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

by Audrey Kurth Cronin

Sometimes a form of negotiation occurs with individual members of the group, drawing them away from their colleagues either through personal incentives or threats. The state from time to time offers its enemies a way out.

Sometimes groups simply come to the conclusion that their goals are not being achieved through terrorist violence. Whole groups have been amnestied by the state, even without a formal negotiation process, in exchange for an agreement to contribute productively to a political process.

Amnesty offers cause internal dissension that extends well beyond the individuals who accept an exit. “Supergrasses” in Northern Ireland, recruited to inform on compatriots in return for personal amnesties and other rewards, were a major factor in unraveling the republican movement.42 Internal informers are particularly devastating to groups that have organized into cells and are difficult to track otherwise.43 But apart from their intelligence value, the specter of betrayal can lead to fratricide.

Still, groups that are in their final phases may not necessarily be more peaceful: the ETA carried out a series of bomb attacks in 2004 while it was again engaged in talks about amnesty with the Spanish government.46

motivations to quit terrorism may reflect proclivities or experiences that differ from person to person. These may include developing social bonds with individuals outside a group (romantic attachments, marriage, having a child, becoming devoted to family), deciding to join a competing group, being demoted within a group, or simply getting too old to keep up with one’s compatriots. Expectations about the life of a revolutionary may be disappointed, individuals may lose interest or enthusiasm, they may fall out with comrades, or they may simply get tired of life on the run. They may also be caught and imprisoned, obviously changing the nature of a person’s involvement (though disengagement is by no means foreordained).47 The question of individual disengagement from terrorism has been explored by psychiatrists and psychologists, particularly through interviews with prisoners in Italy, Germany, Israel, and Northern Ireland, as well as more recent work in South and Southeast Asia. Psychological research on individuals, though important and deserving of further development, is beyond the scope of this study.48

Terrorist groups are strategic actors that usually deliberate about their targets and calculate the effects of attacks on their constituent populations. However, they can undermine their cause if they miscalculate, resulting in plummeting popular support and even the demise of the group. They generally cannot survive without either active or passive support from a surrounding population.

Active support includes hiding members, raising money, providing other sustenance, and, especially, joining the organization. Passive support, as the phrase implies, is more diffuse and includes ignoring

obvious signs of terrorist group activity, declining to cooperate with police investigations, sending money to organizations that act as fronts for the group, and e...

Popular support for a terrorist group can dissipate for a number of reasons. First, people who are not especially interested in the political aims of a group may fear government counteraction. Apathy is a powerful force; all else being equal, most people naturally prefer to live their daily lives without the threat of being targeted by counterterrorism laws, regulations, sanctions, raids, and threats. Sometimes even highly radicalized populations can pull back from active or passive support for a group, especially if the government engages in strong repressive measures and people simply become exhausted. The apparent loss of local popular support for Chechen terrorist groups is a good example. Second, the government may offer supporters of a terrorist group a better alternative. Reforms, increased spending, and job creation in underserved areas can...

Third, populations can lose interest in the ideology or objectives of a terrorist group; events can evolve independently such that the group’s aims become outdated or irrelevant. A sense of historical ripeness or opportunity may have been lost.

To inspire a following, a group’s ideology must have achievable goals, some evidence of progress toward those goals, some degree of organization, and relevance to broader historical circumstances. While members may actually be inspired by overwhelming odds, a truly lost cause eventually becomes obvious even to the faithful. Terrorist leaders are all amateur historians: historical irrelevance is the death knell of any group.

Because of the role of ideology and popular mobilization, a common point of contention concerns the degree to which a group represents the “people” or is actually a small elite. This is not just a Marxist theme, framed in terms of class conflict; it is also evident among groups that describe themselves as nationalist, right-wing, even anarchist. Not all groups have as their goal reaching out to the people; but at some point virtually all speak of catalyzing or inspiring the masses and gaining a base. Humans are by nature social creatures, and true political transformation eventually requires a following.

One of the biggest problems for many groups in the twentieth century was trying to remain in touch with a constituency even as they operated underground. The more groups drew in upon themselves, because of state repression, police successes, or the revulsion of the public, the more they tended to operate according to their own internal dynamics and become further removed from the public, thereby undermining both their raison d’être and their ability to operate.58

How does the internet allow for communication that differs from previous contexts?

Some groups have tried to compensate for their isolation from the public by building international connections with other groups.

Is this just me being macabre? Or is there attractiveness to a "TerrorDAO" or "RevolutionDAO" that rewards "praxis" in the form of tokens?

