Kurd autonomy
Turkey release jailed leader
Ongoing Campaigns, as of December 2001
U.S. out of Saudi Peninsula
Russia out of Chechnya
India out of Kashmir
Sri Lanka accept Tamil state
Israel out of Palestine

6616

384 Complete withdrawal
96 Partial withdrawal
179 No change

14
54
2

164 Negotiations
629 No change
15 Partial withdrawal
from Gaza
65 Partial withdrawal
from West Bank
58 No change

3
3
6
5
4
3
6
39

24 Hamas leader
released
17 No change
0 No change
3,329
53
45
51
177

TBDa
TBD
TBD
TBD
TBD

Source: Pape (2002).
a To be determined.

decision to opt for a “cease-fire.” Further, the terrorist
organizations’ discipline is usually fairly good; although
there are exceptions, such announced cease-fires usually do stick for a period of months at least, normally
until the terrorist leaders take a new strategic decision
to resume in pursuit of goals not achieved in the earlier campaign. This pattern indicates that both terrorist
leaders and their recruits are sensitive to the coercive
value of the attacks.
As an example of a suicide campaign, consider
Hamas’s suicide attacks in 1995 to compel Israel towithdraw from towns in the West Bank Hamas leaders deliberately withheld attacking during the springand early summer in order to give PLO negotiations
with Israel an opportunity to finalize a withdrawal.
However, when in early July, Hamas leaders came tobelieve that Israel was backsliding and delaying withdrawal, Hamas launched a series of suicide attacks.
Israel accelerated the pace of its withdrawal, after
which Hamas ended the campaign. Mahmud al-Zahar,a Hamas leader in Gaza, announced, following the cessation of suicide attacks in October 1995:
We must calculate the benefit and cost of continued armed
operations. If we can fulfill our goals without violence, wewill do so. Violence is a means, not a goal. Hamas’s decision
to adopt self-restraint does not contradict our aims, which
include the establishment of an Islamic state instead ofIsrael. . . . We will never recognize Israel, but it is possible

6

that a truce could prevail between us for days, months, or
years. (Mishal and Sela 2000, 71)

If suicide terrorism were mainly irrational or evendisorganized, we would expect a much different pattern in which either political goals were not articulated(e.g., references in news reports to “rogue” attacks)
or the stated goals varied considerably even within
the same conflict. We would also expect the timing tobe either random or, perhaps, event-driven, in response
to particularly provocative or infuriating actions by theother side, but little if at all related to the progress ofnegotiations over issues in dispute that the terrorists
want to influence.
Nationalist Goals. Suicide terrorism is a high-cost
strategy, one that would only make strategic sense for agroup when high interests are at stake and, even then,as a last resort. The reason is that suicide terrorism
maximizes coercive leverage at the expense of support
among the terrorists’ own community and so can besustained over time only when there already exists ahigh degree of commitment among the potential poolof recruits. The most important goal that a community
can have is the independence of its homeland (population, property, and way of life) from foreign influence
or control. As a result, a strategy of suicide terrorism
is most likely to be used to achieve nationalist goals,
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TABLE 2.

Vol. 97, No. 3

Motivation and Targets of Suicide Terrorist Campaigns, 1980–2001

Region DisputeLebanon, 1983–86
West Bank/Gaza, 1994–
Tamils in Sri Lanka, 1990–
Kurds in Turkey, 1990s
Chechnya, 2000–
Kashmir, 2000–
Saudi Peninsula, 1996–

Homeland Status
U.S./F/IDF military presence
IDF military presence
SL military presence
Turkey military presence
Russia military presence
Indian military presence
U.S. military presence

Terrorist Goal
U.S./F/IDF withdrawal
IDF withdrawal
SL withdrawal
Turkey withdrawal
Russian withdrawal
Indian withdrawal
U.S. withdrawal

Target a Democracy?
Yes
Yes
Yes (1950)a
Yes (1983)a
Yes (1993)aYes
Yes

Sources: Pape (2002). Przeworski et al. 2000 identifies four simple rules for determining regime type: (1) The chief executive must be
elected, (2) the legislature must be elected, (3) there must be more than one party, and (4) there must be at least one peaceful transferof power. By these criteria all the targets of suicide terrorism were and are democracies. Przeworski et al. codes only from 1950 to 1990
and is updated to 1999 by Boix and Rosato 2001. Freedom House also rates countries as “free,” “partly free,” and “not free,” using criteria
for degree of political rights and civil liberties. According to Freedom House’s measures, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Russia were all partly
free when they were the targets of suicide terrorism, which puts them approximately in the middle of all countries, a score that is actuallybiased against this study since terrorism itself lowers a country’s civil liberties rating (freedomhouse.org).
a Date established as a democracy (if not always a democracy).

their national homeland territory and expelling foreign
military forces from that territory.
In fact, every suicide campaign from 1980 to 2001 has
had as a major objective—or as its central objective—
coercing a foreign government that has military forcesin what they see as their homeland to take those forces
out. Table 2 summarizes the disputes that have engendered suicide terrorist campaigns. Since 1980, there has
not been a suicide terrorist campaign directed mainly
against domestic opponents or against foreign opponents who did not have military forces in the terrorists
homeland. Although attacks against civilians are often
the most salient to Western observers, actually every
suicide terrorist campaign in the past two decades has
included attacks directly against the foreign militaryforces in the country, and most have been waged byguerrilla organizations that also use more conventional
methods of attack against those forces.
Even Al Qaeda fits this pattern. Although Saudi
Arabia is not under American military occupation per
se and the terrorists have political objectives against
the Saudi regime and others, one major objective of
Al Qaeda is the expulsion of U.S. troops from the Saudi
Peninsula and there have been attacks by terrorists
loyal to Osama Bin Laden against American troops
in Saudi Arabia. To be sure, there is a major debate
among Islamists over the morality of suicide attacks,
but within Saudi Arabia there is little debate over Al
Qaeda’s objection to American forces in the region andover 95% of Saudi society reportedly agrees with Bin
Laden on this matter (Sciolino 2002).
Still, even if suicide terrorism follows a strategic logic,
could some suicide terrorist campaigns be irrationalin the sense that they are being waged for unrealistic
goals? The answer is that some suicide terrorist groups
have not been realistic in expecting the full concessions demanded of the target, but this is normal for
disputes involving overlapping nationalist claims andeven for coercive attempts in general. Rather, the ambitions of terrorist leaders are realistic in two othersenses. First, suicide terrorists’ political aims, if not their
methods, are often more mainstream than observers
realize; they generally reflect quite common, straight-

forward nationalist self-determination claims of theircommunity. Second, these groups often have significant support for their policy goals versus the target
state, goals that are typically much the same as those ofother nationalists within their community. Differences
between the terrorists and more “moderate” leadersusually concern the usefulness of a certain level of violence and—sometimes—the legitimacy of attacking
additional targets besides foreign troops in the country,
such as attacks in other countries or against third parties and civilians. Thus, it is not that the terrorists pursue
radical goals and then seek others’ support. Rather, theterrorists are simply the members of their societies who
are the most optimistic about the usefulness of violence
for achieving goals that many, and often most, support.
The behavior of Hamas illustrates the point. Hamas
terrorism has provoked Israeli retaliation that has been
costly for Palestinians, while pursuing the—apparently
unrealistic—goal of abolishing the state of Israel. Although prospects of establishing an Arab state in allof “historic Palestine” may be poor, most Palestinians
agree that it would be desirable if possible. Hamas’s
terrorist violence was in fact carefully calculated andcontrolled. In April 1994, as its first suicide campaign
was beginning, Hamas leaders explained that “martyrdom operations” would be used to achieve intermediate objectives, such as Israeli withdrawal from the WestBank and Gaza, while the final objective of creating an
Islamic state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean may require other forms of armed resistance(Shiqaqi 2002; Hroub 2000; Nusse 1998).
Democracies as the Targets. Suicide terrorism ismore likely to be employed against states with democratic political systems than authoritarian governments for several reasons. First, democracies are often
thought to be especially vulnerable to coercive punishment. Domestic critics and international rivals, as wellas terrorists, often view democracies as “soft,” usuallyon the grounds that their publics have low thresholds
of cost tolerance and high ability to affect state policy.
Even if there is little evidence that democracies areeasier to coerce than other regime types (Horowitz

