Effective Counterterrorism Research Articles

Terrorism Where Terror Is Not: Australian and New Zealand Terrorism Compared

ABSTRACTDespite many commonalities in national security priorities, Australia and New Zealand approach the threat of terrorism quite differently. Both had twentieth-century manifestations of domestic terrorism which were generally downplayed. The emergence of jihadist-inspired threats globally have affected Australia much more than New Zealand, and Australian counterterrorism strategy has developed significantly since 9/11. New Zealand has watched global events so far untouched by any jihadist threat, and has implemented few effective counterterrorism measures. The reasons for the differing experience, it is contended here, are the varying historical perceptions of threat, and consequent differing approaches each country has taken to mitigate perceived threat.

Know thy enemy: Education about terrorism improves social attitudes toward terrorists.

Hatred of terrorists is an obstacle to the implementation of effective counterterrorism policies-it invites indiscriminate retaliation, whereas many of the greatest successes in counterterrorism have come from understanding terrorists' personal and political motivations. Drawing from psychological research, traditional prejudice reduction strategies are generally not well suited to the task of reducing hatred of terrorists. Instead, in 2 studies, we explored education's potential ability to reduce extreme negative attitudes toward terrorists. Study 1 compared students in a college course on terrorism (treatment) with wait-listed students, measuring prosocial attitudes toward a hypothetical terrorist. Initially, all students reported extremely negative attitudes; however, at the end of the semester, treatment students' attitudes were significantly improved. Study 2 replicated the effect within a sample of treatment and control classes drawn from universities across the United States. The present work was part of an ongoing research project, focusing on foreign policy and the perceived threat of terrorism; thus classes did not explicitly aim to reduce prejudice, making the effect of treatment somewhat surprising. One possibility is that learning about terrorists "crowds out" the initial pejorative associations-that is, the label terrorism may ultimately call more information to mind, diluting its initial negative associative links. Alternatively, students may learn to challenge how the label terrorist is being applied. In either case, learning about terrorism can decrease the extreme negative reactions it evokes, which is desirable if one wishes to implement effective counterterrorism policies. (PsycINFO Database Record

PAKISTAN’S COUNTERTERRORISM STRATEGY: A CRITICAL OVERVIEW

This paper is an effort to critically evaluate Pakistan’s counterterrorism strategy, based on both military and non-military means. The paper argues that the counterterrorism strategy of Pakistan has proved ineffective and counter-productive to combat the homegrown threat of terrorism, unleashed by militant sectarian groups, following the Takfiri ideology. Although Pakistan’s Military claims that the latest on-going security operations, Zarb-e-Azb in North Waziristan and Khyber-II in Khyber Agency, have succeeded in clearing most of the area, however, the matter of fact is that the security operations have not considerably damaged the ability of terrorists, particularly the Tehrik Taliban Pakistan (TTP), to plan and execute terrorist attacks. The terrorists’ network, their strength and structure have until now remained intact. The key to longterm prevention of terrorism, beyond security operations for clearing any area of the militants, is to discontinue the supply chain of terrorists. This requires the creation of a new counter-extremism religious narrative, which will help re-formulate a concrete and effective counter-terrorism strategy of Pakistan to ensure domestic peace and security.

Terrorized places and spaces: the geographical dimension of African terrorism

The common explanation of terrorism in literature is that it is a political phenomenon. But this paper argues that terrorism is place bound and location specific. It explores how geography connects to the understanding of terrorism as a territorialized phenomenon, stressing the importance of lagging regions which often serve as excuses for terrorism and safe havens for terrorist groups. The argument presented is premised on textual data, expert sources of information on terrorism, and examples largely drawn from Africa to illustrate the bifurcation of terrorism into territorial and non-territorial terrorist groups. A component of an effective counter-terrorism strategy, the paper concludes, must include revamping the depressed regions in Africa.

State Failure and Transnational Terrorism

Based on a country panel from 1995 to 2013, this study examines the relationship between state failure and transnational terrorism with respect to perpetrator’s proximity to the target and logistical complexity of attacks. Using concentration curves and generalized estimating equation negative binomial models, the study shows that failed states experience significantly more transnational terrorism when the perpetrators are from the home country. But these states do not produce terrorists who cross borders and carry out attacks in other countries, neither do they attract foreign perpetrators. The latter suggests that conditions in failed states present major operational challenges to foreign terrorists. State failure also causes more logistically complex attacks due to lack of effective counterterrorism measures by failed states. The main results hold true for both relative and dichotomous measures of state failure.