Terrorist attacks can cause backlash among the group’s actual or potential public constituency. This is a common strategic error and can easily cause the group to implode. Independent of the specific counterterrorist policies of a government, a terrorist group may choose a target that a wide range of its constituents considers illegitimate, undercutting the group and transferring popular support to the government’s response.

The core of a terrorist organization’s viability is its claim to be acting altruistically, on behalf of a larger cause. This claim of legitimacy is the source of its strength, but also its vulnerability: if a group miscalculates and targets poorly, the blunder is potentially more damaging than a comparable error by the state. States have a degree of immortality in the international system; groups do not. Governments are expected to be hypocritical; terrorist organizations cannot afford it. States that fail to publicize and exploit targeting errors by terrorist groups are missing a time-honored opportunity to facilitate the end of a campaign.

Other causes of organizational “suicide” include failing to excite the interest of a second or third generation, experiencing burnout, succumbing to individual members’ departures or betrayals, and breaking into competing splinters. All of these may result in the group turning its violence against itself instead of the state. All can be promoted by steady pressure against a group applied by either the military or security services; however, there is no substitute for understanding the unique dynamics of individual groups within their local cultural, historical, and political contexts, and then tailoring precise policies to exploit their specific individual and organizational vulnerabilities.

Of course, not all groups are dependent on mass support, and many deliberately try to provoke government repression so as to increase the likelihood that they will attract recruits. They may also be able to cause a great deal of damage and suffering in the short run. Yet in the absence of some minimal level of public sympathy, there is nowhere for members to hide, and it is difficult to operate effectively over time. A group may endure, but without demonstrated progress toward its goal, the weight of history is against it: a group’s ideology may be overtaken by events, its supporters may be cowed by government counteraction, or it may find another solution to the problem that originally catalyzed the movement.

The Internet and associated technologies have greatly enhanced the ability of groups to communicate directly with individuals, targeting their message to potential recruits anywhere in the world. Easy access to a broader public enables groups to maintain contact through relatively anonymous channels that may seem impervious to interference. But this seeming invulnerability is deceptive. The flip side of diversification of terrorist assets and channels of communication is the relative sensitivity of their assorted sources of support to targeting errors or changes in the public mood.

populist” by increasing their appeal and widening their reach to potential constituencies, they are likewise increasingly subject to the changing whims of their putative constituencies. States may not now be able to pressure other states to end support for groups through the usual diplomatic or military channels, or to control media or borders or resource flows as effectively or as easily as they might have done in the past; but they can certainly produce counteracting messages, appealing to targeted constituencies and gathering intelligence through the sophisticated use of the Internet. Every link, however brief, between an individual and a group is both a conduit for violence and a window into the organization’s structure and operations. Groups can cause a lot of damage even in the absence of widespread support, but they are unlikely to perpetuate political change or attract the resources necessary to be most effective.

The point of understanding these masochistic aspects of terrorist campaigns is decidedly not that states can simply sit back and wait for a movement to end in failure. Terrorist groups can do a great deal of damage even as they hobble along, especially in the context of enhanced access to increasingly destructive weapons. But comparative study demonstrates that some policies are synergistic with the natural tendency of groups to implode, while others increase their ability to prolong themselves, or even gather momentum. Waiting passively for failure is insufficient; but understanding these self-defeating dynamics and nudging them along through carefully targeted, synergistic counterterrorism is indispensable. A major purpose of terrorism is to use shock and outrage to mobilize a population. To the extent that that population does indeed...

ANSWERING THE THREAT of terrorism with repression, a state’s strongest means of defending itself, is natural—even instinctive.

The state’s response takes the form of intervention, when the threat is based beyond the borders of the target state (as with Israel’s 1982 involvement in Lebanon); or internal repression, when the threat is mainly domestic (as in Turkey with the PKK); or, as is typically the case, some combination of the two (as in Colombia).2 The nation-state was forged as a unique composite of law and strategy, the internal and external realms of authority; terrorism assaults both.3 We should hardly be surprised that states respond in the way that they were designed to respond.

Sanctimonious statements about the foolishness of force reveal an ignorance of history, or at least a selective memory.

History demonstrates that extremism and terrorism are birth pangs of the state, particularly during periods of broader global transition. At some point in the last two centuries, states in every part of the world have used oppressive force to stamp out terrorism at home or abroad.6 In fact, it is much harder to think of states that did not use repression than those that did.

