CJ450 UCLA Week 3 Understanding Terrorist Organizations Influence Questions This week will involve us understanding how terrorist organizations influence a

CJ450 UCLA Week 3 Understanding Terrorist Organizations Influence Questions This week will involve us understanding how terrorist organizations influence and promote their agendas.

Let’s think about past terrorist attacks that have occurred in London. The attackers took a white rental van and ran over pedestrians on London bridge. The van travelled towards the Borough Market and crashes outside the Barrowboy & Banker pub. The attackers then dismount the van and proceed to run around that location stabbing/slashing civilians with knives. It was also reported that these attackers were wearing dummy suicide vests. Multiple deaths were reported and 48 people were taken to five hospitals in that capial – 21 of those injured were categorized as critical. A few days later, ISIS reports and claims responsibility of this event.

Let’s dissect this event. These attackers used a vehicle and knives to cause injury/death. They were focused on conducting random attacks in a highly populated area that consists of a dense tourist population. The attack closed down all traffic on the London bridge, it caused a massive police force and SAS response to counter the threat. It is presently unknown if these perpetrators were on any watchlist and if these attackers were either influenced by ISIS to commit these acts or were directed to execute this action by ISIS leadership.

Here’s the important take away from this topic…the strategy used is always different from the tactics employed. What do I mean by this? The tactics used in this event invovled the attackers using a vehicle to kill/injure, the knives used to kill/injure and the use of dummy suicide vests to deter civilians from counterattacking. The strategic goal of the attackers was to develop a sense of fear and disrupt the local economy through intimidation. The tactics are always different the strategy. Remember, for every terror attack that is committed, there is a strategic goal behind the carnage.

I want you to consider these questions:

Does England have a problem with their citizen population?

Does England’s immigration policy work or does it work against the safety and security of its own population?

Are these attacks preventable?

