EXPLAINING THE STRATEGIES OF TERRORIST GROUPS THROUGH THEIR ACTIONS: THE ANALYSIS OF TARGET SELECTION

The “Target Selection” Study is a CEACS-based project publicly funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education (SEJ2006-12462) that tries to explain the strategies that terrorist organizations follow by analyzing empirically their deadly attacks. Clandestine organizations without free access to liberated territory (as guerrillas do) have to recur to terrorism if they want to attain political goals through the use of violence: without attacks (and killings) terrorist organizations are mostly ineffectual. As a matter of fact, the analysis of their attacks is a key question to explain the decisions they take in the face of rival organizations (powerful states, foe terrorist organizations).

In order to understand the aims, strategies and constraints under which terrorist organizations act, we have to analyze carefully their actions. Some terrorist organizations carry out indiscriminate attacks; some others opt for selective killings. Some terrorist organizations focus on attacks against the State, some others attack social groups. How can we shed light on this variation?

This project pursues a twofold strategy: on the one hand, it’s necessary to construct analytical categories that allow us to theoretically classify the different types of attacks that terrorist organizations carry out; on the other hand, it’s necessary to gather the data that allow the researcher to assess the usefulness of our analytical categories and besides to empirically test hypotheses on how terrorist organizations take decisions on strategy and tactics.

Regarding the analytical side, we propose a new methodological approach to the analysis of target selection. Going beyond gathering information about objective traits of the victims, we connect the selection of the victim with the aims and strategies of terrorist organizations. Thus, we codify information about victims in two different variables. One has to do with the selectivity of the killing -the “how” of the attack. The other, with the strategic aim of the killing –the “why” of the attack. Building on those two variables, we propose a codification scheme general enough to fit the violence of different types of terrorism.

Regarding the empirical side, we are creating an exhaustive dataset of terrorist killings carried out by different types of terrorist organizations in Western European countries to illustrate the usefulness of our methodology. So far, we have collected detailed evidence, based on local sources, on 3,230 fatalities for the period 1965-2005 in three European countries (Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom). We consider cases of (i) revolutionary or left-wing terrorism (Red Brigades, GRAPO); (ii) ethno-nationalist terrorism (ETA, IRA); (iii); fascist or right-wing terrorism (BVE, Triple A, Nar, Ordine Nero); and vigilante terrorist groups (UDA, UVF, UFF). We have also collected, for the Spanish case, data on State repression. This will allow us to evaluate for this case the dynamics of all the political violence that took place during its demcratic transition.

In a nutshell, this project wants to set the ground for rigorous analysis of target selection. To achieve this goal, we propose a new scheme to codify killings and generate several datasets to test the validity of the scheme and besides to offer hypotheses on terrorist decision-making. We strongly encourage readers to provide feedback on the way we have coded terrorist killings. This is an open enterprise, so we appreciate potential comments, ideas, and thoughts about our scheme of target-selection codification.