From attacks on the streets of Paris and London to murders in the marketplaces of Kabul and Baghdad, the suicide bomb takes more lives than any other type of explosive weapon.
Crossing continents, suicide bombs have injured over a quarter of a million people since they were first used in the assassination of a Russian tsar in 1881.
The tally of victims is greater than the number of those harmed by the two atomic bombs in Japan.
The trigger to write this book came in November 2015, when I found myself talking to a room of United Nations diplomats about suicide attacks.
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In my concluding words, I said: “It is not if, but when, there will be a suicide strike at the very heart of a European city.”
Less than a week later, 130 people were killed in Paris as seven terrorists armed with guns and suicide vests wreaked havoc on stadiums, concerts, cafes and restaurants.
I realised that I did not fully understand what paths had led these men to kill in such a terrible and random way. This book was a personal journey to find greater illumination to that darkness.
I embarked on a worldwide search – to St Petersburg, Japan, the killing fields of Sri Lanka, Hamas enclaves in Palestine and Ground Zero in New York.
Since their first use, there have been almost 14,000 suicide attacks, killing and injuring at least 220,000.
Forty per cent of the deaths have happened in the last five years.
In 1976, the world saw no suicide bombs. Forty years later, in 2016, 28 countries witnessed 469 strikes.
A collection of group beliefs has compelled the suicide bomber onwards – utopianism, militarism, nationalism and apocalypticism, to name just some.
They all speak of the tyrannies of teleology – their belief that the suicide bomber’s act will propel them towards a better place.
But suicide attacks have also been driven by individual motivations, too. Men and women have blown themselves up with minds full of ideas unique to no faith or creed – loners seeking meaning, angry men bent on revenge, conspiracy theorists, the sexually frustrated, the mentally ill, drug addicts all finding an end to their private inner hells.
Suicide bombers are the real weapons of mass destruction. In recent years, almost all bombings have been perpetrated by Salafist jihadists.
Such people herald a warped vision of Islam — with Isis, the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and Boko Haram the most persistent proponents.
Sixty countries have had suicide bombings, with Iraq the worst impacted, followed by Afghanistan, Pakistan, Japan and Syria.
Militarily, suicide bombers have changed the face of modern war.
Boots on the ground have been replaced by drone strikes. Hearts and mind campaigns have been lost in the defensive “bunkering down” that suicidal terror necessitates.
Few would argue the UK’s 9/11 wars have been successful. In Afghanistan, violence has increased massively and opium crops soared.
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Almost 3000 people died in 9/11, but the wars since have taken far more lives.
In Iraq, 288,000 are listed dead. More than 30,000 civilians are estimated to have been killed in Afghanistan. Suicide bombs invariably engender responses far deadlier than the original violation.
Such violence has led to a global surge of refugees that, in turn, has fuelled populist fear.
It is perhaps predictable to want to respond to the suicide bomber’s terror with hard and blunt force.
But have such responses – military intervention in Afghanistan and then Iraq and beyond – led to a reduction of the terror threat?
I would say not. When we look back to find out how we arrived at the place we find ourselves in now, we should not be blinded by the carnage brought by terrorism but also see the ensuing violence justified to crush that threat.
We must remind ourselves how the tsar’s blind repression of anarchists fanned the flames of tyrannical communist revolt. How the US high command’s justification for the devastating use of nuclear weapons to defeat the feared kamikaze ushered in the Cold War.
And how the calamitous invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were decided before the dust had settled on downtown Manhattan.
This is a view that reveals starkly how nearly every attempt to stamp out the suicide bomber since they first appeared in the 19th century has claimed more lives than the original bombing ever did.
There was a 600 per cent spike in religious hate crimes against Muslims in the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings in London.
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In my eyes, seeking a UN global ban on suicide bombings would reinforce what other laws say (the targeting of civilians, for instance, is forbidden under international humanitarian law) and send out a clear message of condemnation and stigmatisation.
This might sound naive but if a weapon becomes sufficiently loathed, even the most hardened jihadist might falter before its use, particularly those who seek, one day, to sit at the table of power.
Once, poison gas was considered a weapon of virtue – capable of breaking the quagmire of trench warfare.
But today, even despots would not publicly praise its use. The boil of suicidal terror has burst and the infection is spreading – and violence will not close it. A coherent and imaginative response might work – one that seeks to address all the complex divers of suicidal terror in moral and intelligent ways.
If we fail to address the rise of this terrible weapon, then we will see another 7/7, another Manchester.
●The Price of Paradise by Iain Overton is published by Quercus and is available now.
