Optimal Human Resources Allocation in Counter-Terrorism (CT) Operation: A Mathematical Deterministic Model

Abstract

The quest to find a long-term solution to the world’s insecurity problems and perhaps, terrorism in particular, has climaxed sincethe bombing of the World Trade Centre, the USA in September 11th, 2001 by the Al-Qaeda terrorist group. In the last decades, anumber of research scholars have developed methodologies from system sciences that attempt to describe and model the behavior of a terrorist group. But their findings tend to converged on a rather intimidating and mind-bugging conclusion. Hence the US Secretary of Defense - Donald Rumsfeld once declared “today we lack relevant metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror”. The present study seeks to construct an analytical model of terrorism to study the possible strategies for allocating given counter-terrorism (CT) resource toward a long-term solution of a given terrorist group. The construct is a simple deterministic model of a terrorist evolutional dynamics, represented by a set of coupled differential equations whose variables are parameters of the internal and external dynamics of the organization. Analytical and numerical simulation techniques are used to study the solution paths of the system of differential equations obtained. By examining the evolutional dynamics of the terrorist operatives under five interdiction strategies, the result shows that, since the evolutional dynamics of most terrorist organization is driven by recruitment process, then any strategy that is capable of maintaining a constant high rate of interdiction of the footsoldiers and the leaders simultaneously, would eventually guarantee a maximum decline in the overall strength of the organization, and as well as engenders a maximum decline in even in the recruiter’s pool. Such a strategy has the synergy to weaken the overall terrorists’ strength and drive the organization to extinction in the long runs; thus, yielding a comparatively more effective and efficient CT measure than otherwise. For our modeled organization, the interdiction strategy targeted simultaneously at the leaders and foot-soldiers classes, though comparatively cost effective than otherwise and evolved a highly vulnerable strength, yet the propensity to drive the organization to long term inactivity is comparatively low, given the positive exponential growth curves of its strength. The study agreed “that through terror war of attrition may be problematic and costintensive, however, increasing interdiction accuracy is the best-case scenario for ideal CT measures”. Thus, to guarantee interdiction accuracy, sufficient and credible intelligence for smart-targeting of insurgent locations is a panacea. Given theveracity of our model, it is possible to evaluate the efficacy of the various CT policies of the government and hence measure thedegree of success or failure of a given CT measure.