Knowledge, the Great Challenge to Deal with Terrorism

espanolTerrorism, radicalisation and violent extremism are great challenges in these times of uncertainty. This paper analyses the need to improve the knowledge to provide a solid foundation for the design of effective security Counter-Terrorism strategies. Broad definitions of stakeholders are considered (including universities, think-tanks, the intelligence community, media, communities, and minorities and citizens), together with the integration of methods and techniques of analysis drawn from the social sciences and intelligence techniques. It proposes new approaches to generate knowledge through the integration of critical perspectives allowing an improved decision-making process that must be followed by continuous evaluations. EnglishEl terrorismo, la radicalizacion y el extremismo violento son grandes desafios de estos tiempos de incertidumbre. Este articulo analiza la necesidad de mejorar el conocimiento con el fin de proporcionar una base solida para el diseno de estrategias antiterroristas efectivas. Se tienen en cuenta diversas propuestas que incluyen las Universidades, think-tanks, la comunidad de inteligencia, los medios de comunicacion, asi como las minorias y los ciudadanos, con el fin de integrar los metodos y tecnicas de analisis procedentes de las Ciencias Sociales y de tecnicas de Inteligencia. El articulo propone nuevas aproximaciones para generar conocimiento a traves de la integracion de perspectivas criticas que permiten un proceso de toma de decisiones mejorado, que debe ir acompanado de evaluaciones continuas.

An Expansive Intelligence Community Regime as a Threat to U.S. National Security

It is often said that we live in a dangerous world. The rise of Al-Qaeda has underlined the threat of religiously-inspired terrorism to the maintenance international peace and security. The U.S. government has responded to this threat by embracing a new security agenda that entails creating new government agencies, revising existing laws or adopting new ones. Key to the process however has also been the adoption of a new security rhetoric where policymakers emphasis a pervasive, yet often imprecise threat that fuels the new security environment that has facilitated the rise of the National Surveillance State. Evidence for this threat comes from the intelligence community, which is beholden to the executive branch. The contribution made in this paper is twofold. First, that to have an effective counterterrorism agenda one needs multiple lines of discourse to test claims and hypotheses. Such a system does not seem to exist, as those responsible for security in the U.S. are insular as they constitute a regime, and yet it is they and the executive branch to which they answer to, who shape the security discourse. Second, to highlight that information — words and images — largely disseminated by intelligence community, which operates under the executive branch, have the ability to create the notion that the terrorist threat is greater than it actually is, enabling the executive branch to demand more power as a way to ensure protection. The paper concludes that the post-9/11 security apparatus instead of providing greater security is counter-intuitive, fueling anti-Americanism and undermining fundamental rights, which is why there is a need for greater oversight of the executive branch and by extension the intelligence community.

The “Islamic State”: Between Aspirations and Realities

Despite its alarming rhetoric, ISIS’s claim to ideological and territorial control vis-a-vis other jihadi terrorist organizations is limited. Thus, the international community would do well to highlight ISIS’s failures in order to develop an effective counterterrorism strategy.

Inter Arma Silent Leges? Democracy, Domestic Terrorism, and Diversion

This article develops expectations about the use of military force by democracies facing domestic terrorism. Due to the necessity of balancing effective counterterrorism with liberal acceptability, domestic terrorism typically represents a significant but nonexistential threat to democracies that is ineradicable via repression; as such, it is likely to generate appreciable diversionary incentives. Moreover, the use of force abroad, coupled with counterterrorist strategies that seek to safeguard democratic legitimacy, allows leaders to provide benefits both to citizens who seek retribution against terrorists and to those who value the preservation of liberty. Tests of the correlates of dispute initiation across all democracies, 1970–2000, provide support for this hypothesis. Further analyses reveal that diversion from domestic terrorism is most likely by democratic governments with relatively greater diversionary capacity and with lesser repressive capacity and incentive.

Counterterrorism policies and practices: health and values at stake.

Counterterrorism policies and practices: health and values at stake.

