Since 2001, a Dramatic Increase in Suicide
Bombings
Washington Post April 18, 2008
"Suicide bombers conducted 658 attacks around the world last year, including
542 in U.S.-occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, according to data compiled by U.S.
government experts.
The large number of attacks -- more than double the number in any of the
past 25 years -- reflects a trend that has surprised and worried U.S.
intelligence and military analysts.
More than four-fifths of the suicide bombings over that period have occurred
in the past seven years, the data show. The bombings have spread to dozens of
countries on five continents, killed more than 21,350 people and injured about
50,000 since 1983, when a landmark attack blew up the U.S. Embassy in
Beirut.
Today is the 25-year anniversary of that attack, the first of a series of
large suicide bombings targeting Americans overseas.
"Increasingly, we are seeing the globalization of suicide bombs, no longer
confined to conflict zones but happening anywhere," said Mohammed Hafez of the
Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., and author of the book "Suicide
Bombers in Iraq." He calls the contemporary perpetrators "martyrs without
borders."
The unpublished data show that since 1983, bombers in more than 50 groups
from Argentina to Algeria, Croatia to China, and India to Indonesia have
adapted car bombs to make explosive belts, vests, toys, motorcycles, bikes,
boats, backpacks and false-pregnancy stomachs.
Of 1,840 incidents in the past 25 years, more than 86 percent have occurred
since 2001, and the highest annual numbers have occurred in the past four
years. The sources who provided the data to The Washington Post asked that they
not be identified because of the sensitivity of the tallies.
The data show more than 920 suicide bombings in Iraq and more than 260 in
Afghanistan, including some that killed scores of U.S. troops. All occurred
after the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003..."
