the effects of cleric statements on suicide bombings in pakistan, 2000–2010
TRANSCRIPT
This article was downloaded by: [Statsbiblioteket Tidsskriftafdeling]On: 06 May 2014, At: 04:25Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Studies in Conflict & TerrorismPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uter20
The Effects of Cleric Statements onSuicide Bombings in Pakistan, 2000–2010Bridget Rose Nolan aa Department of Sociology University of Pennsylvania , Philadelphia ,PA , USAPublished online: 14 Feb 2013.
To cite this article: Bridget Rose Nolan (2013) The Effects of Cleric Statements on SuicideBombings in Pakistan, 2000–2010, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 36:3, 219-234, DOI:10.1080/1057610X.2013.755913
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2013.755913
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arisingout of the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 36:219–234, 2013Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1057-610X print / 1521-0731 onlineDOI: 10.1080/1057610X.2013.755913
The Effects of Cleric Statements on SuicideBombings in Pakistan, 2000–2010
BRIDGET ROSE NOLAN
Department of SociologyUniversity of PennsylvaniaPhiladelphia, PA, USA
This article explores the relationship between suicide bombings and public cleric state-ments in Pakistan between 2000–2010. It establishes that bombings and statementsincrease over time, that cleric statements vary according to the bombing target, andthat police and military targets most frequently garner clerics’ attention. An adap-tation of Kaplan, Mintz, and Mishal’s (2006) maximum likelihood estimation methoddetermines whether cleric statements affect the bombing rate. The analysis shows thatpro-suicide statements have a far greater effect on the bombing rate than anti-suicidestatements, both in the magnitude of increased bombings and by the length of time overwhich they exert influence.
On 20 September 2008, just after 8 p.m. local time, a massive truck bomb destroyed halfof Islamabad’s best-known hotel. An apparent suicide bomber had blown himself up as hisvehicle was being checked at the luxury Marriott Hotel’s entrance, only about 50 feet fromthe lobby. At least 40 people were killed, including two Americans, and over 250 peoplewere injured. The blast from the 800-pound bomb was felt as far as 15 miles away andmade a crater 25 feet deep, destroying trees, crushing cars, and leaving the air dense withchoking dust (Schifrin, 2008). President Zardari, Pakistan’s then-new leader, vowed to ridthe country of suicide attacks, calling them a “cancer” within Pakistan (Schifrin, 2008).
Although suicide attacks have been common for years in Iraq, Israel, the Palestinianterritories, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and other countries worldwide, the tactic has onlyemerged in recent years in Pakistan.1 Indeed, various commentators have been baffled bythe surge because suicide bombings are not generally considered to be part of the Pakistaniculture in the sense that they never occurred and were seen as something that happened“elsewhere.” All recent evidence to the contrary, however: from the year 2000 until theend of 2010, suicide bombings in Pakistan have become all too commonplace, with 321attacks killing thousands of people, military and civilian alike. With this sudden uptick insuicide attacks has come increased attention from public figures of all kinds around theworld, including the religious clerics who advise their congregations of the permissibility of
Received 2 May 2011; accepted 28 October 2012.The author thanks Randall Collins, David Gibson, Edward Kaplan, Melissa Wilde, and an
anonymous reviewer for their help in preparing this article.Address correspondence to Bridget Rose Nolan, University of Pennsylvania, 3718 Lo-
cust Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected]
219
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Stat
sbib
liote
ket T
idss
krif
tafd
elin
g] a
t 04:
25 0
6 M
ay 2
014
220 B. R. Nolan
various acts within the tenets of Islam. The aim of this article is to explore the phenomenonof suicide bombings in Pakistan in the depth that it warrants, since no scholarly workto date has done so in a way that is specific to Pakistan. What is the pattern of attacksover time? What sorts of people or places are targeted, and what might explain why someplaces are targeted more heavily than others? This article is particularly concerned with therelationship between these attacks and public cleric statements about suicide bombings.Various news agencies report cleric statements that promote the suicide bombing tactic aswell as statements that oppose it. Do these statements in fact have any effect on the actualincidence of suicide attacks? Conversely, are some bombing targets likely to generate morepublic religious discussion than others? Finally, how can this knowledge create a betterunderstanding of the progression of the suicide attack rate? The questions are many, but theaim is singular: to understand the pattern of suicide bombings in order to prepare for and,ideally, prevent these attacks in the future.
Background
An effective examination of suicide bombing requires that terms be defined. Because thedefinitions of terrorism and suicide bombings have been debated elsewhere ad nauseum,only two definitions will be offered here. For the U.S. State Department, “terrorism”involves the “use of violence by an organization other than a national government to causeintimidation or fear among a target audience” (Pape 2003, 345). The key to this definition isthe role of substate actors; generally, the actions of national governments are not includedwith definitions of terrorism because it would undermine the emphasis on terrorism as atactic of groups with little relative power. Atran defines suicide terrorism as the “targeted useof self-destructing humans against noncombatant—typically civilian—populations to effectpolitical change” (Atran 2003, 1534). It is a tactic where the perpetrator either intentionallykills himself2 or fully expects to be killed in the course of events. The perpetrator’s goal isto kill others at the same time that he kills himself. Pape (2003) states that “in principle,suicide terrorists could be used for demonstrative purposes or could be limited to targetedassassinations. In practice, however, suicide terrorists often seek simply to kill the largestnumber of people.” Furthermore, “while coercion is an element in all terrorism, coercion isthe paramount objective of suicide terrorism” (Pape 2003, 345). Pape (2003) also suggeststhat the main purpose of suicide terrorism is “to use the threat of punishment to coercea target government to change policy, especially to cause democratic states to withdrawforces from territory terrorists view as their homeland” (345).
