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

by Audrey Kurth Cronin

Thus, one conclusion from academic studies of civil wars that directly applies to ending terrorist campaigns is that, when spoiler violence occurs, it matters whether or not outside parties label it illegitimate.155 Whether states support the cause of the incumbent or challenger side, absent or ambiguous responses to terrorist attacks carried out by spoilers augment their effectiveness and undermine negotiations. When the response is outrage at the attackers themselves, on the other hand, spoilers may not spoil the talks at all.

An important element in determining whether negotiations end terrorist attacks is whether terrorist groups have correctly understood the broader historical context within which they are operating, and have responded correctly to it.

Every group whose campaign has recently ended in a negotiated agreement espoused a cause that was no longer in the ascendancy on the international stage.

The answer is, very rarely in the short term. Negotiations are best thought of as an essential elements in a broader range of policies to marginalize a group, as conciliatory gestures or proposals change the dynamics of support; to exploit differences, hive off factions, and enable members to leave or constituencies to turn elsewhere; to provide crucial information about how a group functions; and to reduce the degree and intensity of attacks over time, as groups lose momentum or make errors. Negotiations carry with them many benefits; however, instantaneously ending the violence is not one of them. Given the small number of operatives needed for terrorist attacks to continue, negotiations do not typically end the violence alone, and it is foolish to promote expectations that they will.

A victory, immediate, splendid, and decisive, such as that obtained by an insurrection, is utterly impossible by means of terrorism. But another victory is more probable, that of the weak against the strong, that of the “beggars” of Holland against the Spaniards. In a struggle against an invisible, impalpable, omnipresent enemy, the strong is vanquished not by the arms of his adversary, but by the continuous tension of his own strength, which exhausts him, at last, more than he would be exhausted by defeats. —Sergei Stepniak-Kravshinski, 18831

SOMETIMES TERRORISM ENDS because it succeeds. Terrorist groups achieve their political aims and either disband or stop engaging in violence. This is an awkward reality that can be difficult to analyze objectively, not least because history is written by the “winners.”

Terrorism has periodically been used as a means to pursue admirable ends, such as the freedom and self-determination of an oppressed or displaced people, and the groups that engaged in those means have occasionally gained legitimacy over time. Recognizing that terrorism sometimes succeeds does not legitimize the tactic and may even be a necessary step toward reducing and eliminating it. Denying it, on the other hand, is wishful thinking and an impediment to objective analysis.

Most commonly, success is evaluated according to the perceptions of the targeted state, especially its sense of the level of threat. This analytical narcissism is a mistake, however, since the perspectives

of those in the terrorist group, and especially their active and passive supporters, are more important than other viewpoints in determining whether or not the violence ends.

Terrorist leaders are frequently familiar with the history of previous failed campaigns. Their sense of the likelihood of accomplishing their aims must be affected by the belief that they can avoid the mistakes of their predecessors.

It is precisely because terrorism so often fails that leaders must vigorously propagandize and overstate their ability to win. The most effective terrorist leaders are always, first and foremost, sophisticated manipulators of information.4

Thus terrorism’s success cannot be judged merely by studying the statements of leaders; we must also consider the population on whose behalf terrorism is claimed to be undertaken. At its heart, terrorism is intended to be an altruistic act, aimed toward a political end that represents a better fate for those on whose behalf attacks are carried out. Terrorism without the pursuit of justice (at least as someone sees it) is nothing but mass murder and lacks the legitimacy necessary to attract a political following. When terrorism succeeds, as it rarely does, it yields benefits for those on whose behalf it is undertaken. Leaving them out of the equation is to be duped by the claims and ambitions of leaders whose main task is, after all, to manipulate perceptions.

Terrorism is seen as the violence of the underdog. The harder the odds, the more some see a perverse romance in the campaign.

To examine the phenomenon more objectively, terrorism’s “success” might be analyzed using apolitical metrics, ranging from the viability of groups over time to the demonstrated achievement of their political aims, both tactical and strategic.

Popular impressions of the efficacy of terrorism are overblown.7 If the survival of the group—like the Weberian imperative for the state—is itself a fundamental goal of terrorism, then it is a dubious tactic.

Political actors cannot be effective if they cannot endure.

A careful study of the life spans of the hundreds of groups listed by the MIPT database demonstrates that the average length of time a terrorist group has survived is approximately eight years.

Groups on the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organizations list have a longer life-span of about 19 years, but the list only includes groups that the U.S. government considers currently the most notorious, and against whom U.S. economic sanctions are to be applied.

Longevity in the twentieth century was associated with the ideological motivation of a group: the longest-lived groups were those linked with decolonization and nationalism.

In the twentieth century, a connection with territory and national self-determination was the key to survival—and a shot at success.

It is difficult to be sure whether there will be a comparable variable for the longevity of terrorist groups in the twenty-first century.

Some experts argued in the late 1990s that the key to future staying power would be terrorist groups’ connections wit...

Religious groups have had the most staying power in earlier centuries, so there is some historical foundation for this belief.

Another argument holds that religion is unimportant, and that the connection to territory will persist: an association with a piece of land will continue to be the most important factor for longevity.

careful study of the full empirical record, across regions and types of groups, and over time, indicates that for terrorist groups, longevity is the exception, not the rule.