Did the attackers (presumably directed by ISIS) achieve their goals? The Strategies of Terrorism
Author(s): Andrew H. Kydd and Barbara F. Walter
Reviewed work(s):
Source: International Security, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Summer, 2006), pp. 49-80
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4137539 .
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The
Strategies
Terrorism
of
AndrewH. Kyddand
BarbaraF. Walter
Terrorism often works.
Extremistorganizationssuch as al-Qaida,Hamas, and the TamilTigersengage
in terrorismbecause it frequently delivers the desired response. The October
1983 suicide attack against the U.S. Marine barracksin Beirut, for example,
convinced the United States to withdraw its soldiers from Lebanon.’ The
United States pulled its soldiers out of Saudi Arabiatwo years afterthe terrorist attacksof September11,2001,even though the U.S. militaryhad been building up its forces in that country for more than a decade.2 The Philippines
recalled its troops from Iraqnearly a month early after a Filipino truck driver
was kidnapped by Iraqi extremists.3In fact, terrorismhas been so successful
that between 1980and 2003,half of all suicide terroristcampaignswere closely
followed by substantial concessions by the target governments.4Hijacking
planes, blowing up buses, and kidnapping individuals may seem irrational
and incoherentto outside observers,but these tacticscan be surprisinglyeffective in achieving a terroristgroup’s political aims.
Despite the salience of terrorismtoday, scholars and policymakersare only
beginning to understandhow and why it works. Much has been written on the
origins of terror,the motivationsof terrorists,and counterterrorresponses,but
little has appeared on the strategies terroristorganizations employ and the
conditions under which these strategies succeed or fail. Alan Krueger,David
Laitin,JitkaMaleckova,and Alberto Abadie, for example, have traced the effects of poverty, education, and political freedom on terroristrecruitment.5
AndrewH. Kyddis AssociateProfessorof PoliticalScienceat the Universityof Pennsylvania.
Barbara
F.
Walteris AssociateProfessorat the GraduateSchoolof International
RelationsandPacificStudiesat the
SanDiego.Thisarticleis thesecondinstallmentin a collaborative
Universityof California,
project,andthe
orderof theauthors’nameswas determined
order.
by alphabetical
The authorswould like to thankthe participantsat the Projecton InternationalAffairsseminarat
the Universityof California,San Diego, for helpful commentson an earlierdraft.
1. ThomasL. Friedman,”MarinesCompleteBeirutPullback:MoslemsMove In,”New YorkTimes,
February27, 2004.
2. Don Van Natta Jr.,”TheStrugglefor Iraq:Last AmericanCombatTroopsQuit Saudi Arabia,”
New YorkTimes,September22, 2003.
3. JamesGlanz, “HostageIs Freedafter PhilippineTroopsAre Withdrawnfrom Iraq,”New York
Times,July 21, 2004.
4. RobertA. Pape,Dyingto Win:TheStrategicLogicof SuicideTerrorism
(New York:RandomHouse,
2005), p. 65.
5. Alan B. Kruegerand David D. Laitin,”KtoKogo?A Cross-CountryStudy of the Originsand
International
Vol.31,No. 1 (Summer
2006),pp.49-80
Security,
? 2006 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
49
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InternationalSecurity31:1 50
Jessica Stern has examined the grievances that give rise to terrorismand the
networks, money, and operations that allow terroristorganizationsto thrive.6
What is lacking, however, is a clear understanding of the larger strategic
games terroristsare playing and the ways in which state responses help or hinder them.
Effective counterstrategiescannot be designed without first understanding
the strategic logic that drives terroristviolence. Terrorismworks not simply
because it instills fear in targetpopulations,but because it causes governments
and individuals to respond in ways that aid the terrorists’cause. The Irish
RepublicanArmy (IRA)bombed pubs, parks, and shopping districts in London because its leadership believed that such acts would convince Britainto
relinquishNorthernIreland.In targetingthe WorldTradeCenterand the Pentagon on September11, al-Qaidahoped to raise the costs for the United States
of supportingIsrael,Saudi Arabia,and other Arabregimes,and to provokethe
United States into a military response designed to mobilize Muslims around
the world. Thatso many targetedgovernmentsrespond in the way that terrorist organizationsintend underscoresthe need for understandingthe reasoning
behind this type of violence.
In this article we seek answers to four questions. First,what types of goals
do terrorists seek to achieve? Second, what strategies do they pursue to
achieve these goals? Third,why do these strategieswork in some cases but not
