Leadership Decapitation: Strategic Targeting of Terrorist Organizations by Jenna Jordan. Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 2019. 272 pp. $39.95.

2021 ◽  
Vol 136 (1) ◽  
pp. 195-196
Author(s):  
Dorle Hellmuth
Keyword(s):  
Stanford University ◽  
Terrorist Organizations ◽  
Leadership Decapitation

Targeting Top Terrorists: How Leadership Decapitation Contributes to Counterterrorism

2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 9-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryan C. Price
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mortality Rate ◽  
The United States ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
Organizational Characteristics ◽  
Leadership Succession ◽  
Scholarly Work ◽  
Terrorist Organizations ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
Leadership Decapitation

Several states, including Israel and the United States, have put decapitation tactics, which seek to kill or capture leaders of terrorist organizations, at the forefront of their counterterrorism efforts. The vast majority of scholarly work on decapitation suggests, however, that leadership decapitation is ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst. Contrary to this conventional wisdom, leadership decapitation significantly increases the mortality rate of terrorist groups, although the results indicate that the effect of decapitation decreases with the age of the group, even to a point where it may have no effect at all. This finding helps to explain the previously perplexing mixed record of decapitation effectiveness. Terrorist groups are especially susceptible to leadership decapitation because their organizational characteristics (they are violent, clandestine, and values based) amplify the difficulties of leadership succession. Additionally, in contrast to the conventional wisdom regarding the durability of terrorist groups, politically relevant terrorist groups (defined as those with at least four attacks including one attack resulting in a fatality) endure significantly longer than previously believed.

Leadership Decapitation

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenna Jordan
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Structure ◽  
Effective Means ◽  
Shining Path ◽  
Terrorist Organizations ◽  
Group Type ◽  
The Face ◽  
Leadership Decapitation ◽  
Counterterrorism Policy ◽  
Communal Support ◽  
Operational Capacity

Does leadership targeting work? This question lies at the heart of studies on the efficacy of counterterrorism policy. This book examines whether killing or arresting terrorists is an effective means by which to weaken and degrade a group’s operational capacity. It aims to identify and explain why decapitation works in some cases and not in others. In order to determine whether decapitation is an effective strategy, this project examines nearly one thousand instances of leadership targeting. A group’s susceptibility to leadership targeting is a function of three factors: organizational structure, communal support, and group type or ideology. Leadership decapitation is unlikely to result in the demise of groups that are highly bureaucratized, have high levels of communal support, or are driven by a religious or separatist ideology. Leaders matter less under these conditions, and their removal can have adverse consequences, such as retaliatory attacks or an overall increase in the frequency of attacks. The data reveals that the largest and oldest organizations are highly resistant to destabilization after targeting. Separatist, religious, and especially Islamist groups are unlikely to weaken after the removal of their leaders. In order to develop counterterrorism policies that will degrade and weaken terrorist organizations, it is essential to identify whether our policies are likely to be effective or to have adverse consequences. The book examines the cases of Hamas, al-Qaeda, Shining Path, and ISIS to understand how organizational structure, local support, and ideology contributes to their resilience in the face of repeated leadership attacks.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Jenna Jordan
Keyword(s):  
Life Span ◽  
Terrorist Organizations ◽  
Terrorist Organization ◽  
Terrorist Groups ◽  
Leadership Decapitation

Leadership decapitation, which refers to the arrest or killing of a group’s leadership, has become a key tool in current counterterrorism strategies This chapter presents an overview of the debate about leadership decapitation against terrorist organizations. Much of the optimism regarding the efficacy of decapitation as a counterterrorism strategy stems from the belief that terrorist groups depend upon the charisma of leaders for their cohesion. In order to understand whether decapitation works, this chapter presents three questions that will be answered in the book: (1) Under what conditions does leadership decapitation result in the decline of a terrorist organization? (2) Does leadership decapitation lengthen or shorten a group’s life span? (3) In cases where decapitation does not result in a group’s collapse, to what extent does it weaken a group and hinder its capacity to carry out attacks?

The Philological Association of The Pacific Coast

PMLA ◽  
1935 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 1373-1374
Keyword(s):  
Annual Meeting ◽  
Pacific Coast ◽  
Stanford University ◽  
The Pacific

The thirty-seventh annual meeting of the Philological Association of the Pacific Coast was held at Stanford University, California, on November 29 and 30, 1935.

20-year survivors of heart transplantation at Stanford University

2009 ◽  
Vol 56 (S 01) ◽  
Author(s):  
T Deuse ◽  
F Haddad ◽  
M Pham ◽  
S Hunt ◽  
H Valantine ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Heart Transplantation ◽  
Stanford University

Understanding Suicide Terrorism

2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (04) ◽  
pp. 245-250
Author(s):  
A. Speckhard
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Suicide Terrorism ◽  
Terrorist Organizations ◽  
Global Migration ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Single Region ◽  
Extensive Field ◽  
The World ◽  
Terrorist Groups

SummaryAs a terror tactic, suicide terrorism is one of the most lethal as it relies on a human being to deliver and detonate the device. Suicide terrorism is not confined to a single region or religion. On the contrary, it has a global appeal, and in countries such as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan it has come to represent an almost daily reality as it has become the weapon of choice for some of the most dreaded terrorist organizations in the world, such as ISIS and al-Qaeda. Drawing on over two decades of extensive field research in five distinct world regions, specifically the Middle East, Western Europe, North America, Russia, and the Balkans, the author discusses the origins of modern day suicide terrorism, motivational factors behind suicide terrorism, its global migration, and its appeal to modern-day terrorist groups to embrace it as a tactic.

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