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and Reiter 2001), this image of democracy matters.
Since terrorists can inflict only moderate damage incomparison to even small interstate wars, terrorism canbe expected to coerce only if the target state is viewed
as especially vulnerable to punishment. Second, suicide
terrorism is a tool of the weak, which means that, regardless of how much punishment the terrorists inflict,the target state almost always has the capacity to retaliate with far more extreme punishment or even byexterminating the terrorists’ community. Accordingly,
suicide terrorists must not only have high interests atstake, they must also be confident that their opponent
will be at least somewhat restrained. While there are
infamous exceptions, democracies have generally been
more restrained in their use of force against civilians,
at least since World War II. Finally, suicide attacks may
also be harder to organize or publicize in authoritarianpolice states, although these possibilities are weakened
by the fact that weak authoritarian states are also nottargets.
In fact, the target state of every modern suicide campaign has been a democracy. The United States, France,
Israel, India, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Russia were all
democracies when they were attacked by suicide terrorist campaigns, even though the last three became
democracies more recently than the others. To be sure,these states vary in the degree to which they share“liberal” norms that respect minority rights; Freedom
House rates Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Russia as “partly
free” (3.5–4.5 on a seven-point scale) rather than “free”
during the relevant years, partly for this reason andpartly because terrorism and civil violence themselves
lowers the freedom rating of these states. Still, all thesestates elect their chief executives and legislatures in
multiparty elections and have seen at least one peacefultransfer of power, making them solidly democratic bystandard criteria (Boix and Rosato 2001; Huntington
1991; Przeworski et al. 2000).
The Kurds, which straddle Turkey and Iraq, illustrate the point that suicide terrorist campaigns are more
likely to be targeted against democracies than authoritarian regimes. Although Iraq has been far more brutal
toward its Kurdish population than has Turkey, violent Kurdish groups have used suicide attacks exclusively against democratic Turkey and not against theauthoritarian regime in Iraq. There are plenty of national groups living under authoritarian regimes withgrievances that could possibly inspire suicide terrorism,
but none have. Thus, the fact that rebels have resorted
to this strategy only when they face the more suitable
type of target counts against arguments that suicide
terrorism is a nonstrategic response, motivated mainly
by fanaticism or irrational hatreds.

TERRORISTS’ ASSESSMENTS OF SUICIDETERRORISM
The main reason that suicide terrorism is growing isthat terrorists have learned that it works. Even moretroubling, the encouraging lessons that terrorists havelearned from the experience of 1980s and 1990s are not,8

August 2003

for the most part, products of wild-eyed interpretations
or wishful thinking. They are, rather, quite reasonableassessments of the outcomes of suicide terrorist campaigns during this period.
To understand how terrorists groups have assessed
the effectiveness of suicide terrorism requires threetasks: (1) explanation of appropriate standards for evaluating the effectiveness of coercion from the standpointof coercers; (2) analysis of the 11 suicide terrorist campaigns that have ended as of 2001 to determine howfrequently target states made concessions that were,or at least could have been, interpreted as due to suicide attack; and (3) close analysis of terrorists’ learningfrom particular campaigns. Because some analysts see
suicide terrorism as fundamentally irrational (Kramer
1990; Merari 1990; Post 1990), it is important to assess
whether the lessons that the terrorists drew were reasonable conclusions from the record. The crucial cases
are the Hamas and Islamic Jihad campaigns against
Israel during the 1990s, because they are most frequently cited as aimed at unrealistic goals and therefore
as basically irrational.

Standards of Assessment
Terrorists, like other people, learn from experience.
Since the main purpose of suicide terrorism is coercion,
the learning that is likely to have the greatest impact
on terrorists’ future behavior is the lessons that they
have drawn from past campaigns about the coercive
effectiveness of suicide attack.
Most analyses of coercion focus on the decision making of target states, largely to determine their vulnerability to various coercive pressures (George 1972; Pape
1996). The analysis here, however, seeks to determine
why terrorist coercers are increasingly attracted to a
specific coercive strategy. For this purpose, we must
develop a new set of standards, because assessing thevalue of coercive pressure for the coercer is not thesame problem as assessing its impact on the target.
From the perspective of a target state, the key question is whether the value of the concession that thecoercer is demanding is greater than the costs imposedby the coercive pressure, regardless of whether thatpressure is in the form of lives at risk, economic hardship, or other types of costs. However, from the perspective of the coercer, the key question is whether aparticular coercive strategy promises to be more effective than alternative methods of influence and, so,warrants continued (or increased) effort. This is especially true for terrorists who are highly committed to aparticular goal and so willing to exhaust virtually any
alternative rather than abandoning it. In this search for
an effective strategy, coercers’ assessments are likely to
be largely a function of estimates of the success of pastefforts; for suicide terrorists, this means assessments ofwhether past suicide campaigns produced significant
concessions.
A glance at the behavior of suicide terrorists reveals
that such trade-offs between alternative methods areimportant in their calculations. All of the organizations

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that have resorted to suicide terrorism began their coercive efforts with more conventional guerrilla operations, nonsuicide terrorism, or both. Hezbollah, Hamas,
Islamic Jihad, the PKK, the LTTE, and Al Qaeda allused demonstrative and destructive means of violencelong before resorting to suicide attack. Indeed, looking
at the trajectory of terrorist groups over time, there
is a distinct element of experimentation in the techniques and strategies used by these groups and distinct movement toward those techniques and strategies that produce the most effect. Al Qaeda actuallyprides itself for a commitment to even tactical learningover time—the infamous “terrorist manual” stresses
at numerous points the importance of writing “lessons
learned” memoranda that can be shared with othermembers to improve the effectiveness of future attacks.
The most important analytical difficulty in assessing outcomes of coercive efforts is that successes are
more ambiguous than failures. Whenever a suicide terrorist campaign, or any coercive effort, ends withoutobtaining significant concessions, presumably the coercers must judge the effort as a failure. If, however, thetarget state does make policy changes in the directionof the terrorists’ political goals, this may or may not
represent a coercive success for suicide attack in thecalculations of the terrorists. The target government’s
decision could have been mainly or partly a responseto the punishment inflicted by the suicide attacks, but
it also could be a response to another type of pressure(such as an ongoing guerrilla campaign), or to pressure
from a different actor (such as one of the target state’s
allies) or a different country, or the target’s policy decision may not even have been intended as a concession
but could have been made for other reasons that only
coincidently moved in a direction desired by the terrorists. Different judgments among these alternatives
yield different lessons for future usefulness of suicide
attack.
Standard principles from social psychology suggest
how terrorists are likely to resolve these ambiguities.
Under normal conditions, most people tend to interpret ambiguous information in ways that are consistent
with their prior beliefs, as well as in ways that justify
their past actions (Jervis 1976; Lebow 1981). Suicide
terrorists, of course, are likely to have at least some
initial confidence in the efficacy of suicide attack orelse they would not resort to it, and of course, the factof having carried out such attacks gives them an interest in justifying that choice. Thus, whenever targets ofsuicide terrorism make a real or apparent concession
and it is a plausible interpretation that it was due to thecoercive pressure of the suicide campaign, we would expect terrorists to favor that interpretation even if otherinterpretations are also plausible.
This does not mean that we should simply expect terrorists to interpret virtually all outcomes, regardless ofevidence, as encouraging further terrorism; that would
not constitute learning and would make sense only if
the terrorists were deeply irrational. To control for thispossibility, it is crucial to consider the assessments ofthe same events by other well-informed people. If wefind that when suicide terrorist leaders claim credit forVol. 97, No. 3

