An Empirical Assessment of the Tactical Utility of Suicide Operations

DYING FOR A REASON: AN EMPIRICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE TACTICAL UTILITY OF SUICIDE OPERATIONS

A dissertation presented

Joseph Mroszczyk

to The Department of Political Science

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

In the field of

Political Science

Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts October 2018

Table of Contents

Abstract 3 Acknowledgements 4 Tables and Figures 5 Introduction 7 Rational Choice Theory and the Strategic Model of Terrorism Studies 14 Suicide Attacks – An Overview 24 Dying to Kill: An Analysis of Suicide Attack Lethality 37 Dying for Attention: Suicide Attacks and the Media 71 Dying to Frighten: The Psychological Effects of Suicide Tactics 109 Discussion and Conclusion 150 References 167

Abstract

The strategic model, which has been the dominant paradigm in terrorism studies, explains terrorist behavior through a rationalist lens in which terrorists are assumed to be political utility maximizers who embrace terrorism because it offers the best chance of achieving their strategic goals. Scholars have similarly used this paradigm to explain why terrorist groups choose to employ suicide tactics. There is consensus in extant literature that suicide operations have at least three distinct tactical benefits for terrorist groups:

They are more lethal than non-suicide attacks, they attract more media attention than non-suicide attacks, and they instill more fear and anxiety into the target population than non-suicide attacks. However, scholars have made these claims without robust empirical evidence or compelling theoretical arguments. This study seeks to critically assess these claims by assessing the tactical utility of suicide operations versus non-suicide operations along these three criteria using a multi-modal approach, original data collection, and statistical analyses. It finds that such operations appear to present little to no advantages over non-suicide attacks, especially given the significant costs associated with them. The results of this research challenge the conventional wisdom of why terrorist organizations choose suicide tactics, and why the tactic has proliferated worldwide. Accordingly, further research must explain what other benefits terrorist groups might derive from using suicide attacks, particularly from an internal organizational perspective.

Acknowledgements

I must first thank my wife, Ashley, for her unending love, support, and patience throughout this whole process. Without her words of encouragement and the occasional kick-in-the-butt, it is unlikely I would have finished this project. Many days and nights were spent away from her to study, research, and write, and I am grateful that she always pushed me to “get it done.”

My parents, Jean and John, have always told me to pursue what I love, and instilled in me an appreciation for learning from a very early age. If not for them—the examples they set and the values they instilled in me—I cannot imagine completing this research. I am eternally thankful for all their support over my entire educational journey.

My advisor, Professor Max Abrahms, along with Professor Assaf Moghadam and

Professor Stephen Flynn, have provided valuable guidance, mentorship, course corrections, and advice throughout this process. It would be impossible to cite every time their thinking influenced my own in my research. Of course, any errors throughout this dissertation are mine alone.

Tables and Figures

Figure 1. Three levels of organizational planning...... 20 Figure 2. Number of suicide attacks, 1981-2016...... 25 Figure 3. Average words per article over time...... 88 Figure 4. Average page placement over time...... 88 Figure 5. Psychological impact scale utilizing Google Trends data following a terrorist attack...... 123 Figure 6. Brussels primary search topics...... 126 Figure 7. Brussels secondary search topics...... 127 Figure 8. Brussels normal activity searches...... 129 Figure 9. Nice primary search topics...... 131 Figure 10. Nice secondary search topics...... 132 Figure 11. Nice normal activity searches...... 133 Figure 12. Manchester primary search topics...... 136 Figure 13. Manchester secondary search topics...... 137 Figure 14. Manchester normal activity searches...... 138 Figure 15. Barcelona primary search topics...... 141 Figure 16. Barcelona secondary search topics...... 142 Figure 17. Barcelona normal activity searches...... 143

Table 1. Suicide attacks by region, 1970-2016...... 26 Table 2. Suicide attacks by attack type, 1970-2016...... 27 Table 3. Suicide attacks by target, 1970-2016...... 27 Table 4. Measures of central tendency for lethality rates among all attacks, 1970-2014...... 51 Table 5. Lethality rates for attacks by region, 1970-2014...... 55 Table 6. Top ten countries with the most lethal suicide attacks, 1970-2014...... 56 Table 7. Top ten countries with the most lethal non-suicide attacks, 1970-2014...... 57 Table 8. Lethality rates for attacks by attack type, 1970-2014...... 60 Table 9. Lethality ratio by attack type, 1970-2014...... 61 Table 10. Lethality rates for attacks by target/victim type, 1970-2014...... 63 Table 11. Lethality ratio by target/victim type, 1970-2014...... 66 Table 12. Words per article and page number placement of articles...... 87 Table 13. Deaths reported in article covering attack...... 90 Table 14.Correlational relationship for lethality and article length...... 90 Table 15. Correlational relationship for lethality and page number...... 91 Table 16. Words per article by attack type...... 93 Table 17. Page placement by attack type...... 93 Table 18. Words per article by target type...... 95 Table 19. Page placement by target type...... 96 Table 20. Words per article by location...... 97 5

Table 21. Page placement by location...... 98 Table 22. Words per article by credit claiming...... 99 Table 23. Page placement by credit claiming...... 99 Table 24. Suicide attacks and press freedom...... 102 Table 25. Descriptive traits of terrorist attacks used in analysis...... 119

Introduction

The method of martyrdom operations [is] the most successful way of inflicting damage against the opponent and the least costly to the mujahideen in terms of casualties. – Ayman al-Zawahiri

On 11 December 2017, Akayed Ullah, a 27-year-old immigrant from Bangladesh, set out to conduct a suicide bombing in downtown Manhattan, New York City. His poorly- constructed, makeshift suicide bomb packed with metal screws was attached to his chest with Velcro and zip ties, using a broken Christmas tree light as a detonator. After getting into position during rush hour along the pedestrian walkway that connects the Eighth

Avenue, Seventh Avenue, and Broadway subways lines, he detonated the device at 7:40

AM local time. The device failed to detonate properly and did not produce any shrapnel.

As people fled, Port Authority officers tackled Ullah, who was badly injured in the attempted suicide bombing. No one was killed or injured in the blast (Nir and Rashbaum

2017). He was indicted in January 2018 on federal terrorism charges and faces a lifetime prison sentence. He had intended to conduct a martyrdom operation and to kill and injure as many people as possible. He failed on both accounts.

Ullah’s failed attempt at a suicide bombing is not the only case of a failed suicide mission. In December 2001, Richard Reid failed in his attempt to ignite explosives hidden in his shoes during a flight from Paris to Miami. He was subsequently restrained by fellow passengers. He later plead guilty to eight charges and was sentenced to life in prison. On

Christmas Day in 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to ignite explosives hidden in his underwear while onboard a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. Passengers and crew

7 members on the flight subdued Abdulmutallab and he was unable to ignite his explosives, ultimately only badly burning his groin. He later plead guilty and was sentenced to multiple life sentences. In August 2009, Abdullah al-Asiri attempted to assassinate Saudi Prince

Mohammed bin Nayef by detonating an explosive device in his underwear. The blast only killed himself and left the Prince with only slight injuries. In all these high-profile cases of failed suicide attacks, the operatives had received some degree of training from a terrorist organization, yet were ultimately unsuccessful in their efforts. There are myriad other cases where suicide bombers failed to ultimately achieve tactical success, either detonating their explosive devices during assembly while in their own home, prematurely detonating their device prior to optimal positioning, or encountering technical failures while trying to detonate the device at the moment of attack. In all cases, the attackers— and by extension their organizations—would have likely inflicted more damage had they used tactics that were easier, less costly, and ultimately more reliable. Yet, their desire for martyrdom outweighed their desire to inflict damage against the enemy, which luckily resulted in failed attacks that could have otherwise been disastrous.

Conversely, there have been numerous non-suicide attacks that were relatively unsophisticated yet still able to achieve immense tactical successes. In August 2015, an attacker was able to optimally plant an explosive device at the Erawan shrine in central

Bangkok, Thailand before escaping. The blast killed 20 people and injured over 120 others. In April 2013, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev planted two pressure-cooker bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon before making an escape. The two blasts killed three people and injured 264 others. Attacks involving firearms—such as the

June 2016 shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida that killed 49, the shooting in San Bernardino, California in December 2015 that killed 14, and the January 2015 shooting at the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris that killed 12—were all less sophisticated attacks, at least compared to bombing attacks, yet still achieved their desired tactical effects. Similarly, vehicle ramming attacks like witnessed in London, Nice, Barcelona,

Berlin, and elsewhere have involved no training, no acquisition of weapons or ammunition, and no need to assemble explosive devices and detonators, yet have been horribly devastating. These attackers, and in some cases the groups or organizations with which they identified, were still able to inflict great harm on their targeted victims while also, at least in some cases, not killing themselves in the process. In some cases, the attackers lived to tell their story, broadcast their grievances in a courtroom, and receive sustained national and international media attention during their trials. Were these non- suicide attacks successful?

To be sure, there have been thousands of suicide attacks that have been executed flawlessly, killing both the operative while killing and injuring many victims. Why, though, do terrorist groups use suicide attacks when their tactical goals or objectives could be achieved through other, more reliable, less costly means? Extant literature has almost unequivocally concluded that suicide tactics are uniquely advantageous for a terrorist group over non-suicide attacks, despite myriad anecdotal accounts like those previously discussed. Through this conclusion, scholars have been able to preserve the rational choice paradigm to explain this phenomenon which, at its surface, may appear inherently irrational. That is, if suicide tactics produce certain effects that are disproportionately

9 beneficial compared to the magnitude of the attack itself, then a terrorist group is behaving rationally in their decision to employ a tactic that may otherwise appear inherently irrational. After all, in choosing to employ suicide tactics, a terrorist group leader is consciously deciding to sacrifice a trained operative into whom the group has invested significant resources, particularly in terms of recruiting, training, and equipping. The terrorist group leader certainly has a variety of tactics available to him when deciding to execute an attack against a certain target, so one must posit that he weighs the various costs and benefits associated with each available tactic before ultimately deciding on a course of action, as evidenced from the quote by Ayman al-Zawahiri which opens this paper.

Much of the way in which scholars and the public alike view suicide attacks is arguably shaped by the most salient attacks of the modern era, most of which happen to be suicide attacks. The attacks in the United States on 11 September 2001 immediately come to mind as a highly lethal series of attacks that changed the trajectory of history, and also happened to be suicide attacks. The attacks in Madrid in March 2004, London in July 2005, Paris in November 2015, and other similar attacks have shaped the Western world’s perception of how suicide attacks can be highly lethal, garner the attention of most of the world, provoke governments to become entangled in areas of the world they otherwise may not have, and increase the notoriety of the perpetrating group while magnifying their cause. Suicide attacks are sensational, horrifying, perplexing, and based upon some of the most salient examples, appear to be highly effective.

Scholars have tirelessly sought paradigms to explain this phenomenon, which by all accounts has been proliferating around the world and occurring with greater frequency.

Why would someone kill themselves in order to kill other people? This notion runs counter to basic assumptions of a self-preservation instinct so commonplace in our understanding of the human psyche. Terrorism itself is a phenomenon with political, religious, and social roots that social scientists have been able to explain: it is a “weapon of the weak”, a tool for marginalized groups to employ in order gain attention. But how do we explain suicide terrorism? How can an individual be so committed to a fringe ideology that he or she is willing to take his or her own life in order to commit an act of violence? What purposes does this type of act serve for the group?

Scholars have generally cited three unique tactical effects of suicide attacks to explain why terrorist groups adopt the tactic and use it as a critical component of their campaigns. These three supposed benefits of suicide terrorism are the three hypotheses that this study seeks to test empirically. First, the high lethality of suicide attacks has been cited as a unique feature of the tactic, enabling groups to maximize the carnage of an attack. Suicide bombers are able to position an explosive device at the optimal position and detonate it at the optimal time, thereby maximizing the lethality of the attack. Suicide tactics therefore are preferential to non-suicide tactics for their ability to kill and injure more people. This hypothesis is tested by analyzing data from the Global Terrorism

Database (GTD) to determine what types of attacks are the most lethal. Second, suicide attacks offer greater communicative benefits to a group because they are able to generate more media coverage than non-suicide attacks, resulting in a more prominent public

11 platform on which a terrorist group can communicate its demands to a target population and an international audience. This hypothesis is tested by collecting data from all articles related to terrorist attacks in The New York Times from 2006-2016 to determine what types of attacks receive the most words per article and are featured more prominently in the newspaper publication. Third, suicide attacks allow a terrorist group to maximize the psychological arousal in a target population. More than non-suicide attacks, suicide attacks signal to a target population the tenacity and commitment of a group and its members, thereby increasing the possibility that a target population may concede to certain demands or otherwise shift behavior to the terrorist group’s advantage. This hypothesis is tested by using Google search data after two suicide attacks and two non- suicide attacks in Western Europe to assess how the target populations reacted to each type of attack. These reasons (and others) have dominated the narrative of suicide attacks and has persisted in the literature for years with little empirical evaluation or scrutiny. Instead, these conclusions have been drawn largely from anecdotal evidence and untested theory.

This study uses a multi-modal approach to empirically evaluate each of these three claims. First, this study quantitatively examines the notion that suicide attacks are more lethal by their nature, and finds that non-suicide attacks can be more reliably lethal, more lethal than suicide attacks under certain conditions, and come at a lesser cost to the organization than suicide attacks. Second, this study explores media coverage of suicide and non-suicide attacks and finds that there is little evidence to conclude that suicide attacks offer a significant advantage over non-suicide tactics in terms of the quantity of

12 coverage they receive or the prominence the article receives in publication. Third, this study employs a case study methodology to examine the psychological impact of suicide and non-suicide attacks by using online search metrics, ultimately finding that suicide attacks offer no tactical advantages over non-suicide attacks in terms of short-term benefits. The study concludes with a discussion regarding the implications for the findings of this study and a way ahead for future research.

Rational Choice Theory and the Strategic Model of Terrorism Studies

Rational Choice Theory

Social scientists generally subscribe to one of three separate and distinct paradigms through which to conduct analysis. These approaches—rationalist, culturalist, and structuralist—dominate comparative politics today. Each has unique traditions, communities, and languages (Lichbach and Zuckerman 1997: 9), and each has various methodological strengths and weaknesses. This study primarily employs a rational choice model, consistent with much of the literature on suicide terrorism, to evaluate tactical effectiveness of suicide attacks in terms of costs and benefits to the group. However, it is worthwhile to first define the other available alternatives; that is, cultural and structural approaches.

Culture, according to Ross (1997), is a system of meaning that people use to interpret their daily interactions and is a basis of socio-political identity (42). Culture, however, must not be defined too broadly to incorporate the collective behaviors, beliefs, and institutions of a given society (Ross 1997: 42). Neither does culture directly act upon a given variable, he argues; rather, it interacts with variables such as institutions and interests (Ross 1997: 42). Culture can frame the context within which politics occur, link individual and collective identities, define boundaries of and actions within and between groups, provide a framework for interpreting actions of others, and provide resources for political organization and mobilization (Ross 1997: 46-52). Culturalist approaches, however, have been prone to methodological criticisms due to issues related to falsifiability due to its reliance on interpretation, and due to the difficulty associated with 14 isolating cultural variables to test. A culturalist approach compensates for lack of methodological rigor, however, with theoretical explanatory power. Despite methodological shortcomings, culturist approaches can offer compelling arguments because of their non-exclusionary, comprehensive tendencies.

Structuralist or institutionalist approaches to comparative inquiry focus on large- scale features of a system as the most significant in shaping identities, interests, and interactions (Katznelson 1997: 83). They emphasize formal organizations of governments, and many structuralist approaches incorporate Marxist emphasis on class relations (Lichbach & Zuckerman 1997: 6). This approach – which Katznelson also refers to as “historical-institutional” – sees culturalist and rational choice theories as “dual threats rather than as sets of useful tools and criticisms it might confidently engage, appropriate, and incorporate” (Katznelson 1997: 87). Structuralists are suspicious of culturalists and rational choice proponents for the simplicity required in their causal theories, he notes

(Katznelson 1997: 95). Structures – political systems, social class, economic institutions, international regimes, etc. – are thus the independent variable responsible for causality of a given phenomenon; or, as Katznelson describes them, institutions are “ligatures” that tie processes, relationships, and sites together (1997: 103). He also emphasizes the historical processes through which institutions develop and the need to appreciate history in social science inquiry (Katznelson 1997: 94-96).

A significant portion of the research on suicide terrorism, at least among political scientists, has taken place within a rational choice paradigm. Rational choice theory sets the groundwork upon which to discuss the strategic model of terrorism analysis and

15 subsequently an empirical analysis of tactical benefits of suicide terrorism. Rational choice theory can reveal how intentional and rational actors can themselves generate outcomes and behavior (Levi 1997: 20). This approach is not simply an economic calculation where potential material benefits of each potential option are simply tallied and compared. Rather, it involves an analysis of the individual or group as a rational and strategic entity capable of maximizing their desired ends—whatever they may be— through decision-making (Levi 1997: 22). Using King, Keohane, and Verba (1994), the rational choice theory utilizes the actor—whether a single person or a group that acts collectively as a single actor—as a causal mechanism and therefore an independent or explanatory variable in a given outcome. The methodological advantages of the rational choice model, as Levi (1997) argues and which King, Keohane, and Verba (1994) would applaud, are its parsimony and its ability to isolate variables (namely, the decision itself) for testing.1 Though actors make rational choices they believe to be in their best interest, the outcome of their decision may often appear irrational or contradictory to their own interests (Levi 1997: 20).2 This is particularly important to note when analyzing suicide operations since they may appear irrational at their surface, though when placed into context and viewed from the perspective of the terrorist organization, the underlying logic may become more apparent.

1 For a critique of rational choice theory, see Green and Shapiro (1994). For further discussion on the advantages and disadvantages of the theory, see Friedman (1996). 2 This is a common criticism of rational choice theory. Critics allege that critical choice theories of behavior are too often constructed to explain behavior after the collection of available evidence. This is also a common criticism of using rational choice theories to explain terrorism, and particularly suicide terrorism. The concern is that virtually every behavior can be explained through rational choice so long as explanations are contorted so as to provide some semblance of rational calculation behind the behavior. 16

According to Levi (1997), there are four keys to the rational choice model. First, there must be the assumption that individuals will act consistently with respect to their preferences. However, this does not assume that individuals are always self-interested in how they make decisions. Second, individuals maximize utility within the confines of constraints, namely scarcity of available resources and also institutional or organizational constraints. Third, individuals make decisions based upon how they expect others involved in the situation to act. Lastly, there is an inherent assumption of equilibrium. That is, not all equilibria are efficient. Levi admits that rational choice cannot explain all phenomena, but its advantage is that can assist to “illuminate and advance the explanation of a wide range of phenomena in a large variety of countries and time periods”

(33). Further, she acknowledges that a common criticism of the rational choice approach is that it may appear to simplify human behavior (36). When developing a theory to explain a phenomenon as complex as suicide terrorism, there is always an inherent risk in oversimplifying based upon a presumed or inferred rational calculus. Nevertheless, scholars have consistently use this rational choice approach in examining terrorist behavior, likely due to its ability to isolate and test variables of interest, and to measure deviations from what might be considered rational behavior.

In this study, the rational choice paradigm, which informs the strategic model of terrorism, allows an ability to test whether terrorist groups achieve certain tactical benefits when using suicide tactics compared to non-suicide tactics. Neither a culturalist approach nor a structuralist approach could offer advantages to measuring tactical effectiveness of

17 suicide attacks compared to non-suicide attacks, which is the fundamental research question of this study.

The Strategic Model of Terrorism Studies

The argument about the utility of certain tactics used by terrorist groups over others rests primarily upon the logic associated with the strategic model of terrorist group behavior. The strategic model, which has been the dominant paradigm in terrorism studies, explains terrorist behavior through a rationalist lens based upon the assumptions that terrorists are motivated by stable political preferences, that they weigh potential benefits of the options available to them, and that they embrace terrorist tactics when the expected benefits are greater than those expected through other available options

(Abrahms 2008). Terrorism is thus a rational, if extreme, manifestation of political strategy based on a balanced evaluation of costs and benefits of its utilization (Crenshaw 1998).

Further, as McCormick (2003) explains, this model assumes that terrorist organizations are unitary actors that are capable of evaluating their available options based on their stable set of preferences with a single mind (482). Under this paradigm, terrorists are political utility maximizers who embrace terrorist tactics because they offer the best chance of achieving their strategic goals.3

3 This study is primarily concerned with the rational choices made by the terrorist organization with respect to the use of suicide tactics rather than the rational choices made by the suicide attacker himself or herself. Many scholars have examined the psychology of terrorists and suicide terrorists in particular, noting that if they are psychologically normal, they are capable of undergoing some level of rational calculation of their action. If they are not capable of such a rational calculation, some might argue, then their use of suicide attacks might not be a tactic tied to some outcome, but rather an end unto itself. For a discussion on the psychology and individual motivations of suicide terrorists, see, for example, Horgan (2008; 2014), Lankford (2012), Moghadam (2003), Pittel and Rubbelke (2012), Post (1998; 2007); Sageman (2004), and Victoroff (2009). 18

An advantage of approaching terrorism from this strategic model perspective, according to Crenshaw (2011), is that it allows for the measurement of deviations from a standard benchmark of presumed rationality. From this standard one can understand and identify preferences, goals, and miscalculations of the group, and help provide an accurate and predictable model of terrorist group behavior that holds explanatory power in all situations and time (Crenshaw 2011: 112). It provides, therefore, a common comparative mechanism to understand the savvy of terrorist groups and their ability to operate effectively within their political or social contexts. Further, Crenshaw (2011) contends, the model offers a warning to those who would simply label terrorism as irrational behavior that lacks any logical foundations. Indeed, the opposite may be true, as terrorism can be the logical product of particular political circumstances (112). The behavior is not some abnormality operating outside the bounds of reason, but is the outcome of a coherent set of calculated preferences.4

Goals of a terrorist organization, or any other organization engaged in any broad combative effort, differ depending upon the level of analysis. Warfare planning and objectives are commonly divided into strategic, operational, and tactical levels.5 Though used in traditional military planning settings, it applies equally to terrorist campaigns since both seek to effect broad change through lower levels of sustained, planned action.

4 Though Post (1998) accepts the strategic model, he argues that psychological forces drive terrorists in their decision-making, and their “special psycho-logic” only serves to rationally justify violent acts they were already predisposed to commit (25). 5 Scholars in a wide variety of disciplines have used this construct. For example, Deni (2014) examines use this methodology to examine the interoperability of transatlantic militaries. Sivak and Schoettle (2012) analyze decisions drivers make at each level to influence fuel economy in their vehicles. Harrington and Ottenbacher (2009) examine how hospitality managers make decisions at each level. 19

According to the U.S. Army Field Manual 3-0, the strategic level of war involves the broad security objectives for the nation or group of nations and the plans to achieve those objectives. One step down is the operational level, which involves major campaigns and operations needed to achieve the strategic end state. The operational level also is the link between tactics and strategy. Lastly, the tactical level of war involves the battles, engagements, and other small-unit actions that affect the course of a campaign or operation (US Army 2008).

Figure 1. Three levels of organizational planning.

Strategic

Operational

Tactical

The same levels of planning exist for terrorist organizations. They too have strategic objectives (such as establishing an Islamic caliphate, expelling foreign militaries from their country, etc.), operational objectives (such as affecting public opinion or elections, or succeeding in a certain campaign of violence), and tactical objectives (such as inflicting large number of casualties with each attack, launching attacks against certain targets, etc.). The strategies, operations, and tactics must align in order to achieve victories. As stated in the Army’s Field Manual:

A string of tactical victories does not guarantee success at the operational and strategic levels. Tactical success, while required to set operational conditions, must be tied to achieving the strategic end state. Wars are won at the operational and strategic levels; yet without tactical success, a major operation cannot achieve the desired end state (7-7).

This distinction is important when discussing the strategic model. Terrorist groups, like traditional militaries, must align near-term, localized tactical victories with long-term strategic objectives in order to be effective.6 While linking the three is key to organizational success, terrorist group leaders must engage in separate but linked rational calculations at the each of the three levels when deciding on the most appropriate course of action.

Each level of analysis presents unique costs and benefits and therefore a unique calculation.

The vast majority of terrorism research focuses on the strategic level of warfare, using the strategic or rational model to evaluate whether terrorist groups are actually successful in achieving certain broad political objectives (e.g. Abrahms 2006a, 2006b,

2008; Cronin 2009; Jones and Libicki 2008; Krause 2013; Kydd and Walter 2006; Lake

2002; Pape 2005). Abrahms (2012) and Cronin (2009) also refer to these as “outcome” goals of the terrorist organization. The underlying assumption in most of these studies is that, if groups are successful at the strategic level, then their tactics were also effective.

Some studies have conflated these levels of analysis, drawing conclusions about tactical effectiveness based upon strategic or operational outcomes. For example, Pape (2005) concludes that suicide bombings are effective due to their supposed ability to achieve

6 Adamsky (2009) notes that terrorism scholars have typically omitted this link between terrorism tactics and strategy—what he calls “operational art”—and proposes a method of analysis for operational-level terrorist behavior.

21 strategic objectives, namely the removal of foreign occupying troops. To attribute strategic success or failure solely to certain tactics, absent any consideration of the tactical or operational campaign effectiveness, represents a logical disconnect among the tactical, operational, and strategic chain. In any military or terrorist campaign, the strategic success is based not upon the success of a single tactic employed in the campaign, but on a confluence of factors. Attributing the success or failure of terrorist campaigns to the use of suicide tactics is the logical equivalent of attributing Japan’s loss in World War II solely to their use of kamikaze tactics. Few studies have used the strategic model to actually empirically evaluate the effectiveness of different types of terrorist tactics—or

“process” goals according to Cronin (2009) and Abrahms (2012)—and instead have propagated an assumption of tactical effectiveness as somehow tied directly to strategic effectiveness.