If looked at as a form of war, terrorists use irregular violence because they are unable or unwilling to meet a government on the battlefield.8 If looked at as a form of crime, terrorists circumvent the law by using political motivations to excuse their actions.9 From the state’s perspective, force offers a readily available rejoinder to both that is firmly under its control. Seams are easily ripped open. Trying to shift the violence to a form that is familiar and more advantageous is an understandable response; this is exactly what is happening when a government declares martial law or sends forth the troops. From a position of disadvantage, terrorist violence seeks to challenge the state on two levels: among its citizens, by creating doubt about the state’s ability to protect them from harm; and internationally, by undermining traditional notions of national sovereignty. Random, politically motivated attacks against noncombatants undermine the state’s credibility at home. Attacks abroad project an image of impotence and diminish state power, or so many leaders believe, and their perceptions enhance the strategic impact of the incidents themselves. Regardless of the strength of the state, terrorism may be perceived as a threat to its power and the national interest.

Rightly or wrongly, is it any wonder that terrorist attacks on U.S. civilians elicited the same state-centered response? But this thinking leaves out half of the strategic equation. It is a remnant left over from a war between peer competitors, a relic that needs updating and may bear little relation to the continuing evolution of international terrorism. Lacking a significant military structure, terrorist groups evade the state’s military apparatus and seek to pull it deeper and deeper into an unwinnable, irregular war. A better approach is to consider strategies from the perspective of a group aiming to influence state action for its own purposes. For nonstate challenger groups, wars of attrition and annihilation are parallel to operations that undermine the state’s contract with its citizens (attrition) and operations that elicit action counterproductive to the interests of the state (annihilation). In other words, today’s terrorism assaults the state by either threatening its purpose or influencing its behavior. Both are strategies of leverage, used by the weak against the strong. Both coerce the state either to change its policies or defeat itself.

Provocation, polarization, and mobilization are strategies of leverage that have been used repeatedly in the modern era and for which terrorism is uniquely well suited.16 Like compellence, these strategies have their roots in the political and historical context within which they arise. The first, provocation, tries to force a state to do something—not a specific policy but a vigorous action of some kind, that undercuts its legitimacy.

The second strategy, polarization, tries to divide and delegitimize the state. This strategy directs itself at the effects of terrorist attacks on the domestic politics of a state, driving regimes sharply to the right and ultimately forcing populations to choose between the terrorist cause and brutal state repression. The goal is to force divided populations further apart, fragmenting societies to the extent that it is impossible to maintain a stable, moderate middle within a functioning state. This is a particularly attractive strategy against democracies and has appeared regularly during the twentieth century.

The last strategy, mobilization, is meant to recruit and rally the masses. Terrorist attacks may be intended to inspire current and potential supporters of a group, again using the reaction of the state as a means, not an end.

When terrorist attacks are used to mobilize, they are not necessarily directed toward changing the behavior of a state at all; they aim instead to invigorate and energize those who would support a group or its cause and to raise its profile internationally, attracting resources, sympathizers, and allies. If a group is successful in mobilizing large numbers, this strategy can prolong the fight and enable the threat to transition to other forms, including insurgency and conventional war. A mobilization strategy is focused primarily on the audience; the target and even the political objective may change to suit the needs of the audience. This strategy is uniquely well suited to the twenty-first century’s globalized international community, which allows movements to mobilize on a scale and at a speed never before seen; and it also gets to the heart of why so many see the struggle with religiously inspired militancy led by al-Qaida as a multigenerational “long war.” These four strategies are not mutually exclusive, and we have already mentioned a fifth: to erode a state’s legitimacy at home and abroad. A group may use a combination of several, even all, of these strategies; but what a state does in response is at the core of their efficacy. Reactions by a state in the narrow framework of one may be counterproductive with respect to the others. Thus, counterterrorism strategies that are designed to prevent a state from being compelled by a group founder if the goal is to provoke...

First, overt military retaliation is a kind of strategic catharsis. Sending air strikes or military invasions seems fitting.20 Second, military retaliation responds to domestic pressure, the need to “do something.” In the aftermath of major terrorist incidents, there is often a wave of public opinion supporting military retaliation.21 Elites respond to that pressure—or leaders’ perception of pressure. Using military force sustains national morale and prestige, all the

more so in retaliation to terrorism, a brazen and defiant act. There is much focus on the natural brakes on democratic war-making, but these may be accelerators in counterterrorism.22 Third, obliterating the perpetrators can be seen as appropriate “justice,” especially when attacks originate from outside a state’s territory (as is increasingly likely to be the case). With no reliable international enforcement of laws or norms, states must use their own military power to punish those who harm their citizens, or so the logic goes. Military force extracts Old Testament justice.