coercing potential concessions, their claims are unique(or nearly so), then it would be appropriate to dismissthem as irrational. If, on the other hand, we find that
their interpretations are shared by a significant portionof other observers, across a range of circumstances andinterests—from target state leaders, to others in the terrorists’ community, to neutral analysts—then we should
assume that their assessments are as rational as anyone
else’s and should take the lessons they draw seriously. In
making these judgments, the testimony of target state
leaders is often especially telling; although states likethe United States and Israel virtually never officiallyadmit making concessions to terrorism, leaders such as
Ronald Reagan and Yitzhak Rabin have at times beenquite open about the impact of suicide terrorism on
their own policy decisions, as we see below.
Finally, understanding how terrorists’ assess the effectiveness of suicide terrorism should also be influenced by our prior understanding of the fanatical nature of the specific terrorists at issue. If the mostfanatical groups also make what appear to be reasonable assessments, then this would increase our confidence in the finding that most terrorists would makesimilar calculations. Hamas and Islamic Jihad are themost crucial case, because these groups have been considered to be fanatical extremists even among terrorists (Kramer 1996). Thus, detailed examination of how
Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders assessed the coercive
value of suicide attacks during the 1990s is especially
important.

The Apparent Success of Suicide Terrorism
Perhaps the most striking aspect of recent suicide terrorist campaigns is that they are associated with gains
for the terrorists’ political cause about half the time.
As Table 1 shows, of the 11 suicide terrorist campaigns
that were completed during 1980–2001, six closely correlate with significant policy changes by the target
state toward the terrorists’ major political goals. In one
case, the terrorists’ territorial goals were fully achieved(Hezbollah v. US/F, 1983); in three cases, the terrorists territorial aims were partly achieved (Hezbollah v.
Israel, 1983–85; Hamas v. Israel, 1994; and Hamas v.
Israel, 1994–95); in one case, the target government toentered into sovereignty negotiations with the terrorists (LTTE v. Sri Lanka, 1993–94); and in one case, theterrorist organization’s top leader was released fromprison (Hamas v. Israel, 1997). Five campaigns did notlead to noticeable concessions (Hezbollah’s second effort against Israel in Lebanon, 1985–86; a Hamas campaign in 1996 retaliating for an Israeli assassination;
the LTTE v. Sri Lanka, 1995–2002; and both PKK campaigns). Coercive success is so rare that even a 50%
success rate is significant, because international military and economic coercion, using the same standards
as above, generally works less than a third of the time
(Art and Cronin 2003).
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central to the target countries’ security or wealth, andmost were potential revocable. For the United Statesand France, Lebanon was a relatively minor foreign
policy interest. Israel’s apparent concessions to thePalestinians from 1994 to 1997 were more modest thanthey might appear. Although Israel withdrew its forcesfrom parts of Gaza and the West Bank and released
Sheikh Yassin, during the same period Israeli settlement in the occupied territories almost doubled, andrecent events have shown that the Israel is not deterred from sending force back in when necessary. In
two disputes, the terrorists achieved initial success but
failed to reach greater goals. Although Israel withdrew
from much of Lebanon in June 1985, it retained asix-mile security buffer zone along the southern edge ofthe country for another 15 years from which a second
Hezbollah suicide terrorist campaign failed to dislodge
it. The Sri Lankan government did conduct apparently
serious negotiations with the LTTE from November
1994 to April 1995, but did not concede the Tamil’s
main demand, for independence, and since 1995, thegovernment has preferred to prosecute the war rather
than consider permitting Tamil secession.
Still, these six concessions, or at least apparent concessions, help to explain why suicide terrorism is on therise. In three of the cases, the target government policychanges are clearly due to coercive pressure from theterrorist group. The American and French withdrawal
was perhaps the most clear-cut coercive success for
suicide terrorism. In his memoirs, President Ronald
Reagan (1990, 465) explained the U.S. decision to withdraw from Lebanon:
The price we had to pay in Beirut was so great, the tragedy
at the barracks was so enormous. . . . We had to pull out. . . .
We couldn’t stay there and run the risk of another suicide
attack on the Marines.

The IDF withdrawal from most of southern Lebanon
in 1985 and the Sri Lankan government decision to holdnegotiations with the LTTE were also widely understood to be a direct result of the coercive punishment
imposed by Hezbollah and LTTE respectively. In bothcases, the concessions followed periods in which theterrorists had turned more and more to suicide attacks,
but since Hezbollah and the LTTE employed a combination of suicide attack and conventional attack on
their opponents, one can question the relative weight ofsuicide attack in coercing these target states. However,there is little question in either case that punishment
pressures inflicted by these terrorist organizations were
decisive in the outcomes. For instance, as a candidatein the November 9, 1994, presidential election of Sri
Lanka, Mrs. Chandrika Kumaratunga explicitly asked
for a mandate to redraw boundaries so as to appease
the Tamils in their demand for a separate homeland in
the island’s northeast provinces, often saying, “We definitely hope to begin discussions with the Tamil people,
with their representatives—including the Tigers—andoffer them political solutions to end the war . . . [involving] extensive devolution.” This would, Kumaratungasaid, “create an environment in which people could live
without fear.” (Sauvagnargues 1994; “Sri Lanka” 1994).

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The other three concessions, or arguable concessions,are less clear-cut. All three involve Hamas campaigns
against Israel. Not counting the ongoing second intifada, Hamas waged four separate suicide attack campaigns against Israel, in 1994, 1995, 1996, and 1997. One,in 1996, did not correspond with Israeli concessions.
This campaign was announced as retaliation for Israel’s
assassination of a Hamas leader; no particular coercive
goal was announced, and it was suspended by Hamas
after four attacks in two weeks. The other three all
do correspond with Israeli concessions. In April 1994,
Hamas begin a series of suicide bombings in relation
for the Hebron Massacre. After two attacks, Israel decided to accelerate its withdrawal from Gaza, which
was required under the Oslo Agreement but which had
been delayed. Hamas then suspended attacks for fivemonths. From October 1994 to August 1995, Hamas(and Islamic Jihad) carried out a total of seven suicide attacks against Israel. In September 1995, Israel
agreed to withdraw from certain West Bank towns that
December, which it earlier had claimed could not bedone before April 1996 at the soonest. Hamas thensuspended attacks until its retaliation campaign during the last week of February and first week of March
1996. Finally, in March 1997, Hamas began a suicide attack campaign that included an attack about every twomonths until September 1997. In response Israeli Prime
Minister Netanyahu authorized the assassination ofa Hamas leader. The attempt, in Amman, Jordan,
failed and the Israeli agents were captured. To get themback Israel agreed to release Sheikh Ahmed Yassin,
spiritual leader of Hamas. While this was not a concession to the terrorists’ territorial goals, there is no evidence that Hamas interpreted this in anyway different
from the standard view that this release was the productof American and Jordanian pressure. Accordingly the
key Hamas campaigns that might have encouraged theview that suicide terrorism pays were the 1994 and 1995
campaigns that were associated with Israel’s military
withdrawals from Gaza and the West Banks. Terrorists’assessments of these events are evaluated in detail.

