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Monthly Discussion
Forecasting
Terrorism
In the beginning of the new millennium political violence seems to be concentrated around the notion of terrorism. In the United States political violence focuses on singular large-scale attacks on the population such as the Oklahoma bombing and the World Trade Center. In Europe political violence is expressed for decades now through a multitude of smaller-scale less singular acts committed by self-proclaimed revolutionary terrorist groups such as the german Red Army Faction (RAF), the italian Red Brigades, the french Action Direct, and the greek Revolutionary Organization 17 November. These groups target individual symbols of the social system they are trying to undermine. A slowly evolving pattern of action over the years makes such groups behave like distinct “species” and permits an analysis of the patterns of their acts in terms of natural-growth curves (S-curves).
This
approach was originally suggested by Cesare Marchetti when he studied the acts
of the Italian Red Brigades and demonstrated that when that group finally
disbanded it had accomplished 90% of its “potential”.*
In Exhibit 3 below I show the evolution of the number of victims of
another European terrorist group recently disbanded (a Greek one this time),
the “17 November”. Again we see that that the “species” died after having
achieved 96% of its “potential” as determined by the fitted S-curve.
Not surprisingly, the nominal beginning of this group’s activities (i.e.,
the 1% of the S-curve) points at April 1973, a time period that witnessed much
violence directed from the Greek junta’s police against protesting students.
The situation degenerated and violence culminated with the death of many
students of the National Technical University of Athens on November 17, 1973.
Exhibit 3.
The Greek terrorist organization “17 November” was dismantled when it
had completed 96% of its “potential”
In the same spirit one may
be tempted to analyze Al-Qaeda’s acts. The case is not as clean-cut as the Red
Brigades and the 17 November for several reasons. First, with Al-Qaeda we have
mostly suspected acts and not established facts. Secondly, Al-Qaeda is a
diffuse organization with weak links across continents and cultures. Therefore
it may not behave as a single species with well-defined characteristics. Still,
it may be worth seeing what we can learn if indeed it were a species like the
other terrorist organizations we have seen so far.
Counting acts (not number
of victims) that so far have been generally attributed to Al-Qaeda we see in
Exhibit 4 that the fitted S-curve is still far from being complete. In
particular we seem to be presently at 24% of the ceiling of the organizations
“potential” estimated to be 40 acts. The organization’s nominal beginning (1%) appears
at the beginning of 1985. This date is back far enough in the past to suggest
that possible Al-Qaeda roots extend to the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.
Exhibit 4. At the top we see the cumulative Al-Qaeda
acts. At the bottom the organization’s life cycle. The data come mostly from
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/terror-qaeda.html.
For what concerns the future and in
view of the examples of the other organizations cited above, one could expect
Al-Qaeda to continue its activities into the 2020s. An earlier “unnatural”
death for this “species” cannot be excluded. But it would require something
more drastic than the war in Afghanistan!