Most suicide attacks are carried out by an individual donning a suicide vest or drivingan explosive-laden vehicle (a so-called suicide vehicle-born improvised explosive device, orSVBIED). This form of suicide attack has skyrocketed in recent years in places like Iraq andAfghanistan, particularly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. In total, suicide bombingshave occurred in over 30 countries, and Atran (2006) calculates that in 2004–2005 alone,there were more than 600 suicide attacks worldwide.
Although suicide bombing has garnered more attention in the literature in recentyears, most scholarly works about suicide bombings, particularly published books, tendto focus on the so-called root causes of suicide terrorism. Whether via interviews withdetained would-be bombers or through speculation, these works mostly concern the suicidebombers themselves in an attempt to understand why people turn to this tactic, whethercommonalities can be found among the perpetrators, and whether environmental factorscan contribute to a person’s chances of becoming a suicide bomber. Certainly this is aworthwhile endeavor, and of course understanding this phenomenon at the individual level
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Stat
sbib
liote
ket T
idss
krif
tafd
elin
g] a
t 04:
25 0
6 M
ay 2
014
Suicide Bombings in Pakistan 221
is critical. However, the present study is not concerned with these “root causes” for twomain reasons. First, the attempt to discover who becomes a terrorist is very difficult to carryout systematically. There is a very small pool of captured terrorists, and gaining accessto them for interviews is extremely difficult. This is made all the more difficult for thecase of suicide bombers, because the successful ones, by definition, do not survive, whichresults in not only a smaller pool but a biased one. Second, those rare researchers who areable to gain access to terrorists or who compile their own datasets (e.g., Sageman 2004,61–98; 2008, 1–71) have generally shown that it is nearly impossible to predict who willbecome ideological extremists, let alone active terrorists. There are few traits in commonamong those who go down the path of extremism, and extremists have much in commonwith the millions of others who do not become terrorists—all of which makes it difficult tounderstand what, if anything, makes terrorists different.
As a result, this study intentionally moves away from the “root-causes” question ofwho becomes a suicide bomber and instead takes the phenomenon for granted. Given thatpeople do decide to become suicide bombers, this study turns to the question of factorsthat may increase or decrease the incidence of suicide bombings, in this case in Pakistan.Very few studies have taken this approach, but one insightful exception is the Kaplan,Mintz, and Mishal (2006) study entitled “Tactical Prevention of Suicide Bombings inIsrael.” In that study, Kaplan, Mintz, and Mishal developed statistical models to determinewhether targeted killings and/or preventive arrests of would-be bombers affected the rateof Palestinian suicide bombings within Israel’s green line. These models are thought to bemore flexible than previous methods of studying suicide bombing prevention.
As will be important for the present analysis, Kaplan, Mintz, and Mishal’s (2006)models suggest “whether hits and arrests are differentially associated with increases ordecreases in the number of future suicide attacks, as well as the marginal impact of eachintervention on the timing of downstream attacks” (554). These models are able to mapboth the immediate effects of tactical intervention as well as any lag-time effects thatmay disrupt the rate of attacks later. Essentially, Kaplan, Mintz, and Mishal (2006) testedfour models, exploring all permutations of the possible relationship between the attackrate and the tactics of arrests and targeted killings of would-be bombers. These modelswere as follows: (1) a model assuming a constant attack rate, not considering any tacticalinterventions; (2) a model for the impact of targeting killings only; (3) a model for theimpact of arrests only; and (4) a model for the combined effects of targeting killings andarrests. The authors concluded that model (4) fit the data the best, since it had the lowestchi-square and highest p-value (meaning that the data are not significantly different from theexpected value assuming the model is correct). This model combining hits and arrests wasstrongly predictive of suicide bombing attempts. In this best model, the authors found thateach additional targeted killing was associated with a 9.6 percent increase in the numberof bombings predicted for that month, and that targeted killings had lasting effects on theattack rate long after the hit occurs. On the other hand, the authors found that preventivearrests were associated with a decrease in the attack rate. Each additional preventive arrestwas associated with a 3.1 percent reduction in the attack rate for that month, although againthese arrests did also have long-lasting effects in the months following. Generally, theirbest model indicates that in Israel’s strategy, the increase in the bombing rate predictedby targeted killings outweighed the decrease in the bombing rate predicted by preventivearrests.
The main analysis in the present study is modeled closely on Kaplan, Mintz, andMishal’s general approach. Here, religious cleric statements made about suicide bombingsin Pakistan replace hits and arrests. Presumably religious figures speak publicly for or
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Stat
sbib
liote
ket T
idss
krif
tafd
elin
g] a
t 04:
25 0
6 M
ay 2
014
222 B. R. Nolan
against suicide bombings for a reason, and it is not a stretch to speculate that a primaryreason is that they believe their statements have some impact on the incidence of attacks. Ina country like Pakistan that is at least 97 percent Muslim (CIA 2006, 456), religious figureshave tremendous clout at least in the sense that they reach large numbers of religiousPakistanis every week. This study assumes that those clerics who praise past attacks orcall for future ones are hoping to encourage the tactic, while those clerics who condemnsuicide bombings are trying to mobilize an effort against them. To cite just one instance, forexample, the September 2008 bombing in Islamabad came after the Taliban and its allieshad vowed to strike in Pakistan’s cities after the military launched a major operation alongthe Pakistan–Afghanistan border. Before addressing this question, however, the followingsection will describe the data in depth, examine bombings and cleric statements separately,and explain the preliminary analyses that lead to the employment of Kaplan, Mintz, andMishal’s method.
