Affiliation:
1. Assaf Moghadam is Assistant Professor and Senior Associate at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, and Research Fellow at the Initiative on Religion in International Affairs at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. This article is drawn from his book The Globalization of Martyrdom: Al Qaeda, Salafi Jihad, and the Diffusion of Suicide Attacks (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), but it analyzes a larger, more up-to-date set of data.
Abstract
Suicide missions made their modern debut in 1981. In recent years, however, they have witnessed an unprecedented increase according to several indicators, including number of attacks, number of organizations conducting these attacks, number of countries targeted, and number of victims. Existing explanations, including the occupation and outbidding theses, cannot account for the dramatic increase and spread of suicide attacks. A combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, including analysis of a data set of 1,857 suicide attacks from December 1981 through March 2008, suggests that two interrelated factors have contributed to the “globalization of martyrdom”: al-Qaida's evolution into a global terrorist actor and the growing appeal of its guiding ideology, Salafi jihad. As localized patterns of suicide missions have given way to more globalized patterns, states must rethink their counterterrorism strategies. At the same time, because Salafi jihadist groups tend to target Muslims, moderate Muslims and nonviolent Salafists must take the lead in challenging these groups.
Subject
Law,Political Science and International Relations,Sociology and Political Science
Cited by
118 articles.
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