Following the logic of the strategic model, one should be able to understand how terrorist groups choose tactics based upon their stated objectives and goals.7 If terrorist groups are single-minded seekers of strategic objectives, then the corollary must also hold, that terrorist groups utilize tactics that are the most effective and the most likely to move the organization towards incrementally achieving its strategic goals. According to

Pape (2003), 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 political goal” (344). Similarly, Krueger and Laitin

7 Abrahms and Potter (2015) have examined the effects of decapitation strikes on terrorist group tactics, but only with respect to tactical target selection and not necessarily to how effective the tactics themselves are relative to other tactics available. 22

(2008) argue that both terrorism and suicide terrorism are mainly the products of organizational strategy rather than lone individuals.8 Further, Hoffman and McCormick

(2004) argue that suicide operations are the result of strategic requirements of the terrorist organization. Suicide tactics, then, are tied to a broader operational or strategic set of organizational goals, and are not haphazardly selected in a vacuum devoid of any broader organizational objective. The effectiveness of certain tactics, however, must not be tied necessarily to the strategic effectiveness of a terrorist group to achieve stated political goals. That is, tactics can be effective even within ineffective campaigns or failing strategies. Similarly, tactics can be ineffective within campaigns or strategies that ultimately achieve the desired end state.

8 Krueger and Laitin (2008) find 74% of all international terrorist events are claimed by organizations, or are suspected to have been carried out by organizations. In comparison, 95% of suicide attacks between 1980-2002 are claimed by organizations or suspected to have been carried out by an organization. 23

Suicide Attacks – An Overview

A suicide attack is broadly defined as an attack that involves the death of at least one of the perpetrators, or where it is clear the perpetrator(s) do not intent to survive the attack (Bloom 2007; Moghadam 2008; Pape 2006; Hafez 2007). Moghadam (2008) rightfully notes that the term suicide terrorism itself can be problematic, with various definitions of terrorism complicating attempts at cogently articulating the meaning behind this term. Instead, Moghadam (2008) believes that terms such as suicide mission, suicide attack, and suicide operation are preferable over suicide terrorism. In removing terrorism from the terminology, one can avoid the debate surrounding what defines a terrorist act itself, and instead emphasizes the type of attack in question (6). Due to the analytic and definitional clarity such terms provide, this study will similarly employ these terms interchangeably throughout the text.

Moghadam (2008) further notes that suicide attacks must not only involve the willingness to die in the attack, but also the willingness to kill (6). However, there are numerous examples of suicide attacks in which it is not altogether clear whether the attacker necessarily intended to kill but may have other tactical objectives in mind. For instance, al-Shabaab operatives have repeatedly used suicide bombs in order to breach security perimeters at hotels and other hardened targets in order to allow other assailants to enter into the compound or facility. Therefore, while it is clear that a suicide attack must involve the attacker’s intentional taking of his or her own life in the course of the attack, it is not altogether clear whether suicide attacks must also involve the intention of killing others. They may, and often have, been used for other purposes entirely.

The number of suicide attacks has grown drastically in the past 20 years, resulting in a renewed effort among scholars to understand what is driving this proliferation. Nasra

Hassan reports in a 2001 article that a Hamas leader told her that his biggest problem is not the shortage of volunteers for suicide operations, but rather the “hordes of young men who beat on our doors” asking to be sent on suicide missions (Hassan 2001). Since 1981,

162 groups have conducted 5,770 suicide attacks. However, the increase in the number of suicide attacks in recent years has been driven largely by a few groups. For instance, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is responsible for 17.3 percent of all suicide attacks, followed by the Taliban, which has been responsible for 11.1 percent. Of all

Figure 2. Number of suicide attacks, 1981-2016.

25 suicide attacks, just 37.2 percent are claimed by a group or an individual compared to just

8.5 percent of non-suicide attacks that are claimed.

Bombings are the primary method of suicide attacks. Of all suicide attacks in history, 93.8 percent involve bombings or explosions as the primary attack type. The top three primary targets of suicide attacks include military (27.3 percent), police (18.7 percent), and private citizens and property (15.4 percent). The vast majority of suicide attacks have taken place in the Middle East and North Africa (57.6 percent) and South

Asia (30.1 percent). Frequency distribution tables for attacks by region (Table 1), type

(Table 2), and target (Table 3) can be found below.

Table 1. Suicide attacks by region, 1970-2016.

Region Frequency Percent Middle East & North Africa 3323 57.6 South Asia 1739 30.1 Sub-Saharan Africa 532 9.2 Eastern Europe 89 1.5 Southeast Asia 25 .4 Western Europe 17 .3 East Asia 16 .3 North America 11 .2 Central Asia 11 .2 South America 6 .1 Central America & 1 .0 Caribbean TOTAL 5770 100.0

Table 2. Suicide attacks by attack type, 1970-2016.

Attack type Frequency Percent Bombing/Explosion 5410 93.8 Assassination 238 4.1 Hostage Taking (Barricade Incident) 44 .8 Hostage Taking (Kidnapping) 35 .6 Armed Assault 28 .5 Hijacking 10 .2 Unarmed Assault 2 .0 Facility/Infrastructure Attack 1 .0 Unknown 2 .0 TOTAL 5770 100.0

Table 3. Suicide attacks by target, 1970-2016.

Target Frequency Percent Military 1576 27.3 Police 1081 18.7 Private Citizens & Property 889 15.4 Government (General) 628 10.9 Business 361 6.3 Religious 261 4.5 Figures/Institutions Terrorists/Non-State Militia 212 3.7 Transportation 139 2.4 Government (Diplomatic) 104 1.8 Educational Institution 58 1.0 Airports & Aircraft 33 .6 Violent Political Party 28 .5 Journalists & Media 16 .3 Maritime 14 .2 Utilities 14 .2 Tourists 12 .2 NGO 10 .2 Food or Water Supply 1 .0 Telecommunication 1 .0 Other 33 .6 Unknown 299 5.2 TOTAL 5770 100.0

The motivations for suicide attacks vary depending on whether one is examining the individual suicide bomber or the organization that directs the individual to carry out the attack. Moghadam (2003) proposes a “Two-Phase Model of Suicide Bombings” that examines both individual and organizational aspects as critical in understanding how suicide operations are both organized and carried out. Motivations, rationales, and justifications for the tactic differ depending on which unit of analysis—the group or the individual—is under investigation.

Though this study is focused solely on why organizations employ suicide tactics rather than why individuals volunteer for suicide missions, it is prudent to briefly discuss existing theories on individual motivations.

Individual motivations

One common approach to studying terrorism has focused on developing a socio- economic profile of the average terrorist. In popular discourse there is a widely-held view that providing better education and economic opportunities is the best way to stifle interest of individuals in joining terrorist organizations. Under this assumption, individuals resort to terrorism because they have no other opportunities in life, and so the promise of certain benefits offered by a terrorist group become more appealing than the alternative assurances of a life of poverty and insignificance. Therefore, these individuals are responding to seemingly rational calculations in their effort to maximize their own individual utility.

There is mounting evidence, however, that suggests low educational achievement, poor financial situation, and lack of employment opportunities are not actually good predictors of involvement in terrorism. Krueger and Maleckova (2003) conclude that there is little direct connection between poverty or lack of education and participation in terrorism. In his examination of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), Berrebi (2007) finds evidence that, in fact, higher education and standard of living are positively correlated with joining these terrorist groups and with becoming a suicide bomber. Piazza

(2008) explains that suicide attackers are generally better educated and more affluent because terrorist group leaders choose from among their ranks the most reliable and capable individuals for these attacks.

The result of having higher educated suicide bombers, according to Benmelech,

Berrebi, and Klor (2012), is that groups can conduct more successful operations against higher value targets. Bueno de Mesquita (2005) offers an alternative explanation for why it appears terrorists are better off than average, contending that if terrorist groups use a screening process for new recruits than it is impossible to make any conclusions about the characteristics of those who were willing to become terrorists but were screened out for any number of reasons. This remains a critical piece in individualist-rationalist models for explaining involvement in terrorist groups and in volunteering for suicide operations since terrorist group involvement does not appear to correlate with an absence of other economic opportunity.

Others have focused on the mental or psychological profile of suicide attackers.

Though Lankford (2012) argues that the idea suicide attackers are psychologically normal

29 is a “myth,” many scholars have found little evidence of any predisposition to mental illness among terrorists and suicide attackers (e.g. Elster 2005; Gambetta 2005; Merari et al, 2009; Ricolfi 2005; Sageman 2004; Speckhard 2012). Others have also been unable to discover any profile of terrorists or certain type of terrorists at all (Horgan 2008;

Moghadam 2008). Speckhard (2012) concludes, after interviewing numerous terrorists over 10 years to include would-be suicide terrorists, that context is very important when trying to understand why an individual chooses to become a terrorist. Terrorist groups recruit individuals “by appealing to their inner needs and vulnerabilities, which are then exploited to move them along the terrorist trajectory” (772). Further, she finds that the terrorists she interviewed were not “insane killers” but instead were “rational actors considering their choices within the context of their religious beliefs (773). Even if a profile were to emerge of the average terrorist or the average suicide attacker, this would still fall short of identifying a causal mechanism, explaining why large numbers of others who match the same profile choose not to engage in terrorist activity, or explaining why groups themselves employ suicide attacks as a tactic when they have a range of tactics from which to choose. While the search for a profile may serve certain purposes to psychologists, criminologists, and other social scientists, it is insufficient when discussing operational objectives of individuals and groups.

Since economic gain or opportunity fails to explain terrorist group involvement or participation in suicide attacks, scholars have attempted to maintain the integrity of the individualist-rationalist model by focusing on other possible incentives that could motivate individuals to volunteer for suicide operations. Kruglanski et al (2009) sought to categorize

30 individual motivations for suicide terrorism, based on the heterogeneous findings in the literature. They conclude that an individual’s motivations for suicide terrorism fall into three broad categories – the ideological, social, and personal reasons – which all contribute to an individual suicide terrorist’s “significance quest” (335). For instance,

Victoroff (2009) draws on evolutionary psychology in explaining that suicide attackers are motivated by their desire to gain reputation among their community, and that their suicide attack is a means through which to display affinity for their group. Azam (2005) also focuses on socially-derived benefits, but instead posits that the benefits derived from the suicide attack itself are meant for the attacker’s posterity as a method of inter-generational investment. Thayer and Hudson (2008) discuss suicide terrorism through the lens of evolutionary biology, contending that it is merely the manifestation of non-alpha male mating strategy since certain sexual rewards are promised to the willing in the afterlife.

Others focus less on perceptions of posthumous benefits and more on the suicide attack itself as an expression of either retaliation (Brym and Araj 2006) or revenge, which can be reinforced through notions of perceived humiliation (Moghadam 2006). While understanding individual motivations helps to explain what possible incentives might drive volunteers for suicide operations, such individual explanations are insufficient alone to explain the existence of suicide attacks themselves, given that terrorist organizations have certain interests and strategic motivations as well.

Organizational motivations

At the organizational level, which is the main focus of this inquiry, scholars have examined benefits terrorist groups derive from suicide attacks at the strategic organizational level. Two main theories on organizational motivations for suicide terrorism that use the strategic model come from Pape (2003) and Bloom (2007).

Robert Pape, in his 2003 article titled “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism,” contended that terrorist organizations use suicide tactics primarily because they work in terms of achieving political objectives. In his examination of suicide terrorist campaigns between 1980 and 2001, he arrives at five major findings:

1) Suicide terrorism is strategic; that is, suicide attacks are usually part of a larger

campaign and not carried out by individuals isolated from a larger group or

effort.

2) Suicide terrorism is designed to “coerce modern democracies to make

significant concessions to national self-determination,” citing examples such as

Lebanon, Israel, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, and Chechnya.

3) The increase in the number of suicide attacks is due to the fact that terrorist

groups have realized that the tactic is effective at achieving concessions.

4) Concessions achieved through suicide attack campaigns are likely be only

moderate in nature, and suicide attacks are limited in their ability to achieve

more ambitious goals.

5) Governments can contain suicide terrorism by reducing the confidence of

terrorist groups’ ability to conduct suicide attacks, recognizing that neither

military action nor concessions can limit the number of suicide attacks, and

instead strengthening homeland security (343-344).

Ultimately, Pape concludes, suicide terrorism is neither irrational nor altogether surprising because terrorist organizations have learned from their experience that terrorism pays

(355). In his subsequent book that expands on this thesis, Pape (2005) goes further to conclude that, based on his review of the data, there is little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism (4).

Pape’s theory on the effectiveness of suicide terrorism gained widespread popularity in academia, government, and popular discourse, and is responsible for framing much of the continuing debate on suicide tactics. However, Pape’s study has been widely criticized and disputed by many scholars on both methodological and theoretical grounds. Abrahms (2007), for instance, highlights a number of methodological issues with Pape’s study, particularly bias in terms of his case selection, failing to examine whether the terrorist group was ultimately able to achieve its core policy objective, and not using a control group to compare effects on democracies with non-democracies (236).

Similarly, Atran (2006) cites problems with Pape’s sampling while also challenging whether expelling foreigners is a terrorist group’s sole goal or whether that may serve as a means to enhance the group’s reputation and support. Further, Atran (2006) challenges

Pape’s dismissal of Salafi ideology as at least a contributing factor to the spread of suicide tactics. Moghadam (2006) also offers a number of critiques of Pape’s study, including challenging Pape’s definitions of key concepts and his assessment of the existing literature on suicide terrorism. Moghadam (2006) also argues that Pape exaggerates both

33 the success of suicide attacks and their correlation to occupation, ultimately contending that the spread of suicide attacks is “largely a radical Islamist phenomenon” and that religion plays a larger role in suicide attacks than Pape believes (724). Horowitz (2010) also challenges Pape’s findings, highlighting that his theory fails to explain why other nationalist or separatist groups like the IRA or ETA failed to adopt suicide tactics in their campaigns (50) while also arguing that religion plays a larger role in the adoption of suicide tactics than Pape’s thesis posits. In sum, though Pape’s work on suicide terrorism advanced the understanding of the phenomenon in certain important ways, it also has certain important limitations and flaws in terms of its explanatory power.

A second major theory in the field that attempts to explain from a rational perspective why terrorist groups adopt suicide tactics comes from Mia Bloom and her theory on “outbidding.” She argues that terrorist groups are incentivized to employ suicide tactics when they are in competition with rival terrorist groups and must distinguish themselves (Bloom 2007: 94).

Historically, we can observe that suicide terror was adopted when multiple organizations ramped up insurgent violence with increasing degrees of lethality. Where there are multiple groups, violence is a technique to gain credibility and win the public relations competition. In such circumstances, outbidding will result as groups try to distinguish themselves from one another to establish or increase a domestic constituent base. If the domestic popularity of the organization using suicide terror increases we observe an increase in bombings. If the domestic environment supports the use of terror and an insurgent group does not use the tactic, they tend to lose market share and popularity (95)

In Bloom’s view, suicide tactics are less about tactical effectiveness against a target population and instead more a response to demand among the group’s perceived

34 constituent base in order to gain popularity and/or financial support. If an insurgent or terrorist group wishes to remain relevant in the potentially crowded marketplace of rival groups, then they must resort to tactics that separate them from their peer groups and generate support from the local population. This approach to understanding suicide terrorism inevitably leads to a counter-terrorism strategy that relies heavily upon providing other incentives— “outbid the outbidders” as she refers to it—that can tilt the scale away from resorting to suicide attacks and in favor of other more “irresistible rewards” that that lead to arrests of group members or improved standard of living (191). Bloom’s concept of “outbidding” has gained traction in the field due in part to its parsimony and clear reliance on a strategic or rational model approach. Under this paradigm, terrorist groups are merely self-interested actors concerned with their group’s survival and resort to suicide tactics when they are in competition with other groups for the support of a constituent base. However, Bloom’s approach, like Pape’s, remains at the strategic level and does not address the tactical efficacy of suicide attacks compared to non-suicide attacks.

Both Pape and Bloom argue that suicide terrorism ultimate provides a net positive benefit to the terrorist group. For Pape, suicide terrorist campaigns have achieved strategic successes due to their ability to compel concessions. For Bloom, suicide terrorism allows a terrorist group to gain market share by earning public and financial support. Both such approaches, however, are primarily strategic benefits to a group. This study, conversely, is the first to holistically evaluate suicide tactics for their tactical effectiveness.

Rather than develop and test an entirely new theory on suicide tactics and how terrorist groups decide to use them, this study empirically evaluates three major advantages associated with suicide tactics, at least according to extant literature. These include the claims that suicide attacks are more lethal than non-suicide attacks, that they garner a disproportional amount of media attention, and that they have a more significant psychological impact on a target population. All three claims are tactical-level advantages, and thus this study does not intend to evaluate the strategic effectiveness of suicide terrorism campaigns.

Dying to Kill: An Analysis of Suicide Attack Lethality

“Sadly it turns out, if you’re willing to die, you can kill a lot of people.”

– President Barack Obama, 22 November 2015 (Quoted in Shear 2015)

Those who study terrorism, and suicide terrorism in particular, are familiar with the claim that suicide attacks are the most lethal type of terrorism. By pointing to higher average lethality rates for suicide operations compared to non-suicide operations, scholars conclude that terrorist organizations use suicide operations at least in part because they are the most likely to cause the highest number of casualties. Viewed in this manner, terrorist organizations are behaving rationally in that they seek to inflict the greatest amount of damage at the lowest possible cost. They have identified a tactic that is more effective at killing and injuring larger numbers of people; therefore, the tactic has proliferated widely and is employed with greater frequency. Terrorist organizations are merely choosing the most efficient method available to them to generate their desired outcome, as any other rational organization or actor would. Though choosing to conduct a suicide attack means also the inevitable loss of at least one operative, from a terrorist group leader’s perspective, that is a small cost to pay in order to achieve tactical advantages over the targeted enemy. This has been the common narrative across the literature.

Yet, upon more careful scrutiny, the conventional wisdom on the lethality of suicide attacks is severely under-developed, possessing major theoretical and empirical gaps.

From a theoretical perspective, there does not appear to be anything particularly unique 37 to suicide attacks that make them intrinsically more lethal. The lethality of the attack, it would seem, is separate from whether the attack involved the deliberate suicide of the attacker. Though suicide attacks may allow the attacker to optimally position a bomb to cause the greatest devastation (the so-called “smart bomb” theory), one can easily imagine other possible tactics that could create similar devastation without necessarily involving the death of the perpetrator. Attackers can just as easily be able to place an explosive device in the center of a crowd with a timing device on it and escape before its detonation, remotely detonate the explosive when the operative is a safe distance from the blast radius, or use victim-initiated detonators on the explosive device, such as a pressure trigger, which prevents the operative from having to be near the explosion site and risk being captured (Jervis 2005). Groups can also use non-bombing tactics to achieve similar highly lethal effects, such as shooting attacks, during which the operative is similarly able to initiate the attack at the optimal moment to maximize carnage and continue in a sustained assault. Further, it is fathomable that suicide attacks in some cases may actually limit the lethality of the attack since the operative is instantly killed and obviously unable to engage in a sustained assault.

In fact, there are myriad examples of highly lethal attacks that did not involve the suicide of the attacker. In the August 2015 bombing at a shrine in Bangkok, Thailand, the perpetrator was able to optimally position a backpack full of explosives in the middle of a crowded area, ultimately killing 20 people and wounding over 100 others before safely escaping. In June 2015, 38 people were killed when Islamic State (IS) gunmen opened fire at a resort just north of Sousse, Tunisia. In November 2009, 10 militants associated

38 with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) launched a multi-day siege on Mumbai, India using automatic weapons and grenades, killing 164 people. Further, terrorist and insurgent organizations have used non-suicide roadside improvised explosive devices (IED) in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan against military targets to great devastation, using radio signals or other remote detonation techniques, as well as victim-initiated detonation techniques, to ultimately “have the same effect as a precision-guided weapon” (Moulton 2009). There appear to be countless other ways in which terrorist groups have successfully inflicted damage against a variety of targets through non-suicide methods. Suicide methods are not the only way to optimize the tactical effects of an attack.

From an empirical perspective, evidence for the claim that suicide attacks are the most lethal is insufficient. Though an examination of average rates of people killed per attack is one important metric, it is neither the only metric nor the most comprehensive empirical analysis that could be used to determine which types of attacks are ultimately the most lethal. Unfortunately, however, the comparative analysis of attack lethality typically ends here. There are, though, many contextual considerations about different attacks that are worth examining. Under what conditions might suicide attacks be more lethal than non-suicide attacks, or vice versa? What about those attacks made them more or less lethal? Ultimately, the goal of any study of terrorist attack lethality should not be to look solely at average measures of lethality across all attacks at all times and locations, but rather to examine which types of attacks are more or less lethal under different conditions. Broad claims about characteristics of two different types of terrorist attacks risk becoming too general to be useful to the advancement of knowledge surrounding

39 how and why terrorist groups choose certain tactics from among a range of options available to them, and whether the choices these groups make are ultimately defensible.

This chapter will progress in four sections. First, a review of relevant research on the strategic model of terrorism studies and the lethality of suicide operations will show that the standard claim about the advantage associated with suicide attacks is based on only a macro-level analysis of data that lacks depth or nuance. This section will also show that the literature has tended to focus more on strategic outcomes of terrorist groups and has lacked robust analyses of tactical outcomes, especially in terms of suicide and non- suicide attacks. Second, the chapter will utilize existing data on terrorist attacks to compare lethality of suicide and non-suicide attacks across geography, attack types, and target types. In this section, I also introduce a new quantitative measure—the lethality ratio—to calculate the cost and benefit of an attack according to deaths of the perpetrator compared to total deaths caused by the attack. This analysis underscores how mean lethality rates per attack overall is insufficient when explaining variation in lethality among different types of attacks, and that further empirical investigation can reveal a richer and more nuanced understanding of terrorist lethality. Third, this paper will discuss alternative possible tactics that are available to terrorist organizations and have proven highly lethal—such as small arms attacks and roadside IEDs—illustrating the suboptimal nature of suicide operations. Lastly, the chapter concludes with a discussion on the implications of the findings and what they mean for the study of terrorist attack lethality.

The Strategic Model and Attack Lethality

Following the logic of the strategic model, one should be able to understand how terrorist groups choose tactics based upon their stated objectives and goals.9 If terrorist groups are single-minded seekers of strategic objectives, then the corollary must also hold, that terrorist groups utilize tactics that are the most effective and the most likely to move the organization towards incrementally achieving its strategic goals. According to

(2008) argue that both terrorism and suicide terrorism are mainly the products of organizational strategy rather than lone individuals.10 Further, Hoffman and McCormick

(2004) argue that suicide operations are the result of strategic requirements of the terrorist organization. Moghadam (2003) proposes a two-phase model of suicide bombings, noting that while there are individual motivations for suicide attacks, there are also organizational motivations. Suicide tactics, then, are tied to a broader operational or strategic set of organizational goals, and are not haphazardly selected in a vacuum devoid of any broader organizational objective. The effectiveness of certain tactics, however, must not be tied necessarily to the strategic effectiveness of a terrorist group to achieve stated political

9 Abrahms and Potter (2015) have examined the effects of decapitation strikes on terrorist group tactics, but only with respect to tactical target selection and not necessarily to how effective the tactics themselves are relative to other tactics available. 10 Krueger and Laitin (2008) find 74% of all international terrorist events are claimed by organizations, or are suspected to have been carried out by organizations. In comparison, 95% of suicide attacks between 1980-2002 are claimed by organizations or suspected to have been carried out by an organization. 41 goals. That is, tactics can be effective even within ineffective campaigns or failing strategies. Similarly, tactics can be ineffective within campaigns or strategies that ultimately achieve the desired end state.

Following the modus operandi for most terrorist groups that use suicide methods, it is reasonable to conclude that killing and injuring more people in the target population is preferable to less people. Suicide tactics are normally employed by groups to maximize bloodshed. While suicide attacks can be used to gain publicity (so called “demonstrative terrorism”) or to cause destruction, in practice they are used to simply maximize lethality

(Pape 2003).11 As Alakoc (2015) notes, most terrorist organizations, especially those that are carrying out the bulk of terrorist attacks worldwide today and especially those that employ suicide tactics, believe that maximizing lethality offers a greater chance of advancing their particular cause.12 By demonstrating the ability to kill, terrorist groups can signal to governments they are a capable force and also can positively affect group status and prestige (Horowitz and Potter 2014). Since they tend to be highly lethal, suicide attacks can also ensure widespread media coverage, the maximization of the psychological impact on the targeted population, and the legitimization of the group’s

11 In addition, suicide tactics have been used for other tactical purposes besides simply killing the maximum number of people. For instance, in Afghanistan the Taliban has used suicide bombings during assaults on Afghan and U.S. military bases as a method to penetrate security perimeters, while also inflicting casualties. Similarly, LTTE operatives have used suicide bombing tactics against hardened targets for destruction purposes rather than to maximize lethality. Al Shabaab has also employed suicide bombing tactics as a method to breach security gates, such as at hotels. 12 Wilson and Lemanski (2013) develop a model to study “Apparent Intended Lethality (AIL)” for attacks by examining the target of the attack, the weapon used in the attack, and whether any warnings were provided before the attack. Suicide attacks, however, by their very nature have lethal intentions. There has been no widespread use of suicide attacks to only cause physical property destruction or for purely non-lethal symbolic means. Some terrorist groups also do not intend to kill at all. See Taylor (1998) and Ackerman (2003). 42 grievances and demands by signaling complete devotion to the cause, even if they are an outlying group (Ganor 2007). From the perspective of the terrorist group, killing more people provides more benefits to the group, thereby justifying its use despite the high costs.

In using the rational model to examine reasoning being suicide operations and why organizations so frequently use the tactic in their campaigns, scholars often cite that suicide attacks are the most lethal type of attacks. The fact they kill more people than non-suicide attacks, the reasoning goes, can justify and explain its rapid proliferation.

Terrorist groups have identified a method that is more tactically effective than other methods available to them, thereby providing the most likely chances for tactical, operational, and strategic victories. Pape (2003; 2005) was one of the first scholars to assert that suicide terrorism had become the deadliest form of terrorism in modern times.

Suicide attacks are highly lethal, he argues, because attackers are less interested in targeted assassinations, which might kill only a few people, or some symbolic acts that might result in property damage, and instead are simply interested in killing as many people as possible (Pape 2005: 11). The statistic often cited throughout the literature came first from Pape (2003):

The 188 suicide terrorist attacks from 1980 to 2001 killed an average of 13 people each, not counting the unusually 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 (346).