Data
The data for this project were collected between 2007 and 2011 from a variety of publiclyavailable sources. Information on suicide bombings came primarily from databases suchas the Global Terrorism Database (GTD: http://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/), the WorldwideIncidents Tracking System (WITS: https://wits.nctc.gov), the Terrorism Knowledge Base(TKB; www.tkb.org), the Pakistan Body Count (PBC: http://pakistanbodycount.org/home),and the U.S. government’s Open Source Center (formerly FBIS, the Foreign BroadcastInformation Service), which contains translated versions of local (i.e., Pakistani) newssources. This necessarily introduced some uncertainty in the data because of languagelimitations such as potential mistranslations, but it was important to include as muchlocal news information as possible because of the study’s regional focus. Data were alsocollected from Western news organizations such as Reuters, CNN.com, MSNBC.com,BBC.com, the Associated Press, and others. For each of the 321 bombings, informationwas collected on the date, location, and target of the attack; where available, information onthe fatalities, injuries, responsible party, and other relevant details were also recorded. Thisstudy was limited to suicide bombings that occurred in Pakistan between 1 January 2000 and31 December 2010. It did not include information on bombings occurring outside ofPakistan, even if the bomber was a Pakistani national.
Information on public cleric statements was gathered from the same open sourcesmentioned above, minus the TKB, GTD, and PBC. Details about the date, location, speaker,and content of the statement were collected where available. Eligible statements for thisstudy included statements specifically about suicide bombings made in public by a religiousauthority figure in Pakistan between 1 January 2000 and 31 December 2010. This studydoes not include statements made by other public figures (e.g., Osama bin Laden), nordoes it include statements about suicide bombings that were made outside the borders ofPakistan.
Methods and Results
The first part of this study examined the existing relationship between the cleric statementsand suicide bombings. A simple comparison of the numbers of statements and bombingsover the 11-year period showed that the both phenomena increase dramatically over time,as illustrated in Figure 1.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Stat
sbib
liote
ket T
idss
krif
tafd
elin
g] a
t 04:
25 0
6 M
ay 2
014
Suicide Bombings in Pakistan 223
Figure 1. Pakistan suicide bombings and public cleric statements, 2000–2010.
It is possible that the strong relationship indicated above is the result of some sort ofcollection irregularity—for example, that cleric statements about suicide attacks are morelikely to be reported in the news during an active bombing campaign. But it is also possiblethat statements are also more likely to be made when suicide attacks become more common,thereby accounting for sporadic reporting. It could also be the result of looking at the trendby years rather than going month-by-month, as in the analysis below. When parsed out bymonths, the correlation of suicide bombings to all cleric statements is about 0.3—lowerthan Figure 1 suggests, but still within the range of sociological interest.
Of course, the similarity in the two patterns does not necessarily suggest that onecauses the other, but it does indicate a relationship. Interestingly, 60 of the 321 bombingsthat occurred in Pakistan during this time took place in 2007 alone. By way of comparison,the period between 1980 and 2001 saw 186 suicide attacks worldwide, excluding 11September 2001 (Pape 2003). This dramatic increase in Pakistani suicide bombings is atroubling pattern that warrants considerable attention. Some researchers mistakenly believethat this sharp increase for 2007 is a result of the highly publicized siege on the RedMosque in Islamabad that occurred in July 2007. While it is true that many bombingsoccurred during and after the siege, it is also true that the uptick in suicide bombings hadalready occurred by the time the situation at the Red Mosque escalated. Although Julydid see the largest number of bombings in 2007, only 17 of the 60 bombings occurredduring this time, and 13 bombings occurred before July, nine of which were in January andFebruary alone. Thus, rather than simply concluding that the Red Mosque situation causedthe surge in suicide attacks, it is important to note that the numbers tell a different storyand warrant a deeper look at the phenomenon.
The next step was to go beyond sheer numbers and delve deeper into the actualsubstance of both bombings and statements to ask: How do cleric statements vary accordingto the bombing target? To answer this question, each of the 70 cleric statements was coded aseither “pro-suicide” or “anti-suicide” by two independent coders. “Pro-suicide” statementsadvocated suicide bombings as a general tactic or called for or praised specific bombings.“Anti-suicide” statements repudiated suicide bombings, whether as a general strategy or inreference to a particular attack. Any discrepancy about the placement of these statements
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Stat
sbib
liote
ket T
idss
krif
tafd
elin
g] a
t 04:
25 0
6 M
ay 2
014
224 B. R. Nolan
was resolved by mutual consent of the coders. Of the 70 statements, 33 were pro-suicide and37 were anti-suicide. An example of a pro-suicide statement was issued on 19 May 2005by Hafiz Saeed, chief of the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Tayyiba3 in Pakistan. In responseto an anti-suicide fatwa (religious decree) issued the previous day, Saeed claimed that thefatwa was issued solely to please the United States and that no circumstances in Pakistancalled for such a fatwa. Saeed went on to say that wherever the jihad is launched, suicideattacks become lawful. In contrast, an example of an anti-suicide statement was also madeon 19 May 2005 by Qazi Hussain Ahmad, a well-known religious and political leader inPakistan. He is a former president of the Islamist political party Jamaat-e-Islami and wasalso head of the Muttahida Majlis-e Amal (Council of United Action), a coalition betweenreligious and political parties. In response to the same anti-suicide fatwa, Qazi said thatthere had been a consensus among ulema (religious leaders) that such attacks on places ofworship in Pakistan are haram (forbidden), but that suicide attacks by Kashmiri, Iraqi, andPalestinian “freedom fighters” were legitimate.