The Crucial Case of Hamas
The Hamas and Islamic Jihad suicide campaigns against
Israel in 1994 and 1995 are crucial tests of the reasonableness of terrorists’ assessments. In each case, Israel
made significant concessions in the direction of theterrorists’ cause and terrorist leaders report that theseIsraeli concessions increased their confidence in the coercive effectiveness of suicide attack. However, there
is an important alternative explanation for Israel’s concessions in these cases—the Israeli government’s obligations under the Oslo Accords. Accordingly, evaluating the reasonableness of the terrorists’ assessmentsof these cases is crucial because many observers characterize Hamas and Islamic Jihad as fanatical, irrational groups, extreme both within Palestinian society
and among terrorists groups in general (Kramer 1996).
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ongoing campaign, the second intifada against Israel,and may also have helped to encourage Al Qaeda’s
campaign against the United States.
Examination of these crucial cases demonstrates thatthe terrorist groups came to the conclusion that suicide
attack accelerated Israeli’s withdrawal in both cases.
Although the Oslo Accords formally committed towithdrawing the IDF from Gaza and the West Bank,
Israel routinely missed key deadlines, often by many
months, and the terrorists came to believe that Israel
would not have withdrawn when it did, and perhaps
not at all, had it not been for the coercive leverageof suicide attack. Moreover, this interpretation of
events was hardly unique. Numerous other observers
and key Israeli government leaders themselves cameto the same conclusion. To be clear, Hamas may wellhave had motives other than coercion for launchingparticular attacks, such as retaliation (De Figueredo
and Weingast 1998), gaining local support (Bloom2002), or disrupting negotiated outcomes it consideredinsufficient (Kydd and Walter 2002). However, the experience of observing how the target reacted to thesuicide campaigns appears to have convinced terrorist
leaders of the coercive effectiveness of this strategy.
To evaluate these cases, we need to know (1) the factsof each case, (2) how others interpreted the events, and(3) how the terrorists interpreted these events. Eachcampaign is discussed in turn.
Israel’s Withdrawal from Gaza, May 1994.
The Facts. Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization signed the Oslo Accords on September 13,
1993. These obligated Israel to withdraw its militaryforces from the Gaza Strip and West Bank town ofJericho beginning on December 13 and ending on April
13, 1994. In fact, Israel missed both deadlines. The major sticking points during the implementation negotiations in Fall and Winter of 1993–94 were the size of
the Palestinian police force (Israel proposed a limit of
1,800, while the Palestinians demanded 9,000) and jurisdiction for certain criminal prosecutions, especiallywhether Israel could retain a right of hot pursuit toprosecute Palestinian attackers who might flee into
Palestinian ruled zones. As of April 5, 1994, these issues
were unresolved. Hamas then launched two suicide attacks, one on April 6 and another on April 13, killing 15
Israeli civilians. On April 18, the Israeli Knesset voted
to withdraw, effectively accepting the Palestinian positions on both disputed issues. The suicide attacks thenstopped and the withdrawal was actually conducted ina few weeks starting on May 4, 1994.4
These two suicide attacks may not originally havebeen intended as coercive, since Hamas leaders hadannounced them in March 1994 as part of a planned
series of five attacks in retaliation for the February 24th
Hebron massacre in which an Israeli settler killed 29
Palestinians and had strong reservations about negotiating a compromise settlement with Israel (Kydd andWalter 2002). However, when Israel agreed to withdraw more promptly than expected, Hamas decided to
4 There were no suicide attacks from April to October 1994.

Vol. 97, No. 3

forgo the remaining three planned attacks. There is thus
a circumstantial case that these attacks had the effectof coercing the Israelis into being more forthcoming in
the withdrawal negotiations and both Israeli government leaders and Hamas leaders publically drew thisconclusion.
Israeli and Other Assessments. There are two main
reasons to doubt that terrorist pressure acceleratedIsrael’s decision to withdraw. First, one might thinkthat Israel would have withdrawn in any case, as it hadpromised to do in the Oslo Accords of September 1993.
Second, one might argue that Hamas was opposed toa negotiated settlement with Israel. Taking both points
together, therefore, Hamas’ attacks could not have contributed to Israel’s withdrawal.
The first of these arguments, however, ignores thefacts that Israel had already missed the originallyagreed deadline and, as of early April 1994, did notappear ready to withdraw at all if that meant surrendering on the size of the Palestinian police force andlegal jurisdiction over terrorists. The second argument
is simply illogical. Although Hamas objected to surrendering claims to all of historic Palestine, it did value
the West Bank and Gaza as an intermediate goal, andcertainly had no objection to obtaining this goal sooner
rather than later.
Most important, other observers took explanations
based on terrorist pressure far more seriously, including the person whose testimony must count most, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. On April 13, 1994,
Rabin said,
I can’t recall in the past any suicidal terror acts by the PLO.
We have seen by now at least six acts of this type by Hamas
and Islamic Jihad. . . . The only response to them and to theenemies of peace on the part of Israel is to accelerate thenegotiations. (Makovsky and Pinkas 1994).

On April 18, 1994, Rabin went further, giving a major
speech in the Knesset explaining why the withdrawal
was necessary:
Members of the Knessett: I want to tell the truth. For 27
years we have been dominating another people against its
will. For 27 years Palestinians in the territories . . . get up
in the morning harboring a fierce hatred for us, as Israelis
and Jews. Each morning they get up to a hard life, forwhich we are also, but not solely responsible. We cannot
deny that our continuing control over a foreign people
who do not want us exacts a painful price. . . . For two or
three years we have been facing a phenomenon of extremist Islamic terrorism, which recalls Hezbollah, which surfaced in Lebanon and perpetrated attacks, including suicide missions. . . . There is no end to the targets Hamas andother terrorist organizations have among us. Each Israeli,
in the territories and inside sovereign Israel, including
united Jerusalem, each bus, each home, is a target for theirmurderous plans. Since there is no separation between thetwo populations, the current situation creates endless possibilities for Hamas and the other organizations.

Independent Israeli observers also credited suicide
terrorism with considerable coercive effectiveness. The
most detailed assessment is by Efraim Inbar (1999, 141–
42):

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A significant change occurred in Rabin’s assessment of theimportance of terrorist activities. . . . Reacting to the April
1994 suicide attack in Afula, Rabin recognized that terrorists activities by Hamas and other Islamic radicals were“a form of terrorism different from what we once knew
from the PLO terrorist organizations. . . . “Rabin admitted
that there was no “hermitic” solution available to protect
Israeli citizens against such terrorist attacks. . . . He also understood that such incidents intensified the domestic pressure to freeze the Palestinian track of the peace process.
Islamic terrorism thus initially contributed to the pressure
for accelerating the negotiations on his part.

Arab writers also attributed Israeli accommodation
to the suicide attacks. Mazin Hammad wrote in an editorial in a Jordanian newspaper:
It is unprecedented for an Israeli official like Y. Rabin toclearly state that there is no future for the settlements inthe occupied territories. . . . He would not have said this[yesterday] if it was not for the collapse of the security
Israel. . . . The martyrdom operation in Hadera shook thefaith of the settlers in the possibility of staying in the WestBank and Gaza and increased their motivation to packtheir belongings and dismantle their settlements. (“Hamas
Operations” 1994)

Terrorists’ Assessments. Even though the favorable
result was apparently unexpected by Hamas leaders,given the circumstances and the assessments voiced by
Rabin and others, it certainly would have been reasonable for them to conclude that suicide terrorism had
helped accelerate Israeli withdrawal, and they did.
Hamas leader Ahmed Bakr (1995) said that “whatforced the Israelis to withdraw from Gaza was the intifada and not the Oslo agreement,” while Imad alFaluji judged that
all that has been achieved so far is the consequence of ourmilitary actions. Without the so-called peace process, wewould have gotten even more. . . . We would have got Gaza
and the West Bank without this agreement. . . . Israel canbeat all Arab Armies. However, it can do nothing against
a youth with a knife or an explosive charge on his body.
Since it was unable to guarantee security within its borders, Israel entered into negotiations with the PLO. . . . If
the Israelis want security, they will have to abandon theirsettlements . . . in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem.
(“Hamas Leader” 1995)

Further, these events appear to have persuaded terrorists that future suicide attacks could eventually produce still greater concessions. Fathi al-Shaqaqi (1995),
leader of Islamic Jihad, said,
Our jihad action has exposed the enemy weakness, confusion, and hysteria. It has become clear that the enemy canbe defeated, for if a small faithful group was able to instill
all this horror and panic in the enemy through confronting
it in Palestine and southern Lebanon, what will happen
when the nation confronts it with all its potential. . . .
Martyrdom actions will escalate in the face of all pressures . . . [they] are a realistic option in confronting theunequal balance of power. If we are unable to effect abalance of power now, we can achieve a balance of horror.

