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Suicide Bombers in Iraq, 2003–2010: Disaggregating Targets Can Reveal Insurgent Motives and Priorities

2014; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 26; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09546553.2013.778198

1556-1836

Katherine R. Seifert, Clark McCauley,

Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East

Abstract Extending data reported by Mohammed Hafez in 2007, we compiled a database of 1,779 suicide bombers who attempted or completed attacks in Iraq from 2003 through 2010. From 2003 through 2006, monthly totals of suicide bombers show a pattern different from the pattern of non-suicide insurgent attacks, but from 2007 through 2010 the two patterns were similar. This biphasic pattern indicates that suicide attacks sometimes warrant separate analysis but sometimes are just one tactic in a larger envelope of insurgent violence. We also show that only 13 percent of suicide bombers targeted coalition forces and international civilians, primarily during the early years of the conflict, whereas 83 percent of suicide bombers targeted Iraqis (civilians, members of the Anbar Awakening Movement, Iraqi security forces, and government entities) in attacks that extended throughout the duration of the insurgency. These results challenge the idea that suicide attacks are primarily a nationalist response to foreign occupation, and caution that “smart bombs” may be more often sent against soft targets than hard targets. More generally, our results indicate that suicide attacks must be disaggregated by target in order to understand these attacks as the expression of different insurgent priorities at different times. Keywords: al qaeda in iraqal qaeda in the land of the two riversAQIbaathistsmartyrdom missionssuicide attackssuicide bombingsuicide missions Acknowledgments The authors thank Dr. Mohammed Hafez for the model of studying suicide bombing in Iraq provided in his published research, and especially for sharing his database of suicide bombings in Iraq. Notes Notes Julian Madsen, “Suicide Terrorism: Rationalizing the Irrational,” Strategic Insights 3, no. 8 (2004): 3. Ariel Merari, Driven to Death: Psychological and Social Aspects of Suicide Terrorism (New York: Oxford, 2010). Martha Crenshaw, “Explaining Suicide Terrorism: A Review Essay,” Security Studies 16, no. 1 (2007): 141. Mohammed M. Hafez, Suicide Bombers in Iraq: The Strategy and Ideology of Martyrdom (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2007). Bruce Hoffman, “The Logic of Suicide Terrorism,” The Atlantic Monthly, June 2003. Ibid. Robert A. Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (New York: Random House, 2005), 58. Mia Bloom, Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terror (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). For the purpose of this article, Dr. Hafez shared with the authors his own suicide bombing database, cataloging each attack in Iraq from March 2003 through August 2008. Comparisons between Hafez's data and that of this study focused on attacks occurring from March 2003 through August 2006, to reflect the period utilized in his published study, Suicide Bombers in Iraq (see note 4 above). Since 2003, foreign fighters who have traveled to Iraq to participate in the insurgency have operated under a variety of names and umbrella groups, including al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad, Al Qaeda Iraq, the Mujahideen Shura Council, and the Islamic State of Iraq. WITS NextGen database filters were not absolute in the sense that attacks which lacked conclusive evidence that the attacker survived (i.e., the attacker may have been among the wounded), were still included and additional circumstantial detail was explained in a description of the attack. On occasion, this description would relate the individual suicide incident with other attacks which occurred as part of a coordinated effort, including those additional offenses which were foiled or failed and therefore not included as a separate data entry in the source database. For example, an entry for a single, successful suicide VBIED attack may include information about additional VBIEDs which were discovered nearby, but were defused before they could be utilized as weapons. Detailed reports of planned attacks and additional failed and foiled attacks which were mentioned in source databases were included in this study's database. In many cases of foiled attacks, would-be suicide attackers are shot at as they approach a checkpoint, prematurely detonating their explosives; in failed attacks the explosive vest of the suicide bomber may fail to detonate altogether. Hafez's data not separately graphed, but see Chart 3 in Hafez, Suicide Bombers in Iraq (see note 4 above), 94. Ibid. Of 395 suicide bombers whose attacks were claimed by insurgent groups, two suicide bombers were claimed by both Al Qaeda and Ansar al-Sunna and three suicide bombers were claimed as part of a joint attack carried out by Ansar al-Sunna, the Islamic State in Iraq, and the Mujahideen Army. Each group claiming an attack was counted as one “claim” in our data, as each group was attaching its name to this event. Whereas claiming one bomber indicates a group's desire to take responsibility for the attack, each group which claimed association with these joint attacks was counted separately. A group's claim indicates an attempt to be viewed as culpable of this violence, likely to win public support. These five joint suicide bombers, therefore, were measured as thirteen separate “claims,” as thirteen separate attempts to attach a group's name to a suicide bomber. David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerilla (New York: Oxford, 2009), 177. Stephen Biddle, Jeffrey A. Friedman, and Jacob N. Shapiro, “Testing the Surge: Why Did Violence Decline in Iraq in 2007?,” International Security 37, no. 1 (2012): 18. Kimberly Kagan, The Anbar Awakening: Displacing al Qaeda from Its Stronghold in Western Iraq, Iraq Report (Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of War, August 21, 2006–March 30, 2007), 1. Farook Ahmed, Backgrounder #23: Sons of Iraq and Awakening Forces (Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of War, February 21, 2008), 2. Ibid., 12. Hafez, Suicide Bombers in Iraq (see note 4 above). Ibid., 92–94. Ibid. Biddle, Friedman, and Shapiro, “Testing the Surge” (see note 18 above). Madelyn Hsiao-Rei Hicks, Hamit Dardagan, Peter M. Bagnall, Michael Spagat, and John A. Slobada, “Casualties in Civilians and Coalition Soldiers from Suicide Bombings in Iraq, 2003–2010: A Descriptive Study,” The Lancet 378 (2011): 911. Pape, Dying to Win (see note 7 above). Bloom, Dying to Kill (see note 8 above). Additional informationNotes on contributorsKatherine R. Seifert Katherine R. Seifert is an independent scholar living in Washington, DC. Clark McCauley Clark McCauley is a Professor of Psychology at Bryn Mawr College, Co-Director of the Solomon Asch Center for the Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict, and Editor of the journal Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict.