Suicide Attack - Definition

Definition

Suicide terrorism is a problematic term to define. There is an ongoing debate on definitions of terrorism itself. Kofi Annan, as Secretary General of the UN, defined terrorism in March 2005 in the General Assembly as any action "intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants" for the purpose of intimidation. This definition would distinguish suicide terrorism from suicide bombing in that suicide bombing does not necessarily target non-combatants, and is not widely accepted.

For example, Jason Burke, a journalist who has lived among Islamic militants himself, whilst preferring the term 'militancy' to 'terrorism', suggests that most define terrorism as 'the use or threat of serious violence' to advance some kind of 'cause', and stresses that terrorism is a tactic. Burke leaves the target of such actions out of the definition, although he is also clear in calling suicide bombings 'abhorrent'. F. Halliday meanwhile draws attention to the fact that assigning the descriptor of 'terrorist' or 'terrorism' to the actions of a group is a tactic used by states to deny 'legitimacy' and 'rights to protest and rebel', although similar to Burke does not define terrorism in terms of the militance of the victim as did Kofi Annan. His preferred approach is to focus on the specific aspects within terrorism that we can study without using the concept itself, laden as it is with 'such distortion and myth'. This means focusing on the specific components of 'terror' and 'political violence' within terrorism.

With awareness of that debate in mind, suicide terrorism itself has been defined by A. Pedahzur as "A diversity of violent actions perpetrated by people who are aware that the odds they will return alive are close to zero." This captures suicide bombing, and the range of suicide tactics below.