It is generally believed that suicide terrorism is a contemporary phenomenon, which became conspicuous in the 1980s, but the idea and practice of “the readiness to sacrifice one’s life in the process of destroying or attempting to destroy a target to advance a political goal” is centuries old.

Records on suicide attacks for political gains in the ancient period are not many. Al Baruni writes of an influential heresy in the third century AD called Manichaeism, named after an Iranian known as Mani or Manes. According to this apostasy, “the universe is in the grip of an uncontrollable darkness and evil which must be fought so that fragments of good or light might rise to heaven, and the world come to its merciful end.” Providing this justification, he asked his followers to destroy the world, and accomplish this destruction by suicide attacks. When the Shah of Persia pronounced death sentence on him, he said, “It will be necessary to begin by destroying him, before anything of his plans should be realized.”

During medieval times, Venetian traveler Marco Polo noted that Al-Hasan ibn-al-Sabbah, a Persian Muslim and descendent of the Himyarite kings of South Arabia from Tus, terrorized the population of Persia by “assassinations.” “Assassin” is derived from “hashish,” the drug used by Hasan to “to numb his hand-picked young men’s (of 12 to 20 age group) moral ethics to the point that they could easily kill on command.” Hasan, being an Ismaili missionary – a lesser known Islamic sect – justified his reign of terror as being directed against the Crusaders. However, in reality, he ordered suicide attacks to fulfill his ambition of domination over Persia and vengeance against rival Islamic leaders. The “martyrs” were promised “paradise,” as illustrated in the castles captured by the assassins in modern day Iran and Syria, popularly known as Fertile Crescent. This tradition based on “promise of paradise” still exists in modern Islamic terrorist groups like the al Quaeda using suicide attackers. Apart from “assassins,” the Jewish Sicairis were also notorious during the eleventh century AD. This information is vital since suicide terrorism is generally attributed to Islamic culture, and existing literature does not move beyond this point of reference.

Experts opine that suicide terrorism was used during the eighteenth century in South and Southeast Asia, from Malabar to Philippines, by the natives against the colonialists. But there is a dearth of information beyond this, except that these natives were Muslims. During the First World War, Anglo-French troops adopted a form of marching into enemy’s machine gun fire. The Second World War witnessed Japan using teenage suicide attackers – kamikazes – against enemy military targets. Literally known as “divine wind,” kamikazes, “who were long on fanaticism and short on flying experience,” died for their land and emperor by ramming their Zero fighter planes against Allied warships. Though this did not fall in the category of terrorism, the history of suicide attacks would be incomplete without its mention due to its copycat effect on terrorist organizations that adopted this tactics to instill terror into their enemies with superior fire power.

The contemporary chapter of suicide terrorism dawned in April 1983 when Hezbollah attacked the American Embassy in Beirut and later devastated the US Marines’ headquarters in October the same year in Lebanon. But a view obtains that it started with the bombing of the Iraqi embassy in Beirut in December 1981, sponsored by Iran as a part of Iran-Iraq war. El-Dawa of Kuwait adopted these tactics in December 1983. On witnessing the Hezbollah’s rise to notoriety, the LTTE used this tactic in its first attack on 5 July 1987. Presently the LTTE is the most successful outfit in using this modus operandi. It operates a specialized unit – Black Tigers – for this purpose. Later Hamas in Palestine, Gama’a al-Islamiya and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad in Egypt, Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey, Lashkar-e-Toiba in Kashmir, and al Quaeda in various parts of the world have demonstrated with deadly effect the tactical advantages suicide terrorism has over conventional terrorist attacks. Now, it is all pervasive and has been used by over 17 terrorist organizations across the globe. Contemporary suicide attacks are extensive in their destruction and casualties and intensive in their psychological effect as compared to target-specific attacks in earlier periods of history. Another distinguishing feature is the utilization of women as suicide bombers. The next stage in evolving this “weapon of martyrdom” could be more lethal, devastating, gruesome, and novel.