Author: Daniel Pipes
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: May 6, 2009
URL: http://www.dailypioneer.com/174287/The-limits-of-terrorism.html
Does terrorism work, meaning, does it achieve
its perpetrators' objectives? With terror attacks having become a routine
and nearly daily occurrence, especially in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan,
the conventional wisdom holds that terrorism works very well. For example,
the late Ehud Sprinzak of the Hebrew University ascribed the prevalence of
suicide terrorism to its "gruesome effectiveness". Prof Robert Pape
of the University of Chicago argues that suicide terrorism is growing "because
terrorists have learned that it pays". Harvard law professor Alan M Dershowitz
titled one of his books Why Terrorism Works.
But Mr Max Abrahms, a fellow at Stanford University,
disputes this conclusion, noting that they focus narrowly on the well-known
but rare terrorist victories - while ignoring the much broader, if more obscure,
pattern of terrorism's failures. To remedy this deficiency, Mr Abrahms took
a close look at each of the 28 terrorist groups so designated by the US Department
of State since 2001 and tallied how many of them achieved its objectives.
His study, "Why Terrorism Does Not Work",
finds that those 28 groups had 42 different political goals and that they
achieved only three of those goals, for a measly seven per cent success rate.
Those three victories would be: (1) Hizbullah's success at expelling the multinational
peacekeepers from Lebanon in 1984; (2) Hizbullah's success at driving Israeli
forces out of Lebanon in 1985 and 2000; and, (3) the Tamil Tigers' partial
success at winning control over areas of Sri Lanka after 1990. (They have
since lost the territory.) Mr Abrahms draws three policy implications from
the data.
Guerrilla groups that mainly attack military
targets succeed more often than terrorist groups that mainly attack civilian
targets. (Terrorists got lucky in the Madrid attack of 2004.)
Terrorists find it "extremely difficult
to transform or annihilate a country's political system"; those with
limited objectives (such as acquiring territory) do better than those with
maximalist objectives (such as seeking regime change).
Not only is terrorism "an ineffective
instrument of coercion, but … its poor success rate is inherent to the
tactic of terrorism itself".
This final implication suggests an eventual
reduction of terrorism in favour of less violent tactics. Indeed, signs of
change are already apparent. In the long term, Islamists will likely recognise
the limits of violence and increasingly pursue their repugnant goals through
legitimate ways. We are on notice.
