Leadership Matters: The Effects of Targeted Killings on Militant Group Tactics (forthcoming in Terrorism and Political Violence, with Jochen Mierau)

Terrorism and Political Violence, 2015

Targeted killings have become a central component of counterterrorism strategy. In response to the unprecedented prevalence of this strategy around the world, numerous empirical studies have recently examined whether "decapitating" militant groups with targeted killings is strategically effective. This study builds on that research program by examining the impact of targeted killings on militant group tactical decision-making. Our empirical strategy exploits variation in the attack patterns of militant groups conditional on whether a government's targeted killing attempt succeeded against them operationally. In both the Afghanistan-Pakistan and Israel-West Bank-Gaza Strip theaters, targeted killings significantly alter the nature of militant group violence. When their leaderships are degraded with a successful strike, militant groups become far less discriminate in their target selection by redirecting their violence from military to civilian targets. We then analyze several potential causal mechanisms to account for these results and find strongest evidence that targeted killings tend to promote indiscriminate organizational violence by empowering lower level members with weaker civilian restraint.

International Organization (2015)

Certain types of militant groups-those suffering from leadership deficits -are more likely to attack civilians. Their leadership deficits exacerbate the principalagent problem between leaders and foot soldiers, who have stronger incentives to harm civilians. We establish the validity of this proposition with a tripartite research strategy that balances generalizability and identification. First, we demonstrate in a sample of militant organizations operating in the Middle East and North Africa that those lacking centralized leadership are prone to targeting civilians. Second, we show that when the leaderships of militant groups are degraded from drone strikes in the Afghanistan-Pakistan tribal regions, the selectivity of organizational violence plummets. Third, we elucidate the mechanism with a detailed case study of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a Palestinian group that turned to terrorism during the Second Intifada because pressure on leadership allowed low-level members to act on their preexisting incentives to attack civilians. These findings indicate that a lack of principal control is an important, underappreciated cause of militant group violence against civilians.

Targeting of militant leaders is central to many states' national security strategies, but does it work? What should policymakers expect when armed forces capture or kill militant leaders? Is leadership decapitation more likely to succeed or fail under certain conditions? These questions have never been more pressing than after the May 2011 killing of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. As relevant as these questions are to current U.S. policy and strategy, they are also fundamental questions of asymmetric warfare. They matter because almost all policies of "high-value" targeting require difªcult judgments concerning both the potential consequences and the opportunity costs of targeting militant leaders. The decision to target enemy leaders requires that policymakers adjudicate among numerous difªcult, and potentially contradictory, choices. Leadership targeting strategies affect how states allocate scarce military, intelligence, and economic resources; how they construct their counterinsurgency or counterterrorism postures; and how interested foreign and domestic audiences react to their behavior.

JOURNAL OF PUBLIC AND …, 2004

My MA thesis focuses on the American and Israeli policy of leadership decapitation. It is held by political elites in the aforementioned countries, that by actively decimating the leadership of recognised terrorist groups, the terror organisation subsequently falters. As eventually the 'next' man is not intelligent enough to carry the organisation. To test this premise I assess the frequency and lethality rate per attack of PIJ, Hamas and al-Qaeda, prior to the extermination of Shaqaqi, Yassin and bin Laden. I then compare the findings with the attack frequency and lethality rate following the deaths of said figures. As you will see, terror groups take a pro-active approach to being hunted down. And over time leadership has become increasingly decentralised, essentially meaning that cells as well as small networks do not need the approval of senior figures to first plan and then conduct attacks independently. Therefore making it a futile venture for the west to place too much faith in leadership decapitation as terror leaders merely provide some inspiration, if any, to cohorts, additionally little in the way of operational expertise is offered except in the case of Shaqaqi and the PIJ.

2014

Real Instituto Elcano- ARI 30/2004, 2004

Western nations, faced with an unprecedented growth in terrorist threats, have embarked upon security strategies in which the neutralisation of the top leaders of the groups responsible for violence is becoming paramount. This type of anti-leadership operation has been put forward as the quickest and least costly method to dismantle an insurgent organisation. However, a realistic analysis of the viability and efficiency of this type of action requires that three factors be taken into account. First, it is necessary to weigh up how knocking out an armed group’s leadership will affect its future behaviour. Secondly, it is vital that any attempt to target the leadership of an organisation should be preceded by actions by the security forces aimed at softening up the armed movement as a whole and making its leaders more vulnerable to attack. Finally, it is also necessary to analyse the structure of the terrorist organisation given that the impact of an attack on its leadership will vary, depending on whether the group has a centralised leadership structure or if it is more flexibly organised.

2020

Ophir Falk's book bridges the gap between legality and efficiency; between academia and practice; regarding the use of targeted killings against terrorists. He provides an excellent review of the effectiveness of targeted killings to mitigate suicide terrorism in Israel during the first decade of the 21st century. Dr. Falk's book should be read by all decision-makers, military leaders, experts and students who seek to better understand the use of targeted killings in countering terrorism.'

2016

There is little consensus among scholars on whether targeted killings of members of terrorist and militant groups work, though some have argued that they do, at least under certain circumstances. Most of the work so far has focused on the ability of targeted killings to disrupt targeted groups’ ability to function. In many cases, work has centered on whether they work and not addressed how they work if they do. There has been insufficient study of the coercive effects of targeted killings and these studies have often produced mixed results, with violence sometimes increasing and sometimes decreasing after targeted strikes. This article argues that the focus on disruption and a failure to differentiate between deterrence and compellence and properly to account for the timing of attacks may be at least partly to blame for the mixed record observed from the use of targeted killings. It asserts that targeted killings are inherently compellent and can therefore only be used to change a s...

2014

This paper presents an analysis of the Provisional Irish Republican Army's (PIRA) brigade level behavior during the Northern Ireland Conflict (1970-1998) and identifies the organizational factors that impact a brigade's lethality as measured via terrorist attacks. Key independent variables include levels of technical expertise, cadre age, counter-terrorism policies experienced, brigade size, and IED components and delivery methods. We find that technical expertise within a brigade allows for careful IED usage, which significantly minimizes civilian casualties (a specific strategic goal of PIRA) while increasing the ability to kill more high value targets with IEDs. Lethal counter-terrorism events also significantly affect a brigade's likelihood of killing both civilians and high-value targets but in different ways. Killing PIRA members significantly decreases IED fatalities but also significantly decreases the possibility of zero civilian IED-related deaths in a given year. Killing innocent Catholics in a Brigade's county significantly increases total and civilian IED fatalities. Together the results suggest the necessity to analyze dynamic situational variables that impact terrorist group behavior at the sub-unit level.