A Brief History of Suicide Attacks

A kamikaze attack struck the HMS Formidable in 1945;
along with the Japanese pilot, eight British sailors were
killed in the attack. | Source: Imperial War Museums

Throughout human history, it has been proven that some people are willing to die and kill others for a cause. This notorious method of attack is condemned by some as an abhorrent insult to the dignity of life, an utterly despicable act of terrorism; others consider self-sacrifice or martyrdom the most admirable and heroic of deaths. Opinions are ultimately determined by an individual's perspective, which, on this subject, vary greatly across time and culture. The motivation to commit a suicide attack can be religious or secular, political or personal. Depending on perspective, such attacks can be called warfare or terrorism.

The large-scale use of modern technology to attempt suicide attacks on enemy combatants came during the Second World War. Most famous was the Japanese tactic of kamikaze ("divine wind"), in which pilots would intentionally try to fly their planes into enemy warships. Although only a minority of individual kamikaze attacks ended with success, the strategy as a whole was highly effective in bringing terror and destruction to Allied navies. Nearly 4,000 Japanese kamikaze pilots were sacrificed in the course of the war, resulting in the death of 4,900 American sailors and 34 sunk warships. In 1944, the Ohka, a piloted rocket purpose-built to execute suicide attacks, was developed for the Japanese Imperial Navy; American sailors nicknamed the flyable bomb the Baka (Japanese for "idiot"). The German Luftwaffe implemented a similar project, called Selbstopfer ("self-sacrifice"), to a much smaller scale during the desperate final phase of the war.

As the course of the war turned against the Japanese, the success of kamikaze inspired the development of other methods of suicide attack. These specialized units, or tokkōtai, included suicide submarines (Kairyu), manned torpedoes (Kaiten), motorboats (Shin'yō), and divers (Fukuryu). However, only the Kaiten ("return to heaven") manned torpedoes saw action in combat.

Sana'a Mehaidli killed herself
and two Israeli soldiers in
1985; her's is the earliest
recorded case of a
female suicide bomber.

The prominence of suicide attacks as a military or terrorist tactic rose with the Lebanese Civil War (1975 – 1990), particularly since the bombing of the US Embassy and the bombings of the American and French peacekeeping headquarters in 1983. Each of these suicide bombings were perpetrated by the Islamic Jihad Organization, a Shia militant group that would later become Hezbollah. Although scholars have argued that suicide and murder are in violation of classical Islamic law, the idea of suicide attacks as a method of warfare has nonetheless become accepted within Islamic militant organizations. In the past 30 years, suicide attacks have occurred virtually everywhere conflict exists in the Muslim world. 

Although many or most suicide attacks in recent decades have been inspired by the idea of religious martyrdom, secular and nationalist motivations also enkindle suicide attacks. In 1985, Sana'a Mehaidli, an agent of the secular Syrian Social Nationalist Party, blew up her Peugeot near an Israeli military convoy in Jezzine, killing two soldiers and injuring a dozen others. This event is considered the first example of a suicide attack committed by a woman (although many have followed since). From 1987 to 2009, the nationalist Tamil Tigers, a militant group that advocated the secession of the Tamil people from Sri Lanka, perpetrated over 330 suicide attacks against Indian and Sri Lankan targets.

Some studies have found that suicide attackers can be identified with classic suicidal risk factors. Adam Lankford, a criminal justice professor at the University of Alabama, found depression, PTSD, substance addictions, other mental health problems, severe physical injury or disability, and emotional or personal crises as common traits among suicide terrorists. Suicide attacks are most often committed by men, who are not uncommonly well educated. A study by psychologist Ariel Merari of Tel Aviv University confirmed these results, finding suicide bombers, unlike other terrorists, often displayed suicidal risk factors.

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