Major cases of campaigns that were either destroyed or deeply wounded by the incarceration of a charismatic leader include the Peruvian group Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey, the Real Irish Republican Army (RIRA), and Japan’s Aum Shinrikyo (Aum). These four cases have been selected for analysis because they represent disparate regions of the world, different motivations, have been thoroughly documented, and yield reliable data about the campaigns before and after their leaders’ arrest.