In addition to coding the cleric statements qualitatively, each of the suicide bombingswas coded as having attacked one of seven targets: Journalists, Government, Military,Police, U.S./Western, Religious Site (i.e., mosque), and Unknown. The distribution ofthe bombings among these targets is in Table 1, which shows that the military was themost frequent target of the attackers with 28.04 percent of the bombings, followed bythe police with 23.99 percent. This distribution might seem surprising, since much of thereceived wisdom suggests that suicide bombing is a tactic of religious extremists, andsince significant media attention in other areas focuses on Sunni/Shi’a violence and thedestruction of mosques or the disturbance of religious festivals. Certainly some of that didoccur among the 43 religious bombings recorded here, but the majority of the bombingsappear to be directed toward secular targets. One interpretation of the distribution is that theattackers are protesting the Pakistani government and, indirectly, its cooperation with theUnited States. Indeed, while reporting on a May 2007 suicide bombing that killed at least25 people in Peshawar, one Associated Press article reports that many Pakistani citizenshave been killed in recent years in response to what militants feel is Pakistan’s too-closerelationship with the United States and its War on Terror. In this particular bombing, anote with a warning scrawled in Pashto was wrapped around one of the bomber’s legs,saying, “Those who spy for America will face this same fate” (Associated Press 2007).The dramatic uptick in suicide bombings in 2007 coincides both with increased fundingfrom the United States for the War on Terror as well as with the Pakistani government’s
Table 1Distribution of bombings according to target (N = 321)
Target Number Percent of total Cumulative percent
Journalist 2 0.62 0.62Government 48 14.95 15.57Military 90 28.04 43.61Police 77 23.99 67.60U.S./Western 11 3.43 71.03Religious 43 13.39 84.42Other 25 7.79 92.21Unknown 25 7.79 100.00
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Stat
sbib
liote
ket T
idss
krif
tafd
elin
g] a
t 04:
25 0
6 M
ay 2
014
Suicide Bombings in Pakistan 225
decision to demolish certain mosques and build others on public ground (e.g., Sengupta2007; Associated Foreign Press 2007). The September 2008 Marriott bombing suggests asimilar connection between bombing targets and the Pakistani government’s cooperationwith the United States: “A tape released on the anniversary of 11 September 2001 calledfor new attacks on Pakistan because of its role as a ‘puppet regime’ of the United States”(Schifrin 2008). Thus, it seems that for Pakistan, the suicide bombings may not necessarilybe a sign of intra-religious conflict but rather one of protest against the various actions ofthe Pakistani government in recent years.
I now turn to the effects of cleric statements on suicide bombings. The literaturereview provided an overview of Kaplan, Mintz, and Mishal’s study on tactical preventionof suicide bombings in Israel; the following sections implements this approach with thepresent data. Rather than preventive arrests and targeted killings, the events for this studyare pro- and anti-suicide cleric statements. The latter category includes four statements thatwere ambiguous in some way: either the speaker was a known extremist who occasionallyadopts a moderate public posture, or the statement itself was unclear as to whether suicidebombings were an acceptable tactic. Rather than throw out these statements, however, theywere included so as not to lose a significant portion of cleric statements. Based solely onthe content of these statements, the coders agreed that they belonged in the anti-suicidestatements category. The results below were calculated both with and without the inclusionof these four statements; the decision to include them did not significantly affect the results.
This study employed methods similar to Kaplan, Mintz, and Mishal (2006) in that itestablished various models and estimated the maximum-likelihood for each. It differs fromKaplan, Mintz, and Mishal slightly in adding a fifth model in order to see whether the contentof the statements affects the attack rate differently than a model considering the combinednumber of statements regardless of content. The models were as follows: (1) the constantattack rate, assuming no cleric statements and random Poisson variation; (2) the impact ofpro-suicide statements only; (3) the impact of anti-suicide statements only; (4) the effect ofall statements, regardless of content; and (5) the combined effect of pro- and anti-suicidestatements. Model (5) is parallel to Kaplan, Mintz, and Mishal’s model to test the effects ofhits and arrests together; model (4) simply sums the statements together to assess the effectof the sheer number of statements. It was important to make this distinction because there issome debate as to whether the content of the statements matters, or whether the mere fact ofso much chatter creates a “spotlight effect” that affects the attack rate regardless of the con-tent (e.g., the so-called Werther effect, which holds that media publicity of an event like sui-cide results in a rise in the general suicide rate; see, e.g., Phillips 1974; Hittner 2005). Just ashits and arrests are qualitatively different events in content and effect in Kaplan, Mintz, andMishal’s study, pro- and anti-suicide statements are qualitatively different here and it was im-portant to include a model to test the potential effects of the statements separately as well astogether.
