Free US Law Dictionary

Suicide Bomber

A suicide attack is an attack upon a military or civilian target, in which an attacker intends to kill others, knowing that he or she will either certainly or most likely die in the process (see suicide). The means of attack have included vehicles filled with explosives, passenger planes carrying large amounts of fuel, and individuals wearing vests filled with explosives. Synonyms include suicide-homicide bombing, martyrdom operations, predatory martyrdom. Strictly speaking, an attack may not be considered a suicide attack if the attacker is not killed (although they might hope and plan to be), or if there is some question as to whether their intention is to be killed (even if the attack is certain to kill them).

Although use of suicide attacks has occurred throughout history — particularly with the Japanese kamikaze pilots of World War II — its main notoriety as a specific kind of attack began in the 1980s and involved explosives deliberately carried to the target either on the person or in a civilian vehicle and delivered by surprise. Following the success of a 1983 truck bombing of two barracks buildings in Beirut that killed 300 and helped drive American and French Multinational Force troops from Lebanon, the tactic spread to insurgent groups like the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, Palestinian groups like Hamas, and Al-Qaeda.

During this time the number of suicide attacks has grown rapidly, from an average of less than five a year in the 1980s to 180/year in the first half of the 00s,[1] and from 81 suicide attacks in 2001 to 460 in 2005.[2] Particularly hard-hit by attacks have been military and civilian targets in Sri Lanka, Israeli targets in Israel since 1994, and Iraqis since the US-led invasion of that country in 2003.

Observers believe suicide attacks have become popular because of their lethal effectiveness, but attackers motivation is disputed. One scholar, Robert Pape, attributes over 90% of attacks prior to the Iraq Civil War to a goal of withdrawal of an occupying forces;[3] while another, Scott Atran, argues that since 2004 the overwhelming majority of bombers have been motivated by the ideology of Islamist martyrdom, and that these attacks have been much more numerous. In just two years - 2004-2005 - there have been more suicide attacks, "roughly 600, than in Pape's entire sample."[4]