Terrorist countermeasures

At the end of 1997 the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), and their proxies the South Lebanon Army (SLA), remained hopelessly bogged down in a military quagmire which is played out daily in the hills and valleys of Southern Lebanon. As each new week passed more and more Israeli and SLA soldiers fell victim to the Islamic Resistance's (IR) most effective weapon, the roadside bomb, no amount of “preventive patrolling” could manage to reduce the frequency with which these indiscriminate attacks took place, nor did it confine the planting of these devices to the perimeter of the Security Zone. Having recently completed an assignment with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), Brendan O'Shea, of the History Department at University College, Cork, Ireland, investigates the claims of Nabih Berri, Leader of the Shi'ite Amal Movement and Speaker of the Lebanese Parliament, that the blood‐spattered hills of South Lebanon have now become “Israel's Vietnam.“¹     

What Terrorist Leaders Want: A Content Analysis of Terrorist Propaganda Videos

In recent years, a growing body of empirical research suggests that indiscriminate violence against civilian targets tends to carry substantial political risks compared to more selective violence against military targets. To better understand why terrorist groups sometimes attack politically suboptimal targets, scholars are increasingly adopting a principal-agent framework where the leaders of terrorist groups are understood as principals and lower level members as agents. According to this framework, terrorist leaders are thought to behave as essentially rational political actors, whereas lower level members are believed to harbor stronger non-political incentives for harming civilians, often in defiance of leadership preferences. We test this proposition with an original content analysis of terrorist propaganda videos. Consistent with the principal–agent framework, our analysis demonstrates statistically that terrorist leaders tend to favor significantly less indiscriminate violence than their operatives actually commit, providing unprecedented insight into the incentive structure of terrorist leaders relative to the rank-and-file.     

Terrorist Assassinations and Target Selection

This research note examines political institutional changes in the aftermath of terrorist assassinations. Contemporary assassinations are more often a component of wider campaigns of political violence rather than a singular attack on a head of state. The Global Terrorism Database counts 16,831 terrorist assassinations from 1970–2014, indicating significant frequency of these events and includes a wide range of targets from law enforcement officials to foreign diplomats. Utilizing survival analysis, the span of time from a terrorist assassination event to a change in political institutions within states is measured between target types. Outcome differences between target types are identified.     

Terrorist sympathizers in The Netherlands

Abstract

The following remarks are excerpted from the 1987 Annual Conference on Domestic and International Terrorism sponsored by the Anti‐Defamation League of B'nai B'rith and the Leon and Marilyn Klinghoffer Foundation of the Anti‐Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, in cooperation with the Institute for Studies in International Terrorism at the State University of New York (SUNY) and the U.S. Global Strategy Council. The meeting was held on December 14, 1987 in Washington, D.C., and chaired by Professor Yonah Alexander of State University of New York and The George Washington University.     

自杀性恐怖袭击及其治理

自“9·11事什”发生以来，恐怖主义活动虽然遭到世界各国的联合抵制和打击，但其发展趋势在世界范围内却并没有从根本上得到抑制或扭转，而在某些国家和地区尤呈猖獗之势，其主要表现特征是自杀性恐怖袭击被频频使用，对所在国家乃至整个国际社会的安全与稳定构成严重的威胁与挑战。     

Disaggregating and Defeating Terrorist Safe Havens

Terrorist organizations’ physical safe havens continue to shape the terrorist threat to the United States by extending the groups’ longevity and increasing the threat they pose. As a result, eliminating terrorist safe havens has been a key component of U.S. counterterrorism policy since at least 2001. However, some scholars challenged the post-9/11 policy consensus that terrorists find sanctuary in weak states and so-called ungoverned spaces. This article seeks to bridge this gap between scholarship and policy by offering a typology for disaggregating different kinds of terrorist safe havens. Our typology operates on two axes based on host government will (i.e., the host government's posture toward each group with haven inside its borders), as well as government capability, (specifically whether the host government possesses the specific capabilities needed to oust each group). This intersection of will and capability produces three types of havens. We briefly illustrate each type of haven using the exemplar case study of Pakistan—a location often described as an overarching safe haven, but which is actually home to several sanctuaries—and offer policy recommendations for addressing them. A need exists to disaggregate and identify how the United States can approach haven elimination. This typology and the analysis that stems from it offer a starting point for devising such strategies.     

Archetypal Terrorist Events in the United States

This research presents a typology of terrorist events rather than the more common typologies of terrorist groups and ideologies. Archetypal analysis, a quantitative methodology to identify pure types, was used with data in START's Global Terrorism Database to identify archetypal attacks in the United States. A set of seven archetypal events was identified including abortion bombings, poisonings, Aryan hate, hostage-taking, fire/bomb for damage, assassination, and the catastrophic Big Bad. These archetypes may be useful for training and exercising for events with additional potential value for developing theory of terrorist events.     

