Political Assassinations: A Changing Landscape

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Video originally published on July 31, 2024.

Political Assassinations – Why Leaders Die Script Written by Oliver Carpenter Part 1 – Introduction On the 15th of May 2024, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico was in front of the city of Handlova’s house of culture, following a government meeting. He stepped onto the pavement when a gunman approached him and opened fire. Fico had been shot suffering wounds to his stomach, arms, and legs. The reality is assassinations are messy as a topic and happen in our own messy world. What can even be considered an assassination attempt in some circumstances is murky at best. Attempts can often cross over on motive, weapon, and type of regime. Some attempts are designed specifically to be a public spectacle, occurring at large events or even being televised whilst others are designed to bury the lead as much as possible, hiding the circumstances around the death of a leader. Then there is the potential spin to consider. Who would want to have influence over the outcomes of the violence? One man’s assassination attempt is another man’s terrorist attack, coup and another’s revolution. Worse still, some could be entirely falsified by those who wish to justify the actions they may later take.

Key Takeaways

Political Assassinations – Why Leaders Die Script Written by Oliver Carpenter Part 1 – Introduction On the 15th of May 2024, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico was in front of the city of Handlova’s house of culture, following a government meeting.
Someone had tried to kill him. Robert Fico has become the latest in a very long line of attempted assassinations of world leaders that stretches back millennia.
Join us today as we take a look at the political assassinations, from coup d’etats, to terrorism, to lone gunmen.
Some attempts are designed specifically to be a public spectacle, occurring at large events or even being televised whilst others are designed to bury the lead as much as possible, hiding the circumstances around the death of a leader.
Firstly, if we tried to break down every single assassination attempt in history, we would be here all day.

Key Developments

Someone had tried to kill him. Robert Fico has become the latest in a very long line of attempted assassinations of world leaders that stretches back millennia. With the shooting of Fico, alongside the successful assassination of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2022, it feels as if for the first time since the early noughties, assassinations are back on the menu. But why do they happen? Who are the perpetrators? And what methods do they use? So, before we go any further, lets break down some of the key information on assassinations and establish some parameters for what we mean when we are talking about them. Firstly, if we tried to break down every single assassination attempt in history, we would be here all day. So, we’re limiting ourselves to assassination attempts in the last 50 years, if you’re watching this in the mid-2020s, that means since the mid-70s and even then, there are so many that we will not be able to mention them all in one video. Secondly, we’re limiting those we talk about today to assassination attempts on heads of government, those who are in charge of the day-to-day decision making in countries rather than more symbolic heads of state. For example, we may include an attempt on President Vladimir Putin of Russia, but not on King Charles III of England, as most of his powers are ceremonial in nature. He is not the one running the UK on a day-to-day basis. We’re not counting executions, as even though they can be coordinated much like an assassination and leaders can easily be arrested and summarily killed, there is at least the appearance of a trial and due process, as opposed to the extra-judicial attempts on the lives of world leaders who at that time had not officially been accused of any crimes. Finally, we will not be discussing assassination plots, these being attempts that do not leave the planning stages when they are foiled. A good example of this would be the 2018 plot by an extremist to kill then UK Prime Minister Theresa May, which was foiled by MI5. In short, it needs to be an actual attempt on a world leader in the last half-century. Even with us trimming the fat around the idea of what an assassination attempt is for this video, those we mention today aren’t the only assassinations attempts that have ever happened. We cannot comment on every single one, we are simply wading into the violence and trying to make sense of the bloodshed. According to The Combating Terrorism Centre at West Point (CTC), assassinations peaked in the 1970s and have remained high ever since. Although, this accounts for a much broader definition of assassinations than we’re looking at today, accounting for all politicians assassinated since the mid-40s.

Strategic Implications

Join us today as we take a look at the political assassinations, from coup d’etats, to terrorism, to lone gunmen. This is why leaders die. What even is an assassination? The reality is assassinations are messy as a topic and happen in our own messy world. What can even be considered an assassination attempt in some circumstances is murky at best. Attempts can often cross over on motive, weapon, and type of regime. Conversely when assessing only world leaders, Statista concludes that the 2010s were a noticeably quiet decade for assassinations. However, the 2020s appear to be ramping up the violence once again. By 2024, more world leaders have already been successfully assassinated than in the entirety of the 2010s. With assassination as a tactic seemingly back on the rise, we should look to the near past to determine what has led to the re-emergence of assassinations in the 2020s. Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on who you are) there ae enough concrete attempts since the 1970s to identify and draw out key parallels between cases. Coup D’Etats The vast majority of successful assassination attempts in the last half-century have been as a result of coup d’etats. It is often common in a coup d’etat for the head of state to be killed or arrested, however a dead leader can’t hold an uprising against you, or act as a living symbol of rebellion. Coups are designed to be a swift decapitation of the leadership of a state, leaving a power vacuum for someone waiting in the wings to fill. This can often involve attempted simultaneous assassinations or multiple assassinations within a short time of each other. Coups and by extension, assassinations are more likely to occur in unstable nations with a poor succession structure, as that uncertainty in succession is what any prospective coup planner is trying to exploit. A good example of a so-called “classic” coup that resulted in an assassination would be in Liberia in 1980, where dissidents in the army led by Samuel Doe stormed the presidential palace and killed acting president William Tolbert, leading to a regime change. Doe himself would meet a similarly gruesome end when he himself was later deposed. Similarly, Francois Tombalbaye, then president of Chad, suffered a coup in 1975 where rebels stormed his palace and shot him dead. In some instances, those who wish to kill leaders have greater political motivations than wanting to seize power. Thomas Sankara, President of Burkina Faso who rose to power from a coup of his own in 1983 was affectionately nicknamed the ‘Che Guevara of Africa’ and was a socialist and anti-imperialist who refused all foreign aid, including from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. He was deposed and killed in a coup in 1987 by a childhood friend who apparently sought to restore order and bring much needed funds into Burkina Faso.

Risk and Uncertainty

Some attempts are designed specifically to be a public spectacle, occurring at large events or even being televised whilst others are designed to bury the lead as much as possible, hiding the circumstances around the death of a leader. Then there is the potential spin to consider. Who would want to have influence over the outcomes of the violence? One man’s assassination attempt is another man’s terrorist attack, coup and another’s revolution. Worse still, some could be entirely falsified by those who wish to justify the actions they may later take. So, before we go any further, lets break down some of the key information on assassinations and establish some parameters for what we mean when we are talking about them. Whether the true intentions of the coup plotters were to bring stability and investment to the country or simply seized the unstable nation from under Sankara, only they will know. The majority of countries who have had leaders assassinated as a result of coups since the 70s often had become independent in the past 50 years and the instability that arises from the challenges of nation building. In 1989, Ahmed Abdallah, leader of Comoros was killed after three separate assassination attempts that year. The BBC’s country profile on Comoros states that the island nation off the East African coast has suffered some 20 coups since its independence from France in the 1970s. The instability angle is a key factor in these nations. Assassination attempts are more likely to occur in the midst of a transition, when countries are feeling particularly fragile and tense. There was an attempted assassination on Zimbabwe’s Emmerson Mnangagwa in 2018 when a bomb exploded killing two and wounding 49. For reference, Zimbabwe was labelled as the 10th most unstable country in 2018 according to the Fragile States Index. This makes sense as in 2018, Zimbabwe was on the eve of their first elections since the long running leader Robert Mugabe was deposed by Mnangagwa in 2017. It is clear that a country’s internal stability is critical when assessing whether assassination attempts might occur, which makes regime security vital for new leaders trying to stay in power. However, assassinations, as we stated are never quite so simple. There have been successful assassination attempts on world leaders where the coups themselves fail. Melchior Ndadaye was killed in 1993 during an attempted coup that kick-started he Burundi civil war, but the coup failed owed to the country having a strong succession plan. One could argue the assassination of Haitian president Jovenel Moïse in 2021 by mercenaries was a failed coup, as the country has continued to descend into anarchy since. In 1977, Marien Ngouabi was attacked and killed by what is referred to as a “suicide commando” in Congo-Brazzaville during a suspected coup that also failed.

Outlook

Firstly, if we tried to break down every single assassination attempt in history, we would be here all day. So, we’re limiting ourselves to assassination attempts in the last 50 years, if you’re watching this in the mid-2020s, that means since the mid-70s and even then, there are so many that we will not be able to mention them all in one video. Secondly, we’re limiting those we talk about today to assassination attempts on heads of government, those who are in charge of the day-to-day decision making in countries rather than more symbolic heads of state. For example, we may include an attempt on President Vladimir Putin of Russia, but not on King Charles III of England, as most of his powers are ceremonial in nature. He is not the one running the UK on a day-to-day basis. We’re not counting executions, as even though they can be coordinated much like an assassination and leaders can easily be arrested and summarily killed, there is at least the appearance of a trial and due process, as opposed to the extra-judicial attempts on the lives of world leaders who at that time had not officially been accused of any crimes. In 1981, Ziaur Rahman, the Bengali president was assassinated in an attempted coup that went on to be suppressed, with the rebels who killed him surrendering. Other attempted coups are stranger still and even harder to categorise. Mohammad Daoud Khan, the first Prime Minister of Afghanistan was killed in a communist coup in 1978, billed as the Saur Revolution by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, or PDPA. This again brings into question how those who perpetrate assassination attempts will try to influence the way in which they’re perceived. Khan and his family were killed in the Arg, the royal palace in Kabul as the violence came to a head. Another example is Ibrahim al-Hamidi, the North Yemeni president who died under mysterious circumstances in 1977. The US Army War College believes a Saudi agent was responsible for the killing, but it was believed to be orchestrated by those already within his government, according to Al-Jazeera. This further blurs the lines around what constitutes a coup and what constitutes an assassination attempt by a foreign agent. Extremists The second most assassination attempts of world leaders comes from extremists and otherwise “destabilising elements” who but don’t appear to have any hope of actually taking over the country whose leader they’re trying to kill. Power and influence isn’t necessarily what they’re after, its blood. This runs the gambit from lone gunmen trying to prove a point, to terrorists trying to get someone more sympathetic to their cause in charge and everything in between. Lone assailants appear to have a disproportionate amount of success in assassinating their leader of choice, however that still does not make them very common or likely to succeed.

The Evolution of Political Assassinations: A Historical Context

Of course, we mentioned the attempted assassination of Robert Fico, Slovakian Prime Minister at the beginning of the video. However, the most recent successful assassination of a world leader is Shinzo Abe, who in 2022, was shot three times with a homemade gun by Tetsuya Yamagami. According to the BBC, this was because Yamagami so strongly disapproved of Abe’s alleged associations with an unnamed organisation. Abe was delivering a campaign speech for one of his contemporaries running for re-election when he was shot in the chest and neck. Explosives were also found in the suspect’s home. Fumio Koshida, Japan’s current prime minister, condemned the attack before suffering his own assassination attempt in April 2023 when 24-year-old Ryuji Kimura threw a homemade pipe bomb at him during a campaign event. According to the BBC, Kimura believed he was unfairly barred from running for election in Japan’s upper house and had previously attempted to sue the Japanese government. Another lone assailant we’re exploring was Yigal Amir, an Israeli nationalist who shot Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 following a peace rally. It was believed at that time that peace between Israel and Palestine were on the horizon following the 1993 Oslo Accords that Rabin had helped pioneer, although Rabin’s willingness to even sit at the same table as then PLO leader Yasser Arafat created a great deal of backlash among Israeli nationalists, of which Amir was one. The Guardian states that Amir had gone to the rally with the sole purpose of ending Rabin’s life and in turn, end any peace negotiations with Palestine. Looking at the state of Israel and Palestine today, he unequivocally succeeded. The Guardian was also present when they reported on the attempted assassination of French President Jaques Chirac on Bastille Day 2002 by a neo-Nazi, although this is disputed. It states the assailant fired one shot at Chirac with a fully loaded rifle he carried in a guitar case before he was wrestled to the ground and arrested. 20 years later, Argentina’s vice president and former president Cristina Fernandez De Kirchner, found herself also staring down the barrel of a gun of a neo-Nazi. Fernando Andre Sabag Montiel, a Brazilian man with nazi tattoos and a history of violence, attempted to shoot De Kirchner point blank in the head with a pistol. Fortunately for De Kirchner, the pistol was poorly maintained and failed to fire and Montiel was arrested on scene, according to popular Argentine newspaper Pagina12. The final lone assailant that constituted a successful assassination was of Sri Lankan president Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993, when he was attacked by a suicide bomber who was potentially a member of the Tamil Tigers, a Sri Lankan terrorist organisation. Besides, we know that Iran has a stockpile of drones because they’re selling them to Russia for use in Ukraine. In 1979, during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the USSR shot and killed Hafizullah Amin. Amin had previously been the Soviet Union’s leader in Afghanistan up until the point where they made multiple attempts on his life, eventually succeeding by brute force. In 1983, a bomb that exploded in Rangoon, Myanmar (then Burma) killed South Korean foreign minister Lee Bum Sok as well as Deputy Prime Minister Suh Sang Chul.