Israel’s Withdrawal from West Bank Towns, December 1995. The second Hamas case, in 1995, tells es-

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sentially the same story as the first. Again, a series ofsuicide attacks was associated with Israeli territorialconcessions to the Palestinians, and again, a significant
fraction of outside observers attributed the concessions
to the coercive pressure of suicide terrorism, as did theterrorist leaders themselves.
The Facts. The original Oslo Accords scheduled
Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian populated areas of the West Bank by July 13, 1994, but after thedelays over Gaza and Jericho all sides recognized that
this could not be met. From October 1994 to April
1995, Hamas, along with Islamic Jihad, carried out aseries of seven suicide terrorist attacks that were intended to compel Israel to make further withdrawals
and suspended attacks temporarily at the request of thePalestinian Authority after Israel agreed on March 29,
1995 to begin withdrawals by July 1. Later, however, theIsraelis announced that withdrawals could not begin
before April 1996 because bypass roads needed for the
security of Israeli settlements were not ready. Hamas
and Islamic Jihad then mounted new suicide attacks
on July 24 and August 21, 1995, killing 11 Israeli civilians. In September, Israel agreed to withdraw from theWest Bank towns in December (Oslo II) even though
the roads were not finished. The suicide attacks thenstopped and the withdrawal was actually carried out ina few weeks starting on December 12, 1995.5
Israeli and Other Assessments. Although Israeli government spokesmen frequently claimed that suicide
terrorism was delaying withdrawal, this claim was contradicted by, among others, Prime Minister Rabin.
Rabin (1995) explained that the decision for the second
withdrawal was, like the first in 1994, motivated in partby the goal of reducing suicide terrorism:
Interviewer: Mr Rabin, what is the logic of withdrawing
from towns and villages when you know that terror might
continue to strike at us from there?
Rabin: What is the alternative, to have double the amountof terror? As for the issue of terror, take the suicide bombings. Some 119 Israelis . . . have been killed or murderedsince 1st January 1994, 77 of them in suicide bombings
perpetrated by Islamic radical fanatics. . . . All the bombers
were Palestinians who came from areas under our control.

Similarly, an editorial in the Israeli daily Yediot
Aharonot (“Bus Attack” 1995) explained,
If the planners of yesterday’s attack intended to get Israel
to back away from the Oslo accord, they apparently failed.
In fact, Prime Minister Y. Rabin is leaning toward expediting the talks with the Palestinians. . . . The immediateconclusion from this line of thinking on Rabin’s part—
whose results we will witness in the coming days—will be
to instruct the negotiators to expedite the talks with thePalestinians with the aim of completing them in the very
near future.

Terrorists’ Assessments. As in 1994, Hamas and Islamic Jihad came to the conclusion that suicide
5 There were no suicide attacks from August 1995 to February 1996.
There were four suicide attacks in response to an Israeli assassinationfrom February 25 to March 4, 1996, and then none until March 1997.

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terrorism was working. Hamas’s spokesman in Jordan
explained that new attacks were necessary to change
Israel’s behavior:
Hamas, leader Muhammad Nazzal said, needed military
muscle in order to negotiate with Israel from a position ofstrength. Arafat started from a position of weakness, hesaid, which is how the Israelis managed to push on him thesolution and get recognition of their state and settlements
without getting anything in return. (Theodoulou 1995)

After the agreement was signed, Hamas leaders also
argued that suicide operations contributed to the Israeli
withdrawal. Mahmud al-Zahhar (1996), a spokesman
for Hamas, said,
The Authority told us that military action embarrasses the
PA because it obstructs the redeployment of the Israeli’s
forces and implementation of the agreement. . . . We offered many martyrs to attain freedom. . . . Any fair person
knows that the military action was useful for the Authority
during negotiations.

Moreover, the terrorists also stressed that stopping
the attacks only discouraged Israel from withdrawing.
An early August Hamas communique (No. 125, 1995)
read,
They said that the strugglers’ operations have been thecause of the delay in widening the autonomous rule in
the West Bank, and that they have been the reason forthe deterioration of the living and economic conditionsof our people. Now the days have come to debunk theirfalse claims . . . and to affirm that July 1 [a promised datefor IDF withdrawal] was no more than yet another of the“unholy” Zionist dates. . . . Hamas has shown an utmost
degree of self-restraint throughout the past period. . . . but
matters have gone far enough and the criminals will reap
what their hands have sown.

Recent Impact of Lessons Learned. In addition to the1994 and 1995 campaigns, Palestinian terrorist leaders
have also cited Hezbollah experience in Lebanon as asource of the lesson that suicide terrorism is an effective
way of coercing Israel. Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan
Shallah (2001) argued that:
The shameful defeat that Israel suffered in southern
Lebanon and which caused its army to flee it in terror
was not made on the negotiations table but on the battlefield and through jihad and martyrdom, which achieveda great victory for the Islamic resistance and Lebanese
People. . . . We would not exaggerate if we said that the
chances of achieving victory in Palestine are greater thanin Lebanon. . . . If the enemy could not bear the losses of
the war on the border strip with Lebanon, will it be able towithstand a long war of attrition in the heart of its security
dimension and major cities?

Palestinian terrorists are now applying the lessons
they have learned. In November 2000, Khalid Mish’al
explained Hamas’s strategy for the second intifada,
which was then in its early stages:
Like the intifada in 1987, the current intifada has taught
us that we should move forward normally from popularconfrontation to the rifle to suicide operations. This is thenormal development. . . . We always have the Lebanese ex-Vol. 97, No. 3
periment before our eyes. It was a great model of which
we are proud.

Even before the second intifada began, other Hamas
statements similarly expressed,
The Zionist enemy . . . only understands the language ofJihad, resistance and martyrdom, that was the languagethat led to its blatant defeat in South Lebanon and it willbe the language that will defeat it on the land of Palestine.
(Hamas Statement 2000)

The bottom line is that the ferocious escalation of
the pace of suicide terrorism that we have witnessed in
the past several years cannot be considered irrational oreven surprising. Rather, it is simply the result of the lesson that terrorists have quite reasonably learned fromtheir experience of the previous two decades: Suicide
terrorism pays.

THE LIMITS OF SUICIDE TERRORISM
Despite suicide terrorists’ reasons for confidence in thecoercive effectiveness of this strategy, there are sharp
limits to what suicide terrorism is likely to accomplish in
the future. During the 1980s and 1990s, terrorist leaderslearned that moderate punishment often leads to moderate concessions and so concluded that more ambitious suicide campaigns would lead to greater political
gains. However, today’s more ambitious suicide terrorist campaigns are likely to fail. Although suicide terrorism is somewhat more effective than ordinary coercive
punishment using air power or economic sanctions, it
is not drastically so.