Terrorist Decision Making and the Deterrence Problem

An ongoing debate among policymakers and terrorism scholars concerns the effectiveness of deterrence as a counterterrorism tool. Absent from the debate is a discussion of the complex nature of terrorist decision making. Decisions are made at varying levels in a terrorist organization, often by actors having different motives, resulting in behavior that is not always fully rational. This article identifies several circumstances when terrorist behavior is not the product of an entirely unitary, rational decision-making process, and therefore highlights when deterrence policies will be least effective. It concludes with some policy implications for understanding when deterrence policies are most likely to succeed and how to address terrorism in other situations.     

索马里海盗的"恐怖主义化"及对策

随着亚丁湾局势呈现出很大的不确定性,索马里海盗的“恐怖主义化”有发展成为区域性安全核心问题的趋势,严重干扰着国际海上运输秩序的稳定与各国的海上安全利益,并有加剧中东地区局势动荡的可能。如何应对索马里海盗带来的安全挑战,考验着国际社会的智慧。     

Methodological Triangulation in the Analysis of Terrorist Networks

The conceptualization of terrorist groups as networks is increasingly common to terrorism studies, although methods of analysis vary widely. Contrary to common understandings, the integration of computational and qualitative methods is possible even with limited (small-n) data. The triangulation of different methods can produce insights overlooked by the use of any single method and validate findings across methods. This article demonstrates some of the possibilities for integrating qualitative and quantitative methods for network analysis using Raffaello Pantucci's recent article, “The Tottenham Ayatollah and The Hook-Handed Cleric: An Examination of All Their Jihadi Children.”     

Terrorist Sanctuaries and Bosnia-Herzegovina: Challenging Conventional Assumptions

This article argues that a model of terrorism and terrorist sanctuaries rooted in post-9/11 strategic thought and the Global War on Terror is inadequate to the study of terrorism in Bosnia and the Balkans. It addresses a series of conventional assumptions regarding Bosnia-Herzegovina's status as a putative terrorist sanctuary, based on a reading of post-war ethnic politics and political architecture. This assessment turns on the basic notion that terrorism in Bosnia is a complex phenomenon linked to multiple domestic and foreign communities, defined along competing national trajectories and intersecting foreign interests, and subject to evolving political circumstances and priorities.     

A Basic Model Explaining Terrorist Group Organizational Structure

Terrorist groups strive to balance efficiency with their need for security. This article examines the factors that affect a group's choice of organizational structure. I classify 254 groups from the Global Terrorism Database into one of four basic structures: market, all-channel, hub-spoke, or bureaucracy. The results of a multinomial logistic regression reveal that as secret organizations, terrorist groups are not just driven by achieving efficiencies in their organization but rather by protecting against infiltration and threats. Internal factors such as target selection, operational pace, ideology, and stated goals shape a group's structure. External environmental factors such as political rights, civil liberties, polity durability, and state wealth also help shape a group's structure.     

Fighting Networked Terrorist Groups: Lessons from Israel

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States faced “networked” adversaries: insurgent groups that communicated and coordinated their political and military campaigns without a central command. The rise of networked groups is a direct result of the preponderance of U.S. military power. Consequently, this article asks: What strategies have been most effective in defeating networked groups? To answer this question, the article examines Israeli operations against Palestinian groups during Operation Defense Shield in 2002. It argues that the most effective strategy to defeat networked adversaries is to use networked strategies. In Israel, this meant establishing multiple units to penetrate Palestinian urban areas, swarm together from several directions, and kill or capture militants.     

Strategic Change in Terrorist Movements: Lessons from Hamas

Existing literature is weak in explaining strategic change among terrorist movements, especially regarding the question of why these organizations often switch between contesting the external enemy, usually the government or the occupying power, and the internal arena in which they compete against fellow rebel groups. A rebel force facing diminishing returns from a formerly successful tactic with no equally effective tactical substitute in sight is likely to switch from conflict against a government to achieve dominance in the rebel camp. The terrorist movement will switch from the external to the internal arena even if such substitution compromises the overall goals of the rebel camp. The following article explores these dynamics in Hamas's strategy in the latest round of conflict between the movement and Israel.     

The Politics of Negotiating the Terrorist Problem in Indonesia

Although Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) is a pan-Southeast Asia jihadi network, it has been able to headquarter itself in Indonesia, where it has also been able to find the lion's share of its recruits. This article finds that there is little support for hardline Islamic political movements, or even violent jihadi groups, from the wider population. Yet at the same time the public is skeptical about the existence of an international terrorist problem. Not only is there general denial amongst the Indonesian population but Indonesia's political leaders have had to tread carefully on the issue. Indonesia has had a degree of success in denting the JI network but confronting terrorism on the whole is fraught with political difficultiesnotably the impression that the war on terrorism might be a plot to weaken the Islamic world.