How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns

by Audrey Kurth Cronin

Killing a charismatic leader leaves no one individual for a state to negotiate with. Will the killing of the leader result in the fractionation of the group? This can occur because members of the group suspect each other as informers or because the lack of a firm leader results in proliferating perspectives as to how a group should carry on. Fractionation may be a good or a bad thing. Smaller factions may be weaker and less able to carry out attacks than the original group, or they may be more violent than the mother organization, and more anxious to announce their presence and prove their capacity to kill. Even if a group does not break into factions, the killing of the leader may push it to adapt, and the outcome may be a more effective, flatter, stronger, more decentralized organization that is harder to destroy. In any case, before a group is decapitated, such second- and third-order outcomes must be carefully considered.