First, they are drawn from a range of modern time periods, from the late nineteenth century to the present, as well as across different regional settings including Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. The goal is to minimize the West-centric “tyranny of the now” by casting a wider regional and historical net. Second, the cases chosen have ample, reliable documentary material available. Governments often do not want repressive counterterrorist policies publicized; this book includes only cases where the documentary evidence is reasonably complete and objective. Third, the cases encompass groups with a range of motivations, including separatist, leftist-revolutionary, and Islamist; and a range of types of terrorist organizations, from cellular to hierarchical. Fourth, they provide the opportunity to study state behavior across different types of regimes: authoritarian (Egypt, tsarist Russia), new or fragile democracies (Peru, post–Cold War Russia, Turkey), and established democracies (Uruguay). The argument is often made that democratic states are unable to end terrorism through repression, because democratic states find it difficult to maintain such campaigns over time. This set of six cases will test whether repression works in nondemocratic states as well.

The intellectual origins of today’s terrorism date to the nineteenth century, and understanding how aging autocratic regimes repressed these “threats from below” pertains to the threat today—not because today’s groups are the same as their predecessors (certainly not), but because the state’s impulsive responses to them often are.

There were many other contributing factors in the demise of the tsarist regime; but the assassination was a watershed. A deep chasm opened between an evolving socialist ideology and a government unable or unwilling to meet the challenges of modernization and industrialization except by repression, with its legitimacy increasingly shaky. There was no room for a stabilizing, moderate middle among the cognoscenti and thus no hope of gradual reform. And while the state was not learning, its challengers were. The Bolsheviks carefully studied the experience of Narodnaya Volya, concluding that while individual acts of terrorism merely provoked the regime and led nowhere, a broader campaign of terror could incite and then protect a revolution. For the Russian intelligentsia, the lessons of Narodnaya Volya were twofold: the regime was irredeemable, and well-planned acts of violence could radically divert the flow of history.

As in Russia, in Peru terrorism accompanied a time of dramatic social, economic, and political transition. In May 1980, just as the country was transitioning out of a tumultuous history of military government toward modernization and democracy, Shining Path launched the opening salvos of its Maoist revolutionary war. The inept use of military force by the democratic Peruvian government in turn boosted Shining Path’s campaign.

Peru’s modernization carried with it a series of economic and political measures put in place by the military government of the 1960s and 1970s. Not least among them were agrarian land reforms designed to expropriate land from large private estates (haciendas) and cut it up into smaller parcels within state-controlled cooperatives. The prospect of having their own land raised peasants’ expectations but unfortunately not their circumstances: their overall condition worsened, as hacienda owners fled and poorly managed government cooperative programs faltered. The result was deepening frustration. Wanting to institute their own changes, rural dwellers in 1974 organized a grassroots demonstration of 15,000, agitating for land and against state reforms. When firmly put down by the police, they moved underground. There was no room for compromise and no outlet for dissent. The peasant was presented with a choice between the cooperatives, resented for taking away their historic right to land; and the state, hated for a legacy of allying with the landlords and for its bungled reform. The third way was to cooperate with the Shining Path.

Eventually the military won their campaign in southeast Turkey and sent the PKK toward a sharp decline, catalyzed by Öcalan’s capture in 1999. The case proves that, whether or not it is a democracy, if a state is willing to employ its full force, without scruples, it can crush a terrorist campaign. Turkish elites believed there was a serious threat to the state, gave the military virtually carte blanche to crush it, and had the support of the broader population as they did so.58 Their anxiety helped to fuel the military campaign. But the cost to civilians in the Kurdish regions, victims of slaughter, displacement, human rights abuses, and sheer exhaustion, as well as to the international standing of Turkey, whose aspirations to join the European Union were damaged partly as a result, was enormous. And the threat did not completely disappear, as it spread to the broader region. Subsequent international events, especially the second war in Iraq and the apparent sanctuary given to fighters by Iraqi Kurds in northern Iraq, later led to a resurgence of the PKK, with implications that at this writing have yet to play out.

