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

by Audrey Kurth Cronin

It could be said that criminals use violence to enable them to acquire resources, whereas terrorists acquire resources to enable them to practice violence.”8 Criminal syndicates aim toward personal gain, and their activities are normally hidden from view. Indeed, whether or not a group wants publicity can indicate whether it is engaged in terrorism, which is symbolic violence intended to have a psychological impact upon an audience, or criminality, which results in personal, material gain and is not helped by exposure. Another easy way of distinguishing between criminality and terrorism is to consider whether the group wants the perpetuation of the current political order. The criminal group is a status quo actor, content to operate within the current order, from which illicit gains are siphoned off. Domestically, criminal groups circumvent the legal structure but do not directly threaten the political foundation of the state or the nature of its government. They can be brutally violent but rarely want to run governments themselves. The terrorist group is a revisionist actor, having as its ultimate goal altering the national or international political system in accordance with some concept of justice, piety, fulfillment, or popular welfare. The group may or may not be able to transition to political leadership—and as we saw in chapter 3, few actually do; but they certainly want to determine what that political structure is and who controls it. It is because criminal groups...