Suicide Terrorism Is Unlikely to Achieve
Ambitious Goals
In international military coercion, threats to inflict military defeat often generate more coercive leveragethan punishment. Punishment, using anything short ofnuclear weapons, is a relatively weak coercive strategy because modern nation states generally will accept high costs rather than abandon important national
goals, while modern administrative techniques and economic adjustments over time often allow states to minimize civilian costs. The most punishing air attacks withconventional munitions in history were the American
B-29 raids against Japan’s 62 largest cities from March
to August 1945. Although these raids killed nearly
800,000 Japanese civilians—almost 10% died on thefirst day, the March 9, 1945, fire-bombing of Tokyo,
which killed over 85,000—the conventional bombing
did not compel the Japanese to surrender.
Suicide terrorism makes adjustment to reduce damage more difficult than for states faced with military
coercion or economic sanctions. However, it does notaffect the target state’s interests in the issues at stake.
As a result, suicide terrorism can coerce states to abandon limited or modest goals, such as withdrawal fromterritory of low strategic importance or, as in Israel’s
case in 1994 and 1995, a temporary and partial withdrawal from a more important area. However, suicide13P1: HAUCJ206E-01

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Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism

terrorism is unlikely to cause targets to abandon goals
central to their wealth or security, such as a loss of territory that would weaken the economic prospects of thestate or strengthen the rivals of the state.
Suicide terrorism makes punishment more effective
than in international military coercion. Targets remain
willing to countenance high costs for important goals,
but administrative, economic, or military adjustments
to prevent suicide attack are harder, while suicide
attackers themselves are unlikely to be deterred by
the threat of retaliation. Accordingly, suicide attack islikely to present a threat of continuing limited civilian
punishment that the target government cannot completely eliminate, and the upper bound on what punishment can gain for coercers is recognizably higher in suicidal terrorism than in international military coercion.
The data on suicide terrorism from 1980 to 2001
support this conclusion. While suicide terrorism hasachieved modest or very limited goals, it has so far failed
to compel target democracies to abandon goals central
to national wealth or security. When the United States
withdrew from Lebanon in 1984, it had no important security, economic, or even ideological interests at stake.
Lebanon was largely a humanitarian mission and notviewed as central to the national welfare of the UnitedStates. Israel withdrew from most of Lebanon in June
1985 but remained in a security buffer on the edge ofsouthern Lebanon for more than a decade afterward,
despite the fact that 17 of 22 suicide attacks occurredin 1985 and 1986. Israel’s withdrawals from Gaza andthe West Bank in 1994 and 1995 occurred at the sametime that settlements increased and did little to hinder
the IDF’s return, and so these concessions were moremodest than they may appear. Sri Lanka has suffered
more casualties from suicide attack than Israel but has
not acceded to demands that it surrender part of its
national territory. Thus, the logic of punishment andthe record of suicide terrorism suggests that, unlesssuicide terrorists acquire far more destructive technologies, suicide attacks for more ambitious goals are likely
to fail and will continue to provoke more aggressive
military responses.

Policy Implications for Containing Suicide
Terrorism
While the rise in suicide terrorism and the reasons
behind it seem daunting, there are important policy
lessons to learn. The current policy debate is misguided.
Offensive military action or concessions alone rarely
work for long. For over 20 years, the governments of
Israel and other states targeted by suicide terrorism
have engaged in extensive military efforts to kill, isolate, and jail suicide terrorist leaders and operatives,
sometimes with the help of quite good surveillance ofthe terrorists’ communities. Thus far, they have met
with meager success. Although decapitation of suicide terrorist organizations can disrupt their operations
temporarily, it rarely yields long-term gains. Of the 11
major suicide terrorist campaigns that had ended asof 2001, only one—the PKK versus Turkey—did so as
a result of leadership decapitation, when the leader,

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in Turkish custody, asked his followers to stop. So far,leadership decapitation has also not ended Al Qaeda’s
campaign. Although the United States successfully toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan in December 2001, Al
Qaeda launched seven successful suicide terrorist attacks from April to December 2002, killing some 250
Western civilians, more than in the three years before
September 11, 2001, combined.
Concessions are also not a simple answer. Concessions to nationalist grievances that are widely held in
the terrorists’ community can reduce popular support
for further terrorism, making it more difficult to recruit
new suicide attackers and improving the standing of
more moderate nationalist elites who are in competition with the terrorists. Such benefits can be realized,
however, only if the concessions really do substantiallysatisfy the nationalist or self-determination aspirationsof a large fraction of the community.
Partial, incremental, or deliberately staggered concessions that are dragged out over a substantial period of time are likely to become the worst of bothworlds. Incremental compromise may appear—or easily be portrayed—to the terrorists’ community as simply delaying tactics and, thus, may fail to reduce, or
actually increase, their distrust that their main concerns
will ever be met. Further, incrementalism provides timeand opportunity for the terrorists to intentionally provoke the target state in hopes of derailing the smooth
progress of negotiated compromise in the short term,so that they can reradicalize their own community andactually escalate their efforts toward even greater gains
in the long term.6 Thus, states that are willing to makeconcessions should do so in a single step if at all possible.
Advocates of concessions should also recognize that,even if they are successful in undermining the terrorist leaders’ base of support, almost any concession at
all will tend to encourage the terrorist leaders further
about their own coercive effectiveness. Thus, even in
the aftermath of a real settlement with the opposing
community, some terrorists will remain motivated tocontinue attacks and, for the medium term, may beable to do so, which in term would put a premium on
combining concessions with other solutions.
Given the limits of offense and of concessions, homeland security and defensive efforts generally must be acore part of any solution. Undermining the feasibilityof suicide terrorism is a difficult task. After all, a majoradvantage of suicide attack is that it is more difficult
to prevent than other types of attack. However, thedifficulty of achieving perfect security should not keep
us from taking serious measures to prevent wouldbe terrorists from easily entering their target society.
As Chaim Kaufmann (1996) has shown, even intense
6 The Bush administration’s decision in May 2003 to withdraw most
U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia is the kind of partial concession likely
to backfire. Al Qaeda may well view this as evidence that the UnitedStates is vulnerable to coercive pressure, but the concession does notsatisfy Al Qaeda’s core demand to reduce American military control
over the holy areas on the Arab peninsula. With the conquest andlong term military occupation of Iraq, American military capabilities
to control Saudi Arabia have substantially increased even if there are
no American troops on Saudi soil itself.

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ethnic civil wars can often be stopped by demographic
separation because it greatly reduces both means andincentives for the sides to attack each other. This logic
may apply with even more force to the related problem
of suicide terrorism, since, for suicide attackers, gaining
physical access to the general area of the target is the
only genuinely demanding part of an operation, andas we have seen, resentment of foreign occupation of
their national homeland is a key part of the motive forsuicide terrorism.
The requirements for demographic separation depend on geographic and other circumstances that may
not be attainable in all cases. For example, much of
Israel’s difficulty in containing suicide terrorism derives from the deeply intermixed settlement patternsof the West Bank and Gaza, which make the effective
length of the border between Palestinian and Jewish
settled areas practically infinite and have rendered evenvery intensive Israeli border control efforts ineffective(Kaufmann 1998). As a result, territorial concessions
could well encourage terrorists leaders to strive forstill greater gains while greater repression may only
exacerbate the conditions of occupation that cultivate
more recruits for terrorist organizations. Instead, thebest course to improve Israel’s security may well be a
combined strategy: abandoning territory on the WestBank along with an actual wall that physically separates
the populations.
Similarly, if Al Qaeda proves able to continue suicide
attacks against the American homeland, the UnitedStates should emphasize improving its domestic security. In the short term, the United States should adopt
stronger border controls to make it more difficult for
suicide attackers to enter the United States. In the longterm, the United States should work toward energy independence and, thus, reduce the need for American
troops in the Persian Gulf countries where their presence has helped recruit suicide terrorists to attack
America. These measures will not provide a perfectsolution, but they may make it far more difficult for Al
Qaeda to continue attacks in the United States, especially spectacular attacks that require elaborate coordination.
Perhaps most important, the close association between foreign military occupations and the growth ofsuicide terrorist movements in the occupied regions
should give pause to those who favor solutions that involve conquering countries in order to transform theirpolitical systems. Conquering countries may disrupt
terrorist operations in the short term, but it is importantto recognize that occupation of more countries may
well increase the number of terrorists coming at us.

