Brothers in Arms: The Phenomenon of Complex Suicide Attacks

Mohammed Ibrahim Shire and Abdi Hersi

Terrorism and Political Violence, 2022, vol. 34, issue 2, 263-284

Abstract: Globally, the spread and use of suicide bombing attacks have become a regular occurrence. Suicide terrorism literature focuses primarily on conventional suicide bombing attacks. However, a growing trend has been observed in the adoption of complex suicide attacks. Using Al-Shabaab as a case study, this paper investigates the phenomenon of complex suicide attacks. We explore the tactical differences of complex suicide attacks vis-à-vis simple attacks in terms of its target goal, discriminative lethality, and delivery method. The paper relies on a uniquely constructed dataset of the group’s suicide operations, employing a variety of data collection techniques. The findings reveal that, inter alia, complex suicide attacks reduce civilian casualties compared to simple suicide attacks. Contrary to the group’s intent and official guidelines to target foreign entities; findings illustrate that domestic targets bear the brunt of most complex suicide attacks. These findings have the potential to contribute to counter-terrorism strategies and be adopted by concerned states in order to effectively protect significant loss of lives and destruction of property resulting from suicide terrorism.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09546553.2019.1693371 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ftpvxx:v:34:y:2022:i:2:p:263-284

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/ftpv20

DOI: 10.1080/09546553.2019.1693371

Access Statistics for this article

Terrorism and Political Violence is currently edited by James Forest

More articles in Terrorism and Political Violence from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().