“What is dear to you?” Survey of beliefs regarding protection of critical infrastructure against terrorism

Up to the present, there is only very little research on how the population perceives terrorism and its threats, even though support from the population is crucial for effective counterterrorism. By eliciting beliefs and subjecting them to content analyses, six factors were found that determine the protection worthiness of a target in the people's view: the potential damage to “people,” “symbolism,” “economy,” “politics,” “nature,” and “image/publicity.” These empirically found factors are in line with factors specified by terrorist target selection models. They differ in the strength of their cognitive representation among participants and, thus, their subjective importance to the people. The first three factors are shared among all participants, whereas the latter ones could only be found in a part of the participant sample. People's judgments of the targets' protection worthiness differ substantially from their judgments of the targets' attractiveness to terrorists, even though the same factors seem to be involved. This study offers an insight into the people's mental model about protection worthiness of targets. Together with classical risk analysis and knowledge about terrorists, these results can form a basis for setting up a holistic scheme for critical infrastructure protection.

E-TGPS: Enhanced Terrorist Group Prediction System for Counter Terrorism

Terrorist group prediction using historical data of terrorist incidents has been less explored due to the lack of meticulous terrorist data which contains terrorist group’s attacks and activities information. There are many reasons for less exploration like its confidentiality & sensitivity. This paper presents an enhanced system that helps to predict the terrorist groups involved in the attack under investigation named ETGPS. This system initially learns similarities of terrorist activities from various past terrorist incidents to predict the responsible group. This system can be considered as a vital tool for security agencies and intelligence analysts, by providing more reliable and predictive solutions to take effective counterterrorism measures. The system has been validated by experimental results. The overall performance of the system displays a fair degree of accuracy. This paper also lays emphases on the meticulous analysis of optimal parameters weight estimation, to improve the predictive accuracy of the system.

Agent Based Modeling on Organizational Dynamics of Terrorist Network

Modeling organizational dynamics of terrorist network is a critical issue in computational analysis of terrorism research. The first step for effective counterterrorism and strategic intervention is to investigate how the terrorists operate with the relational network and what affects the performance. In this paper, we investigate the organizational dynamics by employing a computational experimentation methodology. The hierarchical cellular network model and the organizational dynamics model are developed for modeling the hybrid relational structure and complex operational processes, respectively. To intuitively elucidate this method, the agent based modeling is used to simulate the terrorist network and test the performance in diverse scenarios. Based on the experimental results, we show how the changes of operational environments affect the development of terrorist organization in terms of its recovery and capacity to perform future tasks. The potential strategies are also discussed, which can be used to restrain the activities of terrorists.

Does Targeted Capture Reduce Terrorism?

From January 1979 to December 2009, the Maoist insurgent Shining Path committed a total of 9,034 violent acts in a concerted attempt to topple the Peruvian government. These acts of violence included bombings, armed assaults, and assassinations. The Shining Path's leader Abimael Guzmán was captured by the Peruvian government on 12 September 1992. Using quarterly data and an interrupted times-series AutoRegressive Integrative Moving Average (ARIMA) study design, we investigated the effect of Abimael Guzmán's capture on the ability of the Shining Path to wage its war against the Peruvian government. Maximum-likelihood results revealed that the frequency of terrorist acts committed by the Shining Path dropped by 143 incidents per quarter a short time after Guzmán was captured. The analysis also evinced a positive relationship between the lethality of attacks and the frequency of the Shining Path's terrorist activity. We conclude that targeted capture shows some promise as an effective counterterrorism strategy, at least for terrorist groups such as the Shining Path that have a top-down type of organizational structure.

Homeland security: definitions and accountability

Counter-terrorism measures must be developed that are both effective and meet accountability standards. This article approaches the issue by: (1) proposing a matrix facilitating the measurement of the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of a particular counter-terrorism measure; and (2) proposing an accountability matrix for measuring the effectiveness of particular measures. The article's central focus is on developing criteria for measuring effective counter-terrorism – premised on the rule of law, policy considerations and the limits of power. If utilised, these criteria will provide empirical evidence that particular counter-terrorism measures in actuality contribute to effective and legal counter-terrorism.

Deterring terrorism: theory and practice

During the Cold War, deterrence theory was the cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, however, popular wisdom dictated that terrorist organizations and radical fanatics could not be deterred-and governments shifted their attention to combating terrorism rather than deterring it. This book challenges that prevailing assumption and offers insight as to when and where terrorism can be deterred. It first identifies how and where theories of deterrence apply to counterterrorism, highlighting how traditional and less-traditional notions of deterrence can be applied to evolving terrorist threats. It then applies these theoretical propositions to real-world threats to establish the role deterrence has within a dynamic counterterrorism strategy-and to identify how metrics can be created for measuring the success of terrorism deterrence strategies. In sum, it provides a foundation for developing effective counterterrorism policies to help states contain or curtail the terrorism challenges they face.