Appendix: Suicide Terrorist Campaigns, 1980–2001
WeaponTargetKilled∗Completed Campaigns
Campaign #1: Hezbollah vs. US, France
1. April 18, 1983
car bomb
2. Oct 23, 1983
car bomb
3. Oct 23, 1983
car bomb
4. Dec 12, 1983
grenades5. Dec 21, 1983
car bomb
6. Sept ?, 1984
truck bomb

US embassy, Beirut
US Marine barracks
French barracks
US Embassy, Kuwait
French HQ, Beirut
US Beirut embassy

63
241
58
7
1
14

Campaign #2: Hezbollah vs. Israel
1. Nov 4, 1983
car bomb
2. Jun 16, 1984
car bomb
3. Mar 8, 1985:
truck bomb
4. Apr 9, 1985:
car bomb
5. May 9, 1985:
suitcase bomb
6. June 15, 1985:
car bomb

IDF post in Tyre, Lebanon
IDF post, southern Lebanon
IDF post
IDF post
SLA checkpoint
IDF post in Beirut

50
5
12
4
2
23

Campaign #3: Hezbollah vs. Israel and South Lebanon Army
1. July 9, 1985
car bombs
2. July 15, 1985
car bomb
3. July 31, 1985
car bomb
4. Aug 6, 1985
mule bomb
5. Aug 29, 1985
car bomb
6. Sept 3, 1985
car bomb
7. Sept 12, 1985
car bomb
8. Sept 17, 1985
car bomb
9. Sept 18, 1985
car bomb
10. Oct 17, 1985
grenades11. Nov 4, 1985
car bomb
12. Nov 12, 1985
car bomb
13. Nov 26, 1985
car bomb
14. April 7, 1986
car bomb
15. July 17, 1986
car bomb
16. Nov 20, 1986:
car bomb

2 SLA outposts
SLA outpost
IDF patrol, south Lebanon
SLA outpost
SLA outpost
SLA outpost
SLA outpost
SLA outpost
SLA outpost
SLA radio station
SLA outpost
Christ. militia leaders, Beirut
SLA outpost
SLA outpost
Jezzine, S. Lebanon
SLA outpost

22
10
2
0
15
37
21
30
0
6
0
5
20
1
7
3

15

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Appendix—Continued
WeaponCampaign #4: Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam vs. Sri Lanka
1. Jul 12, 1990
boat bomb
2. Nov 23, 1990???
3. Mar 2, 1991
car bomb
4. Mar 19, 1991
truck bomb
5. May 5, 1991
boat bomb
6. May 21, 1991
belt bomb
7. June 22, 1991
car bomb
8. Nov 16, 1992
motorcycle bomb
9. May 1, 1993
belt bomb
10. Nov 11, 1993
boat bomb
11. Aug 2, 1994
grenades12. Sept 19, 1994
mines
13. Oct 24, 1994
belt bomb
14. Nov 8, 1994
mines

TargetKilled∗naval vessel, Trincomalee
army camp, Manakulam
defense minister, Colombo
army camp, Silavathurai
naval vessel
Rajiv Gandhi, Madras, India
defense ministry, Colombo
navy commander, Colombo
President Premadasa, Colombo
naval base, Jaffna Lagoon
air force helicopter, Palali
naval vessel, Sagarawardene
Presidential candidate, Colombo
naval vessel, Vettilaikerny

6
0
18∗∗
5
5
1∗∗
27
1∗∗
23∗∗
0
0
25
53∗∗
0

Campaign #5: LTTE vs. Sri Lanka
1. Apr 18, 1995
scuba divers
2. Jul 16, 1995
scuba divers
3. Aug 7, 1995
belt bomb
4. Sep 3, 1995
scuba divers
5. Sep 10, 1995
scuba divers
6. Sep 20, 1995
scuba divers
7. Oct 2, 1995
scuba divers
8. Oct 17, 1995
scuba divers
9. Oct 20, 1995
mines
10. Nov 11, 1995
belt bombs
11. Dec 5, 1995
truck bomb
12. Jan 8, 1996
belt bomb
13. Jan 31, 1996
truck bomb
14. Apr 1, 1996
boat bomb
15. Apr 12, 1996
scuba divers
16. Jul 3, 1996
belt bomb
17. Jul 18,1996
mines
18. Aug 6, 1996
boat bomb
19. Aug 14, 1996
bicycle bomb
20. Oct 25, 1996
boat bomb
21. Nov 25, 1996
belt bomb
22. Dec 17, 1996
motorcycle bomb
23. Mar 6, 1997
grenades24. Oct 15, 1997
truck bomb
25. Oct 19, 1997
boat bomb
26. Dec 28, 1997
truck bomb
27. Jan 25, 1998
truck bomb
28. Feb 5, 1998
belt bomb
29. Feb 23, 1998
boat bombs
30. Mar 5, 1998
bus bomb
31. May 15, 1998
belt bomb
32. Sep 11, 1998
belt bomb
33. Mar 15, 1999
belt bomb
34. May 29, 1999
belt bomb
35. Jul 25, 1999
belt bomb
36. Jul 29, 1999
belt bomb
37. Aug 4, 1999
bicycle bomb
38. Aug 9, 1999
belt bomb
39. Sep 2, 1999
belt bomb
40. Dec 18, 1999
2 belt bombs
41. Jan 5, 2000
belt bomb
42. Feb 4, 2000
sea diver
43. Mar 2, 2000
belt bomb
44. Mar 10, 2000
belt bomb
45. Jun 5, 2000
scuba diver
46. Jun 7, 2000
belt bomb
47. Jun 14, 2000
bicycle bomb

naval vessel, Trincomalee
naval vessel, Jaffna peninsula
government bldg, Colombo
naval vessel, Trincomalee
naval vessel, Kankesanthurai
naval vessel, Kankesanthurai
Naval vessel, Kankesanthurai
naval vessel, Trincomalee
2 oil depots, Colombo
army HQ, crowd, Colombo
police camp, Batticaloa
market, Batticaloa
bank, Colombo
navy vessel, Vettilaikerni
port building, Colombo
gov motorcade, Jaffna
naval gunboat, Mullaittivu
naval ship, north coast
public rally, Kalmunai
gunboat, Trincomalee
police chief vehicle, Trincomalee
police unit jeep, Ampara
China Bay air baseWorld Trade Centre, Colombo
naval gunboat, northeastern coast
chief Cecil Tissera, south Sri Lanka
Buddhist shrine, Kandy
Air Force headquarters, Colombo
2 landing ships off Point Pedru
train station, Colombo
army brigadier, Jaffna peninsula
new mayor of Jaffna
police station, Colombo
Tamil rival leader, Batticaloa
passenger ferry, Trincomalee
Tamil politician, Colombo
police vehicle, Vavuniya
military commander, Vakarai
Tamil rival, Vavuniya,
Pres C. Kumaratunga, Colombo
PM S. Bandaranaike, Colombo
naval vessel, Trincomalee
military commander, Trincomalee
government motorcade Colombo
ammunition ship, northeast coast
Industries Minister Colombo
air force bus, Wattala town

11
0
22
0
0
0
0
9
23
23
23
0
91
10
0
37
35
0
0
12
0
1
0
18
7
0
11
8
47
38
1
20∗∗
5
2
1
1
12
1
3
38∗∗∗
11∗∗∗
0
1∗∗∗
23
5
26∗∗
2

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Appendix—Continued
Group

WeaponTargetKilled

48. Jun 26, 2000
49. Aug 16, 2000
50. Sep 15, 2000
51. Oct 2, 2000
52. Oct 5, 2000
53. Oct 19, 2000
54. Oct 23, 2000

boat bomb
belt bomb
belt bomb
belt bomb
belt bomb
belt bomb
boat bombs

merchant vessel, north coast
military vehicle, Vavuniya
hospital, Colombo
SLMC leader, Trincomalee
People’s Alliance rally, Medawachchiya
Cabinet ceremony, Colombo
gunboat/troop carrier, Trincomalee

7
1
7
22∗∗
12
0
2

Campaign #6: Hamas vs. Israel
1. Apr 6, 1994
Hamas
2. Apr 13, 1994
Hamas

car bomb
belt bomb

Afula, Israel
Hadera, Israel

96Campaign #7: Hamas/Islamic Jihad vs. Israel
1. Oct 19, 1994
Hamas
belt bomb
2. Nov 11, 1994
Islamic Jihad
belt bomb
3. Dec 25, 1994
Hamas
belt bomb
4. Jan 22, 1995
Islamic Jihad
5. Apr 9, 1995
Islamic Jihad
6. July 24, 1995
Hamas
belt bomb
7. Aug 21, 1995
Hamas
belt bomb

