How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns

by Audrey Kurth Cronin

The inclusion of suicide attacks in a terrorist campaign seems to make resolution through negotiation even more problematic, as it reduces the willingness or ability of the factions to live side by side. Negotiations occurring in the aftermath (or midst) of suicide campaigns are especially difficult to conclude successfully, for a number of reasons. The constituencies involved are more than ever driven to be separated from each other territorially; intermingling among different ethnic, religious, or national groups becomes virtually impossible when civilian counterparts might be human bombs. Suicide terrorism is a problem not only for security forces manning checkpoints, but also for ordinary people going about their daily activities in the fear that other ordinary human beings among them might want to destroy them all. Almost nowhere is safe. In addition, the attention given to attacks that involve suicide is higher than for normal attacks.145 The operatives’ deaths that are so publicly part of such attacks are a kind of communal “sacrifice investment” that in itself raises the stakes, as it is very difficult for communities to admit that human life has been purposely discarded in vain.146 Suicide attacks both engender and reflect an arguably unique level of ideological commitment by the operative. It is therefore especially difficult to remove the negotiations from the angry passions that surround them. The level of personal distrust imbued by suicide attacks may also be...