This perception of suicide attacks being significantly more lethal than non-suicide attacks has permeated the literature and shaped the discussion on suicide terrorist attacks ever since. It has also been cited as the reason why scholars have taken up an interest in the subject (see Pittel and Rubbelke 2011). Hoffman and McCormick (2004) claim that suicide attacks are a reliable way of inflicting higher casualties than other types of terrorist operations. Hoffman (2003) argues that suicide attacks kill more people on average because they are the “ultimate smart bomb” (40). Alakoc (2015) agrees, contending that suicide terrorist attacks are, “by nature” more likely to generate more fatalities than non-suicide attacks due to the fact that the attacker can precisely control the location and detonation of the explosive device. Santifort-Jordan and Sandler (2014) believe that suicide terrorism is in a separate class of terrorist attacks altogether because of their unique ability to be highly lethal. Moghadam (2008/2009) also notes the

“enormous human toll” of suicide attacks (49) while Santifort-Jordan and Sandler (2014) believe that suicide terrorism is in a separate class of terrorist attacks altogether because of their unique ability to be highly lethal.

Others have also found empirical evidence that supports the premise that suicide attacks are more lethal than non-suicide attacks in different contexts. Capell and Sahliyeh

(2007) find that groups that use suicide terror as their modus operandi are more lethal than groups that do not, and find that religiously-inspired suicide attacks are more lethal than non-religious suicide attacks. Alakoc (2015) finds that suicide attacks carried out by terrorist organizations are more lethal than those carried out by lone wolves because of the additional planning and training organizations provide their suicide bombers.

However, Quillen (2002) has found evidence, utilizing data from Schweitzer (2000) on suicide attacks between April1983 and February 2000 and data on mass casualty bombings (which he defines as attacks that kill more than 25 people), that suicide attacks were only slightly more lethal than mass casualty bombings. Further, he finds that when the 1983 Beirut bombings are removed from the data, the average lethality for suicide attacks drops significantly below mass casualty bombings. However, the purpose of his study was to examine mass casualty bombing attacks and how they compare to other categories of attacks rather than to examine the differences in lethality among suicide and non-suicide attacks. Nevertheless, the finding suggests that suicide attacks might not be the most lethal under all circumstances.

Other scholars have examined how other factors may affect militant group lethality.

For instance, some scholars have focused on inter- and intra-organizational and structural dynamics and their effects on lethality. Asal and Rethemeyer (2008) find that only a small percentage of terrorist groups actually are responsible for most terrorism-related deaths and that the most lethal organizations tend to be larger, address supernatural audiences through religion, have religious-ethnonationalist ideologies that define an other, have extensive alliances with peer groups, and control territory. Horowitz and Potter (2014) similarly find that terrorist group alliances can often result in more advanced operational capabilities, and as a result, increased lethality. Of note, they also find that increased lethality can result from the fact that groups may adopt suicide tactics when newly aligned with another group that already utilizes suicide methods. Asal et al (2015), conversely, in

45 their analysis of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), examine variation in lethality within the organization, in this case across various brigades of the PIRA.

A second important consideration when using the strategic model to analyze the effectiveness of suicide tactics are the significant organizational costs associated with them. Any calculation of benefits of a particular decision must also involve the costs of that decision. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current leader of al-Qaeda, has said “martyrdom operations [are] the most successful way of inflicting damage against the opponent and the least costly to the mujahidin in terms of casualties” (Moghadam 2008/2009: 62). In this case, terrorist organizations deliberately lose a member of their organization when using suicide attacks. Especially when the suicide attacker is a seasoned, skilled, and knowledgeable operative, suicide attacks can come with a significant loss of organizational knowledge and skills, especially given the resources that went in to recruiting, training, and equipping the operative prior to the suicide attack. While some groups use suicide attackers who are among the best-educated members of their organization (Piazza 2008), other groups may use newer or less-skilled recruits for suicide missions in a concerted effort to minimize the organizational impact of suicide attacks. In either case, however, the net organizational cost of using this tactic must be weighed against the potential benefits (Horowitz 2010: 46-47).

Further, the fact suicide attacks tend to be highly lethal in nature—which is cited as a major advantage associated with the tactic—may also present organizational drawbacks and costs. The significant numbers of civilian and bystander casualties associated with suicide attacks risk damaging any support the group had among the

46 population. If a group’s objective is to win support of their constituent population, then using suicide attacks may be too risky given the high number of casualties they produce

(Piazza 2008: 32).

Lethality of terrorist organizations and the tactics they employ, it would seem, are of particular interest among terrorism scholars, though the literature has yet to empirically fully grasp the differences in effectiveness at the tactical level. The effectiveness of suicide tactics is either incorrectly linked to strategic successes or is measured simply by comparing lethality metrics at a macro level, thereby failing to capture contextual nuances. This is the first study to examine how suicide and non-suicide attacks compare against one another in terms of lethality across geographic region, attack types, and target/victim types.

Hypothesis

Based upon the strategic model and the conclusions in the literature, one main hypothesis has emerged: Terrorist groups use suicide tactics in part because they are more lethal than non-suicide attacks. This hypothesis is derived from the literature, though thus far has been asserted as a truism without robust empirical support. This hypothesis assumes that the terrorist group leader is aware of the tactical advantages associated with each form of attack, and therefore is able to select methods of attack that present the greatest chance of both killing the most people. This assumption also underlies claims made that suicide attacks have proliferated at least in part because of their lethality. It assumes terrorist groups are aware of such advantages. Without this assumption it is

47 impossible to properly utilize the rational choice paradigm at all because it assumes that the subject has full knowledge and awareness of the various options available.

Empirical Analysis

Overview This study is interested in examining lethality of suicide and non-suicide attacks, and thus draws upon the universe of terrorist attacks for a sample. The GTD—which is compiled and maintained by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and

Responses to Terrorism (START)—has data on nearly 142,000 terrorist attacks from

1970-2014 and is widely used in the field. The value in using the GTD for this analysis is that it provides comprehensive and robust data on all types of attacks, both suicide and non-suicide. While the vast majority of suicide attacks are suicide bombings/explosions, thereby garnering the bulk of the attention in the literature, other suicide attack types exist and therefore are included in this analysis. It also collects data on numbers of people killed in each attack, a category of critical interest in this study. The unit of analysis for this analysis is the terrorist attack itself. Like in other analyses on lethality, the terrorist attacks associated with September 11, 2001 were removed from the dataset because they are extreme outliers and would therefore skew the statistical analyses. Also, the GTD maintains variables for numbers of people killed in the attack and numbers of perpetrators killed in the attack. The former, however, contains the latter.

In order to explore the hypothesis, the data analysis primarily focuses on mean lethality rates for suicide and non-suicide attacks across geographic regions, attack types, and victim/target types. In addition, the analysis introduces a new metric—the lethality 48 ratio—to examine the costs and benefits of each type of attack. This ratio is a useful tool to begin to understand the consequences of attacks in purely quantitative terms, though admittedly cannot incorporate various qualitative costs and benefits associated with the attacks, which may vary widely from group to group. These variations depend on each group’s particular strategy with respect to the caliber of the operative they prefer to use in suicide missions and the potential qualitative benefits they may achieve through the operative’s suicide, which the group could not otherwise gain through the use of non- suicide tactics.

The lethality ratio is calculated as the number of total people killed per perpetrator killed. The lethality ratio scale ranges from 0.00 to 1.00. From a terrorist group leader perspective, the ideal attack would involve the deaths of others (ideally the targeted victims), and not the death of the terrorist group member(s); therefore, a lower lethality score is optimal, ceteris paribus.

# of perpetrators killed Lethality ratio = Total # of people killed

The lethality ratio is calculated for each category based upon averages in each grouping. For instance, the lethality ratio for armed assault attacks would use the mean lethality rate for all armed assault attacks and divide by the mean perpetrator lethality rate for all armed assault attacks. This method is preferable to calculating a lethality ratio for each individual case because out of all cases in the dataset, only 27.7% of attacks have valid data for which to calculate the ratio at the case level due to missing data for either

49 perpetrator lethality or total lethality. The lethality ratio is not used in the examination of geographic locations due to the lack of any theoretical connection between the effects of geography on the lethality ratio.

Macro-level Overview

In a comparison of mean lethality rates for all attacks, suicide attacks kill an average of 9.70 individuals and non-suicide attacks kill 2.08 individuals, meaning suicide attacks are nearly five times deadlier on average than non-suicide attacks when looking at the total universe of terrorist attacks. Though suicide attacks make up just 2.67% of all the terrorist attacks, they are responsible for 11.86% of total number of people killed by attacks. Further, though suicide attacks kill more people on average, the larger standard deviation for suicide attacks (16.63 for suicide attacks versus 10.00 for non-suicide attacks) signifies that there is a wide distribution in lethality rates for suicide attacks.

Suicide attacks hardly guarantee a large body count.

Other measures of central tendency for lethality among the universe of attacks still indicate greater lethality among suicide attacks. After omitting values for 5% of the most lethal attack and 5% of the least lethal attacks for both types of attacks as a method to remove outliers at either end of the distribution, the mean lethality rates for both types of attacks do diminish slightly, though suicide attacks still remain far more lethal. The median lethality rate, which may be more useful for identifying the typical number of individuals killed in both types of attacks, again shows suicide attacks (4.50 deaths) as typically more lethal than non-suicide attacks (0.00 deaths). Further, the modal values of 1.00 deaths

50 for suicide attacks may not seem surprising given that suicide operations usually involve at least the death of the attacker, even in otherwise nonlethal attacks. In sum, suicide attacks appear to be much more lethal than non-suicide attacks, at least when solely examining the universe of attacks.

Table 4. Measures of central tendency for lethality rates among all attacks, 1970-2014.

Suicide Non-suicide N Valid 3755 130035 Missing 36 8136 Mean 9.70 2.08 Std. Deviation 16.63 10.00 5% trimmed mean 7.21 1.01 Median 4.50 .00 Mode 1.00 .00

In examining the tactical effectiveness of suicide attacks, it is also important to evaluate the costs associated with these attacks, despite their perceived advantages in terms of maximizing lethality. As Piazza (2008) finds, suicide attackers tend to be among the best-educated members of a terrorist organization, so the loss of such operatives is not solely a quantitative loss in manpower but a qualitative loss in skill, training, and human capital.13 In terms of the costs to the organization, suicide attacks overall kill an average of 1.50 perpetrators per attack compared to just 0.29 among non-suicide attacks.

The lethality ratio is very similar for both suicide and non-suicide attacks (0.14 for non- suicide attacks compared to 0.15 for suicide attacks). Therefore, from a strategic model perspective, both forms of attack appear to offer the same proportion of cost to benefit.

13 It should be noted that Piazza’s study is from 2008. It remains possible that the findings from a similar study would be different if it were conducted today. Finding demographic data on suicide terrorists is a difficult task to undertake, so it is not a study that is easily replicable. Piazza’s (2008) findings should therefore be used with a degree of caution. 51

However, when also incorporating the opportunity cost of losing a trained operative in a suicide attack, non-suicide attacks at least would appear to be advantageous because they would have greater potential for the attackers to carry out future attacks. Non-suicide attacks do not guarantee that the attacker(s) will escape after conducting the attack since they could still become otherwise incapacitated and unable to carry out additional attacks

(e.g. injured, detained, etc.), but there is at least a greater chance they will be able to conduct future attacks. Further, non-suicide attacks may expose a terrorist organization to additional costs that a suicide attack would not. If a terrorist is arrested in the course of carrying out the attack or afterwards, the organization has no guarantees that the operative would not divulge critical operational intelligence to authorities during interrogation, thereby potentially leading to enormous costs to the organization and future operations. However, of note, among all attacks for which there is data on the number of perpetrators captured, only 0.14 perpetrators are captured on average per non-suicide attack while 0.41 are captured while attempting to carry out a suicide attack. The issue of perpetrators getting captured, then, does not appear to be substantial for either suicide or non-suicide attacks.

Further, non-suicide attacks may expose a terrorist organization to additional costs that a suicide attack would not. If a terrorist is arrested in the course of carrying out the attack or afterwards, the organization has no guarantees that the operative would not divulge critical operational intelligence to authorities during interrogation, thereby potentially leading to enormous costs to the organization and future operations. However, of note, among all attacks for which there is data on number of perpetrators captured

(70,931 cases), only 0.14 perpetrators are captured on average per non-suicide attack while 0.41 are captured while attempting to carry out a suicide attack. The issue of perpetrators getting captured, then, does not appear to be substantial for either suicide or non-suicide attacks.

There are a few important conclusions from this data. First, while there have been more non-suicide attacks, more people killed by non-suicide attacks, and non-suicide attacks are becoming more frequent and are killing more people overall than suicide attacks, suicide attacks still kill more people per attack. Second, though suicide attacks kill more people on average, there is also far greater variance in their lethality than non- suicide attacks, indicating that suicide attacks produce a wide range of outcomes and there is little guarantee that suicide attacks will achieve high lethality scores. Third, the proportion of perpetrator deaths to victim fatalities is identical for both types of attack, meaning the cost and benefits associated with each attack are similar in numbers of lives lost. From a strategic model perspective, there is at least some preliminary evidence to suggest suicide attacks may be an optimal tactical strategy for terrorist groups, if their desired outcome is to maximize lethality per attack, but there also appears to be indications that this apparent advantage is not as clear as it might seem. By examining the same data based upon geographic location of the attack, the attack type, and the target type, one can gain a more granular understanding of how suicide and non-suicide attacks compare in various contexts.

Geography

Determining where suicide and non-suicide attacks are more or less lethal can reveal significant contextual differences that can help explain variation in lethality. A terrorist group’s operational capabilities and resources constrain its geographic reach, however, so it is generally unable to freely select among various countries to target.

Further, a group’s strategic aims may limit the countries it wishes to target. Nevertheless, though groups may not choose countries or regions in which to conduct attacks based on expected lethality rates, this analysis will assist in understanding which type of attack offers optimal results in particular regions and countries.

Nearly all regions of the world have experienced both suicide and non-suicide attacks, except for Australasia and Oceania, which has only had non-suicide attacks. In all regions of the world where there have been both suicide and non-suicide attacks, suicide attacks are more lethal, and typically much more so.14 In the two regions that have the greatest number of attacks—South Asia and the Middle East/North Africa (MENA)— suicide attacks are clearly far more lethal.

In South Asia, non-suicide attacks kill 2.07 people on average while suicide attacks kill 8.95. In the Middle East and North Africa, non-suicide attacks kill 2.17 people and suicide attacks kill 10.27. The greatest disparities in lethality rates are in Western Europe, where suicide attacks claim 5.23 lives while non-suicide attacks claim 0.42 lives, and

Southeast Asia, where non-suicide attacks kill on average 1.46 people while suicide attacks claim 13.17 lives with each attack. This also makes suicide attacks in Southeast

14 Due to low sample sizes for suicide attacks in South America, North America, Central Asia, and Central America & Caribbean it is not possible to draw significant conclusions for these regions. 54

Asia more lethal than anywhere else in the world, at least in regions where there have been at least 10 attacks.

Table 5. Lethality rates for attacks by region, 1970-2014.

Std. 5% trim. Region Suicide? N Mean deviation mean Median Australasia & Oceania No 233 .62 2.10 .24 .00 Yes 0 - - - - Central America & No 8015 3.58 11.63 1.72 .00 Caribbean Yes 1 21.00 - - - Central Asia No 516 1.76 4.73 .92 .00 Yes 9 5.67 6.87 4.96 3.00 East Asia No 708 1.32 8.16 .29 .00 Yes 13 5.15 9.66 3.67 2.00 Eastern Europe No 3982 1.42 9.99 .50 .00 Yes 82 9.27 13.27 7.33 4.00 Middle East & North No 3109 1.00 2.17 12.24 1.17 Africa 4 Yes 2035 10.27 17.71 7.65 5.00 North America No 3082 .52 6.90 .11 .00 Yes 6 3.50 5.68 3.06 1.50 South America No 1677 .00 1.69 5.49 .85 9 Yes 6 21.17 32.97 18.74 5.00 South Asia No 3134 1.00 2.07 6.64 1.23 5 Yes 1368 8.95 14.19 6.76 4.00 Southeast Asia No 9081 1.46 4.21 .83 .00 Yes 23 13.17 28.37 9.03 2.00 Sub-Saharan Africa No 1041 1.00 5.02 20.35 2.45 6 Yes 199 9.30 20.24 6.37 4.00 Western Europe No 1478 .00 .42 2.90 .22 4 Yes 13 5.23 7.99 4.31 1.00

Not all of the countries that have seen the most suicide attacks have seen the deadliest average attacks. Among countries that have had at least 10 suicide attacks in their history, Indonesia (20.54 deaths per attack), Syria (15.48 deaths per attack), and

Lebanon (15.25 deaths per attack) lead in terms of the most lethal suicide attacks. Suicide 55 attacks in Afghanistan, which had the second most suicide attacks of all the countries, actually kill only about 5.76 people on average, making attacks in the country less lethal than even attacks in India (6.57).

Table 6. Top ten countries with the most lethal suicide attacks, 1970-2014.

Mean Country N lethality Std. deviation Indonesia 13 20.54 36.07 Syria 123 15.48 32.39 Lebanon 51 15.25 37.22 Sri Lanka 103 15.19 20.89 Pakistan 410 13.98 19.19 Egypt 18 11.94 21.61 Iraq 1432 10.67 16.24 Algeria 27 10.00 14.33 Russia 76 9.79 13.64 Yemen 116 9.41 15.17

Among countries with at least ten non-suicide attacks,15 the top ten countries with the most lethal non-suicide attacks are on the continent of Africa, and all ten of these countries have non-suicide attacks that are, on average, more lethal than the lethality rate of 9.70 for suicide attacks internationally. Further, with the exception of Djibouti (1 suicide attack), Ethiopia (1 suicide attack), and Morocco (10 suicide attacks), these countries with high lethality rates for non-suicide attacks have not experienced any suicide attacks at all. In Morocco, which is the only country for which there is adequate comparative data, the 10.17 deaths per attack for non-suicide attacks is actually double the 5.30 deaths per attack for suicide attacks.

15 South Vietnam has one documented non-suicide terrorist attack, killing 81 people. Barbados also has only two non-suicide attacks, killing 25.33 on average. These cases are omitted because the small number of attacks prevents any meaningful conclusions. 56

Table 7. Top ten countries with the most lethal non-suicide attacks, 1970-2014.

Country N Mean lethality Std. deviation South Sudan 50 24.04 44.74 Rwanda 156 20.73 100.76 Chad 49 14.88 33.84 Djibouti 19 14.16 28.74 Mozambique 252 10.38 33.39 Morocco 23 10.17 19.09 Ethiopia 135 10.14 32.39 Guinea 21 10.05 18.71 Cameroon 93 9.87 25.02 Burundi 400 9.72 29.77

The higher than average lethality rates for non-suicide attacks in these African countries is interesting. In examining the primary attack types of non-suicide attacks in these countries, armed assaults were the most common method of attack in all countries except Morocco and Ethiopia. This indicates that such attacks have proven to be highly lethal in their own country contexts, which may be attributed to limited policing and security infrastructure capable of responding to armed assaults, thereby allowing prolonged attack time and the maximization of fatalities. Further, the most common target type in these countries is private citizens and property, except in Djibouti, Morocco, and

Ethiopia. This provides more evidence that armed assaults against soft targets can prove to be even more lethal than suicide attacks. More case-level analysis would need to be conducted to determine precise causality of higher lethality scores for non-suicide attacks in these countries.

There are two main conclusions one can draw from this comparative analysis of suicide and non-suicide attack lethality rates in various regions and countries of the world.

First, while suicide attacks are more lethal than non-suicide in every region and nearly 57 every country, there is wide variation in the advantages suicide attacks have over non- suicide attacks in terms of lethality. Second, among the top ten countries with the most lethal suicide attacks and the top ten countries with the most lethal non-suicide attacks, the average lethality is identical at 13 killed per attack. This illustrates that both tactical methods are equally as lethal in their most lethal country contexts. These geographic variations are important in advancing the understanding of lethality since they reveal that attacks in certain areas can be more or less lethal than other areas, making it analytically insufficient to discuss attack lethality solely at the global level. Future research may reveal that, in addition to the presence of certain types of terrorist groups, certain characteristics of the countries themselves—such as the effectiveness of police and security forces, counterterrorism tactics and policies, capacities of local communities, etc.—may be associated with variations in suicide and non-suicide attack lethality.

Attack Type

A second useful analysis upon which to judge the tactical effectiveness of suicide attacks relative to non-suicide attacks involves an examination of lethality metrics among different attack types. The GTD codes each incident with up to three attack types, depending upon whether the incident involved a sequence of events with different methods of attack. However, since only one primary attack type is typical for each attack, and when multiple methods are involved they are coded based on a hierarchy rather than the order in which they occurred, this analysis will only examine primary attack type for each incident.

A comparative analysis of mean lethality rates for suicide and non-suicide attacks reveals that every type of suicide attack is deadlier on average than its non-suicide variant. This holds true even with a 5% trimmed mean and even when looking at median lethality rates. Suicide bombings/explosions—which comprise 92.98% of all types of suicide attacks—kill 9.57 people on average compared to just 1.27 people among non- suicide bombings. Following rational choice logic, however, one might expect that terrorist groups would utilize the most lethal types of attack more frequently just as they presumably choose suicide attacks over non-suicide attacks because of their greater lethality rates. This, however, is not the case. Despite the fact bombings are by far the most common type of suicide attacks, they are not even among the top three most lethal types of suicide attacks. Among attack types with at least 10 suicide attacks, hostage incidents involving kidnapping are by far the most lethal at 70.17 deaths per attack followed by armed assaults, which kill 18.06 people per attack. However, both of these most deadly types of attacks occur very infrequently compared to other forms of attacks with just 12 cases of hostage incidents involving kidnapping and 32 cases of armed assault.

Table 8. Lethality rates for attacks by attack type, 1970-2014.

Mean Std. 5% trim. Attack Type Suicide? N lethality deviation mean Median Assassination No 16398 1.27 1.57 1.05 1.00 Yes 185 6.16 7.66 5.08 4.00 Armed Assault No 32135 4.15 13.70 2.46 1.00 Yes 32 18.06 4.73 13.99 8.00 Bombing/Explosion No 61254 1.27 5.56 0.56 0.00 Yes 3491 9.57 15.65 7.19 4.50 Hijacking No 479 1.26 6.81 0.29 0.00 Yes 4 12.00 22.67 10.78 1.00 Hostage Taking No 630 2.50 14.62 0.36 0.00 (Barricade Incident) Yes 21 15.90 18.23 13.70 9.00 Hostage Taking No 6498 1.96 22.27 0.59 0.00 (Kidnapping) Yes 12 70.17 91.23 60.41 33.00 Facility/Infrastructure No 7642 0.42 7.52 0.01 0.00 Attack Yes 5 7.60 7.64 7.28 6.00 Unarmed Assault No 719 0.98 8.80 0.18 0.00 Yes 1 - - - - Unknown No 4280 4.61 14.74 2.66 1.00 Yes 4 5.75 5.48 5.75 5.75

In order to compare cost and benefits of each type of attack, the lethality ratio is calculated for each type of attack. Lower ratios—which indicate that more people are killed in the attack with less perpetrators killed—are ideal for terrorist groups while higher ratios—which indicate that more perpetrators are killed per total people killed—is less ideal, ceteris paribus.16 This analysis reveals that non-suicide attacks offer more advantageous cost-benefit results for assassinations, armed assaults, bombing/explosions, and hostage taking (kidnapping). Suicide attacks appear more advantageous for hijackings, hostage taking (barricade incident), and

16 There may be qualitative differences in these attacks that are not accounted for here. For some attacks, a high ratio may be justifiable due to strategic or symbolic significance of the given target. However, for purposes of this analysis, all attacks are perceived to be equal in terms of the tactical goal of killing the most number of people as possible. This is the logic behind the hypothesis in question. 60 facility/infrastructure attacks. However, given that 83.9% of all attacks are armed assaults, assassinations, or bombing/explosions, it is significant that non-suicide variants of these attacks offer optimal cost-benefit results, despite the fact that suicide attacks kill more people.

Table 9. Lethality ratio by attack type, 1970-2014.

Lethality Attack Type Suicide? ratio Assassination No 0.05 Yes 0.15 Armed Assault No 0.15 Yes 0.20 Bombing/Explosion No 0.07 Yes 0.15 Hijacking No 0.20 Yes 0.06 Hostage Taking No 0.61 (Barricade Incident) Yes 0.19 Hostage Taking No 0.12 (Kidnapping) Yes 0.22 Facility/Infrastructure No 0.21 Attack Yes 0.19 Unarmed Assault No 0.04 Yes - Unknown No 0.43 Yes 0.58

This analysis of lethality among suicide and non-suicide attack types reveals three important findings. First, though suicide variants of all types of attacks kill more people on average than non-suicide variants, they also kill more perpetrators and therefore come at greater costs to the group. Among the three most popular attack types that account for the vast majority of all attacks, non-suicide attacks offer better ratios in terms of the number of perpetrators killed to number of total people killed in the attack. Second, again

61 following the logic that terrorist groups are seeking to maximize the lethality of their attacks, it remains unclear why they do not choose certain attack types more often. For instance, suicide hostage taking attacks—both the barricade and kidnapping variants— are among the most lethal types of suicide attacks, yet are very rare compared to the other types of attacks. One might expect terrorist groups to be aware of the unique advantages to hostage taking attacks and utilize them more frequently, but this does not appear to be the case. Similar to the conclusions drawn from the geographic analysis, this analysis of lethality rates based upon attack type offers further evidence that suicide attacks might not be universally the most tactically effective method.

Target/Victim Type

A third criterion upon which to judge how suicide attacks compare to non-suicide attacks in terms of lethality is target or victim type. The GTD has 22 different categories for this variable, which is meant to capture the general type of target or victim that is attacked. Though the GTD codes for up to three target/victim types per attack, this analysis uses only the primary target/victim type. Similar to how terrorist groups can choose from among a variety of attack types, terrorist groups also generally have the ability to conduct—or at least attempt—attacks against whichever target or victim they choose. Though a group’s strategic objective may guide their tactical target selection, ultimately groups must make tactical decisions that give them their best chance at achieving their ultimate objective.

Table 10. Lethality rates for attacks by target/victim type, 1970-2014.

