Dying to Win - Why Suicide Terrorists Do It

In Dying to Win Robert, Pape presents the findings of the first comprehensive database of every suicide terrorist attack in the world from 1980 until today. Discrediting widely-held misconceptions on suicide terrorism, he creates for the first time a clear psychological, sociological and strategic profile for combating suicide attacks. His thesis - initially based on the 354 attacks throughout the world up to 2003 - has been remarkably born out by the ones that have followed (the 192 attacks from 2004 up to May 2006 are included in Dying to Win). Pape also examines the early practitioners of this guerrilla tactic, including the ancient Jewish Zealots, who in A.D. 66 wished to liberate themselves from Roman occupation; the Ismaili Assassins, a Shi'ite Muslim sect in northern Iran in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; World War II's Japanese kamikaze pilots, three thousand of whom crashed into U.S. naval vessels; and, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a secular, Marxist-Leninist organization responsible for more suicide terrorist attacks than any other group in history....