The quantitative methods used to analyze this data were modeled closely on Kaplan,Mintz, and Mishal’s (2006) equations. As with their models, the following equation linkedcleric statements and bombings to the mean suicide attack rate:
log λt = β +∑
βiγit (1)
Here, λt represents the mean attack rate. The log of the attack rate is expressed by aconstant, β, which, just as in Kaplan’s model, regulates the constant attack rate and absorbsthe impact of tactics implemented prior to the beginning of the data set (in this case, January
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Stat
sbib
liote
ket T
idss
krif
tafd
elin
g] a
t 04:
25 0
6 M
ay 2
014
226 B. R. Nolan
2000). This constant is added to the summation of a coefficient βi (representing the slopeof the tactic in question), multiplied by a “γit” term:
γit =t∑
j=0
θt−j
i xij (2)
This γit term is expressed as a function of θ , theta, which represents the discount rate of thestatement in question—that is, the effect that the statement has on future attack rates. Thetamust be between 0 and 1: values approaching 0 suggest that the statement will affect theattack rate only in the month in which the statement occurs; in contrast, values approaching1 suggest that the statement in question will affect the attack rate both in the month inwhich the statement occurred as well as in subsequent months. (In all of these expressions,j represents the first month in the data set, while t represents the final month in the dataset. The type of tactical event in question—i.e., pro-suicide vs. anti-suicide statement—isrepresented by i, and x represents the number of statements.)
The most important Kaplan, Mintz, and Mishal equation is their Equation (4), be-cause this equation will illustrate how the attack rate changes for every additional clericstatement:4
∂λt
∂γit
= βiλt (4)
Thus, the collected data on statements and bombings can be used to examine how the attackrate changes for each additional cleric statement.
The parameters for all five models are displayed in Table 2.
Table 2Model parameters
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5Parameter (Constant) (Pro) (Anti) (Total) (Combined)
Beta 0 0.889 −1.428 −0.128 −0.922 −1.441(17.916) (0.160) (0.091) (0.116) (0.174)
Pro-Slope 0.224 0.220(0.013) (0.012)
Anti-Slope 0.167 0.074(0.019) (0.049)
Total Slope 0.134(0.008)
Log-likelihood −35.747 183.761 103.062 161.794 186.099Likelihood ratio χ2 301.2 81.703 162.402 103.669 79.364p-value 0 0.999 0.028 0.957 0.999Pearson χ2 724.7 160.6 333.787 192.160 152.906p-value 0 0.035 0 0.0003 0.074Theta 0.976 0.952 0.955 0.974 (pro)
0.703 (anti)
Numbers in parentheses are standard errors. P-values very close to zero (e.g., 5.20E-71) are listedas zero for ease of reading.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Stat
sbib
liote
ket T
idss
krif
tafd
elin
g] a
t 04:
25 0
6 M
ay 2
014
Suicide Bombings in Pakistan 227
Figure 2. Observed and expected suicide bombings, 2000–2010.
Just as with Kaplan, Mintz, and Mishal’s examination of the constant attack rate, therewas a very poor fit between this first model and the data. This is not surprising, since theattack rate is not constant. Table 2 shows that the log-likelihood is maximized in Model5, the model that qualitatively combines pro- and anti-suicide statements. This model alsohas the lowest chi-square and the highest p-values, which means that the model is not verydifferent from the data. Figure 2 shows the actual suicide attacks (dots) and the expectedsuicide bombing attacks (line) as estimated with this best model.
The best of the five models shows that both pro-suicide cleric statements and anti-suicide statements tend to increase downstream suicide bombings, although pro-suicidestatements have the stronger effect. Barring any statements, the expected rate of suicideattacks is approximately 0.24 attacks per month.5 Pro-suicide statements increase thisrate by about one-fifth of the current attack rate in any given month. In other words,each addition to the cumulative number of pro-suicide statements roughly increases theattack rate by 22 percent. Additionally, increasing the cumulative number of anti-suicidestatements increases the current rate of attacks from the previous rate by slightly morethan 7 percent of the current level. These numbers are the values of the coefficient βi
in the equations above, labeled in the table as “slopes.” The changes in the attack ratedescribed here may not seem like much when the constant attack rate is low, but inlooking at the trend of July 2007, for example, this could mean that a pro-suicide statementcould increase the number of attacks from 24 to 29 in a month during an active bombingcampaign.6
The combined model fits the data well; perhaps most interestingly, it fits significantlybetter than a model that counts the total number of clerics’ statements without differentiatingbetween pro and anti. The model considering all statements regardless of content was onlythe third-best fitting model. These results suggest that the qualitative nature of what theclerics say in public matters greatly, even though both types of statements increase thebombing rate. Furthermore, the statements in this model have far-reaching effects: whenthe maximum likelihoods were calculated, almost all theta values were very close to 1.As stated earlier, theta values approaching 1 imply that the events (in this case, cleric
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Stat
sbib
liote
ket T
idss
krif
tafd
elin
g] a
t 04:
25 0
6 M
ay 2
014
228 B. R. Nolan
statements) affect the attack rate in all subsequent months, rather than affecting the attackrate only in the month in which the statements were issued. This means that statementsissued months or years ago can affect the suicide attack rate of today. Only the theta valuefor anti-suicide statements in the best-fitting model had a lower theta value of 0.703. Toput it in other terms, the half-life of pro-suicide statements in this case is about 26 months,whereas the half-life of anti-suicide statements is only about two months. Because theeffects of each statement are so far-reaching, one implication of this finding is that year-level trends could emerge in addition to month-level trends. Aggregating the month-leveldata means that the overall correlation near 0.3 is only a lower end of how strongly relatedcleric statements and bombings are. Assuming that a statement made in 2000 can affect theattack rate in 2005, as the data suggest, then the trends shown in Figure 1 emerge, wherethe year-level correlation is above 0.95.