Std. 5% trim. Target/Victim type Suicide? N Mean Deviation mean Median Abortion Related No 248 0.04 0.21 0.00 0.00 Yes - - - - - Airports & Aircraft No 1154 2.65 18.56 0.26 0.00 Yes 28 9.71 12.85 8.36 4.50 Business No 16069 0.92 5.17 0.37 0.00 Yes 255 11.33 22.37 8.57 6.00 Educational Institution No 3470 0.74 6.44 0.29 0.00 Yes 43 13.29 26.32 8.84 5.00 Food or Water Supply No 240 1.10 4.38 0.32 0.00 Yes - - - - - Government (Diplomatic) No 2948 0.51 2.32 0.20 0.00 Yes 75 11.64 27.38 7.38 5.00 Government (General) No 16797 1.00 5.72 0.53 0.00 Yes 509 8.51 14.34 6.26 4.00 Journalists & Media No 2284 0.49 2.09 0.28 0.00 Yes 14 5.82 5.38 5.25 4.50 Maritime No 260 3.90 20.64 1.34 0.00 Yes 11 3.27 4.17 2.97 1.00 Military No 17419 3.89 16.01 2.18 1.00 Yes 857 8.08 14.58 5.97 4.00 NGO No 747 1.07 3.84 0.55 0.00 Yes 9 4.67 3.42 4.46 4.00 Other No 291 7.47 26.80 3.42 1.00 Yes 11 7.00 4.34 6.72 7.00 Police No 17676 1.91 7.16 1.24 1.00 Yes 837 7.05 9.18 5.63 4.00 Private Citizens & Property No 29770 3.13 12.23 1.69 1.00 Yes 569 15.13 21.90 12.16 7.00 Religious No 3215 2.29 11.44 0.98 0.00 Figures/Institutions Yes 169 18.58 23.27 15.44 9.00 Telecommunication No 821 0.21 1.10 0.04 0.00 Yes 1 - - - - Terrorists/Non-State Militias No 2059 2.50 6.77 1.59 1.00 Yes 119 7.93 11.57 6.19 5.00 Tourists No 385 1.40 4.24 0.75 0.00 Yes 13 27.08 40.50 24.42 7.00 Transportation No 5540 2.11 8.33 0.95 0.00 Yes 110 8.37 8.65 7.40 6.50 Unknown No 2697 1.04 3.07 0.59 0.00 Yes 105 2.13 5.28 1.21 1.00 Utilities No 4599 0.32 4.25 0.00 0.00 Yes 5 3.40 4.56 3.17 2.00 Violent Political Party No 1346 2.04 8.53 1.03 1.00 Yes 15 14.42 17.22 12.97 8.00 63

The mean lethality rates for suicide attacks are greater than non-suicide attacks for every target type, except attacks against maritime targets. The same is also true among 5% trimmed mean and median scores. The most lethal suicide attacks are against tourists (27.08), religious figures/institutions (18.58), and private citizens/property (15.13), all “soft” targets with generally no defensive or offensive wherewithal to capably fend off an attack or protect potential victims. Military targets are the most common among suicide attacks, making up 23.1% of all suicide attacks, followed by police targets, which make up 22.1% of all suicide attacks. This aligns with findings from Berman (2009) that the single best predictor of suicide attacks has to do with the “hardness” of the target, and that terrorist groups use suicide methods against “harder” targets because they are the most difficult method of attack to defend against. They therefore prefer to use less costly tactics on softer targets where they have greater chances of success. However, military targets are eighth most lethal and police targets are tenth most lethal among the various target types, so it does not appear that terrorist groups, even at greater cost, are able to achieve much by way of lethality. This presents an interesting target selection paradox:

Suicide attacks against “soft” targets are far more lethal, yet groups employ suicide tactics far more frequently against “hard” targets. Following a rational model, one would expect that terrorist groups would conduct attacks against targets that offer the highest likelihood of killing the most number of people, but this does not emerge from the data.

An analysis of lethality ratios finds that among the two most common types of targets—police and military—the lethality ratios are the same for both suicide and non- suicide attacks. Suicide attacks against military targets achieve a lethality ratio of 0.25

64 and non-suicide attacks achieve a 0.24 ratio. These two target types represent some of the least advantageous lethality ratios for both suicide and non-suicide attacks alike, yet groups target them with greater frequency than other targets.

This analysis of suicide and non-suicide attacks based upon target type reveals a few key findings. First, though suicide attacks are more lethal than non-suicide attacks across virtually every target category, in most target categories, non-suicide attacks actually offer a more desirable lethality ratio score than suicide attacks. Second, there appear to be inconsistencies in target selection. Military and police targets account for nearly half of all suicide attacks, yet they are far from being the most lethal and kill more perpetrators on average than any other target type. Such attacks generate higher costs and lower benefits than many other types of attacks, yet are conducted with greater frequency. Taken together, these findings challenge the hypothesis that suicide attacks are simply more tactically effective from a lethality standpoint.

Table 11. Lethality ratio by target/victim type, 1970-2014.

Target/Victim type Suicide? Lethality ratio Abortion Related No 0.00 Yes - Airports & Aircraft No 0.10 Yes 0.24 Business No 0.12 Yes 0.15 Educational Institution No 0.05 Yes 0.09 Food or Water Supply No 0.18 Yes - Government (Diplomatic) No 0.29 Yes 0.13 Government (General) No 0.15 Yes 0.18 Journalists & Media No 0.04 Yes 0.22 Maritime No 0.03 Yes 0.44 Military No 0.24 Yes 0.25 NGO No 0.01 Yes 0.48 Other No 0.02 Yes 0.18 Police No 0.20 Yes 0.20 Private Citizens & Property No 0.05 Yes 0.08 Religious No 0.03 Figures/Institutions Yes 0.07 Telecommunication No 0.05 Yes - Terrorists/Non-State No 0.18 Militias Yes 0.14 Tourists No 0.09 Yes 0.05 Transportation No 0.03 Yes 0.12 Unknown No 0.35 Yes 0.53 Utilities No 0.41 Yes 0.29 Violent Political Party No 0.06 Yes 0.07 66

Suboptimal Nature of Suicide Attacks

Under the assumption that terrorist groups select tactics in part based on their high lethality rates, and that they seek to minimize the costs incurred to their group, the data illustrate that suicide attacks remain a suboptimal tactic. Other tactics—such as the use of small arms and IEDs—have proven to be more fail-safe, require less investment in training and acquisition costs, and can almost guarantee multiple casualties at a minimum. Attacks involving firearms are more likely to be lethal than bombings since they typically are only employed for the sole purpose of causing human casualties whereas bombings could be used to cause property damage. In the United States alone between

1970 and 2014, 4% of terrorist attacks not involving firearms were lethal while 40% of attacks involving firearms were lethal. In the rest of the world, 29% of attacks not involving firearms were lethal while 70% of attacks that involved firearms were lethal (Miller 2015).

Further, the use of small arms can offer terrorists a number of unique tactical advantages, including the ability to repel the response from law enforcement personnel and select new targets as the attack commences. Small arms attacks are “almost guaranteed to have lethal potential” while a self-made bomb may fail or even kill its maker(s) while being assembled (Gartenstein-Ross and Trombly 2012: 21-22). Small arms attacks arguably offer a greater opportunity to maximize lethality and reduce costs—both financially and in terms of human capital—than bombings, explosions, and other common suicide tactics.

Secondly, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan proved that IED tactics—particularly roadside IEDs—can produce high lethality rates, even against hardened targets of the world’s most advanced military. The U.S. and coalition forces in both theaters

67 experienced heavy losses as a result of IEDs, which came in a variety of forms to include roadside IEDs, vehicle-borne IEDs (VBIEDs), suicide IEDs, etc. Roadside IEDs—which can be detonated remotely from an observer or can be victim-initiated—killed 3,589 U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and wounded another 32,556 (Zoroya 2014). From the perspective of terrorist groups operating in both countries, the roadside IED proved to be a highly lethal and effective weapon and involved minimal risk and cost to their operatives.

This would appear to offer a more advantageous lethality ratio to the group, and yet it remains a tactic not widely utilized outside of the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters.

Anecdotally, there have been a number of cases where suicide attacks have failed precisely because the attacker was determined to commit suicide and where, had the attackers used a different tactic, they would have had a higher likelihood of success. The multiple coordinated assaults in Paris, France in November 2015 provide interesting comparative data within a single group of attacks. The suicide explosions that night were the least lethal of all the attacks. In the attack outside the Stade de France, a man detonated his explosive belt during a security check, killing only himself and one other.

Another attacker later in the evening detonated a suicide bomb at the restaurant Le

Comptoir Voltaire, killing himself and injuring one other. In the Bataclan concert hall, the attackers killed 80 people using Kalashnikov rifles before detonating suicide vests when police stormed the theater, killing only themselves. One of the leaders of the attack, Salah

Abdeslam, also reportedly backed out from conducting a suicide attack at the stadium, which could have caused additional fatalities. In all, it was the use of small arms that night that killed the majority of the victims. Had they continued using guns to slaughter their

68 victims, the total number of people killed that evening would likely have been much higher.

Similarly, in February 2016, an al-Shabaab operative detonated a suicide bomb onboard a Somali passenger plane, managing to only kill himself after being sucked out of the hole blown into the fuselage. The plane was then able to safely make an emergency landing.

Other well-known examples include a failed Islamic State suicide bomber in Yemen in

2015 who managed to tear himself in half after his explosives detonated prematurely, the failed suicide attack on Christmas Day in 2009 when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab—the

“Underwear Bomber”—failed to detonate explosives hidden in his underwear onboard a transatlantic flight, a failed suicide attack and assassination attempt on a Saudi prince in

2009 that killed only the attacker, and many more. In these cases, the fact the perpetrators chose suicide tactics severely limited or precluded them from actually maximizing lethality or conducting a successful attack at all.

Conclusion and Discussion

In following the logical corollaries to the hypothesis that terrorist groups utilize suicide tactics because they are more lethal than non-suicide tactics, one might expect to witness certain behavior among terrorist groups and characteristics of their attacks that are consistent with this underlying logic. For instance, one might expect groups to choose methods of attack that are more lethal rather than less lethal. They might also seek to reduce costs to their own group while achieving the greatest benefits. Again, these expectations are based on an underlying assumption in the hypothesis that assumes that terrorist group leaders have knowledge of the various advantages and disadvantages

69 associated with the various tactical options available to them. Just as they supposedly know that suicide attacks kill more people, so too must they know that one type of suicide attack kills more than another type of suicide attack, or that non-suicide attacks might offer certain tactical advantages in various scenarios.

However, once one delves deeper into the data, there are sufficient logical inconsistencies to at least merit questioning the hypothesis set forth, that groups choose suicide tactics because they are more lethal. A number of paradoxes emerge that provide preliminary evidence that there is more to how terrorist groups select targets and attack methods than simply a calculation of expected lethality. There is no doubt that on some key metrics suicide attacks offer significant tactical advantages to terrorist groups in terms of killing the most number of people. They kill more people on average overall, across geographic regions, across different attack types, and across different target types.

However, non-suicide attacks can be equally as lethal, as was demonstrated in the analysis of countries with the most lethal non-suicide attacks. Further, suicide attacks may kill more people on average, but also result in more deaths of perpetrators which, when weighed against the number of total people killed, make suicide tactics less appealing from a purely quantitative cost-benefit perspective. Suicide attacks, even with some unique advantages, remain suboptimal from a terrorist group leader perspective.

Dying for Attention: Suicide Attacks and the Media

In July 1985, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, speaking before the

American Bar Association a month after the Trans World Airline hijacking by members of

Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, urged news organizations to voluntarily restrict reporting that could assist terrorists. She called for a “voluntary code of conduct” among the media to not publicize anything that “could assist the terrorists’ morale or their cause.” Doing so would “starve the terrorist…of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend” (Apple, Jr.

1985).

While her suggestion might be viewed as inconsistent with the values of a modern liberal democracy and a free press, it appropriately highlights the unique relationship between the media and terrorism. Terrorist attacks are sensational events designed to capture the attention of the media in order to promote a certain political, social, or religious cause. Terrorist groups are aware that their attacks will attract the attention of media organizations, at least in liberal democratic countries, and media organizations know that the compelling stories created by terrorist attacks can drive readership, clicks, and sales.

The media is a critical link between the terrorist group and the government or society they are seeking to influence or coerce. Just as other organizations—whether international corporations, non-profits, or small businesses—seek free or “earned” media for promotional and marketing purposes, so too do terrorist groups seek to maximize their earned media coverage. Media coverage is indeed the oxygen on which they depend.

How, then, can terrorist groups maximize their media coverage in what has become an increasingly competitive worldwide marketplace of terror?

According to the common narrative found in the terrorism literature today, terrorist groups use suicide tactics at least in part because they guarantee media coverage of the attack due to their uniquely high levels of gore and intrigue. This media exposure, so the narrative goes, can at least partially justify the high costs associated with the attack, particularly the loss of a terrorist operative in whom the group has invested resources both in terms of recruitment and training.17 If guaranteeing the most widespread coverage of an attack means having to lose a trained operative and loyal group member, then that is simply an incidental cost in the quest to maximize the tactical and strategic effects of the attack.

Though the fact that suicide attacks elicit a disproportionally large media response is often cited as a unique advantage of using suicide tactics (Hoffman 2003: 40;

Moghadam 2008/2009; Hoffman and McCormick 2004; Lewis 2007; Roger 2013; Jetter

2014; Schweitzer 2007), there is neither robust empirical evidence to support this claim nor compelling theoretical connections between whether an attack involves the suicide of the perpetrator and its coverage in the media. It is hard to imagine a news editor deliberately providing more coverage to a suicide attack based purely on that attack attribute alone. Other variables may come into play to determine whether an attack is covered and to what extent it is covered, such as where the attack took place, whether the attack was part of an ongoing conflict, how many people were injured or killed,

17 The recruitment, training, and vetting process can vary depending upon the supply of volunteers for suicide missions. Groups can become more or less selective in their recruits depending both upon supply of volunteers and the criticality or immediacy of a tactical operation. Therefore, not all suicide operatives are equal in terms of the amount of time and resources invested into them. See Schweitzer (2007: 671).

72 whether it targeted civilians, etc. This study examines which attributes of a terrorist attack result in greater amounts of media coverage in terms of both words per article and article placement. It contributes to the literature a greater understanding of what characteristics of terrorist attacks drive coverage, not in terms of the attributes of each attack itself, which may only become clear days or weeks after the attack, but in terms of the attributes of the attack as reported.

The study proceeds in five sections. First, the chapter provides a review of existing research on the relationship between terrorism and the media. Second, the chapter discusses the purportedly unique advantage suicide attacks offer a terrorist organization in terms of media coverage based on existing theory. Third, the study explores how different types of suicide and non-suicide attacks are covered in The New York Times

(NYT), including the lethality of the attack, type of attack, target of the attack, location of the attack, and whether a group claimed credit for the attack. This is measured by examining words per article (WPA) and page placement in print publication. Fourth, the chapter explores the levels of press freedom in countries within which the majority of suicide attacks take place using data from Reporters Without Borders. Lastly, the chapter concludes with a discussion regarding the implications and limitations of this research, as well as areas of future inquiry. The study finds that, overall, suicide attacks do not receive a significant, discernible quantitative advantage over non-suicide attacks when it comes to media coverage. This finding holds true under a variety of different confounding conditions. Further, the study finds that other attack characteristics, particularly the

73 novelty of the tactic utilized in the attack, may provide groups better chances of maximizing coverage in the media.

Terrorism and the Media

Much like other organizations, terrorist groups crave publicity not as an end unto itself, but as a means to achieve certain tactical or strategic effects (Weimann 2004;

Crenshaw 2011; Surette, Hansen, and Noble 2009: 360; Campos and Gessebner 2013;

Shoshani and Slone 2008; Ganor 2005: 229). Through the media, terrorist groups can communicate a set of political, social, or religious demands to an audience and convey the high costs of noncompliance with these demands. By resorting to terrorist tactics, organizations are able to focus public attention on their particular group or cause despite their lack of political legitimacy in the international system. Terrorist groups are able to achieve sustained national and international media coverage while other groups of similar capacities in terms of financing and personnel struggle to achieve even a fraction of this publicity. The media coverage terrorist groups receive is, according to Melnik and Eldor

(2010: 972), “of the same order of magnitude as the advertising budgets of some of the world’s largest corporations,” making it a relatively small investment for terrorist groups with large returns. Terrorist organizations thus seem to attract media attention that is vastly disproportionate to their organizational capacity.

The ability to indirectly target a wider population or audience through an attack is a distinguishing characteristic of terrorism that separates it from other acts of violence.

Unlike acts of criminal violence, terrorism intends to not only harm the immediate victim(s)

74 of the attack, but also to psychologically affect the broader target audience; that is, the victim of the violence and the audience that the terrorists are trying to influence are not the same (Richardson 2006; Hoffman 2006; Krueger and Maleckova 2010; Nacos 2007;

Surette, Hansen, and Noble 2009; Ganor 2005). Without media coverage of their attacks, terrorist groups are unable to victimize a broader audience, thereby reducing the significance of their attack and limiting its effects to only the immediate victims (Hoffman

2006: 174). Quite simply, according to Byman (2015), “Terrorism doesn’t work if no one is watching.” The media is a “magnifying glass that can intensify the impact of the attack”

(Ganor 2005: 236). Before modern mass-communication, Surette, Hansen, and Noble

(2009) note that terrorist groups were primarily concerned with reaching local audiences with only the hope that they would have an effect on a more distant audience. Today, however, it is difficult to imagine terrorist groups achieving their goals without the media

(Melnick and Eldor 2010). Technological developments such as the Internet, easy access to video production/duplication equipment, and the rise of private television stations owned by terrorist groups themselves have all increased the control terrorists can exert on their media messaging (Hoffman 2006: 201).

At its base, Crenshaw (1981: 386) argues, terrorism is designed to gain attention, making publicity an important goal of terrorist groups so that they can promote their agenda and achieve strategic effects. This “process” goal (Cronin 2009) of publicity can be disaggregated into separate sub-goals terrorist groups hope to achieve through publicity. There are primarily four media-centered goals of terrorists, according to Nacos

(2007: 20). First, they want the attention and awareness of audiences, including the

75 targeted audience but also other audiences. Second, they want recognition of their motives, which can be achieved when the target audience begins to ask why the terrorists conducted the attack. Third, terrorist groups seek the respect and sympathy from those on whose behalf they claim to be acting. Lastly, terrorists want to attain a quasi-legitimate status and be treated similarly to other more legitimate political actors. Terrorist groups can also use the media to suggest future potential targets, improve the morale of their supporters, and shift public opinions towards governments and institutions to the advantage of the terrorist group (Surette, Hansen, and Noble 2009: 361). Therefore, groups do not simply seek coverage of their attacks. Rather, they have multi-layered goals with respect to the media that ideally will work in concert to further the strategic outcomes of the organization. In sum, the news media can become the “propaganda machine” of a terrorist ideology, according to Sageman (2008: 122).

Scholars have also examined the effects of consuming the media’s coverage of terrorism. For instance, one study utilizing a survey methodology finds that the frequency of exposure to news related to terrorism is positively associated with greater fear for one’s family, a greater personal perception of the risk of terrorism, and a greater perception of risk of terrorism to others. This fear can then manifest itself economically with reduction in travel and tourism, it can generate greater public support for counterterrorism policies that encroach on civil liberties, and can have individual psychological effects, such as depression and anxiety (Nellis and Savage 2012). On the first effect, one study finds that the economic damage caused by terrorism increases monotonically with the amount of media coverage received (Melnick and Eldor 2010). Further, in a meta-analysis of 23

76 studies on media coverage of terrorism and posttraumatic stress (PTS), another study by

Houston (2009) finds a significant effect size for the consumption of media coverage related to terrorism and PTS. There is also empirical support for the effects of broadcasts about terrorism on anxiety, anger, stereotypes, and perceptions of the enemy (Shoshani and Slone 2008). Therefore, there is evidence that the media’s coverage of terrorism has measurable effects on people and societies.

Another major area of inquiry for the relationship between terrorism and the media is whether the media’s coverage of terrorism actually promotes terrorism because terrorist groups know, based on previous behavior of the media, that their actions will gain similar coverage, thereby perpetuating the phenomenon itself. The media and terrorist groups enjoy a symbiotic relationship in which both stand to gain something: the media gets compelling news stories that will drive readership and terrorist groups can reach audiences through the media coverage (Rohner and Frey 2007; Ganor 2005; Shoshani and Slone 2008; Wilkinson 1997; Iqbal 2015). A study by Rohner and Frey (2007) finds that media attention and terrorism do in fact mutually Granger cause each other, though

Nelson and Scott (1992) earlier found no evidence that media coverage encourages or motivates more acts of terrorism. While the media and terrorist groups may have a symbiotic relationship, the amount of media coverage terrorist groups can receive is finite, thereby making terrorist groups compete for media attention with other non-terrorism news but also with news about other terrorist attacks. Therefore, Pfeiffer (2012) argues, the media can have a stabilizing effect on terrorism because there is lower marginal utility of an individual attack due to the large number of attacks. Further, an analysis by

Hoffman, et al (2010) of reporting in The Washington Post and USA Today finds that national newspapers may not experience as much pressure from a business perspective to report on acts of terrorism as is often implied under the symbiotic relationship model.

In fact, reports on counterterrorism actually overshadow reports on terrorism.

Terrorist groups appear to have developed a degree of savvy when it comes to the media. Terrorism is a form of costly signaling through which groups can persuade an audience by demonstrating their ability to impose certain costs while also demonstrating their commitment to their cause (Kydd and Walter 2006). News coverage may impact different components of an attack, including the target, the duration, the timing, and the method of attack chosen (Ganor 2005), and terrorists apparently adapt their strategies depending upon media behavior (Rohner and Frey 2007). For instance, an analysis by

Iqbal (2015) finds that the attacks in Mumbai, India in November 2008 were designed to maximize media coverage due the location of the targets and the nature in which the attacks were carried out.

As media coverage is a critical component of a terrorist group’s strategy, one might expect groups to behave in a manner that would maximize the media coverage they receive. Similar to other organizations that aim to increase their media exposure, terrorist groups should be aware of what types of attacks are more likely to achieve the most coverage, and avoid attacks that tend to be covered less. This aligns with the strategic model of terrorism studies, in which terrorist groups are viewed as rational actors with stable political preferences who ultimately utilize terrorist tactics because they believe the expected benefits of these tactics to be greater than the expected benefits of using other

78 tactics or strategies (Abrahms 2008; Crenshaw 1998; McCormick 2003). There are both costs and benefits when an organization decides to begin employing terrorist tactics. One such benefit is that it attracts the attention of the public mind, thereby putting “the issue of political change on the public agenda” (Crenshaw 1998: 17). Groups use terrorism as a strategy because of the assured coverage they will receive, particularly when contrasted against the lower likelihood of coverage if they were to utilize less extreme tactics such as non-violent protests or demonstrations, which, in their view, may be less likely of effecting meaningful change.18

Suicide Terrorism and the Media

Following the strategic model, terrorist groups use suicide tactics because of the unique advantages associated with them, providing the group a greater chance of achieving their political or strategic objectives. Tactical advantages are of critical importance to groups using suicide operations (Moghadam 2008: 259). Suicide attacks may come at greater costs to an organization, especially in terms of human capital, but such costs can be justified from a rational choice perspective because they provide benefits not otherwise achieved through non-suicide tactics, at least according to the common narrative. Though the assertion that the media tends to cover suicide attacks more than non-suicide attacks is one such supposed advantage, there are others as well that scholars often cite as unique benefits. Among these supposed advantages is their

18 Some scholars, on the contrary, contend that nonviolent resistance methods are actually more likely to achieve organizational strategic goals than violent methods. See, for example, Stephan and Chenoweth (2008). 79 propensity to be more lethal than non-suicide attacks (Hoffman and McCormick 2004;

Hoffman 2003; Alakoc 2015; Moghadam 2008/2009; Santifort-Jordan and Sandler 2014), their ability to instill more fear in a target population than non-suicide attacks (Kydd and

Walter 2006; Burnham 2011; Atran 2004, 2006; Hoffman 2003; Moghadam 2008), and their utility in increasing intragroup solidarity (Moghadam 2008; Abrahms 2008; Crenshaw

1981; Shimizu 2011). This study seeks to empirically evaluate one of the most commonly- cited claims, that terrorist groups enjoy more advantageous media coverage as a result of using suicide tactics compared to the coverage they receive when using non-suicide tactics, thereby providing crucial justification for their use.

The terrorist group leader must balance a number of objectives when deciding which tactics to employ. Such objectives may include maximizing the lethality of the attack, striking a high-value or symbolic target, instilling the greatest amount of fear in the target population so as to increase the chances of political coercion, and others. Without the media, none of these outcomes can be achieved to the greatest effect. Even killing a large number of people or attacking a symbolic target is not as devastating if there is not a wider audience that is aware of it and reacts to it.19 The media is thus the critical communications link between a terrorist group and the audience the group is attempting to coerce, and terrorist groups must always be thinking about maximizing media coverage.

19 In today’s modern media environment, news outlets are no longer the sole or primary sources of information. Social media, blogs, and other outlets have proven to be equally as effective or, in some cases more effective, at disseminating information. Nevertheless, major news outlets remain the authoritative sources for information, and from a terrorist group perspective, are the ideal outlets with which to disseminate information about their group.

So, do terrorist groups use suicide tactics as a means to maximize media coverage, providing the group an opportunity to convey their demands to the target audience and communicate the consequences of noncompliance with their demands?

Scholars have tended to agree that suicide tactics do offer a distinct advantage in that they receive more coverage than non-suicide attacks. The fact suicide attacks “guarantee media coverage” has been cited as a main reason why the tactic has proliferated

(Hoffman 2003). It has also been argued that suicide attacks are, by their nature, prone to media coverage (Schweitzer 2007: 671), that they are newsworthy in their own right

(Hoffman and McCormick 2004: 249), that the use of suicide attacks “guarantees disproportionate media coverage” (Palmer 2007: 292), and that that they enjoy

“extraordinarily high attention,” even more than non-suicide operations, thereby drawing attention to a terrorist group’s cause (Moghadam 2008: 31). The attractiveness of suicide bombings therefore is due in part to the media exposure they receive (Lewis 2007).

