Making Sense of Suicide Missions Eilert Sundt Lecture 2004

1
Diego Gambetta Nuffield College,
University of Oxford London, 7 July 2005 An
Extreme Instance of an Extreme Tactic? The
Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing
Character of War, Department of Politics,
University of Oxford, 24 January 2005
2
What is a SM?

• A violent attack in which the death of the
  perpetrators is strictly essential for its
  success. If they survive the attack fails.
• We included no-escape missions perpetrators do
  not detonate themselves but know they will be
  killed in the actions and have no escape plan
• High-risk missions do not qualify as SMs as the
  death of perpetrators is not necessary for their
  success
• Nor do other forms of extreme self-sacrifice,
  such as the many cases of self-immolations for a
  cause in which no one else is killed
• Key questions
• What is the difference between the motives of the
  perpetrators and those of the organisers?
• Given the target and the resources of the
  perpetrators is their death an unavoidable cost
  or an intermediate goal?

3
How many SMs?

• At least a dozen anarchist SMs in the early part
  of the 20th century in Russia
• Over 3,000 Japanese kamikaze sorties from October
  1944 to August
• From 1981 to December 2003 there were no fewer
  than 535 successful SMs, including no-escape
  missions but excluding failed and foiled
  attempts, the majority in the Middle East and in
  Sri Lanka (191 in a decade)
• From 2004 till mid-January 2006 there were at
  least
• 9 in Afghanistan
• 20 in Israel and Egypt (Sinai) (source IDF)
• 272 SMs in Iraq (out of a total of 573
  mass-casualty bombings, which killed 5,314 people
  and wounded 10,489 Source The Brooking
  Institution Iraq Index, 17 January 2006)
• 1 in London, 3 in Indonesia, 2 in Turkey, 4 in
  Sri Lanka
• Excluding the Kamikaze, a total of no less than
  846 SMs (32 of which in Iraq alone in less than
  2 years Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch states that at
  least 96 of suicide bombers are not Iraqis.)

4
London, 7/7 an outlier?

• FEATURES
  Majority of SMs 7/7
  London
• Hard target to hit? YES NO
• Military, political, symbolic target? YES
  NO
• Target of a different religion?
  YES NO
• Target of a different ethnicity/nationality? YES
  NO
• Target country directly part of an
  insurgency? YES NO
• Were perpetrators friends/kin victimised? YES N
  O
• Did the perpetrators need to die to hit
  target? YES NO
• Were perpetrators part of larger
  networks/teams? YES NO?
• Were the perpetrators part of an
  organisation? YES NO?

5
Year of first suicide mission by different
organizations
SSNP Syrian Social Nationalist Party PKK
Kurdistan Workers Party DHKP