The politics of counterterrorism in India: strategic intelligence and national security in South Asia

In the wake of the Mumbai terrorist attacks in November 2008, terrorism and counterterrorism in India became the focus of international, regional and national attention. Here, Prem Mahadevan, by using three case studies of Sikh separatist, Kashmiri separatist and pan-Islamist groups, focuses on the efforts of India's decision-makers and intelligence agencies to create coherent and effective counterterrorism policies and actions. Questioning why Sikh separatist groups have been effectively contained, and yet pan-Islamists have not, Mahadevan draws the conclusion that, due to a gap between the expectations of decision-makers and the capabilities of strategic intelligence agencies, India's ability to prevent terrorist attacks has been undermined. In addition, the role played by Pakistan's intelligence agencies in the border regions is given extensive analytical treatment. Combining a theoretical approach with empirical analysis of India's counterterrorist activities, this book holds valuable information for those examining strategy-making and counterterrorism - practitioners as well as researchers - in addition to those interested in the politics of India.

Curious Victory: Explaining Israel's Suppression of the Second Intifada

The article examines Israel's successes and failures during the Second Intifada. It argues that Israel's advances came from an effective counterterrorism campaign involving a mix of military operations, defensive measures, and in particular improved intelligence gathering. Domestic resilience also proved strong in the face of a brutal terrorism campaign. Yet long-term victory remains elusive for Israel. Deterrence, always difficult against terrorist groups, is growing harder for Israel. Hamas's control of Gaza, and the mistrust and hatred sown during the Second Intifada, have hindered a political deal between Israel and moderate Palestinians. Much of what went into successful counterterrorism, notably the security barrier and the aggressive campaign of raids and arrests, does not jibe with most visions of what peace would look like and makes a deal harder to achieve. To make a peace deal work, Israeli counterterrorism must change, with measures including relocating parts of the security barrier, bolstering moderate Palestinian politicians, and working with, as opposed to undermining, Palestinian security forces in the West Bank.

Counter-Suicide-Terrorism: Evidence from House Demolitions

This paper examines whether house demolitions are an effective counterterrorism tactic against suicide terrorism. We link original longitudinal micro-level data on houses demolished by the Israeli Defense Forces with data on the universe of suicide attacks against Israeli targets. By exploiting spatial and time variation in house demolitions and suicide terror attacks during the second Palestinian uprising, we show that punitive house demolitions (those targeting Palestinian suicide terrorists and terror operatives) cause an immediate, significant decrease in the number of suicide attacks. The effect dissipates over time and by geographic distance. In contrast, we observe that Palestinian fatalities (regardless of whether or not they were killed in a targeted killing operation) do not have a consistent effect on suicide terror attacks, while curfews and precautionary house demolitions (demolitions justified by the location of the house but not related to the identity or any action of the house’s owner) cause a significant increase in the number of suicide terror attacks. The results are consistent with the view that selective violence is an effective tool to combat terrorist groups and may have contributed to bring an end to the Second Palestinian uprising. On the contrary, indiscriminate violence backfires.

The Trouble with Targeted Killing

Is targeted killing an effective counterterrorism tactic? Several studies published in academic journals over the last decade differ over the answer. While some believe that it is effective as a tactic within a larger counterterrorism strategy, others believe that it has no effect or possibly a negative effect in countering terrorism. This paper argues that although current studies may be valuable for understanding the impact of targeted killing in specific case studies, they do not yet provide a basis for making general pronouncements on whether targeted killing is or is not an effective counterterrorism tactic. Problems include widely divergent definitions, a dearth of evidence, difficulties in measuring success, and the radical differences between case studies that make comparison and generalization a questionable exercise. However, while the evidence does not yet allow scholars, pundits, and policymakers to make general pronouncements on the effectiveness of targeted killing generally, it does provide grounds to begin a normative debate over whether such policies are appropriate. In addition, it suggests that researchers and policymakers should focus on gathering and improving empirical data to advance decision making on counter- terrorism tactics in the future, particularly on when targeted killing should or should not be employed.