Bombing It: The Meaning and Sources of Suicide Bombing Failure

Over the years, political scientists and policymakers have striven to understand the circumstances under which terrorists fail, operationally and strategically. However, the question of failure has less frequently been approached through the lens of any one specific tactic. This article asks: how should one define and understand the sources of suicide bombing failure? After introducing a new definition of suicide bombing failure, the article next uses probit model analysis to test planner (or “architect”) versus militant (or “attacker”) sources of failure by using a unique dataset detailing the suicide bombing efforts of three of the most active African jihadist terror groups which leveraged suicide terrorism from 2007 to 2020 — al-Shabaab, “Boko Haram,” and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (“AQIM”). It finds evidence that choices made by these groups’ “architects,” are most commonly correlated with suicide bombing failures, rather than operational failures by “attackers” themselves.