The Lethality of Female Suicide Bombers

Over the past 50 years, suicide bombings have become an increasingly common tactic of politically motivated violence, and a rising number of these attacks feature women perpetrators. Prior literature suggested that female-perpetrated suicide bombings occurring between 1985 through 2008 inflicted greater casualties, which may account in part for their increased use by terror groups. The current research project ascertains whether sex continues to predict the lethality of suicide bombing attacks perpetrated by terror groups over the decade leading up to 2016. The study utilizes secondary data sampled from the Global Terrorism Database (N?=?881) and the Chicago Project on Security and Threats (N?=?1,722). A negative binomial model regressing lethality against perpetrator and conflict covariates did not observe a statistically significant relationship between sex and lethality. Male and female suicide bombers demonstrated similar lethality in suicide bombing events between 2005 and 2016, although scatterplots suggest some aberration during the years 2009, 2010, and 2016. Pairwise comparisons of perpetrator sex by conflict observed some variation in the lethality of attacks, with female suicide bombers from Al Qaeda, the Islamic State of Iraq, and Iraqi rebel groups found more lethal than male suicide bombers from Boko Haram and the Nigerian rebels. The current research project contributes to the literature by demonstrating the evolving nature of terrorism and tactics relevant to the lethality of politically motivated violent attacks.     

The Moral Justification for the Preventive Detention of Terrorists

The moral, as opposed to legal, justification for the preventive detention of terrorists is the topic of this article, and, in particular, for the preventive detention of members of extremist Islamist terrorist organizations, such as Islamic State (IS) and Al Qaeda (AQ). The article argues that preventive detention of terrorists is morally justified under certain circumstances. Its argument for preventive detention of terrorists is analogous to that used to detain enemy combatants as prisoners of war. However, rather than relying on the possession of the properties definitive of the legal status of a combatant, it relies on demonstrable possession of constitutive features of functionally integrated membership of a terrorist organization. Membership in this sense of a terrorist organization creates the presumption of a standing intention to commit murder, or at least to assist others to do so, in the service of the organization’s political ends.     

我国应对炸弹恐吓事件的工作缺失及其对策

近来,我国境内发生多起炸弹恐吓事件,造成了较大伤亡和财产损失,引起了社会公众的恐慌。炸弹恐吓事件有各种特征及其成因,我国应对此类事件有一些缺失,要采取一些对策预防和打击炸弹恐吓事件。     

“恐怖活动组织”概念初探

“组织、领导、参加恐怖活动组织罪”是我国９７刑法新确立的一个罪名,本文作者在对各种学说进行分析的基础上,提出了自己对这一概念的界定和特征的认识。     

莫斯科劫持人质事件暴露出的问题及其警示

莫斯科劫持人质事件暴露了俄政府在打击恐怖活动上的措施不当、防范不周、信息不灵、制度要求不落实等问题;给我们的主要警示是:应加强反恐理论研究,建立并完善对恐怖事件的打击机制。     

现代国际恐怖主义犯罪主要原因谈

国际恐怖主义犯罪已成为当今社会的一大公害,是全世界人类文明社会的共同敌人,其手段血腥残忍,范围更扩大、方式更隐蔽、形式更多样、活动更猖獗,已成为国际社会关注的焦点。文章认真全面分析了现代国际恐怖主义犯罪的主要原因,对深入进行反恐斗争将有一定的政治意义和现实意义。     

试论我国民族型恐怖主义犯罪的防范对策

恐怖主义犯罪是当今世界的一大灾难。我国的恐怖主义犯罪主要是由民族主义引发的,突出表现为西藏“独立”和新疆“东突”问题。在防范民族型恐怖主义犯罪的对策中,政治和刑法手段只能治标,而社会政策才能治本。通过完善和加强民族区域自治、经济、语言、教育、移民和宗教等社会政策,瓦解民族型恐怖主义犯罪思想基础的民族主义情绪。     

西部民族地区恐怖犯罪问题初探

中国西部地区“三股势力”的恐怖活动对国家和平、安全与发展构成了严重威胁。本文从国际环境、民族宗教、经济文化等方面综述引发西部地区恐怖犯罪之根源,指出遏制、防范和打击西部地区恐怖犯罪的战略指导思想。     

Competing to Kill: Terrorist Organizations Versus Lone Wolf Terrorists

Are organizationally linked suicide attacks deadlier than those launched by lone wolf terrorists? This article elaborates a perpetrator-based distinction among suicide terrorist attacks between organizations and lone wolf terrorists, who operate in the absence of a financially or physically supportive terrorist organization. The expectation is that terrorist organizations would serve as commitment tools that increase the loyalty of suicide bombers to their missions through material and non-material incentives. Findings demonstrate that when terrorist organizations are involved in the planning and execution of suicide terrorist attacks, not only do they increase the lethality of these attacks but they also accentuate the tactical advantages of suicide terrorism. These findings suggest that despite the recent upsurge and concern about lone wolf terrorism, the lethality and security impacts of suicide terrorism continue to be driven by terrorist organizations.     

Deadlier in the U.S.? On Lone Wolves,Terrorist Groups,and Attack Lethality

Scholars, politicians, and pundits increasingly suggest lone wolf terrorists are substantial threats, but we know little about how dangerous these actors are—especially relative to other terrorist actors. How deadly are lone actor terrorists? A growing body of empirical research focuses on terrorist organizations, but similar work on lone actors is sparse. Furthermore, attempts to explicitly compare these or other types of terrorist actors are almost non-existent. This article considers theoretical arguments for why lone wolves ought to be especially lethal. However, it presents an argument for why terrorist groups should generally be more lethal. This argument is conditional upon the environment in which actors operate. Lone wolves should only be more deadly in states with especially strong counterterrorism capacity. The article uses data on terrorist attacks in fifteen developed countries, 1970–2010, to compare the lethality of terrorist acts. Around the world, attacks by organizations tend to be far more lethal than attacks by other actors. In the United States, however, lone wolves are generally the more lethal terrorist actors. This is argued to be because the robust counterterrorism capacity makes organized terrorism more difficult to accomplish.