While terrorist attacks have killed increasing numbers of people, terrorist groups continue to have difficulty translating that violence into the political ends they seek. But that is not to say that terrorism is an astrategic tool. Although terrorists may not “win,” their campaigns always involve assessment of their progress toward an end.16 The standard way of describing progress toward such goals is to look at tactical and strategic aims.17 Most organizations have used terrorism as a means to achieve either short-term, tactical (proximate) aims or long-term, strategic (ultimate) goals—or some dynamic mixture of the two.

The classic argument made in the latter twentieth century was that terrorism often succeeds tactically but is virtually nowhere a strategic success. However, this seductive mental framework can mask the essential interactive nature of terrorism: as many in the U.S. military like to say, in terrorism as in war, the “enemy gets a vote.” Some tactical achievements have strategic consequences for progress toward overall goals, and the strategic objectives themselves normally evolve in the course of a terrorist campaign, making it very difficult to judge exactly what “success” means in a given case.

The central question here is: what kinds of successes have perpetuated terrorism, and what kinds have led to its end?

Terrorist attacks serve many narrow or immediate tactical goals. The purposes of such attacks can be internal or external, aimed at a large number of different audiences.

Terrorist organizations do not construct strategies as if they were states.

States generally go to war over disagreements about the relative distribution of international power. There is no disagreement over the distribution of power between a state and a terrorist organization: the latter has little and exploits its absence. Indeed, terrorist groups are compelled to consciously draw their power from states. They are not sovereign entities, having neither the strengths nor the weaknesses of states: they do not have the responsibilities and constraints implied in governing—indeed, they cannot even count on their own survival. The common assumption (especially among political scientists) that strategic theories developed on the basis of state behavior are directly comparable to terrorist group activities glosses over vital differences in their decision-making processes, as will be seen below in the study of outcomes. In their behavior, terrorist groups do not behave as if they were the equivalent of weak little states, and efforts to analyze them as if they were are misguided.19

A thorough analysis of the strategies of a terrorist campaign includes, at a minimum, a dissection of the motivations, goals, and incentives of individual members (leaders, powerful deputies); factions within the group (individuals from one tribe, family, social group, or nationality competing

with others); rivalries between groups (competition to represent a cause or constituency); attracting new followers (by showing strength or viability); satisfying external donors (demonstrating organizational effectiveness so as to attract support or resources); and swaying potential supporters (e.g., attracting new allies, again by showing strength). All of these are proximate goals, not strategic accomplishments, and they may not necessarily be designed to directly engage any state at all. They are aimed at tactical or operational means, not longer-term political ends—unless, of course, the “end” is merely the perpetuation of the campaign itself.21

Sometimes groups or individuals use terrorist attacks to show strength or ruthlessness, or to lionize a leader.

Other short-term actions have been employed to shore up support, such as increasing the number of recruits (for example, videos of attacks released by the Mujahideen Army in Iraq), preventing interference in recruitment efforts (as in the FARC’s 2004 attack on a church that opposed recruitment of local youth), or the flow of money and other resources (for example, the Tamil Tigers, the Sikhs, the Basques, and the IRA holding the attention of far-flung diaspora sympathizers).25

Satisfying the demands of a state sponsor is another classic short-term motivation for groups, even though the strategic aims of the group may or may not align over time with those of the state involved.

Some short-term, process goals can also relate to manipulating the actions of a state or undermining state governance.

Or groups may simply want to demonstrate the inability of a state to protect its own citizens,

It can be a means of bringing down a government, even though many terrorist organizations are not strong enough or politically agile enough to replace it.

Terrorism can be used when state governance is already weak and its perpetrators have a sense of opportunity: attacks on civilians are meant to provoke ethnic or civil unrest.

enjoying too much success or having too high a profile can lead to an overpowering counterreaction by the state or, at the other extreme, the collapse of state governing structures that a terrorist group may need. Not all groups want to bring down a government, especially if it provides useful services and if the group has no interest in replacing it.28 The short-term goal of terrorism may simply be to attract members, publicize the cause, and survive, so as to pursue a long-term ideological change.

Strategic goals are the end states or “outcomes” that a terrorist organization attempts to achieve through violence targeted at civilians. Strategic goals may be political (relating to the state—its regime, organization, boundaries, population), economic (redistributing resources or wealth), social (racial or ethnic identity, modernization), or religious (relating to spiritualist identity, values, strictures, virtues), or some combination

of these aims. Groups operating in the twentieth century tended to fall into four categories, sorted according to their motivations: left wing, right wing, ethnonationalist-separatist, and spiritualist.

The first three categories oriented themselves toward political organization and ideology—a pressing source of conflict throughout the modern age, spawning waves of fascism, communism, and nationalism that led to the outbreaks of both world ...

Strategic goals typically relate either to the nature or behavior of the state, or to the identity of its population.

Groups may wish to bring down a specific government in order to replace it with a more “just” form of organization or governance.

National self-determination was the most important goal of terrorism in the twentieth century.

Other long-term aims may be less clearly visualized: the goal may be to bring on the apocalypse (as with Aum Shinrikyo) or to glorify the actions of the “fighter” (some Italian right-wing groups in the 1970s) or to act as a catalyst for the forces of history (again the Russian social revolutionaries). Sometimes religious groups may seek to please a god or spiritual force, such as the Hindu Thugs, who sought to placate the goddess of suffering, Kali.

If few terrorist groups enjoy longevity, even fewer appear to achieve their strategic political objectives.

Taking into account the stated goals of groups leads to the unavoidable conclusion that, whatever its narrower gains, terrorism is not a promising avenue for change. Of the more than four hundred terrorist groups that I analyzed from MIPT database, for example, only a small minority, less than 5...