Terrorist Inter-Group Cooperation and Terror Activity
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Terrorist Inter‑Group Cooperation and Terror Activity Aditya Bhan1 · