"Why? What motivated them? I put the question to any number of historians of self-immolation, but the best answer came from a scholar based in Washington, D.C., Timothy Dickinson. “Fire is the most dreaded of all forms of death,” he said, so “the sight of someone setting themselves on fire is simultaneously an assertion of intolerability and, frankly, of moral superiority. You say ‘I would never have the guts to do that. It’s not that he’s trying to tell me something, but that he’s commanding me.’ This isn’t insanity. It’s a terrible act of reason.” https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/a-terrible-act-of-reason-when-did-self-immolation-become-the-paramount-form-of-protest

My first night in Iraq the ceiling above my bunk had a red circle from a captain offing themselves two weeks prior, they left a pair of Oakley boots that fit my feet like feet gloves. People absolutely do kill themselves in war zones sometimes they find it too much to bear. He was part of a government that is providing weapons and money to fund the killers of children.