Alternative Explanations and Considerations
First, it is important to note that this analysis presents a model that fits the data well withoutweighting any of the cleric statements; that is, without asserting that some cleric statementsmatter more than others. While some clerics may certainly be more famous than others, itis not clear why the imposition of beliefs regarding whose statements are more importantwould be reasonable here, especially since it is difficult to say with confidence what thoseweights would or should be. A potential future direction for this line of research wouldbe to try to measure the relative resonance of the speakers with various audiences, but thepresent study still offers a model that fits the data well and is an important step forward intactical terrorism research—a field in which it is difficult to make headway due to seriousdata collection limitations, such as the lack of reliable data in many parts of the world,particularly the Middle East, South Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa; language barriers; theinaccessibility of suspected terrorists; and the biased sampling that results from the factthat one could only ever theoretically interview failed suicide bombers but not successfulones.
Second, the setup of these models claims a singular direction of causality from state-ments to bombings. This design naturally raises the question of whether the direction cango the other way as well—that is, whether bombings can cause statements, and thereforewhether it is possible to say anything about causality at all. To address this concern, themodels were reset to flip the variables and the direction of causality. Only three models areincluded here since it was not possible to reverse the equations for the combined model: thismodel contained two independent variables, so reversing the direction would have createdan impossible equation with two dependent variables. It also did not make much sense toinclude a constant model here, since the interest lies in the causality between bombings andstatements. As Table 3 shows, there is a very poor fit between the reversed models and thedata, suggesting that the direction of causality flows primarily in the direction of statementsto bombings.
The best-fitting reverse-causality model suggests that bombings increase statementsby no more than 1.8 percent of the current rate. The effect is negligible, suggestingthat—somewhat counterintuitively—the direction of causality is one-way from statementsto bombings.
Third, the decision to group the data by month gives rise to the concern that statementsmade in a given month are being used to “predict” bombings in the same month, regardlessof when each event occurred in that month. For example, it would be possible for the
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Stat
sbib
liote
ket T
idss
krif
tafd
elin
g] a
t 04:
25 0
6 M
ay 2
014
Suicide Bombings in Pakistan 229
Table 3Reverse causality parameters
Parameter Model 2 (Pro) Model 3 (Anti) Model 4 (Total)
Beta 0 −1.628 −2.270 −1.218(0.267) (0.214) (0.171)
Pro-Slope 0.100(0.058)
Anti-Slope 0.018(0.008)
Total Slope 0.021(0.023)
Log-likelihood −73.758 −68.998 −102.604Likelihood ratio χ2 59.556 55.225 92.139p-value 1 1 0.995Pearson χ2 266.786 221.379 315.221p-value 0 0.000001 0Theta −0.703 0.955 1
Numbers in parentheses are standard errors. P-values very close to zero (e.g., 5.20E-71) are listedas zero for ease of reading.
present model to assert that a statement made in week three of a particular month is“predicting” a bombing that had already happened in week one of that month. To addressthis concern, the models were again reset so that statements in a given month would onlyinfluence bombings in subsequent months, excluding the current month (t-1). This setupomits legitimate sequences such as a statement in week one and an attack in week three,but also excludes all illegitimate sequences such as a statement in week three “predicting”an attack in week one.
The results of this analysis were not very different from the original analysis. Thecombined model is still the best fit for the data, with the other four models following in thesame order of goodness-of-fit. Within the combined model, each pro-suicide statement stillincreased the bombing rate by about 22 percent, and each anti-suicide statement increasedthe bombing rate by about 12 percent, as opposed to the 7.4 percent predicted above. Thestronger impact is surprising because the analysis excludes the current month, which isassumed to be the most influential: it would make sense for recent statements to havea greater impact on subsequent bombings, but the practical difference of 4.6 percentagepoints is not very great. In any case, the analysis excluding this influence does show thatpast statements do carry resonance beyond the month in which they were made. This isnot the ideal way to conduct the analysis since it omits a substantial number of legitimatesequences, but it is worth addressing the notion of whether recorded statements occur afterthe bombings since this article makes causal claims. Table 4 shows the parameters for allfive models in the analysis excluding the current month.
Finally, the possibility exists that some of the clerics come from the same groups thatare committing the attacks, so the statements and attacks could be coordinated—that is, thesame group could decide to have a cleric issue a statement to “cover” an attack. If that isthe case, then several of the pro-suicide statements would essentially coincide directly with
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Stat
sbib
liote
ket T
idss
krif
tafd
elin
g] a
t 04:
25 0
6 M
ay 2
014
230 B. R. Nolan
Table 4Model parameters excluding the current month
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5Parameter (Constant) (Pro) (Anti) (Total) (Combined)
Beta 0 0.896 −1.296 −0.098 −0.843 −1.323(9.165) (0.231) (0.187) (0.214) (0.320)
Pro-Slope 0.221 0.217(0.014) (0.070)
Anti-Slope 0.170 0.120(0.024) (0.091)
Total Slope 0.133(0.008)
Log-likelihood −33.306 178.447 103.281 159.242 183.611Likelihood ratio χ2 298.8 87.0 162.0 106.2 81.9p-value 0 0.999 0.029 0.937 1.000Pearson χ2 716.8 199.2 327.6 209.9 173.6p-value 0 0 0 0 0.005Theta 0.976 0.952 0.955 0.974(pro)
0.703(anti)
Numbers in parentheses are standard errors. P-values very close to zero (e.g., 5.20E-71) are listedas zero for ease of reading.
attacks, and it would not be correct to interpret those cleric statements as independentlyinfluential. To ensure that the effects are truly attributable to the impact of the statementsthemselves, the data would ideally identify clerics that are known to be unaffiliated withbombing groups.