According to Roger (2013), suicide bombings are not merely a tactic designed to kill, but are designed to be highly symbolic tools of political communication.

Despite the oft-cited claim in the literature that suicide attacks appear justifiable, or indeed rational, from a terrorist group leader perspective due to the disproportionately large amount of media attention they enjoy, the assertion has not been tested in any robust way. This study is the first to examine how terrorist attacks are covered in the

81 media, particularly how coverage of non-suicide attacks compares to coverage of suicide attacks using measures of article length and prominence.20

Research design

Based upon assertions and conclusions in the literature, the main hypothesis that emerges and that this study addresses is: Terrorist groups use suicide tactics in part because they generate more advantageous media coverage than non-suicide attacks.

Consistent with the strategic model of terrorism studies and a rational choice paradigm, this hypothesis assumes that terrorist groups are cognizant of this advantage associated with suicide attacks and thus utilize the tactic more frequently because of this advantage.

This hypothesis is tested under a variety of confounding conditions that could impact how an attack is covered in the media. First, the study measures the coverage received for suicide and non-suicide attacks in relation to the lethality of the attack reported. Second, coverage is measured for different types of suicide and non-suicide tactics to determine

20 See Jetter (2014). This study is one of the few actual empirical investigations into the relationship between suicide attacks and media coverage. Jetter finds that suicide missions do receive more coverage, which he argues could explain the popularity of suicide tactics among groups. Jetter proxies media attention by using the relative change in the number of daily articles in the New York Times mentioning the attacked country the day before the attack compared to the day after the attack. However, there are methodological flaws with Jetter’s analysis that call into question whether the findings are as robust as they purport to be. First, by using the change in the number of articles that mention the attacked country before the attack and then after the attack, he measures only numbers of articles rather than the extent to which the article covers the attack, measurable by number of words used in the article. While the number of articles is one measure, it does not capture the quality of coverage. According to this methodology, articles with 100 words are counted as the same as articles with 1,000 words. Second, his analysis relies upon data from the GTD for attack attributes rather than examining attributes of the attack as reported in the article. There could be important disparities in how an attack was reported initially and what details about the attack emerged days or weeks later. One can only reach conclusions on how the media covers terrorist attacks based on the knowledge of the attack available at the time of reporting. The GTD, however, contains conclusive details about the attack that, in some cases, may emerge well after initial reports.

82 whether certain tactics receive more advantageous coverage. Third, reports on suicide and non-suicide attacks on various types of targets is analyzed to determine whether civilian or selective (i.e. government or security personnel) targeting results in more coverage for each. Fourth, the effects of geographic location of both suicide and non- suicide attacks are examined. Lastly, articles on attacks are measured based on whether a group claimed credit for the attack, as reported in the article. In addition, this study examines the media environments within which most suicide attacks take place to determine whether groups are using the tactic more or less within restrictive or liberal media marketplaces.

In order to evaluate whether suicide attacks attain any measurable advantage over non-suicide attacks in terms of quantity and prominence of media coverage, this study involved coding all articles in the NYT from 2006-2016 that mention “terrorism” and/or

“terrorist(s),” as identified through LexisNexis. The NYT has previously been used in studies related to media coverage, including of terrorism in particular (Nelson and Scott

1992; Jetter 2014, 2017; Scott 2001; Rohner and Frey 2007), and is a common proxy used in measuring media coverage in the United States.21 In all, LexisNexis returned

33,587 entries from the NYT over the period in question. The entries fell into a number of article-type categories, including book reviews, editorials, reporting on political issues dealing with terrorism, proposed counterterrorism legislation or policies, effects of

21 Admittedly, in today’s media environment, there are many ways one may measure media coverage of terrorist attacks. This could include the number of minutes devoted to coverage of a particular attack on network and/or cable news, the prominence and longevity of articles on news websites’ homepages, etc. Though the NYT is a standard in the literature on media coverage of terrorism, the author acknowledges there may be other ways to measure the same phenomenon.

83 previous attacks, and continuing investigations into past attacks. A portion of the articles had nothing substantively do to at all with terrorism. In total, just 710 of the returned entries—or 2.11% of the entries reviewed—were assessed to be articles that reported on an actual terrorist-related attack. Of these articles, 62.7% reported on non-suicide attacks and 37.3% reported on attacks that were either confirmed to have been a suicide attack or were suspected to have been a suicide attack.

Each returned entry was reviewed in order to identify those articles that dealt solely with the reporting of an actual terrorism-related event. These articles reported on the facts of an attack, including where and when the attack took place, how many people were killed and injured, whether a group claimed responsibility, etc. Since this study is concerned with determining whether suicide attacks gain greater coverage in the media, articles not dealing with an actual attack are outside the control of a terrorist organization and therefore not meaningful when evaluating levels of coverage of events. Though groups may gain media attention for other reasons, such as claiming credit for an attack after the fact, issuing a threat of an attack, or releasing a video, such actions lie outside the scope of this study. Similarly, all articles pertaining to investigations into an attack, legal proceedings following an attack, arrests of individuals suspected of being involved in a terrorist act or plot, social or political effects of an attack, etc. were omitted from this analysis since such articles are not reporting on the actual attack itself but rather the various impacts of the attack about which the perpetrator has little control. Each identified article was then coded based on a number of criteria to include basic article information

(date of publication, number of words in the article, page number on which the article

84 appeared, etc.) and information pertaining to the attack(s) reported (the country the attack took place, the number of deaths and injuries reported, type of attack, target of attack, whether a group claimed responsibility, etc.)

Importantly, each article was also coded for whether the attack in question was a suicide attack. This was based on the reporting in the article only and not on any other knowledge of the attack. If there was no mention in the article that the attack involved the suicide of the perpetrator(s) of the attack, then it was coded as a non-suicide attack. If the article mentioned that the attack was a suicide attack, a suspected suicide attack, or if a suicide attack was reported as having been part of the attack in question (i.e. other methods of attack were used in addition to suicide tactics), then the article was coded as a suicide attack.

The dependent variables of greatest importance for this study included the number of words in the article and the page number on which the article appeared. The words per article (WPA) variable is one proxy for the importance the NYT editorial staff apply to the event in question, assuming that articles of greater length are of greater importance or significance, at least relative to other news that day. The page number variable is a second proxy for importance that measures the prominence of the article, assuming that events deemed more important are likely to appear closer to the front of the publication rather than the end. From a terrorist group’s perspective, or any other group whose objective is to maximize media coverage, a longer-than-average article placed close to the front of the publication is optimal.

Further, this study utilizes the World Press Freedom Index from Reporters Without

Borders (RSF) to examine the media environments in which suicide attacks take place.

The Index provides a score for each country that captures various characteristics of the media environment. This data is matched with data on suicide attacks from the GTD to examine correlational relationships between a country’s media environment and the number of suicide attacks in that country.

Results Overall Articles reporting on suicide attacks (729.22 WPA) are virtually the same length, on average, as non-suicide attacks (709.49 WPA), a difference of just 19.73 words which equates to a 2.78% advantage. Similarly, median values are very similar for both types of articles with suicide attacks at 667.00 WPA and non-suicide attacks at 635.00 WPA, a difference of just 32 words. Both types of attack are given approximately similar prominence in NYT print publications. Reports on non-suicide attacks, on average, fall on page 7.54 while suicide attacks fall on page 7.45. When examining overall data, there does not appear to be any indication that suicide attacks receive significantly more advantageous coverage than non-suicide attacks, either in terms of article length or in prominence.

Table 12. Words per article and page number placement of articles.

N Mean Std. Min Max Median deviation words suicide 265 729.22 316.22 103 1688 667.00 non-suicide 445 709.49 363.60 40 2431 635.00 page# suicide 258 7.45 4.52 1 24 7.00 non-suicide 415 7.54 4.45 1 40 8.00

When excluding attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan—which account for 27.0% of the articles in the dataset, the results change and non-suicide attacks achieve slightly more favorable coverage. Articles reporting on non-suicide attacks in other countries are longer on average (702.14 WPA) than suicide attacks (682.72 WPA) and featured slightly more prominently (7.33) than non-suicide attacks (7.68). This may be attributable to the fact that articles reporting on attacks in both countries tended to report on multiple attacks, were part of broader campaigns of violence or attacks, or were otherwise intertwined with political and international issues that required more explanation and context in the article.

Further, since 2006, articles reporting on both types of attacks have been relatively similar in terms of length and prominence. Articles reporting on both types of attacks have become moderately more prominent in the NYT, though they have achieved relatively similar WPA. Importantly, articles reporting on suicide attacks have not maintained significant advantages over non-suicide attacks for any sizable period since 2006, at least in terms of WPA and prominence (see Figures 3 and 4 below).

Figure 3. Average words per article over time.

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Figure 4. Average page placement over time.

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However, theory dictates that a number of other attack attributes may explain variation in coverage and prominence, including lethality of the attack, the type of attack, the target of the attack, the region in which the attack took place, and whether a group claimed credit for the attack or was suspected of having carried out the attack.

Lethality

Schweitzer (2000) hypothesized that the highly lethal nature of suicide attacks drives more media attention when compared to non-suicide attacks. Following this reasoning, the fact that an attack involved the suicide of the attacker is secondary to the fact that an attack was highly lethal. However, if it is the lethality of the attack that can account for more media coverage, then whether the reported attack involved a suicide operation should not be a necessary condition to achieve more coverage. Non-suicide attacks of comparable lethality could earn the same media.

The analysis reveals that the average number of deaths reported in an article about a suicide attack is 26.44, whereas for non-suicide attacks the average number of deaths reported is almost half that at 16.01.22 Non-suicide attacks would appear to have a lower barrier of entry to gain coverage than suicide attacks, at least in terms of how many people must be killed. It’s possible suicide attacks generate coverage because the attacks are highly lethal; however, non-suicide attacks also generate more coverage, on average,

22 Again, the deaths reported in the article is neither the final death count from the attack(s) in all instances, nor always confirmed. Also, when a range was provided for the death count, only the minimum number was used for coding purposes. 89 and are less lethal. A terrorist group, therefore, is capable of achieving the same goals vis a vis the media by using less costly tactics and even killing less people in the attacks.

Table 13. Deaths reported in article covering attack.

N Mean Std. deviation suicide 263 26.44 29.41 non-suicide 445 16.01 29.44

To explore whether the lethality of an attack, at least as reported in the article, is tied to WPA and prominence, bivariate correlations are calculated for articles that report on both types of attacks, and then for non-suicide and suicide attacks separately.

Table 14. Correlational relationship for lethality and article length.

Type of attack(s) reported in Pearson article Correlation Sig. (2-tailed) N suicide and non-suicide .294* .000 708 suicide .348* .000 263 non-suicide .268* .000 445 * Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level, (2-tailed).

Across articles reporting on both suicide and non-suicide attacks, there is only a low correlation (.294) between deaths reported in the article and the corresponding WPA.

This relationship is even weaker among non-suicide attacks (r=.268), indicating that there is very little positive correlation between the number of deaths reported in a non-suicide attack and the WPA for its associated article. Among articles reporting on suicide attacks, however, there is a stronger correlation between number of deaths in the attack and the

WPA for associated articles reporting on that attack. The r value for this correlational relationship is .348, meaning that suicide attacks that are more highly lethal are more highly correlated with article length.

Theory also dictates that articles reporting on more highly lethal attacks would achieve greater prominence, measured by the page number on which the article appeared in the NYT. In this instance, a strongly negative correlation would be expected; that is, articles reporting on more highly lethal attacks are more likely to appear closer to the front of the print publication.

As expected, this relationship holds in the data, but with only low correlational values, suggesting only a mild relationship between lethality and prominence. As with article length, this relationship is accentuated among suicide attacks. Articles reporting on more highly lethal suicide attacks are more likely to be placed closer to the front of the publication.

Table 15. Correlational relationship for lethality and page number.

Type of attack(s) reported in Pearson article Correlation Sig. (2-tailed) N suicide and non-suicide -.214* .000 671 suicide -.259* .000 256 non-suicide -.190* .000 415 * Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level, (2-tailed).

The findings from this analysis of lethality and media coverage validates existing conclusions in the literature that casualties of an attack do not have an impact on media coverage (Jetter 2014). There are only slight correlations between the lethality of an attack and both the length of the article that reports on the attack and the page placement of the article in the NYT. This correlation, however, is stronger among suicide attacks than non-suicide attacks. Suicide attacks that are more lethal will receive more coverage and achieve more favorable article placement. Non-suicide attacks that are covered, on average, are less lethal than suicide attacks. Therefore, there is no evidence from this

91 analysis to demonstrate that the highly lethal nature of suicide attacks can account for more favorable coverage of an attack than non-suicide attacks. Non-suicide attacks can achieve more coverage for a terrorist group without being highly lethal whereas suicide attacks must be lethal in order to achieve favorable coverage. From the perspective of a terrorist group leader, non-suicide attacks would appear to offer a more favorable balance between costs and benefits, at least in terms of coverage in the media.

Type of attack

A second factor that could impact media coverage of a terrorist attack is the type of attack used in either the non-suicide or suicide operation. Iqbal (2015), for instance, finds that the coordinated attacks in Mumbai, India in November 2008 were designed to maximize media coverage at least in part due to the tactics used, which included hostage taking, shooting, and bombing. Terrorist groups are faced with the challenging task of creating innovative tactics in order to avoid “diminishing novelty,” according to Gill, et al

(2013), which would reduce the impact of the attacks, including in the media. Suicide attacks largely involve bombings, which can be a highly dramatic and sensational method of attack. Bombings are generally indiscriminate in nature, can generate high casualties, and cause widespread destruction. In this analysis, every suicide attack reported involved a bombing and, in some cases, involved other methods of attack in addition.

Overall, among articles that reported on suicide and non-suicide attacks, bombings were the most common method of attack yet had the lowest WPA (700.18) and second worst page placement (7.52). Further, articles that reported on suicide bombings attained

92 the second worst media coverage scores of all types of attacks, though did achieve more favorable scores than non-suicide bombings.

Table 16. Words per article by attack type.

Suicide and non-suicide Suicide Non-suicide

Mean N Std Dev Mean N Std Dev Mean N Std Dev Bombing/ 700.18 549 329.55 728.17 264 316.36 674.26 285 339.82 explosion Shooting/ 810.92 197 418.51 804.90 42 371.16 812.55 155 431.55 guns Stabbing/ 752.80 41 293.98 - - - 752.80 41 293.98 knife Hostage 757.18 28 382.09 866.67 3 398.58 744.04 25 386.43 taking Vehicular 907.64 11 338.04 - - - 907.64 11 338.04

Table 17. Page placement by attack type.

Suicide and non-suicide Suicide Non-suicide

Mean N Std Dev Mean N Std Dev Mean N Std Dev Bombing/ 7.52 522 4.43 7.45 257 4.53 7.58 265 4.33 explosion Shooting/ 7.01 188 5.33 6.05 40 4.52 7.27 148 5.52 guns Stabbing/ 7.84 37 3.93 - - - 7.84 37 3.93 knife Hostage 6.74 27 4.90 4.33 3 5.77 7.04 24 4.84 taking Vehicular 4.91 11 3.45 - - - 4.91 11 3.45

Though only 11 articles in the sample reported on attacks that involved vehicles

(such as ramming attacks), all 11 were longer on average than articles on any other type of attack, and were also featured more prominently than any other type of attack. None of the attacks reported that involved a vehicle ramming incident involved the suicide of the perpetrator in the course of that attack, and even in attacks that had very low death

93 and injury counts, still achieved higher than average coverage. These vehicular attacks likely involved less operational planning and sophistication in terms of training, financing, and procurement of supplies than bombings and shootings, yet were able to achieve far more favorable coverage in the NYT, most likely to their novelty. Suicide bombings, conversely, involve high costs in terms of planning, training, equipping, and human capital, yet earn only poor media coverage scores compared to other available tactics.

The fact that vehicular attacks, along with hostage taking attacks, were the least frequently reported attacks but the most advantageously reported attacks to a terrorist group perhaps provides further evidence to the notion that terrorist groups must innovate in order to maintain relevancy and, ultimately, tactical effectiveness. If media coverage is a goal of a terrorist organization, this data shows that it would be better off employing a less common method of attack, even one that has low costs, than using suicide bombs.

Target

A third factor that could affect how the NYT covers a terrorist attack is the target of the attack, either a civilian or official (i.e. government or military) target. An increasingly growing body of research has concluded that targeting civilians is strategically ineffective for terrorist groups (Abrahms 2006b, 2012, 2013; Berrebi and Klor 2008; Getmansky and

Zeitzoff 2014; Kydd and Walter 2002; Cronin 2009; Jones and Libicki 2008). However, just under two-thirds of the articles (61.55%) reported on attacks against civilian targets,

38.90% of which name a group as being responsible for the attack either due to a group claiming credit for the attack or due to strong suspicion a certain group was behind the

94 attack. Whether media attention for attacks against civilians is in the best strategic interests of the group is a question that is not addressed in this research.23 Rather, the assumption as set forth is that a group generally seeks to maximize media attention rather than to minimize it.

One would expect that attacks against civilian targets might receive more attention by the media than attacks against official targets. As expected, this holds true in the data.

The articles that report on attacks against civilians received more advantageous results with greater WPA (755.28) and slightly better page placement (7.30) than articles that reported on attacks against official targets.

Among articles that reported on attacks against civilians, non-suicide attacks received greater WPA (759.27) than suicide attacks (747.74). Suicide attacks received only slightly greater WPA (705.06) than non-suicide attacks (628.44) among official targets. Articles reporting on non-suicide attacks achieve only slight advantage over suicide attacks in terms of prominence among civilian targets. There is no evidence from this analysis to indicate suicide attacks offer any discernible advantage to a group depending on target selection. In fact, reports on non-suicide attacks against civilians may even offer more advantages in the media than suicide attacks.

Table 18. Words per article by target type.

Suicide and non-suicide Suicide Non-suicide Mean N Std Dev Mean N Std Dev Mean N Std Dev Civilian 755.28 437 351.22 747.74 151 330.66 759.27 286 362.10 Government/ 660.41 302 332.39 705.06 126 300.33 628.44 176 350.91 Police/Military

23 See Abrahms (2011), p. 592. Though targeting civilians may not result in strategic successes for a terrorist group, it can result in more media coverage and help to perpetuate the group. 95

Table 19. Page placement by target type.

Suicide and non-suicide Suicide Non-suicide Mean N Std Dev Mean N Std Dev Mean N Std Dev Civilian 7.30 417 4.64 7.04 148 4.33 7.45 269 4.81 Government/ 7.86 285 4.18 7.97 122 4.61 7.77 163 3.85 Police/Military

Location

Given that the NYT is a US-based publication, one might expect that it would cover attacks against countries in the West (defined as the United States, Canada, Western

Europe, Australia, and New Zealand) more than attacks in non-Western countries.

Indeed, existing research by Rohner and Frey (2007) finds that the NYT reports more on terrorist attacks in Western countries than in developing countries. This study finds that just 10.7% of the articles that reported on terrorist attacks covered attacks in a Western country.24 This may not be surprising given that the vast majority of attacks occur in the non-Western world. This finding also does not necessarily contradict existing research since this research did not analyze the proportion of attacks covered compared to actual number of attacks, but rather only examined how the NYT covers such attacks in terms of length and prominence.

As predicted, WPA for reports on attacks in the West is greater (875.99) than attacks not in the West (697.78), and prominence for reports on attacks in the west is

24 For comparison, over the same time period, 2.64% of all terrorist attacks in the world took place in Western countries, according to the GTD.

96 greater (5.86) than in the non-West (7.68). Clearly such attacks are given more coverage and featured more prominently in the news.

Suicide attacks in the West are very rare events. In the years of interest in this study, 2006-2016, just three suicide attacks took place in the West, including the Paris attacks in November 2015, the attacks in Brussels in March 2016, and the attack in

Ansbach, Germany in July 2016. Given the magnitude of the Paris attacks, two articles reported on the events that took place, resulting in four total articles in the period of interest that reported on suicide attacks in the West. These reports achieved greater WPA

(964.50) than non-suicide attacks in the West (871.07). Further, reports on suicide attacks in the West are featured more prominently (2.25) than non-suicide attacks (6.10). This data, however, is skewed by the magnitude of the Paris attacks and therefore this data should be taken as directional in nature only, especially given the small sample size. It remains difficult to determine whether suicide attacks in the West result in more advantageous media coverage due to the fact they actually involved a suicide attack, or that they are such rare events, or that the few that have taken place are highly lethal

(aside from the Ansbach attack).

Table 20. Words per article by location.

Suicide and non-suicide Suicide Non-suicide Mean N Std Dev Mean N Std Dev Mean N Std Dev Western 875.99 76 346.58 964.50 4 595.33 871.07 72 445.09 Non- 697.78 634 327.39 725.62 261 310.77 678.30 373 337.58 Western

Table 21. Page placement by location.

Suicide and non-suicide Suicide Non-suicide Mean N Std Dev Mean N Std Dev Mean N Std Dev Western 5.86 65 5.45 2.25 4 2.50 6.10 61 5.51 Non- 7.68 608 4.33 7.54 254 4.50 7.79 354 4.21 Western

Credit Claiming

If groups seek to maximize media exposure of their attacks as a means to convey their demands to a target audience and/or communicate the costs of non-compliance with their demands, then it would follow that they would want to claim credit for their attacks as quickly as possible so as to ensure the media properly attributes the attack in its reporting. This may be especially true when the costs of the attacks are particularly high, as is the case for suicide attacks. There is a “strategic logic” to credit claiming, and a larger percentage of attacks against military/government targets are claimed than civilian targets due to the fact groups can derive more political or strategic benefits from claiming military/government targets than civilian ones (Abrahms and Conrad 2017).

This study found that 42.39% of articles that report on terrorist events actually name a group, either due to the fact the group claimed credit for the attack or due to strong speculation the group had carried out the attack.25 Among suicide attacks the percentage is greater, with 48.68% of articles linking the attack to a group. As suspected, this percentage is lower among reports on non-suicide attacks with just 38.65% of articles

25 Of note, in many cases a group claimed credit for an attack days or weeks after an attack took place, resulting in additional articles that reported on the credit claiming. However, to maximize the media effect of an attack, a group should claim credit immediately after the attack so as to ensure they are included in all the immediate reporting. 98 linking the attack to a group. Since terrorist groups have more invested in suicide attacks than non-suicide attacks, they may be more cognizant of the need to claim credit for the attack as quickly as possible so as to maximize tactical and operational effect via the media. In light of the fact that articles reporting on claimed suicide attacks tend to be longer and have better page placement, terrorist groups would appear to be acting somewhat irrationally by not claiming more suicide attacks when it is clear that doing so can result in more advantageous media coverage. As suicide attacks have high costs to a group, it would seem sub-optimal for a group to anonymously carry out an attack or to delay claiming credit for the attack, at least in terms of maximizing media coverage.

Table 22. Words per article by credit claiming.

Suicide and non-suicide Suicide Non-suicide Mean N Std Dev Mean N Std Dev Mean N Std Dev Group claimed/ 736.12 301 342.43 759.66 129 318.34 718.47 172 359.35 suspected No claim in article 703.98 407 349.68 701.80 135 313.34 705.06 272 366.92

Table 23. Page placement by credit claiming.

Suicide and non-suicide Suicide Non-suicide Mean N Std Dev Mean N Std Dev Mean N Std Dev Group claimed/ 7.14 285 4.19 6.91 126 4.08 7.31 159 4.28 suspected No claim in 7.78 386 4.68 7.97 131 4.89 7.68 255 4.57 article

Suicide attacks and press freedom

An assumption in the claim that terrorist groups use suicide tactics rather than non- suicide attacks as a means to guarantee media coverage is that the media is freely able

99 to report on the attacks. However, this is certainly not the case in all countries. If the media in a given country is censored by the government or otherwise unable to freely report on the attacks, then a terrorist group must factor this into its calculation about whether using suicide attacks is justifiable, at least in terms of potential media coverage. From a terrorist group’s perspective, conducting attacks in countries that have the most restrictive media would be suboptimal since they run the risks of their attack not being covered or of the attack being manipulated by the government for a political reason antithetical to their own.

A free and fair media, conversely, would afford a terrorist group the opportunity to garner attention in a relatively unbiased lens, at least in terms of the details of the attack, claims of the attack, etc. Especially when a terrorist group’s target audience is localized within a country, that country’s media landscape must be one important consideration a terrorist group leader factors into planning of an attack, at least if he wants to maximize media attention to achieve some tactical or strategic end.

To examine this relationship between media freedom and suicide attacks, ratings from the non-profit organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and their World Press

Freedom Index (hereafter Index) is matched with the number of suicide attacks in a given country in the year 2015. The Index is compiled for each country based on responses from media professionals, lawyers, and sociologists on an 87-question online questionnaire. The Index scores are then calculated using these responses combined with data on abuses and violence against journalists. The questionnaire focuses on seven indicators: pluralism, media independence, environment and self-censorship, legislative framework, transparency, infrastructure, and abuses. Countries receive a score between

100

0 (the best possible score) and 100 (the worst possible score) (Reporters Without Borders

2015).

Upon review of the data, it is apparent that the vast majority of suicide attacks are carried out in countries with poor press freedom ratings. In the top three countries for the most suicide attacks—Iraq, Afghanistan, and Nigeria—which together account for more than two-thirds (67.77%) of all suicide attacks in 2015, the average Index rating is 39.76, a “Bad” rating according to Index parameters. Further, 83.55% of suicide attacks take place in countries deemed either “Bad” or “Very bad” (Index score of 35.01-100 points) for press freedom, the two lowest ratings possible. Of all suicide attacks in 2015, 16.45% were carried out in countries with “Very bad” ratings, i.e. index scores between 55.01-

100. The average world ranking for the countries that witnessed the top ten most attacks in 2015 was 148.7, a rather poor ranking out of the 180 countries ranked.

Therefore, if terrorist groups are truly seeking to maximize media coverage and use the media to their advantage when conducting suicide attacks, it would seem they are attempting this strategy in countries with the least hospitable media environments in the world. Further, the bulk of attacks in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Nigeria are actually groups with localized grievances and demands. In Iraq, Islamic State fighters have been engaged in ongoing fighting with Iraqi security forces for control of territory.