It would be easy to conclude from this survey thus far that only authoritarian regimes, or fragile recent democracies with authoritarian regimes standing in the wings, clumsily try to end terrorism through brutal repression. By this logic, the story of the Tupamaros should be a parable about the resilience of democracy in the face of terrorism, since the ultraleftist group attacked Uruguay, the most progressive and stable democracy in Latin America. But that is not what happened. Uruguay had room for dissent, a robust party system, a relatively educated, urban population, and an established democratic tradition. It was the first Latin American country to adopt the characteristics of a liberal welfare state, including progressive rights for women, labor unions, and minorities, as well as welfare benefits for the poor and state intervention in the economy. Unlike Peru, the country had almost no peasantry, and 88 percent of the population was concentrated in rural towns and the capital. A strong two-party system grew out of the nineteenth century, with the urban, progressive Colorado Party dominating the traditional, rural Blanco Party for most of the twentieth.

democratic values and civil society seemed intrinsic to the country, as was its position as a model of liberal governance for neighboring authoritarian states. The two-party system worked well, and the state seemed stable and able to satisfy the needs of its citizens, including providing avenues for productive opposition. If democracy were an antidote to terrorism, Uruguay should have been immune.

This philosophy was used to justify extensive, brutal repression, including restrictions on freedom of the press and assembly, torture, killings, disappearances, and the jailing of thousands for political crimes. Ten percent of the Uruguayan population fled the country. In 1976, Amnesty International reported that there were more people in jail per capita in Uruguay than anywhere else on earth.61 By the early 1980s, as economic problems grew and civil resistance increased, the military began to negotiate with political parties, and democratic government was reinstated in 1985. In their short preeminence, the Tupamaros had executed one hostage and assassinated eight counterinsurgency personnel. The military regime that came to power in 1973 “disappeared,” tortured, or killed thousands.62 Although democracy was ultimately restored, the outcome of Uruguay’s counterterrorism was the slaughter of its own people and the undermining of its liberal political system. Repression had worked, but at enormous cost.

First, terrorism was used as a mechanism of shock. Having suffered brutally at the hands of Russian forces, the Chechens employed terrorism increasingly to jolt the Russian people, especially in Moscow but also elsewhere in Russia.

Second, terrorist attacks were used during sensitive political periods as provocations. For example, in 1995 the Budenovsk hostage crisis helped to end the first war. The 1999 Moscow apartment bombings, whoever the perpetrators were, apparently precipitated the outbreak of the second.

Third, terrorism was an attempt to level the playing field, to improve a losing position by enlarging the battlefield and expanding the range of potential targets. In both wars, the Chechens used terrorism when they were at a disadvantage, when the Russian counterinsurgency seemed to be prevailing. All three strategies failed in the face of increasing Russian repression.

Repression resulted in polarization, both within Russia and within the Chechen republic: on the one hand, following each terrorist attack blamed on Chechen operatives there was an outflow of passionate Russian hatred of the Chechens; this seemed to have a palpable influence on the evolution of the Russian state toward more executive power, more restriction of civil liberties, and greater willingness to use force. Terrorist attacks succeeded in mobilizing the Russian population against the Chechens, even as they failed to stir the Chechen people. On the other hand, there was a fractionizing occurring within Chechnya itself, as the Kremlin-supported government seemed to engage in criminal behavior against its own people and increasing numbers of Chechens seemed to be swayed by militant Islamic groups. There was no going back from this repression, as the regime deliberately made negotiations impossible: in March 2005, the Russian security forces assassinated Aslan Maskhadov, elected president of the separatist government of Chechnya and the only person with whom the state might possibly have talked.

The Kremlin put large amounts of money into rebuilding the Chechen economy, including building schools, hospitals, and houses, and had good reason to argue that the war in Chechnya was over. The Chechen people were exhausted, and there was no one left to lead the fight.89 On the other hand, Russian repression of Chechen separatists promoted the spread of the conflict to neighboring areas in the North Caucasus, especially Ingushetia, Dagestan, Karbardino-Balkariya, and North Ossetia.90 In Ingushetia, for example, death squads reportedly carried out summary executions of those appearing on “Wahhabi lists.”91 In Chechnya, military repression ended terrorism; but it remained to be seen whether the cyclical historical pattern of harsh repression followed by resurgent rebellion would eventually repeat itself.

In other words, if all you want to do is end terrorism, at whatever cost, you can certainly do so through military repression.

Repression alone seldom ends terrorism because terrorist groups resort to strategies designed to turn a state’s strength against itself. Indiscriminate, retaliatory police or military force used in a frontal assault, at home or abroad, may set back a movement. Overwhelming—and unscrupulous— use of force may even obliterate groups using terror tactics. But it may be a pyrrhic victory. If the ideas that are the source of popular mobilization persist, repression will be temporary, even counterproductive

Repression, often brutal, wiped out terrorist groups in Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Peru, and tsarist Russia; however, the response itself undermined the legitimacy of the state.