in others? And fourth, given these strategies, what are the targeted governments’ best responses to prevent terrorismand protect their countries from
future attacks?
The core of our argumentis that terroristviolence is a form of costly signaling. Terroristsare too weak to impose their will directlyby force of arms. They
are sometimes strong enough, however, to persuade audiences to do as they
wish by altering the audience’s beliefs about such matters as the terrorist’s
ability to impose costs and their degree of commitment to their cause. Given
the conflict of interestbetween terroristsand their targets,ordinarycommunication or “cheaptalk”is insufficientto change minds or influence behavior.If
al-Qaidahad informed the United States on September10, 2001, that it would
Targetsof Terrorism,”PrincetonUniversity and StanfordUniversity,2003;Alan B. Kruegerand
JitkaMaleckova,”Education,Poverty,and Terrorism:Is There a Causal Connection?”Journalof
Economic
Vol. 17, No. 4 (November2003),pp. 119-144;and AlbertoAbadie, “Poverty,
Perspectives,
PoliticalFreedom,and the Roots of Terrorism,”FacultyResearchWorkingPapersSeries,RWPO4043 (Cambridge,Mass.:John E Kennedy School of Government,HarvardUniversity,2004).
6. Jessica Stem, Terrorin the Name of God: Why ReligiousMilitants Kill (New York: EccoHarperCollins,2003).
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The Strategiesof Terrorism
151
kill 3,000Americansunless the United Stateswithdrew from Saudi Arabia,the
threatmight have sparkedconcern,but it would not have had the same impact
as the attacksthat followed. Becauseit is hard for weak actorsto make credible
threats,terroristsare forced to display publicly just how far they are willing to
go to obtain their desired results.
Thereare five principalstrategiclogics of costly signaling at work in terrorist campaigns:(1) attrition,(2) intimidation,(3) provocation,(4) spoiling, and
(5) outbidding. In an attritionstrategy,terroristsseek to persuade the enemy
that the terroristsare strong enough to impose considerablecosts if the enemy
continues a particularpolicy. Terroristsusing intimidationtry to convince the
population that the terroristsare strong enough to punish disobedience and
that the government is too weak to stop them, so that people behave as the
terroristswish. A provocationstrategyis an attemptto induce the enemy to respond to terrorismwith indiscriminateviolence, which radicalizesthe population and moves them to support the terrorists.Spoilers attack in an effort to
persuade the enemy that moderates on the terrorists’side are weak and untrustworthy,thus undermining attempts to reach a peace settlement. Groups
engaged in outbidding use violence to convince the public that the terrorists
have greater resolve to fight the enemy than rival groups, and thereforeare
worthy of support. Understandingthese five distinct strategiclogics is crucial
not only for understandingterrorismbut also for designing effective antiterror
policies.7
The article is divided into two main sections. The first discusses the goals
terrorists pursue and examines the forty-two groups currently on the U.S.
State Department’slist of foreign terroristorganizations(FTOs).8The second
section develops the costly signaling approachto terrorism,analyzes the five
strategiesthat terroristsuse to achieve their goals, discusses the conditions in
which each of these strategies is likely to be successful, and draws out the
implications for the best counterterrorresponses.
The Goalsof Terrorism
Foryears the press has portrayedterroristsas crazy extremistswho commit indiscriminate acts of violence, without any larger goal beyond revenge or a de7. Of course, terroristswill also be seeking best responses to government responses. A pair of
strategiesthat are best responses to each other constitutesa Nash equilibrium,the fundamental
predictiontool of game theory.
8. Office of Counterterrorism,U.S. Departmentof State, “ForeignTerroristOrganizations,”fact
sheet, October11, 2005, http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/fs/3719.htm.
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InternationalSecurity31:1 152
sire to produce fear in an enemy population. This characterizationderives
some support from statements made by terroriststhemselves. For example, a
young Hamas suicide bomber whose bomb failed to detonate said, “I know
that there are other ways to do jihad. But this one is sweet-the sweetest. All
martyrdomoperations,if done for Allah’s sake, hurt less than a gnat’s bite!”9
Volunteersfor a suicide mission may have a variety of motives–obtaining rewards in the afterlife,avenging a family member killed by the enemy, or simply collecting financial rewards for their descendants. By contrast, the goals
driving terroristorganizationsare usually political objectives, and it is these