Similarly, in Afghanistan, Taliban fighters have been engaged in fighting with the Afghan security forces and coalition forces for control of territory. In Nigeria, Boko Haram has been waging an ongoing insurgency against the Nigerian government. In these three contexts, which account for the bulk of all suicide attacks, groups have largely concrete

101 or tangible goals and would stand the most to gain from advantageous domestic media coverage. However, all three countries have poor press freedom ratings and therefore the media may not be as crucial to their calculations when deciding to utilize suicide tactics. The governments of all three countries have an interest in limiting and/or shaping the public’s perception of these groups, and doing so through media restrictions may be the most effective method.

Table 24. Suicide attacks and press freedom.

% of total Index country # of suicide suicide ranking (out attacks in attacks in of 180 Country 2015 2015 Index rating countries) Iraq 339 37.42 47.76 156 Afghanistan 148 16.34 37.44 122 Nigeria 127 14.02 34.09 111 Syria 77 8.50 77.29 177 Yemen 36 3.97 66.36 168 Pakistan 30 3.31 50.46 159 Libya 28 3.09 45.99 154 Somalia 25 2.76 72.31 172 Cameroon 23 2.54 39.63 133 Chad 13 1.43 40.17 135 Egypt 13 1.43 50.17 158 Saudi Arabia 8 0.88 59.41 164 Mali 6 0.66 36.33 118 Niger 6 0.66 23.85 47 Turkey 5 0.55 44.16 149 Lebanon 4 0.44 31.81 98 China 3 0.33 73.55 176 Bangladesh 1 0.11 42.95 146 Kenya 1 0.11 32.07 100 Kuwait 1 0.11 30.84 90 South Sudan 1 0.11 38.04 125 Tunisia 1 0.11 38.68 126 West Bank and 1 0.11 - - Gaza Strip

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Discussion and Conclusion

Suicide attacks necessarily come at high costs to a terrorist organization due to the loss of a trained operative into whom they have invested resources in the form of recruitment and training. From a terrorist group leader’s perspective, however, this cost may be acceptable if the tactical gains outweigh the costs. If the group is able to derive benefits from a suicide attack that are greater than those derived from a non-suicide attack, then this decision to use suicide tactics may appear to be a rational one, and one that is consistent with the strategic model. In this sense, a terrorist organization that uses suicide operations is responding to a similar cost-benefit calculation that all organizations do. This study examined whether one such benefit of suicide attacks is that they receive more advantageous coverage in the media than non-suicide attacks, as is often cited in the literature with little empirical foundation.

Upon review of the data, there is little evidence to conclude that suicide attacks offer a significant advantage over non-suicide tactics when it comes to media coverage, at least in terms of quantitative measures of media coverage in the form of words per article and page placement. Though suicide attacks generally still offer a slight advantage, the advantage is not as sizeable as it is often purported to be. The only context where suicide attacks outperform non-suicide attacks significantly is when they are conducted in Western countries. While they may offer slight advantages in certain other circumstances over non-suicide attacks, the advantages are not sizable, and it is difficult to conclude that suicide attacks are unique in their ability to attract media coverage and therefore promote the agenda of the terrorist group. First, articles that cover suicide

103 attacks are only 2.78% longer on average than non-suicide attacks, hardly a substantive advantage, especially when considering the costs associated with suicide attacks.

Second, among articles on suicide attacks, there is a higher correlation between lethality and both longer articles and better page placement, meaning a suicide attack must be tactically more successful in order to reap the media benefits which could otherwise be achieved through a non-suicide attack. Third, articles reporting on non-suicide attacks other than bombings—including shootings, stabbings, hostage taking, and vehicular attacks—all generate higher WPA than suicide bomb attacks, the most common type of suicide attack. Fourth, articles on non-suicide attacks against civilians tend to be longer than suicide attacks against either civilians or government targets. Lastly, the vast majority of suicide attacks take place in countries with restrictive media environments, providing little guarantees that their attacks will be covered in an objective way or otherwise provide publicity for the terrorist group. Based on these findings, there is no conclusive evidence to determine that the hypothesis set forth—that terrorist groups use suicide tactics due to more advantageous media coverage—has universal empirical grounding, at least not when it comes to measures of article length and article placement in one of the nation’s most read newspapers. While these findings do not prove that conventional wisdom about the relationship between suicide attacks and the media is inaccurate, it does provide evidence that the magnitude of that relationship is significantly smaller than is often argued.

This study also provides directional and preliminary findings to indicate that the attacks utilizing novel or innovative attack methods may achieve greater media coverage.

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This is illustrated by the fact that vehicular attacks, of which there were only eleven articles that reported on such attacks in the sample, received higher than average WPA and better than average page placement. This may lend credence to the notion of “diminishing novelty” and that attacks that are perceived to be more innovative or creative may attract greater media attention than attacks that use more traditional methods of attack (Gill, et al 2013). If this finding proves accurate upon further analysis, then this would provide more evidence to illustrate that there are more effective means of achieving media coverage that can involve—and may even require—non-suicide tactics.

Even if suicide tactics did generate better media coverage than non-suicide tactics, there is certainly no guarantee that the coverage would effectively promote the group or accurately convey the group’s demands to a target population, a key component of any terrorist group’s media strategy. Kelly and Mitchell (1981) have shown that the actual grievances of terrorist groups are discussed in less than 10 percent of articles on terrorism. This is also illustrated by the fact that a group claimed credit or was suspected of having carried out an attack in just 42.39% of articles in this study. If terrorist groups are focused on truly maximizing the media coverage they receive for their attacks, they should do a better job in claiming their attacks and articulating their demands. Though, according to Melnick and Eldor (2010: 972), terrorist groups achieve media coverage comparable to some of the world’s largest corporations, they appear to be wasting the opportunity by not ensuring that the immediate reporting on their attack is properly

105 attributed.26 The equivalent would be if a corporation received coverage for some major success it had achieved, yet the article did not mention the name of the corporation, the product or service they provide, what its value proposition is over competitors, and where a consumer can go to learn more and possibly purchase from the corporation. They may capture headlines, but they are not informing the consumer.

Further, it is not apparent that terrorist groups’ only avenue to achieving media attention is through attacks alone. Terrorists may not necessarily have to succeed in conducting an attack in order to get media attention, because even if attacks fail they at least will spark a public and political reaction (Jenkins 2017). Suicide attacks, then, would seem to be an absurdly high cost to bear in order to achieve an end state that could be acquired through myriad other less costly methods. If a terrorist organization seeks to remain relevant in a crowded marketplace of worldwide terrorist activity, they would seem to have multiple methods at their disposal to achieve that effect. While conducting attacks is one way to demand relevance, convey organizational strength, and raise grievances to a target population, there is no indication that suicide attacks are more emphatically able to communicate those messages.

This study has a few important limitations. First, this study sought only to examine how attacks are covered rather than what attacks receive media attention. Further study is needed on what attributes of certain attacks are more or less likely to be covered by local, national, and international media. By using the GTD, future study could examine

26 There are strategic reasons why terrorist groups do not claim attacks against civilians. See Abrahms and Conrad (2017). However, a hesitance to claim attacks, even against civilian targets, would run counter to the notion that groups seek to maximize the media coverage for their attacks. 106 what proportion of attacks are covered in various media outlets, and what attack attributes are likely to achieve media coverage. Second, this study only examined articles that reported on terrorist attacks. In order to more fully understand how terrorist groups seek to maximize media coverage, future studies could examine how the media covers other terrorist group activity, such as the release of a statement or video. Third, this study solely measured articles based upon measures of article length and page placement. A content analysis of articles that cover suicide and non-suicide attacks could offer more insights into whether one type of attack may result in qualitatively different coverage than the other. Fourth, this study assumed that groups prefer articles that are longer and placed closer to the front of the publication. However, future inquiry may reveal that groups may be more interested in the quality of coverage rather than the quantity of coverage, and that a shorter piece that articulates group demands is preferable to a longer report on an attack that doesn’t mention the group’s platform at all. Fifth, this study did not examine the role of “new media” in a terrorist group’s communication strategy. Terrorist groups may measure their success with respect to the media in ways other than achieving coverage in publications like the NYT.27

In sum, the findings from this study contribute to a broader, growing literature that examines the effectiveness of terrorism, both as a tactic and a strategy. It similarly calls into question either a) the strategic rationality of terrorist organizations, or b) the utility of the strategic model of terrorism studies. If suicide tactics provide little tactical or strategic advantage over non-suicide attacks, yet are proliferating widely around the world, then

27 See, for instance, LaFree (2017); Gill, et al (2017); and Amble (2012). 107 terrorist groups may be using a different cost-benefit matrix than Western scholars assume and a new explanatory paradigm may be needed.

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Dying to Frighten: The Psychological Effects of Suicide Tactics

Both terrorism and other manifestations of violence are similar in that they seek to cause damage to property and/or death and injury to targeted victims. However, unlike other types of violence, terrorism is unique in its goal to also psychologically affect a broader target audience in furtherance of a specified goal. The intended victims of terrorism are not just the people who are killed or injured, but also the wider audience that the terrorists are seeking to influence. The act of terrorist violence is not the end goal of a terrorist group but rather the means through which to effect certain political, social, religious, or economic change (Richardson 2006; Hoffman 2006; Krueger and Maleckova

2010; Nacos 2007; Ganor 2005). Following a rational choice or strategic model of terrorism studies, it would follow that terrorist groups seek to maximize the communicative impact of their attacks so as to amplify their demands to the targeted population and convey the costs of noncompliance to the targeted government.

According to the literature on terrorism and suicide terrorism in particular, suicide attacks offer a distinct tactical advantage over non-suicide attacks due to their ability to convey a group’s message particularly effectively, thereby engendering a disproportionately large amount of fear and cause other widespread effects on a target population, including political, economic, and psychological effects. Therefore, according to the common narrative, terrorist groups utilize suicide attack tactics in order to maximize the tactical effects of the attack to allow for the greatest chance of achieving their desired operational goals and strategic end state. Though suicide attacks come at certain costs to the organization, such costs may be justified when their effects provide unique benefits 109 not otherwise achieved through non-suicide attacks. Extant literature has relied upon largely upon anecdotal evidence to support this claim (Gambetta 2005: 267), as well as limited survey and focus group data which rely too heavily upon hypothetical or arbitrary rankings rather than large-scale observational data.

This study seeks to evaluate this claim by measuring the effects of suicide attacks compared to the effects of non-suicide attacks using a case study analysis of four attacks—two suicide and two non-suicide. The cases include the suicide attack in

Brussels, Belgium in March 2016; the suicide bombing in Manchester, England in May

2017; the vehicle ramming attack in Nice, France in July 2016; and the vehicle ramming attack in Barcelona, Spain in August 2017. This study utilizes a novel approach to measuring psychological impact by collecting topical search data from Google Trends for each country during the timeframe of the attacks. It is the first study to use Google Trends data to measure the impact of terrorist attacks on a target population. It measures impact of each attack across primary topics, secondary topics, and normal social activities. This method allows real-life observation of how populations react to attacks through what they search. It provides preliminary and suggestive findings that both suicide and non-suicide attacks are similarly limited in terms of their psychological impact, and that other attributes of an attack may explain their effects more so than whether the attack involved suicide bombers.

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Terrorism Effects

The strategic model of terrorism studies states that a group adopts terrorism tactics because it believes the potential benefits outweigh the costs and offer a greater chance of achieving certain desired political ends (Abrahms 2008; Crenshaw 1998; McCormick

2003). Following similar logic, scholars have explained why certain terrorist groups use suicide tactics, namely because they are perceived to offer even greater tactical advantages over non-suicide tactics, despite the obvious costs. Scholars have pointed to a number of unique advantages of suicide tactics. These include the ability to kill and injure more people due to the attacker being able to detonate the device at the precise time and location to instill the greatest carnage (Hoffman and McCormick 2004; Hoffman

2003; Alakoc 2015; Moghadam 2008/2009; Santifort-Jordan and Sandler 2014), the likelihood of the attack generating more media coverage due to the uniquely sensation nature of a suicide attack (Hoffman 2003; Schweitzer 2007; Hoffman and McCormick

2004; Moghadam 2008; Palmer 2007; Lewis 2007; Roger 2013), and, of interest for this study, the ability to inflict more damaging social or psychological effects on a target population.

Terrorist groups seek to, at least in part, change political attitudes and preferences among a target population. Terrorism is designed to alter the target population’s assessments and beliefs regarding the interest of their country with the interest of each individual. This “irrational anxiety,” as described by Ganor (2005: 254), where there is a disproportionate assessment regarding the probability of harm from a terrorist attack, is a key immediate goal of terrorist attacks and a necessary condition for the success of a

111 terrorist group. Friedland and Merari (1985) find that terrorism is able to intimidate and induce worry and concern disproportionately to the amount of damage it actually causes.

Braithwaite (2013) also argues that a key priority of terrorists is to both intimidate and compel a target population to demand some sort of policy change from their government.

Similarly, Santifort-Jordan and Sandler (2014) submit that terrorist groups use extreme forms of violence in order to generate enough social anxiety in a target population such that the population will pressure the government to concede to the group’s demands

(981). Horgan (2014) highlights that a terrorist group must both generate and maintain

“a general climate of uncertainty and psychological arousal” (13) among the targeted population in order to be effective.

However, as Friedland and Merari (1985) find, terrorism is only effective in influencing a population when the threat exceeds a “critical threshold,” and that below that threshold terrorism only serves to a “hardening of attitudes and a crystallization of opposition to the causes pursued by terrorists” (603). Berrebi and Klor (2008) find evidence of this effect among the Israeli electorate, where terrorist attacks increase support for the right-wing bloc of parties, the parties that are least likely to make territorial or political concessions to the terrorist groups and most likely to reinforce counterterrorism efforts. With respect to foreign policy, Gadarian (2010), using the National Election

Studies 2000-2004 panel and a controlled, randomized experiment, finds that emotional and powerful imagery of terrorism can persuade people to adopt a more hawkish foreign policy preference. Rose and Murphy (2007) conversely cite the example of the 2004 train bombings in Madrid, Spain that may have contributed to the election of the Socialist Party,

112 whose platform had included the removal of Spanish troops from Iraq, a goal shared by the perpetrators of the attack.28

Many scholars have examined the relationship between terrorism and fear. Nellis and Savage (2012), in a telephone survey, find that paying greater attention to the news does not appear to affect either fear of terrorism or a perceived risk from terrorism (763).

Further, the survey found that women reported greater fears of terrorism than men, and whites rated the likelihood of future terrorist attacks significantly lower than minorities and were less afraid of an attack (762). Herzenstein, Horsky, and Posavac (2015), in their study of consumer behavior and terrorism, find that consumers do not change behavior when faced with terrorism threats when they think they have some control over the odds of becoming a victim of an attack. However, they will change their preferences to avoid public contexts when they believe they cannot control the odds of becoming a victim

(234). Christensen and Aars (2017) find that fear of terrorism is more prevalent in non- democratic countries than in democratic countries, controlling for exposure to terrorist attacks and living conditions.

Terrorism scholars have mostly concluded that suicide operations generate more fear or have greater psychological effect on a target population than other forms of terrorism, though this claim has been largely untested empirically. Roger (2013) notes that symbolism is at the heart of suicide attacks and are designed as a form of political communication (79). Bloom (2006) agrees, emphasizing that suicide terrorism is a form of “political theater” where the reaction to the attack is as important as the act itself (26).

28 Abrahms (2007) has challenged this explanation. 113

Moghadam (2008) argues that suicide attacks “create a disproportionally intense amount of fear among the targeted population” (31). Fierke (2009) contends that suicide operations are effective because they are so able to “traumatize the enemy’s population”

(173). Merari (2005) submits that, through suicide attacks, terrorist groups are more able to demonstrate their devotion to their cause, therefore creating a uniquely frightening impression on a target population (70). The intense psychological effect of suicide operations can also probably explain why groups continue to use the tactic, according to

Quillen (2002). Margalit (2003) argues that Palestinian suicide bombings “make most

Israelis feel not just ordinary fear but an intense mixture of horror and revulsion as well.”

Such “communicative benefits” of suicide attacks, as Gambetta (2005; 266) notes, stem from signaling theory and the ability of suicide attacks to convey a fearlessness in combat.

Suicide attacks are a way for a terrorist group to communicate to a targeted population that its members value their own lives less than the death of members of the target population (Gambetta 2005; 266), thereby invoking a unique level of fear not otherwise achieved through non-suicide tactics. Hoffman and McCormick (2004) argue that terrorist groups use the “choreographed drama” of suicide attacks in order to create a set of images among a target population that will help the group advance their particular operational objective (244).

There have been some attempts to empirically assess whether suicide attacks do indeed generate more fear, and to what effect. One such study was conducted by Berry, et al (2008) from Argonne National Laboratory for the US Department of Homeland

Security. They conducted focuses groups to examine how various events could erode

114 public confidence in the government and law enforcement agencies. They find that a campaign of suicide bombings would cause both the greatest immediate effect and also result in longer-term degradation in public confidence. However, the authors of this study only examined four scenarios: Small pox, refinery bombing, cyber attack, and suicide bombing. Therefore, despite the fact they find suicide bombings to be the most deleterious to public confidence, they do not compare against non-suicide bombings, which is the subject of this study.

Krause and Otenyo (2006) conducted a survey of the Kenyan population between

December 2002 and February 2003. Respondents were asked to rate their perception of danger from five security threats: Local criminals, AIDS, terrorists, attack from Kenya’s neighbors, and car/road accidents. They found that only 17.9 percent of those surveyed perceived “more” or “most” danger from terrorists, the second lowest rating of the five items tested in the survey. AIDS was considered four times more dangerous than terrorism, local criminals over three times more dangers, and car accidents more than two times more dangerous. In fact, an attack from Kenya’s neighbor was the only threat that was perceived to be less dangerous than terrorism (103). The survey also asked respondents to rate how much anxiety they perceive from different types of terrorist threats: non-conventional (i.e. biological or chemical attacks), suicide terrorism, hostage- taking terrorism, stabbing attacks, or a plane crash. The survey found that suicide terrorism was the most frightening with 54.9 percent of respondents saying they perceive

“more” or “most” anxiety from them. However, suicide terrorism did not provoke the greatest intensity of anxiety among respondents. In terms of those who rated the type of

115 terrorist attack the “most” anxiety-inducing, 32.3 percent said a plane crash and 23.2 percent said stabbing attacks compared to the 18.6 percent who said suicide terrorism.

Methodologically, it is very difficult to empirically determine that suicide attacks create more fear in a population than non-suicide attacks. How can we objectively and systematically measure the level of “fear” induced by a certain type of terrorist attack? In the two previously-discussed empirical studies, for instance, respondents are only offering views based on hypothetical scenarios or are comparing suicide attacks to a finite list of other types of attacks or threats. Neither study observes reactions to actual suicide attacks, which admittedly poses a number of methodological challenges itself. There does not appear to be any daily or weekly national tracking surveys that measure fear, which would enable analysts to determine what effect, if any, a terrorist attack had on a population. Focus group research or other surveys that ask hypothetical questions about likely responses to different types of terrorist attacks also fail to truly take into account myriad situational and environmental variables unique to each attack. The best scholars can do is to use proxy variables to measure other indicators that may be related to fear.

Therefore, the claim that suicide terrorism creates more fear in a target population has largely persisted without sound or robust empirical grounding.

While existing research has demonstrated that terrorist groups are largely ineffective at achieving strategic goals, and that groups that employ suicide tactics are at least equally as ineffective, this is not necessarily to say that suicide attacks may offer certain tactical, near-term advantages over non-suicide attacks. Indeed, as previously discussed, the notion that suicide attacks have proliferated due to their supposed

116 effectiveness has persisted in the literature. Despite these widespread claims in popular and scholarly literature on terrorism that suicide attacks are uniquely able to instill fear and provide other socio-psychological tactical effects on a target group, empirical evidence for this claim has largely been lacking. This may at least partially be attributed to the fact that, methodologically, it is a challenging task to measure fear. Without sound empirics upon which to validate the claim, it has nonetheless persisted.

Hypotheses

Based upon extant literature, two main hypotheses emerge. First, suicide attacks invoke a greater amount of psychological arousal among a targeted population than non- suicide attacks. Second, the psychological arousal derived from suicide attacks provides more short-term or tactical advantages to the group than that derived from non-suicide attacks. Based on the strategic model and the conclusions in the literature, these hypotheses assume that terrorist group leaders are aware of the tactical advantages or disadvantages of suicide attacks and are freely able to choose among the different tactics available to them in order to maximize the psychological impact on a targeted population.

From the perspective of a terrorist group leader according to the strategic model, attacks achieve optimal tactical effectiveness if they effect the largest possible secondary audience in terms of both getting their attention so as to maximize the communicative benefit of the attack, but also to disrupt daily normal activity and maximize the psychological impact of the attack. Between these two effects—heightening awareness

117 of the attack and also disrupting norms through fear—a group is able to achieve tactical effects to ultimately advance their strategic or political goals.

Methodology

In order to compare the tactical effects of suicide and non-suicide attacks, this study utilizes a case study methodology to explore the effects of four terrorist attacks.

According to Yin (2009), case study methodologies offer advantages when seeking to answer how and why research questions in relation to contemporary events (8). Further, as Berg (2009) notes, case studies can provide for a fuller understanding of events and phenomena, which are at core of this study.

The four cases examined in this study were chosen based on their common traits, including their location (Western Europe), timeframe (2016-2017), group responsible

(ISIS) and on the fact they were mass casualty events. Further, with those variables similar across attacks, the cases were also chosen based on the one key variable of interest, whether the attack involved suicide tactics. Two of the cases (Brussels and

Manchester) involved suicide attacks and the other two (Nice and Barcelona) involved non-suicide attacks. A table with basic descriptive traits of each attack can be found in

Table 24.

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Table 25. Descriptive traits of terrorist attacks used in analysis.

Location Date Attack # # Responsible Suicide type killed injured Brussels, 22 March Bombings 32 240 Islamic Yes Belgium 2016 State Manchester, 22 May 2017 Bombing 22 512 Islamic Yes UK State Nice, France 14 July 2016 Vehicle 86 434 Islamic No ramming State Barcelona, 17 August Vehicle 15 131 Islamic No Spain 2017 ramming State

While a case study approach to this study offers certain distinct advantageous over other methods of inquiry, there are also certain important limitations inherent in all case study research. One important limitation with respect to this study concerns the issue of generalizability (Berg 2009: 330; Yin 2009: 15). Admittedly, this study evaluates the effects of attacks in a specific context, namely Western European countries in recent years, and may not necessarily be generalizable to other countries or time frames. That is, suicide and non-suicide attacks of a similar nature may have different effects in other regions of the world, during other timeframes, and when perpetrated by different groups.

However, despite these limitations, this methodology will still provide directional findings and offer insights into the tactical effects of different types of terrorist attacks.

This study seeks to identify variation in reactions to these four attacks based on online search behavior using Google Trends data. Google Trends data is a relatively new data source that has been utilized by political scientists as a measure of attention or issue salience among a public (Mellon 2014: 47). Scholars in a variety of fields have used this data to examine a range of phenomena as well, including how public perception of

119 environmental risks (Durmuşoğlu 2017), how Google search data can identify early signs of a financial systemic risk (Heiberger 2015), how and when people take interest in political movements (McClure 2014), and how environmental events raise public attention

(Cha and Stow 2015).

Trends data does not measure frequency of searches used, but results are adjusted in order to be proportionate to time and location of the query. Up to five queries can be compared over a given time frame. Each data point is adjusted in order to compare popularity relative to other topics/search terms queried over the given time frame and in the particular country of interest. The output is scaled on a range of 0 to 100 based on the topic’s proportion. Therefore, different regions may show the same number of searches for a particular term, but will not always have the same overall search volume score (Google 2). Further, by searching for topics (rather than search terms), Google

Trends allows for cross-language comparisons by adjusting for a group of search terms that share the same concept, in any language. For instance, searches such as “capital of the UK” and “Londres” (London in Spanish), would be included if one were to search for the topic of London (Google 1). However, Google only has limited topics that users are allowed to query.

This novel approach to measuring the impact of terrorist attacks offers certain advantages over other available methodologies. First, this data is observational in nature and does not involve hypothetical scenarios common in surveys or experimental methodologies where respondents are asked to self-report levels of fear. The data represents how people actually responded to each attack, at least in terms of online

120 searches. Second, it allows easy comparative analysis between each country, between different search topics, and across the same time frame. It also easily allows for comparisons across languages due to the search topic functionality. Using this data also has at least one important limitation. The data does not account for reasoning behind why people search for certain terms. That is, two people can search for the same topic but for vastly different reasons. While using topical search data is one proxy for measuring a psychological impact a terrorist attack has on a population, this study recognizes there are certain other proxies that may be used to measure similar effects.

This study aims to proxy the psychological effect of terrorism on a population—the

“psychological arousal” described by Horgan (2014)—by using search interest metrics from Google Trends. The literature has generally been silent in terms of how to operationalize this supposed unique impact that suicide attacks have on a population. In an effort to address this lacuna, this study uses three primary measures of psychological arousal that are designed to measure intensity of the arousal. Under this theoretical scale, an attack achieves maximum psychological impact if it promotes heightened interest in primary topics associated with the attack, which leads into a deeper interest in topics associated with the attack, which then translates into an actual negative impact on normal behavior (see Figure 5). From the perspective of a terrorist group, an attack optimizes the psychological impact on a target population if they are able to increase interest in the group and associated issues and also to negatively impact normal activity in the target population. If the attack is only able to achieve temporary heightened interest in the topics, though, then it had only a minimal and ineffective tactical result.

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First, a variety of terms associated with interest in the attack itself are measured.

These terms are categorized as primary interest terms and secondary interest terms.

Primary interest terms include general searches regarding the attack, including terms such as Terrorism, News, the city in which the attack took place, and Islamic State of Iraq and Levant.29 Searches for these terms demonstrates superficial or shallow interest in the attack. Next, secondary interest terms are examined, including Islam, Iraq, Syria, and name of the perpetrator of the attack. Searches for these terms demonstrates more interest in the attack and may represent attempts to gain more knowledge about causes and motivations for the attack. Since all of the attacks were Islamist-inspired attacks, one might expect that people would be interested in the religion following the attacks. Both

Iraq and Syria are important countries to ISIL and the ongoing battle against them, therefore searches for both countries can serve as proxies for interest in reasoning behind the particular attack.

