Knowledge Extraction on the Nexus Between Terrorism Criteria and Attacks on Private Citizens and Property

Abstract

This study extracted knowledge on the association between terrorism inclusion criteria and one of the terrorism target/victim types known as “private citizens and property.” Three criteria determine what constitutes a terror attack: Criterion 1: the action is done with intention to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal; Criterion 2: the action is done with the intention to coerce, intimidate or publicize to larger audience(s); Criterion 3: the action is outside international humanitarian law. Literally, all terror incidents satify Criterion 3. As for Criteria 1 and 2, the odds ratio was deployed on the global terrorism database, consisting of 170,350 records of terrorist attack incidents, to evaluate the nexus between each of these criteria and terror attacks on private citizens and property. The results showed that any terror attack on private citizens and property is 2.2 times more likely to have been perpetrated by a terror group in order to achieve Criterion 2 than to achieve Criterion 1. The implications of the outcome in counterterrorism are discussed.