Suicide terrorists in recent decades total approximately 3,500. Lankford finds risk factors for suicide for about 40 of these cases. Given that many with risk factors for suicide never attempt suicide, a reasonable estimate might be that one percent of suicide terrorists are suicidal

McCauley, Clark

English

Scholarship;  Research;  and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College

Bryn Mawr College
Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr
College
Psychology Faculty Research and Scholarship Psychology
2014
How many suicide terrorists are suicidal?
Clark McCauley
Bryn Mawr College, cmccaule@brynmawr.edu
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Custom Citation
McCauley, Clark. " How many suicide terrorists are suicidal?" Behavioral and Brain Sciences 37.4 (2014): 373-374; 10.1017/
S0140525X13003452
Target article:  Adam Lankford’s The Myth of Martyrdom 
How many suicide terrorists are suicidal? 
Clark McCauley 
Psychology Departmnet, Bryn Mawr College 
101 N. Merion Ave, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010 
610 526 5017 
cmccaule@brynmawr.edu 
http://www.brynmawr.edu/psychology/McCauley1.html 
 
ABSTRACT:   
 
Suicide terrorists in recent decades total about 3700.  Lankford finds risk factors for suicide for about 40 
of these cases.  Given that many with risk factors for suicide are not in fact seeking death, a reasonable 
estimate might be that one percent of suicide terrorists are suicidal.     
 
