Why terrorism does not work
As horrifying as their attacks are, terrorists who bomb and shoot noncombatants don’t win.
JSTOR CITATIONS: Why Terrorism Does Not Work
(Abstract at http://www.jstor.org/stable/4137516?m...
BY: MAX ABRAHMS
International Security, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Fall, 2006), pp. 42-78. MIT Press.
[Full text downloadable here: http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/f... ]
Will the recent attacks on Paris and Beirut help ISIS achieve its goals? Will the man who killed three people and wounded nine others in a Colorado Planned Parenthood advance the pro-life cause?
A 2006 analysis by Max Abrahms suggests that they probably won’t.
Looking at the 28 groups that the U.S. Department of State had designated as foreign terrorist organizations at the time, Abrahms set out to systematically determine whether they’d achieved the things they set out to do.
Abrahms starts out by looking at the terrorist groups’ stated objectives. This makes sense, he wrote, because scholars of terrorism generally understand these groups to be explicit about their goals. Altogether, he lists 42 policy objectives named by the groups.
Then, he considers whether the groups achieved all or part of their goals. He does find some clear instances of success by well-known terrorist forces. Hezbollah succeeded in two of its goals: driving peacekeeping and Israeli forces out of southern Lebanon in 1984 and in 2000. The Tamil Tigers also won a major victory, taking control over parts of Sri Lanka starting in 1990.
But Abrahms wrote that those three victories—which are frequently cited by scholars of terrorism—are the only terrorist success stories out of the 42 objectives surveyed. That’s only a 7 percent success rate. In contrast, he wrote, other forms of coercion have much better chances of success. Even economic sanctions, which are not generally considered a very effective way to accomplish anything, succeed about a third of the time.
Part of the reason terrorists were generally unsuccessful was that, in many cases, their goals were enormous. Twenty-two of the objectives Abrahms looked at were “maximalist”—things like converting a country to a Marxist or Islamist political system, or destroying it entirely. Not surprisingly, the groups did not accomplish any of the goals in this category. The three success stories involved much narrower objectives concerning control over a piece of territory.
But even in eight cases where the goal involved territory, five of the terror campaigns failed. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, Harakat ul-Mujahidin in Pakistan, the Basque group ETA, and the Real Irish Republican Party all failed to end what they considered foreign occupations.
Abrahms writes that another key to whether terrorists succeeded or failed was their method. The State Department list included both organizations that mainly targeted civilians and guerrilla groups that usually attacked military targets. The guerrilla groups were the only ones that had any success.
He writes that this is the result of the way target countries perceive the attacks. Groups that indiscriminately murder civilians are automatically seen as having maximalist goals—that is, wanting to completely destroy a society. And that perception makes it very unlikely that anyone will grant them even minor concessions.
So the upshot is, as horrifying as their attacks are, terrorists who bomb and shoot noncombatants don’t win.
JSTOR CITATIONS: Why Terrorism Does Not Work
(Abstract at http://www.jstor.org/stable/4137516?m...
BY: MAX ABRAHMS
International Security, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Fall, 2006), pp. 42-78. MIT Press.
[Full text downloadable here: http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/f... ]
Will the recent attacks on Paris and Beirut help ISIS achieve its goals? Will the man who killed three people and wounded nine others in a Colorado Planned Parenthood advance the pro-life cause?
A 2006 analysis by Max Abrahms suggests that they probably won’t.
Looking at the 28 groups that the U.S. Department of State had designated as foreign terrorist organizations at the time, Abrahms set out to systematically determine whether they’d achieved the things they set out to do.
Abrahms starts out by looking at the terrorist groups’ stated objectives. This makes sense, he wrote, because scholars of terrorism generally understand these groups to be explicit about their goals. Altogether, he lists 42 policy objectives named by the groups.
Then, he considers whether the groups achieved all or part of their goals. He does find some clear instances of success by well-known terrorist forces. Hezbollah succeeded in two of its goals: driving peacekeeping and Israeli forces out of southern Lebanon in 1984 and in 2000. The Tamil Tigers also won a major victory, taking control over parts of Sri Lanka starting in 1990.
But Abrahms wrote that those three victories—which are frequently cited by scholars of terrorism—are the only terrorist success stories out of the 42 objectives surveyed. That’s only a 7 percent success rate. In contrast, he wrote, other forms of coercion have much better chances of success. Even economic sanctions, which are not generally considered a very effective way to accomplish anything, succeed about a third of the time.
Part of the reason terrorists were generally unsuccessful was that, in many cases, their goals were enormous. Twenty-two of the objectives Abrahms looked at were “maximalist”—things like converting a country to a Marxist or Islamist political system, or destroying it entirely. Not surprisingly, the groups did not accomplish any of the goals in this category. The three success stories involved much narrower objectives concerning control over a piece of territory.
But even in eight cases where the goal involved territory, five of the terror campaigns failed. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party, Harakat ul-Mujahidin in Pakistan, the Basque group ETA, and the Real Irish Republican Party all failed to end what they considered foreign occupations.
Abrahms writes that another key to whether terrorists succeeded or failed was their method. The State Department list included both organizations that mainly targeted civilians and guerrilla groups that usually attacked military targets. The guerrilla groups were the only ones that had any success.
He writes that this is the result of the way target countries perceive the attacks. Groups that indiscriminately murder civilians are automatically seen as having maximalist goals—that is, wanting to completely destroy a society. And that perception makes it very unlikely that anyone will grant them even minor concessions.
So the upshot is, as horrifying as their attacks are, terrorists who bomb and shoot noncombatants don’t win.
Those small movements studied, failed, even the Tamil Tigers.
The big movements, especially Islam, spread by violence. Men were killed, women and children enslaved, no wonder many converted. Back then Persia was an advanced and wealthy nation, it succumbed. Today Islam is advancing. You may quote Russia but leaders in democratic countries are scared, dare not speak, suppress dissent, and make concessions. So there are more threats, more demands, more concessions. It works.
Some recent discussion:
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegra...
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegra...
Correspondent inference theory attempted to resolve a crucial question that Heider left unanswered: How does an observer infer the motives of an actor based on its behavior?(47) Jones showed that observers tend to interpret an actor’s objective in terms of the consequence of the action.(48) He offered the following simple example to illustrate the observer’s assumption of similarity between the effect and objective of an actor: a boy notices his mother close the door, and the room becomes less noisy; the correspondent inference is that she wanted quiet.(49) The essential point is what Jones called the “attribute-effect linkage,” whereby the objectives of the actor are presumed to be encoded in the outcome of the behavior.(50)
Another point is the distinction between the consequence of guerrilla war against military targets and terrorism against noncombantants.
When terrorists strike civilian targets, especially soft targets, such as the World Trade Center or the apartment building in Moscow in 1999, the general perception changes. Most people assume that the terrorists intend total destruction of the target society. Osama bin Laden and al Qaida were explicit in their goals. They wanted US military forces out of Saudi Arabia. That demand was swamped under the general perception that they wanted - and still want - to destroy America. The same shift occurred in Russia. As long as the Chechens were fighting a military war in Chechnya, many Russians were sympathetic to the Chechens in their war for territorial sovereignty. In the wake of the apartment bombings of 1999, that sympathy evaporated.