Motivations and Perpetrators: A Diverse Array of Actors

Whilst this may constitute more of a group attack owed to the organisation involved, it was still carried out by one person. The president’s valet, a friend of the suicide bomber, had allowed him to get close enough to the president to detonate, according to The Washington Post. Premadasa was killed alongside 23 others. In all of these cases, the security of the incident was brought into question. Specific recommendations had been made, for example Rabin was urged to wear a bulletproof vest and refused. For the others unknown members of the public were allowed to get within assassination distance during recognised and scheduled public appearances. Security was not taken seriously enough, either by the victims of these attacks or their staff. A breakdown in security therefore is a key factor in active assassination attempts, but we will touch more on this later. Extremists also come in the form of groups who try to assassinate world leaders. Often, they are a part of an organisation that is in conflict against the government in power, whether that’s terrorists, separatists or other groups, the goal is to destabilise the country in some way. A strong example is of Hamad Karzai, the former president of Afghanistan who had several attempts made on his life by the Taliban throughout the 2000s, including during a military parade in 2008, according to the New York Times. Vazgen Sargysan, the Armenian Prime Minister, was among one of eight shot dead in Armenia’s parliament in 1999 in the capital of Yerevan during a question-and-answer session. The group of 5 gunmen were jailed for life for their crimes, stating they committed the atrocity as part of a patriotic duty to Armenia and to cause political change, according to the Washington Post. The Irish Republican Army, or IRA is infamous for its conflict with the UK during “the Troubles” where they have attempted to assassinate the British Prime Minister on several occasions. The New York Times tells us that in 1991, they fired 3 mortars at 10 Downing Street, hoping to kill Prime Minister John Major, but only one shell found its target, exploding in the PM’s garden where nobody was harmed. This came after the infamous Brighton hotel bombing which aimed to assassinate Prime Minister Margeret Thatcher in 1984. She, like Major seven years later, escaped unharmed. In 2006 Somali president Abdulahi Yusuf Ahmed was targeted by a suicide bomber and 6 gunmen which left 11 dead. Somalia’s then foreign minister, Mohamed Hurre, stated it was likely the work of Al-Qaeda aimed at destabilising the perennially unstable nation. It is not the first time Islamic fundamentalists have attacked an East African power. In 1981 in Cairo Egypt, during a military parade, Islamic extremists disguised as Egyptian soldiers shot and killed Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. This is following Sadat’s participation in the 1978 Camp David Accords, which aimed to bring about peace between Israel and the Arab world. For the fundamentalists, much like in Rabin’s case, the accords were proof that Sadat had to go, according to NBC News. Most assassination attempts by extremists, lone assailants or other “destabilising elements” don’t tend to succeed. This is due to a mix of factors including disorganisation, incompetence, intelligence services catching plots and the security efforts of leaders in the immediate aftermath of attacks. It is clear just how big a threat that extremists can be to the security of a country, as even failed assassination attempts often end with many fatalities and inuries, even if the main target of the attack survives. Assassination as a geopolitical tool Sometimes, it is not the threats from within a country that leaders must take seriously, but assassination attempts from other nations as a strategic tactic on the geopolitical stage. In 2021, Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, the Prime Minister of Iraq was targeted by pro-Iran militias who flew drones into his house in Baghdad, according to the BBC. He escaped unharmed, but it was clear who was behind the attack. Given Iran’s sordid history with Iraq and the strengthening of Iranian-backed groups like Hamas and Hezbollah since the start of the decade, it would not be out of the ordinary for Iran to instigate an attack like this.

Frequently Asked Questions

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Jackson Reed

Jackson Reed creates and presents analysis focused on military doctrine, strategic competition, and conflict dynamics.

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