MAIN TEXT  
 
This book offers a startlingly simple message: suicide bombers are suicidal.  They want to die to escape 
personal problems the way a patient with end-stage cancer wants to escape pain.  Dying in an attack on 
the enemy provides a socially acceptable form of suicide, and earlier analyses of suicide bombing have 
erred in seeing the bomber’s cause as the cause of the bomber’s act.   
The author understands that his thesis is far from the mainstream of terrorism research.  Referring to 
himself, Lankford muses that “A young professor should not be able to uncover the secret motives of 
suicide terrorists in just a few years, while the rest of the world essentially failed to do so in the decade 
that followed 9/11” (p.11).   
Lankford takes several tacks in advancing his thesis.   
First he argues that suicide bombers are suicidal by definition, because they orchestrate their own 
deaths.  “As a starting point for a more sophisticated theory, this book takes the view that, by definition, 
all suicide terrorists are suicidal” (p.10).   
This thought is quickly left behind, however, in order to engage issues relating to the motivations of 
suicide bombers.  Lankford argues that suicide bombers are not heroes because heroes—the soldier 
who falls on a grenade, the Secret Service officer who takes a bullet for the president—act to save 
others rather than to harm others, and act on trained reflexes with no intention of dying.     
This is an odd argument in two ways.  There are heroes, like Audie Murphy, awarded the U.S. Medal of 
Honor for extraordinary risk-taking in attacking and killing the enemy.   And it is not obvious why the 
individual who acts without thinking is more heroic than one who chooses death.    
Lankford further argues (p.122) that U.S. suicide terrorists (n=12) are similar to U.S. rampage shooters 
(n=18) and to U.S. school shooters (n=16).  In his coding, the great majority of all three groups have 
mental health problems, most die in the course of their attacks, and many are socially marginalized or 
suffering from family, school, or work problems.  Thus, not only are suicide terrorists not heros, they are 
troubled loners with mental health problems.     
Of course the small numbers make statistical conclusions difficult.  And, although the suicide terrorist 
cases are identified as individuals, the rampage shooters and school shooters are not identified.  
Readers must trust that the  author has included all relevant cases and that definitions of ‘social 
marginalization,’‘family problems,’ ‘work/school problems,’ and ‘mental health problems’ were 
consistently and reliably coded across the three groups.   
Another issue here is that rampage shooters and school shooters are predominantly lone actors, 
without group or organizational support, whereas suicide terrorists are volunteers or recruits for an 
organization that arms them and selects their target.  One might learn more about lone-actor terrorists 
by comparing them with predominanly lone-actor school attackers and assassins (McCauley & 
Moskalenko, 2013), but it is unlikely that suicide bombers, embedded in an organization, have the same 
motives as lone-actor rampage and school shooters. 
Finally, Lankford’s thesis must stand or fall with evidence about the motivations of suicide bombers.  
Willing to die for a cause is martyrdom.  Wanting to die to escape human travail—suicide—is 
condemned by major religions and, to varying extents, by the social norms of most cultures.  Although 
motivation can be difficult to ascertain, it is straightforward to count suicide bombers.   
In Israel and the Occupied Territories, between 1981 and 2008, Palestinian suicide bombers numbered 
216 (Merari, 2010).  Tamil Tiger suicide bombers numbered 378 between 2006 and 2008 (Ministry Of 
Defence, Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, 2011).  Suicide bombers in Iraq numbered 1779 
between 2003 and 2010 (Seifert & McCauley, in press).  In Afghanistan, between 2001 and 2011, suicide 
bombers numbered 736 (Bhattacharya, 2011; in Pakistan, between 1995 and 2012, suicide bombers 
numbered 369 (Pakistan Body Count, 2012). 
Some of these numbers may seem surprising.  The 200 Palestinian suicide bombers are few in relation to 
suicide bombers in other countries, notably fewer than the nearly 1100 suicide bombers in Afghanistan 
and Pakistan (“AfPak Theater”).  The total across countries for the past 35 years is 3478, and countries 
and years not included in this rough count make 3500 a minimal estimate of the number of suicide 
bombers in recent decades.  This is the size and breadth of the phenomenon of interest.   
Lankford raises the question, how many of the 3500 were suicidal?  His Appendix A (“Partial list of 
suicide terrorists with risk factors for suicide”) contains 142 cases, but only 40 of these have enough 
detail to be cited in the text.  It is not clear that the 40 are a representative sample of the 3500, and 
many of the 40 cases can be questioned because many with risk factors for suicide are not ready to die.   
But let us suppose for a moment that all 40 cases were persuasively shown to be suicidal.  What should 
we conclude about the 3500 suicide bombers?  One possibility is to estimate that about one percent of 
suicide bombers are suicidal.  Lankford believes that something close to one hundred percent are 
suicidal.  Readers will have to decide which is the more reasonable estimate. 
Given the uncerttain evidence that suicide bombers are suicidal, it is worth asking why this book is being 
reviewed in BBS.   I believe that the attraction of Lankford’s thesis is psychological and political.   
Psychologically it is reassuring to think that our enemies are not so committed to their cause as they 
seem.  They do not generate martyrs for their cause, they only channel suicides to masquerade as 
martyrs.  Their commitment to their cause is no stronger than our commitment to our cause; they are 
not going to outlast us.   
Politically it is reassuring to think that “As a form of psychological warfare, [this book] could be used to 
smear the reputations of suicide terrorists by portraying them as weak, cowardly, and suicidal” (p.172).  
The enemy won’t be listening to this, but it can play well in the U.S. 
12. ALPHABETICAL REFERENCE LIST (APA STANDARD)  
 
Bhattacharya, S.  (2011).  Afghanistan: Messengers of death. South Asia Intelligence Review, 10(9), 
September 5.  Accessed 24 July 2012 at http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/sair/Archives/sair10/10_9.htm 
McCauley, C., Moskalenko, S. & Van Son, B. (2013).  Characteristics of lone-wolf violent offenders: A 
comparison of assassins and school attackers.  Perspectives on Terrorism, 7(1), 4-24.   
Merari, A.  (2010)  Driven to death:  Psychological and social aspects of suicide terrorism.  New York: 
Oxford.    
Ministry Of Defence, Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. (2011). Humanitarian Operation Factual 
Analysis: July 2006 – May 2009, p.22.   Accessed 24 July 2013 at 
http://www.defence.lk/news/20110801_Conf.pdf 
Pakistan Body Count.  (2012). Accessed 24 Julyt 2013 at http://pakistanbodycount.org/suicide_bombing  
1995-2012  
Seifert, K. & McCauley, C. (in press).  Suicide bombers in Iraq, 2003-2010:  Disaggregating targets can 
reveal insurgent motives and priorities.  Terrorism and Political Violence.  


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