Tel Aviv
Netzarim, Gaza
Jerusalem
Tel Aviv
Netzarim, Gaza
Tel Aviv
Jerusalem

22
3
0
21
8
6
5

Campaign #8: Hamas vs. Israel
1. Feb 25, 1996
Hamas
2. Feb 25, 1996
Hamas
3. Mar 3, 1996
Hamas
4. Mar 4, 1996
Hamas

belt bomb
belt bomb
belt bomb
belt bomb

Jerusalem
Ashkelon
Jerusalem
Tel Aviv

25
1
19
13

Campaign #9: Hamas vs. Israel
1. Mar 21, 1997
Hamas
2. Jul 30, 1997
Hamas
3. Sept 7, 1997
Hamas

belt bomb
belt bomb
belt bombcafé, Tel Aviv
Jerusalem
Jerusalem3
147Campaign #10: Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) vs. Turkey
1. Jun 30, 1996
belt bomb
2. Oct 25, 1996
belt bomb
3. Oct 29, 1996
belt bombs

Tunceli, Turkey
Adana, Turkey
Sivas, Turkey

94
4Campaign #11: PKK vs. Turkey
1. Mar 4, 1999
2. Mar 27, 1999
3. Apr 5, 1999
4. Jul 5, 1999
5. Jul 7, 1999
6. Aug 28, 1999

Batman, Turkey
Istanbul
governor, Bingol, Turkey
Adana, Turkey
Iluh, Turkey
Tunceli, Turkey

0
0
0
0
0
0

belt bomb
grenadebelt bomb
belt bomb
grenadesbomb

Ongoing Compaigns
Campaign #12: Al Qaeda vs. United States
1. Nov 13, 1995
car bomb
2. Jun 25, 1996
truck bomb
3. Aug 7, 1998
truck bombs
4. Oct 12, 2000
boat bomb
5. Sep 9, 2001
camera bomb
6. Sep 11, 2001
hijacked airplanes

US military base, Riyadh, SA
US military base, Dhahran SA
US embassies, Kenya/Tanzania
USS Cole, Yemen
Ahmed Shah Masood, Afghanistan
WTC/Pentagon

Campaign #13: Chechen Separatists vs. Russia
1. Jun 7, 2000
truck bomb
2. Jul 3, 2000
truck bomb
3. Mar 24, 2001
car bomb
4. Nov 29, 2001
belt bomb

Russian police, Chech.
Argun, Russia
Chechnyamilitary commander, Chechnya

2
30
20
1

Campaign #14: Kashmir Separatists vs. India
1. Dec 25, 2000
car bomb
2. Oct 1, 2001
car bomb
3. Dec 13, 2001
gunmenSrinagar, Kashmir
Legislative assembly
Parliament, New Delhi

8
30
7

5
19
250
17
1
3037

17

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Appendix—Continued
Group
Campaign #15: LTTE vs. Sri Lanka
1. Jul 24, 2001
2. Sep 16, 2001
3. Oct 29, 2001
4. Oct 30, 2001
5. Nov 9, 2001
6. Nov 15, 2001

Weaponbelt bomb
boat bomb
belt bomb
boat bomb
belt bomb
belt bombCompaign #16: Hamas/Islamic Jihad vs. Israel
1. Oct 30, 2000
Hamas
belt bomb
2. Nov 2, 2000
Al Aqsa
3. Nov 20, 2000
Hamas
car bomb
4. Dec 22, 2000
Al Aqsabelt bomb
5. Jan 1, 2001
Hamas
belt bomb
6. Feb 8, 2001
Hamas
7. Feb 14, 2001
Hamas
bus driver
8. Mar 1, 2001
Hamas
9. Mar 4, 2001
Hamas
belt bomb
10. Mar 27, 2001
Hamas
belt bomb
11. Mar 27, 2001
Hamas
belt bomb
12. Mar 28, 2001
Hamas
belt bomb
13. Apr 22, 2001
Hamas
belt bomb
14. Apr 23, 2001
PFLP
car bomb
15. Apr 29, 2001
Hamas
belt bomb
16. May 18, 2001
Hamas
belt bomb
17. May 25, 2001
Islamic Jihad
truck bomb
18. May 27, 2001
Hamas
car bomb
19. May 30, 2001
Islamic Jihad
20. Jun 1, 2001
Hamas
belt bomb
21. Jun 22, 2001
Hamas
belt bomb
22. Jul 2, 2001
Hamas
car bomb
23. Jul 9, 2001
Hamas
car bomb
24. Jul 16, 2001
Islamic Jihad
belt bomb
25. Aug 8, 2001
Al Aqsa
car bomb
26. Aug 9, 2001
Islamic Jihad
belt bomb
27. Aug 12, 2001
Islamic Jihad
belt bomb
28. Aug 21, 2001
Al Aqsa
29. Sept 4, 2001
Hamas
belt bomb
30. Sept 9, 2001
Hamas
belt bomb
31. Oct 1, 2001???
32. Oct 7, 2001
Islamic Jihadcar bomb
33. Nov 26, 2001
Hamas
car bomb
34. Nov 29, 2001
Islamic Jihad
35. Dec 1, 2001
Hamas
belt bomb
36. Dec 2, 2001
Hamas
37. Dec 5, 2001
Islamic Jihad
belt bomb
38. Dec 9, 2001???
belt bomb
39. Dec 12, 2001???
1. Dec 15, 1981
2. May 25, 1985
3. Jul 5, 1987
4. Aug 15, 1993
5. Jan 30, 1995
6. Nov 19, 1995
7. Oct 29, 1998
8. Nov 17, 1998
9. Dec 29, 1999???
Hezbollah
LTTE???
AIG∗∗∗∗
Islamic Group
Hamas
???
Hezbollah

Isolated Attacks
Car bombcar bomb
truck bomb
motorcycle bomb
truck bomb
truck bomb
belt bomb
belt bomb
grenadesTargetKilledinternational airport, Colombo
navel vessel, north
PM Wickremanayake, Colombo
oil tanker, northern coast
police jeep, Batticaloa
crowd, Batticaloa

12
29
3∗∗∗
4
0
3

Jerusalem

IsraelGaza
Gaza
Haifa, Israel
Jerusalem
Jerusalem
Haifa, Israel
Gaza

15
2
2
3
10
4
8
1
3
1
0
3
3
8
0
5
2
1
8
22
2
0
0
5
8
15
0
0
0
3
1
2
0
3
11
15
0
0
0

Iraqi embassy, Beirut
ruler, Kuwait
army camp, Jaffna Penin
Egyptian Interior Minister
crowd, Algiers
Egyptian embassy, Pakistan
Gaza
Yuksekova, Turkey
Lebanon

30
0∗∗∗
20
3
42
16
1
0
1

Hadera, IsraelWest Bank
Netanya, Israel
Tel Aviv
Netanya, Israel
Jerusalem
Jerusalem (2nd attack)Kfar Saba, Israel
Kfar Saba, Israel
Yehuda, IsraelWest Bank
Netanya, Israel
Netzarim, Gaza
Netanya, Israelnightclub, Tel Aviv
Gaza
IDF checkpt, Gaza
Gaza
Jerusalem
Jerusalem
Haifa, Israel
Haifa, Israel
Jerusalem
Jerusalem
Nahariya, Israel

Note: Several reports of PKK suicide in May and June 1997 during fighting between PKK and Kurdish militias in Iraq, but coverage
insufficient to distinguish suicide attack from suicide to avoid capture.
∗ Not including attacker.
∗∗ Assassination target killed.
∗∗∗ Assassination target survived.
??? = unclaimed.
∗∗∗∗ Armed Isalamic Group.

18

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