They rely on ambushes, roadside bombings, sniper fire and other tactics that in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan have imposed considerable challenges and losses to US forces. Groups such as the Islamic State, Hizballah and Hamas are able to handle second-generation weapons such as Russian RPGs and possibly wire-guided anti-tank missiles and build sophisticated underground tunnel systems. Empirical support for the growing terrorism-guerrilla nexus One criterion by which to measure the growing crossover of terrorism and guerrilla tactics is to examine the choice of targets.
We examined all groups in the period between and that carried out at least six attacks —the minimum required to render the statistical analysis meaningful—. Furthermore, focusing on this time period allows for the analysis of contemporary militant actors, thereby rendering our study more policy relevant. These requirements left us with groups to analyse. For each group we recorded the total number of attacks during that period and examined the distribution of target types, with a focus on attacks against civilians, general and diplomatic government targets, military targets and attacks against the police.
As the following analysis shows, the data strongly suggest that terrorist groups indeed use a combination of guerrilla and terrorist tactics.
The analysis first focused on data for the universe of groups active in that decade. As Figure 1 shows, on average civilians are the favoured targets for these groups but such attacks account for no more than a third of the total. When combined, these targets generally considered typical for guerrilla operations —such as military, government and police targets— are targeted in In sum, groups active in the Middle East and North Africa are more likely to attack civilian targets compared with their counterparts in the other geographic locations combined.
Still, attacks that could also be considered guerrilla attacks, ie, against military, police and government targets, outnumber attacks against civilian targets.
The 10 most active groups labelled as terrorist groups by the GTD that operate in the Middle East and North Africa aim for non-civilian targets The concept of insurgency can help overcome the conceptual difficulties regarding the proper labelling of many contemporary militant groups because theorists of insurgency have long argued that insurgents typically rely on several modes of warfare at once.
Although theoretically these modes of warfare do not have to include acts of terrorism —insurgents can rely, for example, on a combination of conventional and guerrilla tactics— they almost always do. Viewing terrorist groups as insurgent groups should not be seen as an attempt to play down the fact that these groups frequently commit acts of indiscriminate violence.
Yet it does help place these acts in a broader context of a more complex reality. Based on this understanding, even the most violent groups using the most despicable tactics are likely to spend most of their time and energy doing something other than killing civilians —fighting regular troops and government forces and subverting their enemies by means of propaganda and other political means—.
According to data assembled and analysed by Michael Findley and Joseph K. The conduct of civil wars is therefore, by definition, marked by insurgency and counterinsurgency, again suggesting a close interrelationship between terrorism and insurgencies. In addition, the suggested label can be useful in explaining the adoption of both violent including terrorism and nonviolent means of political struggle, based on the present political, economic and social conditions on the ground.
Theoretically our conclusions also call for closer intellectual interaction between the terrorism and insurgency studies fields, as well as to the study of civil wars. Closer correspondence between these related fields can help shed more light on the political aspects of the campaigns in which terrorism occurs. Such policies should combine political and military components to address what is in essence a political-military threat.
Finally, viewing terrorism as a phenomenon closely related to insurgency and civil war will allow analysts to pool the insights and best practices from academic fields that have thus far been treated separately. The study of terrorism, insurgency and civil wars not only suffer from a disconnect as far as the analysis of their causes are concerned: analyses of how these different phenomena might end are similarly compartmentalised.
Insights from the study of the termination of civil wars and insurgencies, for example, are likely to inform future studies of the decline and demise of groups heavily reliant on terrorism, and vice versa. Most scholars, however, expand that category of victims to civilians as well as noncombatants. See Alex P. Schmid Ed. Jongman , Political Terrorism. We chose a minimum of six attacks because if a group listed in the GTD database attacked each one of the target types included in the database, setting six attacks as the minimum would ensure that at least one target type was targeted more than the others.
Before the s, the majority of Western military analysts considered the phenomenon of terrorism mainly as one of the many tactics deployed by insurgency movements, therefore, countermeasures against terrorism were incorporated in COIN strategies. Military planners started to consider terrorism and insurgency as two separate threats when terrorist groups throughout the 70s composed of alienated individuals, such as the Italian Red Brigades and the German Red Army Faction, engaged in a season of attacks without achievable aims or trying to obtain popular support[6].
Unlike the majority of terrorist organisations, insurgent groups consider it paramount to gain legitimacy from the greater population by championing deeper issues and grievances within society. In other words, insurgencies are long-term conflicts that the insurgent party wages with the intention of overthrowing the government to take its place. Because insurgents rely on their links with the local population for securing their survival and advancing their cause, governments that implement counter-terrorism strategies to engage insurgency movements are unlikely to emerge victorious.
Consequently, strategies that rely on military operations designed to capture and kill insurgents without addressing the root causes of the insurgency are often counterproductive. It is thus not rare for governments to implement countermeasures that, without causing significant damages to the insurgents, generate civilian casualties, alienate local communities, and indirectly legitimise the insurgents in the eyes of the population.
Therefore, successful COIN efforts, instead of only seeking to kill insurgents and disrupt their networks, are mainly directed at severing the link between insurgents and local communities population-centric approaches. The two are not mutually exclusive because if properly implemented their joint action can turn out to be highly successful in tackling terrorism and insurgency. Nevertheless, the marriage between CT and COIN is profitable only when the government is facing insurgents that adopt terrorism as one of their strategies.
Firstly, population-centric COIN approaches sever the link between insurgents and population. Secondly, once insurgents are alienated from the local communities and lack the protection of the greater population, they become highly vulnerable to CT strategies. The strategic approach adopted by the U. Firstly, the massive deployment of U.
Special Operations Forces SOFs efficiently combined counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency tactics, engaging insurgents and neutralising their networks without inflicting large numbers of civilian casualties[12].
Terrorist organisations cannot be disrupted through COIN techniques and insurgencies are extremely resilient to CT strategies. Consequently, adopting the wrong strategy often strengthens the hostile movement.
But when it comes to confronting alienated individuals determined to spread fear among the population, COIN efforts are generally ineffective. In these circumstances governments should implement CT strategies that emphasise military and law enforcement techniques.
Conversely, CT strategies adopted in insurgency scenarios alienate the population, creating the perfect breeding ground for radicalisation and political violence, indirectly strengthening the insurgency. Policy-makers and military officials often confuse insurgency for terrorism and vice versa because the two phenomena share many commonalities. The main difference between CT and COIN is that, while the former focuses on neutralising terrorists and disrupting their networks, the latter is an approach aimed at first marginalising, rather than destroying, the insurgent movement[14].
Government Printing Office, p. What is the difference between counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism?. Single pieces. All Podcasts.
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