In fact, this endogeneity of the clerics is one possible explanation for the results, atleast as far as the pro-bombing statements are concerned. Since anti-bombing statementspresumably do not involve clerics with ties to any of the organizations behind these attacks,the phenomenon occurs mostly with the pro-suicide statements. Even if all of the pro-bombing statements were calculated moves on the part of the terrorists, however, there isstill an effect for anti-bombing statements, and so the present study is still an importantfirst step in this area of research. Determining clerics’ affiliations and relationships withterrorist organizations represents an important next step forward.
Discussion and Conclusions
This study was an exploration of suicide bombings in Pakistan and their relationship topublic cleric statements. After a brief background on terrorism in general and suicideterrorism in particular, the article examined the bombings and statements separately at first,then asked how cleric statements vary according to bombing targets. Between 2000–2010,suicide bombers targeted the Pakistani military and police 52 percent of the time, whileU.S./the West comprised only 11 of the 321 bombings, or 3.43 percent. This result wasinitially surprising, until it became clear that the probable motivation for the general increasein suicide attacks in Pakistan was to protest the Pakistani government’s cooperation with the
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Stat
sbib
liote
ket T
idss
krif
tafd
elin
g] a
t 04:
25 0
6 M
ay 2
014
Suicide Bombings in Pakistan 231
United States; in essence, this was a campaign against the local government as a statementagainst the influence of a farther one. This interpretation makes sense both in looking atthe broader trend over time as well as in looking at a number of specific threats that call forsuicide bombings as a means of warning Pakistan’s government of the danger of gettinginvolved with America. Because this link exists, it is important for policymakers and theAmerican people not to dismiss the incidence of suicide attacks in Pakistan as merely afar-away phenomenon.
Most importantly, this study explored whether there is a predictive relationship betweenstatements and bombings by using Kaplan, Mintz, and Mishal’s (2006) methods. Their studyexamined the relationship between targeted hits and arrests and the suicide attack rate inIsrael; here, the method is used to examine the relationship between bombings and clericstatements. Five models examined the effect of pro-suicide statements only, anti-suicidestatements only, all statements together, and the combined effect of pro- and anti-suicidestatements, as well as a constant that assumed no statements. After using the equationsand calculations in Kaplan, Mintz, and Mishal’s model, the analysis showed that the log-likelihood was maximized for the model that considered the combined effect of pro- andanti-suicide statements. This model also had the lowest chi-square value and the highestp-value, indicating that the model was least different from the observed data. This is acritical finding, because it suggests that what the clerics say does matter, and that the effectis not merely a matter of the amount of chatter that is directed toward suicide bombings as atactic. For these data, each pro-suicide cleric statement is associated with an increase in theattack rate of 0.22 times the current attack rate, and each anti-suicide statement is associatedwith an increase in the attack rate of 0.074 times the current attack rate. The larger absolutenumber for pro-suicide statements suggests that these statements have a greater effect onthe attack rate, but both types of statements are important. The counterintuitive findingthat anti-bombing statements actually increase the bombing rate is especially importantfor countermessaging strategies; it would be easy to assume that anti-bombing statementswould decrease the attack rate, but the present analysis demonstrates the opposite. Theseresults suggest some truth in the saying that “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” for theterrorists perpetrating these bombings. By that same token, we would not want to extendthis counterintuitive conclusion too far, given the near-tie of log-likelihood with the modelonly considering pro-suicide bombing statements, the limitations of the collected data set,and the subjective nature of coding statements manually as pro- or anti-suicide. If the modelwere to consider a few additional statements or code some of the ambiguous statementsdifferently, the effect of anti-suicide bombing statements could easily reverse to the moreintuitive result.