Lastly, a series of topics are examined that deal with routine, everyday activities that involve people going out in public recreationally. These terms include Restaurant,

Bar, Café, Park, and Travel. This would capture people searching for places to go out to eat, meet up with friends for a coffee or a drink, or planning a trip. One might expect searches for these terms to remain relatively constant over time, adjusting for normal fluctuations in a weekly or monthly cycles, but may decline following an attack if people were less interested in these activities due to fear, anxiety, or other reasons. Following

29 When searching topics using Google Trends rather than actual search terms, it groups together search terms that relate to the topic. Therefore, search terms such as “Islamic State,” “ISIS,” etc. would all be grouped under the singular topic. For ease and consistency, this paper uses ISIL to refer to the group, which is the name Google Trends uses. 122 heightened interest in primary and secondary topics related to the attack, a decline in interest in these activities serves as a proxy for disruption to normal life. Though it is impossible to precisely discern the reasoning for any increase or decrease in search activity regarding these topics, it is at least an indicator of behavioral change, which this study seeks to explore.

Figure 5. Psychological impact scale utilizing Google Trends data following a terrorist attack.

Minimum& Optimal& effect effect Increase(in(primary( Increase(in( Decrease(in(interest( topics secondary(topics in(normal(activities

•News •[Name(of( •Restaurant •Terrorism perpetrator(s)] •Bar •[City] •Syria •Café •ISIL •Iraq •Park •Islam •Travel

Search topics are examined longitudinally to discern spikes of interest and duration of heightened interest. While using Google searches as a proxy for psychological impact does not capture the qualitative nature behind the intent of the search (i.e. whether the search is motivated out of a sense of fear, anxiety, sympathy, curiosity, etc.), it does at a minimum capture a heightened state of interest in the topic and thus some degree of an effect on the person. From the perspective of a terrorist group leader, an optimal attack is one that would spike interest among the target population not only in terms of general awareness of the attack, but also in terms of fixating people on the motivations for the attack. This would be to maximize the “communicative benefit” of the attack. Further, a

123 terrorist group would want to disrupt normal day-to-day activities, and so an optimal attack would result in less interest in going out to dinner or to a local bar, for instance. While it is impossible to discern precisely why there is more or less interest in these types of activities following an attack, it would still be significant in further understanding how people respond to attacks.

22 March 2016 – Suicide bombings in Brussels

Background On 22 March 2016, three coordinated suicide attacks in Brussels, Belgium killed

32 people and injured 340 others. The first two suicide bombers detonated devices at

Zaventum airport at 7:58 AM local time. About an hour later, a third bomber detonated his device at the Maelbeek metro station. Of the 32 people killed, 16 were killed at the airport and 16 were killed at the metro station.

The three suicide bombers were Khalid el-Bakraoui, Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, and

Najim Laachraoui. Belgian police conducted several raids after the attacks. At least 12 people were arrested in connection with the attack in Belgium, France, and Germany in the days following the attack. After the attack, Belgium raised its terror threat level to its highest level (BBC 2016a). The Belgian prime minister also declared a three-day mourning period as the US Department of State warned American travelers in Europe to

“exercise vigilance when in public places or using mass transportation” and that terrorist groups “continue to plan near-term attacks throughout Europe, targeting sporting events, tourist sites, restaurants and transportation” (Rubin, Breeden, and Raghavan 2016). IISL claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement released that afternoon, claiming that 124

Belgium was targeted because of its participation “in the international coalition against the Islamic State” (Dearden 2016), referencing Belgium’s role in the fight against ISIL forces in Iraq and Syria.

Findings The attack in Brussels immediately heightened the Belgian people’s interest in the city as well as in news generally. Search volume for Brussels jumped from 22 the day before the attack to 100 the day of the attack before going back to 47 the day after the attack and 34 two days after the attack. Similarly, though to a lesser extent than searches for the city, interest in News jumped from 9 the day before the attack to 55 the day of the attack before returning back to 23 the day after and 18 two days after the attack. Interest in Terrorism and ISIL also increased, but on a much smaller scale. For instance, search volume for ISIL—the group that claimed the attack—only went from less than 1 the day before the attack to 5 the day of the attack, when compared against other search topics.

These findings indicate that the Belgian public was, quite expectedly, interested in gaining information about the attack, though this interest did not appear to translate into interest in the terrorist group responsible for the attack.

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Figure 6. Brussels primary search topics. Primary'search'topics' 100

News Brussels Terrorism Islamic:State:of:Iraq:and:the:Levant

Secondary search topics related to the Brussels attack demonstrate that the public became more interested in certain topics after the attack than they were before. For instance, search volume on the topic of Islam, which was already relatively high before the attack, jumped from 54 the day before the attack to 95 the day of the attack. Interest in Syria and Iraq both increased after the attack as well, with Syria jumping from 29 the day before the attack to 39 the day of the attack, 58 the day after the attack, and 63 two days after the attack before peaking at 66 on March 27. Similarly, search volume for Iraq increased after the attack and peaked at 46 on March 26. Search volume for the perpetrators of the attack also increase markedly after the attack.30 The names of all three

30 All three perpetrators of the Brussels attack had been mentioned in the news in the days and weeks before the attack due to their suspected involvement in the November 2015 attacks in Paris, France. Therefore, unlike in other cases where search volume for the perpetrator was usually at 0 before the attack, in this case the perpetrators were not entirely unknown, as reflected by the evidence of measure search queries before the attack. 126 attackers were reported widely on the same day of the attack. Volume increased the most for Laachraoui, from 9 the day before the attack to 15 the day of the attack and 89 the day after the attack before dropping back down to 20 two days after the attack. Search volume for both El Bakraoui brothers also increased the day after the attack. For Ibrahim, volume increased from 1 the day before and the day of the attack to 24 the day after the attack. For Khalid, volume went from 0 the day of the attack to 30 the day after. These findings are significant because they demonstrate that the Belgian public took a greater interest—however short-lived—in the perpetrators of the attack as well as other issues related to the attack, such as the religion that was used to justify the attacks, and the two countries associated with the perpetrating group. This illustrates the attack had a measurable impact on the population, though the precise qualitative nature of the interest is impossible to discern, it does represent sustained attention to the issues surrounding the attack.

Figure 7. Brussels secondary search topics. Secondary*search*topics 100

Islam Syria Iraq Ibrahim7El7Bakraoui Najim7Laachraoui Khalid7El7Bakraoui

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Among search topics explored as proxies for social activities, the attack appears to have had a measurable impact on interest in restaurants. Search volume for restaurants was more than double that of the other topics explored here before the attack; however, the day of the attack search volume dropped to 40 from 69 before rebounding to 70 the day after the attack. This drop indicates that, generally speaking, Belgian people were significantly though moderately less interested in going out to eat the day of the attack. Though it does remain impossible to determine precise causality of this sharp decline, it is within reason to believe that the attack, which occurred in the morning, had an impact on people’s desire to go out to eat that day. Consistent with this finding, interest in bars also decreased from 21 the day before the attack to 13 the day of the attack, which was the lowest volume for this search topic over the two-week period. However, search volume for other measures of normal social activities remained relatively consistent through the attack with no sizable increases or decreases. These findings suggest that the attack had a low-to-moderate negative effect on the Belgian population due to the decline in interest in both restaurants and bars, which serve as proxies for routine or normal daily activities.

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Figure 8. Brussels normal activity searches. Normal'activities 100

Restaurant Café Park Bar Travel

Using online search activity as a proxy, the attack in Brussels appeared to have a measurable psychological impact on the Belgian public. The attack sparked interest in the attackers, issues associated with ISIL, and even appeared to result in disruption to some normal activity. The attack had many attributes that may have added to its apparent psychological effects. First, the attack was coordinated and involved multiple explosions in different locations. This could have amplified the psychological impact due to its magnitude. Second, the attacks targeted public transportation infrastructure, again possibly heightening interest among the public since it was so blatantly random. Third, the perpetrators of the attack were linked to the attacks in Paris in November 2015 and therefore the public may have been particularly interested in the perpetrators and their motivations because it was part of a larger narrative about radical Islamists operating in

Europe. Lastly, while it remains possible that the nature of the attacks, i.e. the fact they 129 were suicide bombings, was the cause for the observed effects, that link remains only tenuous due to other unique attack traits.

14 July 2016 – Vehicle ramming attack in Nice, France

Background At 10:30 PM on 14 July 2016, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel intentionally drove a large truck into a crowd of people who had gathered along the Promenade des Anglais in

Nice, France for a firework display to celebrate Bastille Day. Lahouaiej-Bouhlel then exchanged gunfire with police and was killed in the shootout. In total, 86 people were killed and over 400 people were injured. ISIL claimed that the perpetrator of the attack was one of its followers. Following the attack, French President Francois Hollande extended the state of emergency in the country (BBC 2016b).

In claiming the attack approximately 36 hours after it happened, ISIL said the attacker carried out the operation “in response to calls to target nationals of states that are part of the coalition fighting Islamic State” (Jones, Chrisafis, and Davies 2016), alluding to French military operations against the terrorist group in Iraq and Syria.

Findings As expected, there is an immediate interest in the attack according to Google search data. Over the period of one week before and one week after the attack, search volume went from a 3 for the city of Nice to 32 on the day of the attack to 100 the day after the attack. It took approximately 6 days for search volume for Nice to return to its pre-attack levels. Searches for general news also increased in volume, but only from 6

130 the day of the attack to 14 the day after. Search volume for Terrorism and for ISIL remained virtually unchanged after the attack. This demonstrates that the French population was very interested in the Nice attack, which one would expect, but that their interest did not translate over to interest in terrorism generally or ISIL more specifically.

Figure 9. Nice primary search topics. Primary'search'topics' 100

News Nice Terrorism Islamic8State8of8Iraq8and8the8Levant

Regarding second-tier search topics, Islam was clearly a popular topic, at least when compared against the other topics measured, and became even more so immediately following the attack and for the week after the attack. Both searches for Syria

(24 to 35) and Iraq (8 to 16) saw slight increases in interest immediately following the attack, and in the case of Syria, there was slightly higher than average interest for at least a week after the attack. These two countries have been the focus of fighting against ISIL forces, which ISIL cited as a reason for the attack. However, interest in both countries remained relatively low compared to interest in the religion. Interest in the perpetrator of 131 the attack, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, who was widely reported as the attacker by 15

July, peaked the day after the attack. However, with a maximum search volume of 14, it was only a fraction of the interest in Islam generally. These findings suggest that people focused more broadly on Islam than they did the two countries at the center of ISIL justifications and also significantly more than the perpetrator of the attack himself, suggesting only general rather than acute focus on the attack.

Figure 10. Nice secondary search topics. Secondary*search*topics* 100

Islam Syria Iraq Mohamed:Lahouaiej>Bouhlel

Regarding the attack’s effect on interest in normal social activities, there is little evidence to suggest it had a significant negative impact at all. There was a sharp drop in interest in restaurants from 98 to 77 the day after the attack before it rebounded back up to 100 two days after the attack. Given that that drop remained within the range of interest over the previous week, it is difficult to determine whether it is directly attributable to the 132 attack itself. Similarly, there were slight drops in interest in both travel and parks, but both remained within normal fluctuations so it is unclear whether the attack caused any changes. There was virtually no change in interest in the topics of Bar or Café. Taken together, it does not appear the attack affected the French people to the extent it registered a significant change in online search behavior.

Figure 11. Nice normal activity searches. Normal'activities 100

Restaurant Café Park Bar Travel

The Nice attack certainly heightened the French public’s interest, but only for a period of about 5 days and seemingly mostly in the details of the attack itself. Interest in

Islam increased immediately following the attack, and interest in other secondary interest topics increased slightly as well. There appeared to be no significant or sustained disruption to normal activities in terms of search volume. In all, the attack certainly focused attention on Nice for a brief period of time, though there is little evidence to suggest the attack resulted in a psychological effect that was advantageous to ISIL. 133

22 May 2017 – Suicide bombing in Manchester, United Kingdom

Background On 22 May 2017, Salman Abedi detonated a home-made suicide bomb in the foyer of Manchester Arena in Manchester, England during a pop music concert, killing 22 people and injuring 116 others. The attacker appeared intent on maximizing lethality by carrying out the attack at the main exit from the arena at the end of the concert and using metal shrapnel in the bomb (BBC 2017a). ISIL claimed responsibility for the attack, claiming Abedi was a “soldier of the caliphate,” and said the attack was meant to terrorize

“infidels…in response to their transgressions against the land of the Muslims” (Dearden

2017). It later emerged that Abedi had met with ISIL members linked to the November

2015 Paris attack while in Libya (Callimachi and Schmitt 2017).

The attack, which was aimed at young concert-goers, was clearly meant to inflict both casualties and also fear in the broader population due to the senseless and random nature of the attack. Following the attack, British Prime Minister Theresa May raised the

UK’s terror alert to its highest level— “critical”—due to a concern that the attack was not just the act of a lone bomber but may have been part of a wider conspiracy. According to

May, the raising of the threat level indicated that “a further attack may be imminent.” She further iterated that she did not “want the public to feel unduly alarmed” (Bennhold,

Erlanger, and Yeginsu 2017).

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Findings How did the British public react to the suicide attack in Manchester in terms of online search behavior? As expected, search volume for topics related to the attack increased immediately following the attack. Notably, more general searches related to the attack had greater volume than more specific searches. For instance, there was a sharp increase in the number of searches for News and Manchester the day after the attack, which would be expected given the magnitude of the event and the increased amount of attention on the city and on the news. Searches for Manchester had the greatest volume in the time frame and among the search topics tested the day after the attack, with searches for News at 94% on the same day. While search volume for Manchester returned to approximate pre-attack levels seven days after the attack, search volume for

News remained at heightened levels over the same period, indicating sustained greater interest in the general news following the attack.

Interestingly, though, more specific searches related to the attack— including

Terrorism and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant—were a much smaller fraction of search volume. At its peak, search volume for Terrorism was only approximately 10% that of Manchester, and search volume for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant was only about

4%. ISIL claimed responsibility for the attack immediately, and it was widely reported by

May 23 that they had claimed responsibility for the attack. This indicates that the British people had a relatively shallow interest in the attack, choosing to search more for the general information related to the attack but not prying much further into the group that claimed responsibility for the attack or for information related to terrorism generally.

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Regarding its ability to focus attention on the group, then, the attack appeared unsuccessful.

Figure 12. Manchester primary search topics. Primary'search'topics 100

News Manchester Terrorism Islamic

Similarly, searches for secondary-tier topics related to the attack demonstrate only mild interest in issues related to the attack. Among the topics tested in the time frame, interest in Islam as a religion had the highest volume, more than doubling the day after the attack and sustaining at least 25% more volume in the week following the attack compared to the day of the attack. Search volume for Iraq and Syria increased after the attack as well, with searches for Syria increasing more rapidly than Iraq. However, searches for both countries remained at less than half the volume as Islam. Interestingly, search volume for the perpetrator of the attack—Salman Abedi—didn’t even register when compared against these other terms. It was widely reported in the media by May 136

23 that he was the perpetrator of the attack, yet the public appeared less interested in him than in topics related to Islam, Syria, and Iraq. This finding illustrates that the British people became significantly more interested in the topic of Islam following the attack when compared to the actual attacker, Iraq, or Syria.

Figure 13. Manchester secondary search topics. Secondary*search*topics 100

Islam Syria Iraq Salman6Abedi

Given that the suicide attack was highly lethal and targeted concert-goers, one might expect a decline in search volume for other social activities that involve going out in public, such as to restaurants, bars, cafes, parks, and also in the interest in travel.

Among these topics, there are only slight drops in interest for one day before they begin to increase to normal levels. The sharpest drops were among searches for Parks, which went from 48 on May 22 to 36 on May 23, and bars, which went from 47 to 39 over the same one day period. Searches for both topics, however, had already been on the decline 137 before the attack, possibly due to normal weekly fluctuations, since the attack occurred on a Monday and interest in these activities tends to peak during weekend periods, as evidenced by data covering the previous week. As such, it is difficult to determine whether the declines were directly in response to the attack, but their levels are consistent with levels the previous week on the same day. What is clear, however, is that there was no significant or sustained disruption to normal activities, at least when using online search activity as a proxy.

Figure 14. Manchester normal activity searches. Normal'activities 100

Restaurant Café Park Bar Travel

In sum, it is clear the attack in Manchester focused the British public’s attention onto the news about the attack, and also on Islam more generally. There appeared to be little interest in either the perpetrator of the attack or the group that claimed responsibility for the attack. Further, there was no indication that the attack resulted in any significant or sustained interest in normal activities. The attack certainly had an impact on the news 138 cycle, but it is not apparent that it had a broader psychological impact on the British population. From the perspective of a terrorist group leader, this attack was successful in its attempt to impact a broader audience, but only on a superficial level.

17 August 2017 – Vehicle ramming attack in Barcelona

Background At 4:40 PM local time on 17 August 2017, Younes Abouyaaqoub drove a van into a crowd of people in on Las Ramblas, a popular tourist destination in Barcelona, Spain.

In total, 13 people were killed and more than 100 others were injured in the attack.

Abouyaaqoub subsequently fled on foot, hijacked a car, and killed its driver. He was subsequently killed by police in an operation four days later in Subirats, located west of

Barcelona (Lister and Masters 2017). Eight hours after the attack in Barcelona, a car drove into a crowd of pedestrians in Cambrils, which is located 62 miles from Barcelona.

One person was killed in that attack. Five attackers in that car were shot dead by police.

In total, 15 people had been killed in the two vehicle ramming attacks and the hijacking

(BBC 2017b). ISIL was quick to claim responsibility for the attack in Barcelona, saying the attack was “in response to appeals targeting coalition countries,” referring to countries engaged in counter-ISIL operations in Iraq and Syria (Le Miere 2017).

After the attack, the Spanish government increased security patrols at popular tourist sites across the country, though chose not to raise the nation’s terror alert level.

According to the interior minister, the threat level remained the same because they believed the terrorist cell responsible for both the attack in Barcelona and in Cambrils had been dismantled, even though the police were still pursuing Abouyaaqoub at the time 139

(Stone 2017). Less than 24 hours after the attack, Las Ramblas in Barcelona reopened for business in an effort to return to normal as an act of defiance (Molloy 2017).

Findings As is apparent in examining search volume data, the Spanish people became focused on the events in Barcelona following the attack. Search volume for Barcelona, the city at the center of the events, jumped from 19 the day before the attack to 100 the day of the attack. Volume returned to pre-attack levels five days after the attack. Search volume for Cambrils, where the second attack took place, saw a more moderate increase, from 4 the day before the attack to 28 the day of the attack, which was one day after the

Barcelona attack, and back down to 3 the day after. The Spanish people also became more interested in the news due to the attack, with volume jumping from 9 the day before the attack to 27 the day of the attack and staying at elevated levels for another week. The

Spanish public also became interested in the topic of terrorism, as the search volume jumped from less than 1 the day before the Barcelona attack to 57 the day of the attack and 49 the day after. While interest in these topics saw measurable increases due to the attack, interestingly search volume for ISIL, which was less than 1 the week before the attack, never went above 3 throughout the week following the attack. The Spanish people appeared to be briefly interested in the events in Barcelona and Cambrils, though their interest did not translate into interest in the group responsible for the events.

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Figure 15. Barcelona primary search topics. Primary'search'topics' 100

News Barcelona Cambrils Terrorism Islamic

Among secondary search topics, the Spanish public noticeably took an interest in the prime suspect and Barcelona attacker, Younes Abouyaaqoub, in the days following the attack. The search volume peaked at 100 on 21 August, the day he was killed by police after a four-day manhunt. The public also took a sudden interest in the topic of

Islam, which saw volume increase from 5 the day before the attack to 30 the day of the attack, peaking at 62 two days after the attack, and staying at higher than normal levels for the following week. Interest in both Syria and Iraq also saw an increase immediately following the attack, and remaining at elevated levels for the following week. This heightened and sustained interest in these secondary search topics illustrates that the

Spanish public became focused on the issues associated with the attack. Though this data does not indicate for what reason people searched for these topics, it is clear that the attack heightened their interest in them. 141

Figure 16. Barcelona secondary search topics. Secondary*search*topics 100

Islam Syria Iraq Younes:Abouyaaqoub

Given the magnitude of the attack and the fact the Barcelona attacker was on the loose for four days, one might have expected there to be a measurable impact on normal social activities. As the graph below illustrates, there were slight declines in search volume related to some activities, though no drastic changes. There was a moderate impact on interest in restaurants, which dropped to 68 the day of the attack and to the lowest point, 64, on August 21, the day police killed Abouyaaqoub. Search volume for other topics remained within normal levels following the attacks, though interest in travel and parks were at a two-week low the day after the attack at 20 and 12, respectively.

Overall, though, there did not appear to be any drastic or sustained reduction in interest in these activities. 142

Figure 17. Barcelona normal activity searches. Normal'activities 100

Restaurant Café Park Bar Travel

In sum, the Barcelona attack and the subsequent attack in Cambrils certainly heightened the Spanish public’s interest in the events, and to a certain extent that interest translated into prolonged interest in secondary-related topics such as Islam and the primary perpetrator. The prolonged interest may be directly related to the fact that the attacker remained at-large following the attack and that a number of counter-terrorism raids took place related to both attacks, resulting in sustained news coverage of the attack. When it came to measurable impacts on search volume for a number of social activities, though, the attacks only seemed to have a moderate impact on restaurants only.

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Discussion This study measured public reactions to four terrorist attacks—two suicide attacks and two non-suicide attacks—by using Google Trends data as a proxy for psychological impact. The study sought to assess two hypotheses: 1) Suicide attacks result in greater psychological arousal among a target population than non-suicide attacks, and 2) This psychological arousal offers tactical advantages to the group. The study measured search volume for primary and secondary topics related to the attack as a proxy for psychological arousal, and used search volume for a number of normal social activities as a proxy for whether the attack was able to disrupt normal activities in the population, with the assumption that terrorist groups view major disruptions as at least one important part of their tactical goals. The optimal attack would result in increased interest in the attack and associated topics (perpetrating group, its demands, etc.) but also would negatively impact normal activities.

Upon review of the data, a few key findings emerge. First, among primary search topics, all attacks resulted in heightened interest primarily in the city in which the attack took place and news generally. However, after the Barcelona attack, the Spanish people searched for the topic of Terrorism at much higher levels compared to the name of the city than after any other attack, indicating that the attack may have prompted a unique psychological response.

Second, among secondary search topics, interest in Islam spiked after each attack and in all cases it had the highest search volume among secondary topics for at least 3 days following the attack. The fact the populations of each country searched more for the religion than for Iraq, Syria, or the name of the perpetrator may illustrate that people see

144 a greater link between the religion and the attack than geo-political issues or the actual perpetrator(s). It remains unclear whether heightened interest in Islam serves short-term or long-term goals of a terrorist group; however, in each case ISIL said the attack had been carried out due to the target nation’s role in combating ISIL in Iraq and Syria, so the fact people seem to be linking Islam to the attack more than those countries is an interesting finding. If ISIL claimed responsibility for these attacks in order to prompt a policy change among the target government towards Iraq and Syria, it’s not clear that people linked any of the attacks to either of these countries, making it less likely that the voting publics in each of the countries will apply political pressure on their leaders to change course.

Third, interest in ISIL as a group remained low in each attack compared to other search topics. In each case, immediately following the attack, search volume for the terrorist group remained behind News, name of the city in which the attack took place, and Terrorism. Despite claiming responsibility for each attack soon after they took place, the target populations seemed uninterested in the group compared to these other topics.

This was the case both among the suicide attacks and the non-suicide attacks. If ISIL was seeking to attract attention to their cause or their demands with these attacks, they appear to have failed.

Fourth, the interest in the perpetrators of the attacks varied, and does not appear directly linked to whether the attack was suicide or non-suicide. For instance, the British public appeared uninterested in the Manchester suicide bomber, with search volume for his name not even registering when compared to volume for Islam, Syria, and Iraq. The

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Brussels suicide bombers, however, received significantly more attention after the attack, though that heightened interest may have been at least partially attributed to the fact they had been involved in a terrorist cell responsible for the November 2015 attacks in Paris rather than just the fact they were suicide bombers. The Nice attacker received a slight uptick in interest, though again, significantly less than other terms. The primary perpetrator of the Barcelona attack, however, did receive significant attention by the

Spanish public in the days following the attack, likely due to the fact there was a large manhunt underway for him before he was killed by police four days after the attack. If a terrorist group’s goal is to focus attention on their operatives, either due to fear or interest, then it’s not clear that suicide tactics are sufficient, and in fact, non-suicide attacks where the perpetrator remains on the run may be optimal.31

Lastly, the attacks largely did not appear to greatly affect interest in normal social activities when using search volume for Restaurant, Bar, Cafe, Park, and Travel as proxies. The one attack that did result in some significant measurable disruption was the

Brussels attack, which resulted in drops of interest in going out to eat and to bars.

However, it is unclear whether this was directly linked to the fact the attack involved suicide bombers or other variables, including that the attack targeted public transportation infrastructure. The other suicide attack explored here, the bombing in Manchester, did not

31 These results align with a study that compares the financial impacts of the London attack in July 2005 and the Madrid bombings in March 2004 by Kollias, Papadamou, and Stagiannis (2010). That study finds that the financial markets rebounded quicker in London than in Madrid, which the authors hypothesize may be at least partially attributed to the fact that the London attacks involved suicide bombers and the Madrid attack did not. That is, in London the attackers were neutralized as part of the attack whereas in Madrid the perception was that the threat continued to exist until security forces identified and neutralized the perpetrators.

146 result in similar disruptions among the British public. Overall, though, the attacks did result in sustained disruptions, perhaps indicating that terrorist tactics—both suicide and non- suicide—result in little disruptions to social activities. If ISIL’s goal was to tear at the social fabric of a target country, there is no indication in this study that they were successful.

