Publication

This paper examines a dataset on all instances of suicide bombings by the Islamist terrorist group al-Shabaab between September 2006 and October 2017. Key findings include 1) al-Shabaab has deployed at least 216 suicide attackers who carried out a total of 155 suicide bombing attacks, killing at least 595 and as many as 2,218 people; 2) the attacks are highly targeted, aimed at degrading the Somali state and members of the international community that are combating against the group; 3) the group’s attacks tend to avoid targeting non-combatant civilians, suggesting that they are not just undertaken to engender ‘shock and awe’, and more.