goals that determinewhether and how terroristcampaignswill be launched.
We define “terrorism”as the use of violence against civilians by nonstate actors to attainpoliticalgoals.10These goals can be conceptualizedin a variety of
ways. Individuals and groups often have hierarchies of objectives, where
broadergoals lead to more proximate objectives,which then become specific
goals in more tacticalanalyses.n For the sake of simplicity,we adopt the common distinctionbetween goals (or ultimate desires) and strategies(or plans of
action to attain the goals).
Although the ultimate goals of terroristshave varied over time, five have
had enduringimportance:regime change, territorialchange, policy change, social control,and status quo maintenance.Regime change is the overthrowof a
government and its replacementwith one led by the terroristsor at least one
more to their liking.12 Most Marxist groups, including the Shining Path
(SenderoLuminoso)in Peru have sought this goal. Territorialchange is taking
territoryaway from a state either to establish a new state (as the TamilTigers
seek to do in Tamilareas of Sri Lanka)or to join another state (as Lashkar-e
Tayyiba would like to do by incorporating Indian Kashmir into Pakistan).
9. Quotedin NasraHassan,”AnArsenalof Believers:Talkingto the ‘HumanBombs,”‘New Yorker,
November 19, 2001,p. 37.
10. Fordiscussionof differingdefinitionsof terrorism,see Alex P.Schmidand AlbertJ.Jongman,
andLiterature
(New
A New Guideto Actors,Authors,Concepts,DataBases,Theories,
PoliticalTerrorism:
Brunswick,N.J.:Transaction,1988),pp. 1-38. We do not focus on state terrorismbecause states
face very differentopportunitiesand constraintsin theiruse of violence,and we do not believe the
two cases are similarenough to be profitablyanalyzed together.
11. For the distinctionbetween goals and strategies,see David A. Lake and RobertPowell, eds.,
Relations(Princeton,N.J.:PrincetonUniversityPress, 1999),espeStrategicChoiceandInternational
cially chap. 1.
12. On revolutionaryterrorism,see MarthaCrenshawHutchinson,”TheConceptof RevolutionJournalof ConflictResolution,Vol. 16, No. 3 (September1972),pp. 383-396;Martha
ary Terrorism,”
TheFLN in Algeria,1954-1962 (Stanford,Calif.:
Terrorism:
Crenshaw Hutchinson, Revolutionary
Hoover InstitutionPress,1978);and H. EdwardPriceJr.,”TheStrategyand Tacticsof RevolutionStudiesin SocietyandHistory,Vol.19,No. 1 (January1977),pp. 52-66.
Comparative
ary Terrorism,”
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The Strategiesof Terrorism
153
Policy change is a broader category of lesser demands, such as al-Qaida’s
demand that the United States drop its support for Israeland corruptArab regimes such as Saudi Arabia.Social controlconstrainsthe behavior of individuals, rather than the state. In the United States, the Ku Klux Klan sought the
continued oppression of AfricanAmericansafter the Civil War.More recently,
antiabortiongroups have sought to kill doctors who performabortionsto deter other doctors from providing this service. Finally,status quo maintenance
is the support of an existing regime or a territorialarrangementagainst political groups that seek to change it. Many right-wing paramilitaryorganizations
in Latin America, such as the United Self-Defense Force of Colombia, have
sought this goal.13Protestantparamilitarygroups in Northern Ireland supported maintenance of the territorialstatus quo (Northern Ireland as British
territory)against IRA demands that the territorybe transferredto Ireland.14
Some organizationshold multiple goals and may view one as facilitatinganother. For instance, by seeking to weaken U.S. support for Arab regimes
(which would represent a policy change by the United States), al-Qaida is
working toward the overthrow of those regimes (or regime change). As another example, Hamas aims to drive Israelout of the occupied territories(territorial change) and then to overthrow it (regime change).
A cross section of terroristorganizationslisted in Table1 illustratesthe range
of goals and their relative frequency.Of the forty-two groups currentlydesignated as FTOsby the U.S. State Department,thirty-one seek regime change,
nineteen seek territorialchange, four seek policy change, and one seeks to
maintain the status quo.15The list is neither exhaustive nor representativeof
all terroristgroups, and it does not reflect the frequency of goals in the universe of cases. None of the FTOsappear to pursue social control,but some domestic groups, which are by definition not on the list, are more interested in
13. This group has recentlysurrenderedits weapons.
14. Some analystsargue that many terroristorganizationshave degeneratedinto little more than
self-perpetuatingbusinessesthat primarilyseek to enhancetheirown power and wealth, and only
articulatepoliticalgoals for rhetoricalpurposes.See, for example,Stern,Terrorin theNameof God,