Furthermore, this analysis shows that cleric statements have lasting effects well beyondthe month in which they were made and that statements can affect the suicide bombing ratemonths or even years later. This potentially counterintuitive result makes sense. Clerics areoften revered public figures, some of whom can generate “rock star” status for themselvesamong their followers. Maulana Abdul Aziz, the charismatic imam of the Red Mosquein Islamabad, has created such a following for himself, particularly after his role in theMosque’s standoff with the Government of Pakistan in the summer of 2007; the factthat his brother and son were killed in the standoff further add to his credibility amongextremists. Just as many historical figures are quoted and revered by followers decades orcenturies after their deaths, the words of some clerics can easily continue to resonate forfactions of the Pakistani population far beyond the week or month in which those wordswere uttered.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Stat
sbib
liote
ket T
idss
krif
tafd
elin
g] a
t 04:
25 0
6 M
ay 2
014
232 B. R. Nolan
These results, and the method in general, have far-reaching applications for countert-errorism efforts. This method and its applications can be useful to policymakers because itcan provide them with solid calculations in the immediate aftermath of a bombing, sinceearly information after such an event is often sparse, inaccurate, or both. This is a long-termanalysis that can be tweaked to reflect the most updated information, and it can providereliable trends and predictions to those who need them most. Moreover, this model’s abil-ity to predict the attack rate based on cleric statements can be useful as a warning tool.For example, if the model detects a spike particularly in pro-suicide statements, it maybe possible to warn the proper authorities that an attack may be imminent, or at least todevote some resources to tracking the situation more closely so as to be on alert. Themethods employed here can be applied to a broad range of terrorism questions as well;many policymakers and governments stress the importance of tactics against violence, butso few studies actually look at the effectiveness of these tactics systematically. KaplanMintz, and Mishal’s study was an important step forward in this effort, and the presentstudy is another. Although it is critical to understand who becomes a suicide bomber andwhy, this seems to be more of a long-term strategy in a time when the use of this tacticis skyrocketing in the short term. Counterterrorism and law enforcement officials needmore information on how to stop attacks here and now, and tactical prevention is a criticalstep forward in achieving that goal to ensure a safer and more secure future for all whodesire it.
Notes
1. With the exception of the 19 November 1995 bombing of the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad.2. Although the use of female suicide bombers is an increasing trend, the overwhelming majority
of suicide bombers are still male; thus, this article uses the male pronouns both for ease of readingand to reflect the majority makeup of the population.
3. All groups described as “terrorist groups” in this article are on the U.S. State Department’slist of officially designated terrorist groups.
4. Please see the Appendix for a derivation of Equation (4) from Equation (1).5. e∧beta 0, or e∧(–1.441) = 0.23669, following Equation (1).6. Please see the Appendix for more information on how these numbers were calculated.
References
Associated Foreign Press. 2007, July 23. Pakistan to demolish part of Red Mosque complex. Avail-able at http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/07/23/1986139.htm?section=world (accessed30 September 2008).
Atran, Scott. 2003. Genesis of suicide terrorism. Science 299(5612): 1534–1539.Atran, Scott. 2006. The moral logic and growth of suicide terrorism. The Washington Quarterly 29:
127–147.Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). 2006. The world factbook: Statistics and analysis for every
country on the planet. New York: Barnes and Noble.Hittner, James B. 2005. How robust is the Werther effect? A re-examination of the suggestion-
imitation model of suicide. Mortality 10: 193–200.Kaplan, Edward H., Alex Mintz, and Shaul Mishal. 2006. Tactical prevention of suicide bombings in
Israel. Interfaces 36: 553–561.Pape, Robert A. 2003. The strategic logic of suicide terrorism. American Political Science Review
97: 343–361.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Stat
sbib
liote
ket T
idss
krif
tafd
elin
g] a
t 04:
25 0
6 M
ay 2
014
Suicide Bombings in Pakistan 233
Phillips, David P. 1974. The influence of suggestion on suicide: Substantive and theoretical implica-tions of the Werther effect. American Sociological Review 39: 340–354.
Sageman, Marc. 2004. Understanding terror networks. Philadelphia: University of PennsylvaniaPress.
Sageman, Marc. 2008. Leaderless jihad. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Schifrin, Nick. 2008, September 20. Death toll in Pakistan bombing still on rise. Available
at http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=5846991&page=1 (accessed 30 September2008).
Sengupta, Somini. 2007, July 24. Red Mosque fueled Islamic fire in young women. Available athttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/24/world/asia/24madrasa.html?pagewanted=all& r=0 (ac-cessed November 2, 2012).
Appendix: Notes on Calculations
It is possible to derive Equation (4) from Equation (1) algebraically in a few steps:
ln λt = β0 +∑
i
βiγit (1)
∂λt
∂γit
[ln λt ] = ∂
∂γit
[β0 +
∑i
βiγit
]
1
λt
∂λt
∂γit
= βi
∂λt
∂γit
= βiλt (4)
One issue that may be raised with the results is the fact that the reported values of betawere not exponentiated. In studies using similar methods, the numbers are exponentialsraised to different expressions; here the numbers would be exponentials raised to differentexpressions of beta when determining the effect of a statement on the bombing rate (partiallambda over partial gamma, Equation (4)). In this case, the exponentials are not necessary.Just as it was possible to derive Equation (4) from Equation (1) above, it is also possible tocomplete this derivation by including the exponentials:
ln λt = β0 +∑
i
βiγit (1)
λt = exp
[β0 +
∑i
βiγit
](1a)
∂λt
∂γit
= ∂
∂γit
[exp
[β0 +
∑i
βiγit
]], chain rule :
∂λt
∂γit
= exp
[β0 +
∑i
βiγit
]∂
∂γit
[exp
[β0 +
∑i
βiγit
]]
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Stat
sbib
liote
ket T
idss
krif
tafd
elin
g] a
t 04:
25 0
6 M
ay 2
014
234 B. R. Nolan
∂λt
∂γit
=[
exp
[β0 +
∑i
βiγit
]]βi
Substituting 1a:
∂λt
∂γit
= βiλt (4)
Thus, Equation (4) can be derived from Equation (1) either way, and in this case it is muchsimpler to do the calculations without the exponentials.
Dow
nloa
ded
by [
Stat
sbib
liote
ket T
idss
krif
tafd
elin
g] a
t 04:
25 0
6 M
ay 2
014