In summary, there is no evidence from this study to validate either of the hypotheses set forth, that suicide attacks result in a greater psychological arousal among a target population than non-suicide attacks or that any such arousal offers tactical advantages to a terrorist group. If a terrorist group’s goal is to induce fear, anxiety, and worry among a population, one might expect to see members of the target population taking to the Internet to search for information related to the attack beyond just the immediate news. If the attacks, which the perpetrating group said were in response to the target country’s foreign policy in Iraq and Syria, had prompted enough of a psychological response from the public, one might expect to see the public searching for information online regarding these countries. One might also expect to see decline of interest in going out in public to crowded areas—such as to restaurants or bars/cafes—or traveling, but there is no evidence any of these attacks had such an effect. If anything, this study has illustrated that terrorism generally does not appear to have the tactical psychological effects on a target population that terrorist groups intend, regardless of whether suicide tactics are utilized.

Conclusion Terrorism scholars have long concluded that terrorism does not work. By using terrorist tactics, groups reduce the possibility of concessions from a target government,

147 mobilize the target population against the group, and result in strengthened domestic and foreign counterterrorism efforts. Further, Abrahms (2013) has found that groups that use suicide tactics are even less likely to achieve their political goals, primarily due to the highly lethal nature of suicide attacks and the fact that groups that employ suicide tactics tend to have unrealistic demands: “To be sure, suicide terrorism is a superb way to blow things up. But there is precious little empirical evidence that groups turn to suicide terrorism to maximize political return” (163). However, despite the fact it would seem that terrorism and suicide terrorism in particular are ineffective means to achieve a desired strategic objective, scholars have nonetheless continued to highlight that suicide terrorist attacks are uniquely more effective than non-suicide attacks at a number of things, including inducing a heightened state of psychological arousal among a targeted population, which can then advance strategic or political goals of the group. This study, though, finds no evidence that suicide attacks offer unique short-term tactical advantages to a terrorist group in terms of their communicative benefit or psychological arousal. In fact, there is no evidence from this study to conclude that the psychological arousal instilled by a terrorist attack offers any significant or sustained tactical advantages to a terrorist group.

To be sure, there are several important limitations of this study, and the findings should be interpreted as only preliminary and suggestive. First, the search topics explored in this study were certainly not exhaustive. It attempted to use some important, general topics that would be applicable across cases and that would serve as proxies for variables of interest. Analysis of other topics may reveal additional insights into how societies

148 respond to terrorist attacks. Second, the study only examined four attacks that took place in Western Europe and, as such, the findings may not necessarily be generalizable more broadly. Findings may differ in other national contexts. Third, Google Trends data offers a number of advantages, but it does not provide search frequency data, only adjusted measures of search volume. This makes comparison across cases and contexts more difficult. Fourth, this study has noted that it is impossible to ascertain the precise nature of each search. That is, people may search for the same topic though for qualitatively different reasons. One person may search for ISIL due to fear and a desire to learn more about the threat, whereas others may search for the group to learn about its history or other reasons unrelated to fear. Though we can determine which topics had larger or smaller search volume at a given time, that does not necessarily specify the reason for the searches, what websites people actually navigated to as a result of the search, how long they spent searching, etc. However, this study used issue salience as a proxy for psychological arousal and provides directional findings.

Further observational empirical research into the social consequences of suicide attacks compared to non-suicide attacks is needed. Research should strive to measure how societies actually respond to both types of attacks rather than relying too heavily upon surveys or focus groups where respondents are asked to self-report how they would hypothetically respond to different types of attacks. This offers myriad methodological challenges, though understanding how societies respond to terrorist attacks—and how their responses differ based upon type of terrorist attack—would offer further tools to increase societal resilience.

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Discussion and Conclusion

So, do suicide attacks work at the tactical level? Do they provide terrorist groups certain advantages that justify the costs associated with them? This study has ventured to evaluate the effectiveness of suicide attacks versus non-suicide attacks on three criteria. First, the study examined lethality rates of both types of attacks, including lethality ratios that measured victims killed versus perpetrators killed. It found that non-suicide attacks can be equally as lethal as suicide attacks while also minimizing the deaths of operatives, that certain non-suicide attacks are more reliably lethal than suicide attacks, and ultimately that suicide attacks remain a suboptimal tactic if a terrorist group is singularly focused on lethality while reducing costs to his organization. Second, the study explored how The New York Times covers both types of attacks in terms of words per article and page placement, metrics that serve as proxies for the level of importance the newspaper applies to stories. It found that suicide attacks only outperform non-suicide attacks significantly when they occur in Western countries, but generally suicide attacks do not provide significant advantages over non-suicide attacks to justify the costs involved. Lastly, this study analyzed social reactions to both types of attacks by examining four cases—two suicide and two non-suicide—in Western Europe by using Google

Trends data. It found scant evidence that suicide attacks resulted in greater psychological arousal among a target population or a type of psychological arousal that is more advantageous to the terrorist group. In sum, at least among these three commonly-cited supposed advantages, suicide attacks do not appear to have the edge over non-suicide attacks, rendering the argument that terrorist groups utilize suicide attacks due to their

150 unique tactical advantages at least in need of further empirical investigation. There was little empirical evidence across the three studies to conclude that suicide attacks offer unique tactical advantages to a terrorist group vis-à-vis the target population, despite the fact that all three have been cited by scholars in extant literature as criteria in which suicide attacks outperform non-suicide attacks, thereby justifying their continued employment and explaining their proliferation. The question academics have been asking has been “Why do groups use suicide terrorism?” when the question they perhaps should be asking is “Why do groups use suicide terrorism when other tactics can achieve similar effects on the enemy?” The strategic model and rational choice theory, therefore, might be more useful in explaining why many terrorist groups choose not to use suicide tactics than why some groups do. There may simply be more benefits and less costs associated with non-suicide tactics, at least according to many groups’ calculations and the data presented in this study. Suicide attacks do not appear to be the “smart bombs” or “golden bullets” that scholars have generally argued.

The notion that terrorist tactics generally do not work is nothing new in the literature. Abrahms (2006b) found that terrorist groups only rarely (7 percent) of the time achieve their stated policy objectives and that such a poor rate of success is inherent to the tactic of terrorism itself. However, despite this finding, in their quest to explain why groups would use suicide tactics, scholars have continued to conclude that suicide tactics remained an effective tactic for terrorist organizations, at least at the tactical level. This claim has been able to co-exist in the literature that has concluded that terrorism does not work due to its focus on tactical rather than strategic effects. Terrorism doesn’t work

151 strategically, but suicide terrorism works tactically. However, the findings of this study align suicide tactics with other measures of the ineffectiveness of terrorism generally.

The paradigm that involves explaining suicide terrorism based on the perception that its effective goes back to Pape (2003). This outcomes-based approach to the study of terrorist behavior is focused on the ability—or inability—of a terrorist group to achieve certain objectives, from the tactical level up to the strategic. This strategic model tends to minimize or limit the explanatory power of cultural or religious variables when seeking to develop causal theories on terrorist group behavior, including why such groups choose one tactic over another. This approach views a terrorist group as inherently a rational entity that responds to cost-benefit analyses and data-driven decision making. A terrorist group will adopt tactics and methods that give them the best chance of succeeding in their mission while minimizing the costs to their organization. This approach dominates the field, at least among political scientists, and, in addition to attempting to explain suicide terrorism, has been used to explain why groups claim certain attacks and not others

(Abrahms and Conrad 2017), why terrorist propaganda emphasizes certain themes

(Abrahms, Beauchamp, and Mroszczyk 2017), how terrorism is used to provoke a targeted population into a disproportionate response (Lake 2002), and myriad other studies. Overall, though, scholars have tended to agree that terrorism is not an effective strategy, and often works against the interests of the group (Abrahms 2006b; Abrahms and Lula 2012). Therefore, much of current research on terrorism has sought to preserve the rational choice or strategic model in the face of seemingly irrational behavior by developing theories and models that demonstrate how terrorist groups behave rationally

152 under certain circumstances, with certain conditions, utilizing different units of analysis, etc., thereby preserving the strategic model.

If suicide attacks do not result in quantitatively greater benefits to a terrorist group than non-suicide attacks, which would have justified their use while preserving the strategic or rational model of terrorism, then there are at least three possible avenues worth exploration. First, it may be possible that there were once more significant tactical advantages associated with suicide tactics when it was a novel attack method. The impacts associated with the tactic may have worn off over the years as the behavior became relatively normalized, and terrorist groups must now generate innovative and creative ways to instill shock and horror in order to attain tactical advantages over their targets. This may explain the recent turn, at least among certain prominent jihadist terrorist groups, to vehicular ramming attacks, stabbings, and shootings as preferred tactics. Such “low-tech attacks” require little in terms of operational training or technological sophistication. IS, for instance, appears to have become agnostic in terms of its preferred tactic, urging its followers to use “Trucks. Knifes. Bombs. Whatever. It’s time for revenge” (Clifford 2018). These methods of attack, along with shooting attacks have been employed with greater frequency in the West seemingly as a result of and in response to IS propaganda, as witnessed in London, Nice, Stockholm, Paris, Orlando,

Barcelona, and elsewhere. It remains unclear whether there is any tactical or operational imperative behind calling for conducting non-suicide attacks. Have groups like IS realized that suicide attacks do not necessarily result in tactically advantageous outcomes or that these other non-suicide methods can be at least equally as effective? Are they

153 experiencing a low supply of willing volunteers for suicide missions? Or are they trying to reduce the barrier for entry to would-be sympathizers and followers who are willing to conduct attacks, but not necessarily prepared to take their own lives in the process?

Empirical investigation into such questions, absent direct access to terrorist group leaders, remains improbable, but they nevertheless merit consideration. Suicide attacks, like other military tactics throughout history, may have reached their historical apex in terms of tactical effectiveness, forcing terrorist groups to innovate in order to remain relevant.

Second, terrorist groups may derive other benefits of suicide attacks that are not necessarily related to effects vis-à-vis the target population. The benefits that terrorist groups seek may be internal in nature rather than external; that is, a terrorist group leader’s calculus does not use effects on a target population as the desired product, but rather effects on internal cohesion, group solidarity, recruitment, or some other internal human capital goal. There may be short-term internal organizational objectives of terrorism generally and suicide terrorism in particular for which lethality metrics, media coverage of the attacks, and psychological impact on the target population may be irrelevant to the group, or at least not feature prominently in their calculus. Pape (2003:

344) has noted that suicide terrorism is primarily a group-related phenomenon; that is, suicide tactics are used by groups to achieve an organizational goal and are rarely used by an individual acting without ties to any broader group. Richardson (2006: 106) agrees, noting that “in every known martyrdom operation, a group plays an essential role in planning the terrorist attack and in training, sustaining, and supervising the volunteer. The

154 average martyrdom operation requires a supporting case of about two others.” The notion that suicide terrorism is unique only in groups has also been noted by Hoffman and

McCormick (2004), Krueger and Laitin (2008), and others.

Terrorist groups may be simply unaware of the actual effects of the various tactics they have at their disposal. While scholars can measure various metrics to evaluate the success of different types of tactics, there is little evidence to indicate that terrorist group leaders are actually engaged in collecting data and statistically analyzing measures of performance of their attacks at all. There may very well be a perception among terrorist groups that suicide attacks offer unique tactical advantages over non-suicide attacks, and this perception may be driving decision-making and rational calculations on the part of the terrorist group leader. In this case, the data collected and analyzed in this study would be largely irrelevant since a terrorist group would be simply oblivious to any of it, but the strategic model paradigm would remain intact due to the terrorist group leader’s perception of benefit as the driving causal mechanism.

Scholars have hypothesized that groups may use terrorism, and in suicide terrorism in particular, for a variety of intra-organizational goals. Through terrorism, people may seek and achieve affective ties with other terrorist group members rather than strategic or political outcomes (Abrahms 2008). There have been other internal group benefits of terrorism noted such as a control, discipline, and morale building (Crenshaw

1981). According to Post (2010), group psychology, and particularly collective identity, can be a significant motivator for terrorist behavior. Similar arguments have been made regarding the use of suicide terrorism. Groups can induce self-sacrificing behavior, such

155 as suicide attacks, as a way to increase social solidarity within the group (Shimizu 2011).

If this approach has merit, then measuring the effectiveness of suicide attacks by examining lethality rates, media coverage, and psychological impact will not necessarily reveal any advantages since these are not the intended products. Instead, the metrics worth investigation would be things like group membership, rates of defection, and other metrics that measure strength of group cohesion. Under this approach, suicide attacks would be positively correlated with measures of group strength.

Another explanation for suicide terrorism falls outside the bounds of the strategic model and rational choice theory altogether. This ideological approach argues that terrorist groups may use suicide tactics not for tactical advantages against an enemy or for internal organizational objectives, but because of religious motivations alone.

Moghadam (2008) best articulates this approach to suicide terrorism and terrorism more broadly that places less emphasis on a rationalist, outcomes-based approach to explaining suicide terrorism and instead emphasizes the role of ideology in the diffusion and adoption of suicide tactics. Moghadam proposes that “Al Qaeda and its Salafi-Jihadist ideology are directly responsible for the rise in the number of suicide attacks, the rise in the number of countries in which suicide attacks have occurred, and the rise in the number of organizations that employ suicide tactics” (Moghadam 2008: 3). Hafez (2006) agrees, arguing that it may be the symbolism associated with suicide attacks that actually drives the operatives rather than the strategic goals of their organization. This ideological approach is less concerned with the lethality of attacks, their ability to capture the attention of the public, their psychological impact, or other tangible or secular effects, and instead

156 emphasizes how religion, ideology, and symbolism can serve as sufficient explanatory variables. This approach contends that suicide attacks are not merely the result of a callous calculation made by a terrorist group leader in a moral or ideological vacuum, but instead is intimately intertwined with religious beliefs and notions of sacrifice, death, and honor. If suicide attacks are inherently a manifestation or product of salafi jihadist ideology, and not of tactical necessity, then the tactical effects of the attacks are irrelevant or only secondary considerations. Scholars such as Berman (2009), Benjamin and Simon

(2002), Juergensmeyer (2003), Roy (2004) and others have similarly emphasized the role of religion in explaining modern jihadist terrorism rather than merely attributing it to the result of a cost-benefit calculation in which a leader decides on which tactics to employ based on his estimation regarding their tactical utility. Elster (2005) criticizes the over- emphasis on rational choice models and argues for the incorporation of ideology into analyses: “Attempts to identify motivations [for suicide attacks] by some combination of game-theoretic analysis and econometrics are, in my opinion, doomed to fail” (257). He continues that he disagrees with crediting organizations with a level of rationality necessary under rational-choice models: “To talk about rational actors with irrational beliefs would be an oxymoron” (258). If suicide attacks are inherently a manifestation or product of salafi jihadist ideology, and not of tactical necessity, then the tactical effects of the attacks are irrelevant or only secondary considerations.

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The Kamikaze parallel

A parallel is often drawn between Japanese kamikaze pilots in World War II and modern jihadist-inspired suicide attackers. In both scenarios, the attackers willingly engage(d) in offensive actions designed to both inflict damage against their enemy while simultaneously also taking their own lives. Their own suicide is a defining characteristic of a successful mission; that is, their mission would be unsuccessful, less effective, or, worse, dishonorable if they did not perish while committing their final act. Another important commonality is that in both scenarios the commanders have other available and less-costly options at their disposal which may reasonably inflict equivalent damage.

Certainly, terrorist group leaders have myriad tactics in their repertoire that could achieve similar effects against a target that do not involve the suicide of an operative. Similarly, the Japanese military had other methods at their disposal, which may (or may not have) produced results.

There are important distinctions between these two types of operatives. First, most available evidence seems to indicate that suicide terrorist operatives volunteer for suicide missions, even enthusiastically. A Hamas leader is reported to have said that his biggest problem is not the shortage of volunteers for suicide operations, but rather the “hordes of young men who beat on our doors” asking to be sent on suicide missions (Hassan 2001).

Among the documents recovered from Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad, Pakistan compound during the raid that killed him is a letter from an unnamed operative in which he passionately requests bin Laden’s permission to conduct a martyr operation: “I ask you in God’s name to allow me to carry [a suicide mission] out in the fastest time

158 possible…I beseech you to come through” (“Request to Carry Out a Martyr Operation”).

A former IS intelligence officer and trainer reportedly recalled that being a “Suicide bomber is a choice…When you join [IS], during the clerical classes, they ask: ‘Who will be a martyr?’ People raise their hands…They keep volunteering” (Weiss 2015).32 In one study on a Pakistani Taliban suicide bomber training camp in Waziristan, it was found that the trainees were allowed to quit their training if they so chose, and there were no repercussions to the trainees if they did leave: “Therefore, whether to stay at the camp or return to family largely depends on the will of the suicide bomber” (Tajik 2010). In general, suicide bombers appear to be conscious of their decision, eager to volunteer, and willing to die in their mission.

Conversely, evidence is less clear that kamikaze pilots were as willing or as enthusiastic to meet their fate as suicide terrorists. Ohnuki-Tierney (2006), in her analysis of diaries of kamikaze pilots, notes that “The system made no allowance for conscientious objectors. Any soldier who would not obey military rules and his commander’s orders was shot on the spot” (4). There was the illusion that the soldiers had willfully volunteered to be kamikaze pilots, Ohnuki-Tierney argues, because it was in the Japanese military’s interest to make it seem that they had volunteered to be pilots since kamikaze operations were not considered official Japanese military operations (6). Writings left behind by the

32 It is worth noting, however, that not all suicide operatives are necessarily volunteers, and there have been many documented cases in which vulnerable populations—including women, children, and those with mental disabilities—are coerced into carrying out a suicide attack, are brainwashed, or are even unaware entirely that they are on a suicide mission and a device is planted on them and remotely detonated. Boko Haram, for instance, is notorious for using children as suicide bombers in part due to the ease with which they can be coerced. For more on the demographic profiles of Boko Haram suicide bombers, see Warner and Matfess (2017). 159 pilots indicates that they did not resist becoming pilots to be sent on suicide missions because of peer pressure, but because they could not justify saving their own lives while allowing their comrades to go on missions (7). Further, the ramifications of refusing would have meant being “consigned to a living hell,” including becoming persona non grata or being sent to a battlefield where death was certain (7). While German soldiers were told to kill, Japanese soldiers were told to die (4).

Japanese military suicide missions in World War II (WWII), which are often referred to collectively as kamikaze missions, fell into a number of categories, which Hill (2005) discusses. First, plane attacks, which accounted for most of the Japanese suicide missions during WWII, were widely used in the Philippines but also off Okinawa, Kyushu, and Iwo Jima. Second, the Japanese used rocket-propelled piloted bombs in order to increase the speed of the attack (making it less susceptible to being shot down) while also packing more explosive power than a plane kamikaze attack. Third, airborne saboteur assaults in which soldiers on board a plane made a landing, conducted an assault, but knew they’d be killed by the enemy. Fourth, suicide submarine attacks involved manned torpedoes that allowed Japanese submarines to launch the torpedo at a distance far enough away from its intended target so as to remain undetected while also allowing the torpedo to be guided to the target by the pilot. Fifth, suicide motorboats were used as torpedoes since conventional torpedo boats were too slow. At least 6,000 suicide motor boats were constructed during the war. Lastly, “frogman mines” were underwater human mines in which operatives would detonate mines near enemy landing craft.

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The Japanese military’s suicide missions were similar to present-day suicide terrorist attack perhaps in another way: The benefits of their use to their organization, at least when measured in terms of tactical effects on their enemies, may not have outweighed the costs associated them. According to an analysis by Hill (2005), Japanese suicide missions, aside from the aircraft-cashing variant, were largely ineffective weapons. They only hit their intended targets a fraction of the time, the men tasked with carrying out missions were killed in training, and the attacks were otherwise defended against by US forces. Even with air attacks, which were the most effective method of suicide attack, only 11.6 per cent of sorties achieved direct hits. They also resulted in, as one would expect, large number of deaths of Japanese service members with around

4,000 Japanese soldiers killed in aircraft special attack missions alone (Hill 2005: 12).

Despite the ineffectiveness of these attacks, the Japanese government frequently overestimated their successes (Hill 2005: 9). There’s no denying, however, that there was a strong perception, even among the US military at the time, that kamikaze missions were an effective tactic that proved difficult at defending against. In an article title “New

Tactics in Naval Warfare” written for Foreign Affairs in January 1946, Bernard Brodie notes that “The Navy became seriously alarmed at the extent of damage [caused by kamikaze missions], and for a time insisted upon the utmost secrecy concerning the successes of the Kamikaze” (Brodie 1946: 222). Further, according to Brodie, 80 percent of the casualties and damage inflicted in the Okinawa campaign were the result of

Japanese suicide planes. Yet, Brodie continues:

…the net result of this battle was a defeat for the Kamikaze. Heavy as was the damage inflicted upon our fleet, it did not begin to compensate for the

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more than 4,000 Japanese planes destroyed during the assault. None of our major ships was sunk, and there was no question as to which side could better absorb the blows inflicted upon it. The Kamikaze assault at Okinawa was the last great challenge to our fleet by the Japanese. Their recognition of its failure no doubt helped to make certain their surrender within a very few months (222).

The costs of the kamikaze campaign outweighed the marginal benefits that they provided the Japanese military, and ultimately the realization of the ineffectiveness of the tactic contributed to their surrender. The kamikaze case is a good example of how a tactic can seem effective in the short term with apparent advantages and operational victories, yet ultimately contributed to a strategic defeat due at least in part to the accrued costs.

Despite the fact that, in general, suicide terrorists are willing volunteers and kamikaze pilots were mostly compelled by a variety of formal and informal forces, the parallels between the two in terms of the effectiveness of the tactic as part of a broader campaign of violence is worth exploration. In both cases, the prevailing sentiment during the time of the attacks was that they were impossible to defend against, that they were precision weapons capable of maximizing damage to a target, and that they inflicted a disproportionately high psychological toll on the enemy. However, as witnessed both in this study on suicide attacks and in the brief review of the track record of kamikaze attacks, the reality of their effectiveness was and is different than the perception. This realization naturally prompts a question regarding this puzzle of suicide terrorism: Why do organizations utilize a tactic that presents uniquely high costs when the benefits can also be achieved through less costly means? If the benefits do not outweigh the costs, or if similar benefits can be achieved through less-costly means, then one must conclude that there are additional factors at play. Why groups use suicide tactics and why people

162 volunteer to participate in them are complex questions that require consideration of myriad factors. Despite the best efforts by social scientists, these questions do not lend themselves to parsimonious explanations.

Way ahead

For decades, scholars across a variety of disciplines have struggled in their quest to develop a comprehensive theory to explain suicide terrorism. Nearly every theory has fallen short in some manner. They often fail to strike an appropriate balance between the individual and the group, between tactics and strategy, between rationality and religion, and between benefits and costs. Attempts to explain the behavior have appeared in academic journals related to economics, religion, history, political science, psychology, biology, philosophy, medicine, and security. Ultimately, academia has been unable to develop a theory that has withstood cross-discipline scrutiny while simultaneously meeting the standards of parsimony and falsifiability so treasured in social science research. The shortcomings related to the state of suicide terrorism research are not related to a lack of effort, but instead to the inherent difficulties associated with studying a phenomenon like suicide terrorism. Terrorist group leaders are not generally available for interviews in order to explain their decision-making processes when determining when and how to use suicide attacks, or what metrics, if any, they review to determine whether an attack was successful. There are no meeting minutes that capture terrorist groups’ deliberations when determining what tactics to utilize. Similarly, the suicide bombers themselves are rarely available for interviews ahead of their operation in order to explain

163 their individual motivations, or otherwise available to psychologists for evaluation.

Scholars are left with insufficient or incomplete data and a lack of access to research subjects, making it challenging to scientifically research this phenomenon.

In addition, adherence to a rational choice paradigm, at least among much of the social science research on suicide terrorism, has resulted in only a narrow view of how terrorist groups—particularly jihadist groups—operate. A more robust understanding of suicide terrorism as the product of not just rational calculation but also cultural influence and structural constraints may lead to more durable and useful theories. Terrorist groups, like all organizations, do not merely operate within a vacuum where calculations are made and costs and benefits are weighed. Suicide terrorism must not simply be the result of such a calculation, either at the individual or organizational level. Suicide terrorism is qualitatively different than other tactics, and future research must account for this.

Academic theories and methodological obstacles aside, an inability to fully grasp the nature of this deadly phenomenon has implications for those in the security and intelligence community tasked with preventing such attacks from happening. How can we combat the use of a tactic when we do not understand what drives the tactic to begin with? Police can use deterrence measures to stop crime, such as the possibility of being arrested, convicted, and sentenced to a prison sentence. But how do you deter a suicide attack, when the attacker is willing and eager to die? How can a group be dissuaded from not only engaging in terrorist activity, but particularly suicide terrorism? Based on the findings of this study, terrorist groups may be less inclined to adopt suicide tactics if they

164 knew that the tactic offers few advantages over non-suicide tactics with higher costs, assuming they engage in some degree of rational, tactical-level decision making.

A durable approach to combating suicide terrorism, and terrorism more broadly, must stem from an accurate assessment of the incentive structures, structural dynamics, and cultural influences. Any approach that too heavily relies on one while dismissing the others will prove to be insufficient. Hafez (2006) notes that policymakers must consider three levels of analysis—individual motivations, organizational strategies, and societal developments—when attempting to understand the proliferation of suicide terrorism (67).

“Individuals are not inspired to carry out suicide bombings because they are the optimal tactic given the constraints of the political environment or the calculations of costs versus benefits,” he notes (67). A full appreciation of the various factors at play is the only way to develop durable and effective measures to counter suicide terrorism. Any explanatory theory of suicide terrorism must incorporate elements of both rational choice theory as well as a study of religion, culture, and history.

Further research should examine how tactical decisions are made within terrorist groups, what level of awareness they have of the costs and benefits associated with different tactics, how they justify high costs to their organization, and what alternative benefits—both internally and externally—they might derive from suicide attacks. In addition, structural and cultural variables should be considered in conjunction with this rational choice or strategic model approach. Terrorist group leaders are bound by various structural constraints, and their decision-making is informed by various religious and cultural variables. Only when such an agnostic approach is taken can we begin to develop

165 a more holistic understanding of the driving factors behind suicide terrorism. Ultimately, as Hafez (2006) correctly notes, in order to deter suicide terrorism there must be a strategy to render the tactic too costly to a group (70). Based on the findings of this research, the data may already be on our side.

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