pp. 235-236. This suggests that power and wealth should be consideredgoals in their own right.
All organizations,however, seek power and wealth to furthertheir politicalobjectives,and these
are better viewed as instrumentalin nature.
15. A difficult coding issue arises in determiningwhen a group is a nonstate actor engaged in
status quo maintenanceand when it is simply a covertagent of the state. Some death squads were
linked to elements in the armed forces,yet were not necessarilyresponsiveto the chief executive
of the country.Otherswere tied to right-wingparties and are more clearly nonstate,unless that
party is the party in power. See BruceD. Campbelland ArthurD. Brenner,eds., DeathSquadsin
GlobalPerspective:
Murderwith Deniability(New York:PalgraveMacmillan,2002).
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Table 1. Foreign TerroristOrganizations and Their Goals
Ultimate Goals
Name
Abu Nidal Organization
Abu Sayyaf Group
Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade
Ansar al-Islam
Armed Islamic Group
Asbat al-Ansar
Aum Shinrikyo
Basque Fatherland and Liberty (ETA)
Communist Party of the Philippines/New
People’s Army
Continuity Irish Republican Army
Al-Gama’a al-lslamiyya (Islamic Group)
Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement)
Harakatul-Mujahidin
Hezbollah (Party of God)
Destroy Israel; establish Palestinian state
Secede from Philippines
Destroy Israel; establish Palestinian state
Evict United States from Iraq;establish Islamic state
Establish Islamic state in Algeria
Establish Islamic state in Lebanon
Seize power in Japan; hasten the Apocalypse
Secede from Spain
Establish Communist state in Philippines
Evict Britain from Northern Ireland; unite with Eire
Establish Islamic state in Egypt
Destroy Israel; establish Palestinian Islamic state
Evict India from Kashmir;unite with Pakistan
Originally:evict Israel from Lebanon; now: destroy
Israel and establish Palestinian Islamic state
Establish Islamic state in Uzbekistan; reduce U.S.
Islamic Jihad Group
influence
Establish Islamic state in Uzbekistan
Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan
Evict India from Kashmir;unite with Pakistan
Jaish-e-Mohammed (Army of Mohammed)
Establish Islamic state in Indonesia
Jemaah Islamiya
Establish Islamic state in Egypt
AI-Jihad (Egyptian Islamic Jihad)
Kahane Chai (Kach)
Expand Israel
Kongra-Gel (formerly KurdistanWorkers’ Party) Secede from Turkey
Evict India from Kashmir;unite with Pakistan
Lashkar-eTayyiba (Army of the Righteous)
Establish Islamic state in Pakistan
Lashkari Jhangvi
Secede from Sri Lanka
LiberationTigers of Tamil Eelam
Establish Islamic state in Libya
Libyan Islamic Fighting Group
Establish Islamic state in Morocco
Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group
Overthrow Iranian government
Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization
Establish Marxist government in Colombia
National LiberationArmy
Palestine Liberation Front
Destroy Israel; establish Palestinian state
Palestinian Islamic Jihad
Destroy Israel; establish Palestinian state
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R
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Table 1. continued
Name
Ultimate Goals
R
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Popular Front for the Liberation of PalestineGeneral Command
Al-Qaida
Destroy Israel; establish Palestinian state
Destroy Israel; establish Palestinian state
X
X
Establish Islamic states in Middle East; destroy
Israel; reduce U.S. influence
Evict United States from Iraq;establish Islamic state
Evict Britainfrom Northern Ireland; unite with Eire
Establish Marxist state in Colombia
Establish Marxist state in Greece
X
X
X
Establish Marxist state in Greece
Establish Marxist state in Turkey
X
X
Establish Islamic state in Algeria
Establish Marxist state in Peru
Preserve Colombian state
X
X
Al-Qaida in Iraq (Zarqawi group)
Real Irish Republican Army
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
Revolutionary Nuclei (formerly Revolutionary
People’s Struggle)
Revolutionary Organization 7 November
Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front
Salafist Group for Call and Combat
Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso)
United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia
Total
X
3
SOURCE:
Office of Counterterrorism, U.S. Department of State, “Foreign TerroristOrganizations,” fact sheet,
NOTE:
RC:regime change; TC:territorialchange; PC: policy change; SC: social control; and SQM: status quo
goals is the authors’.
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InternationalSecurity31:1 156
this goal.16What Table1 reveals, however, is the instrumentalnatureof terrorist violence …
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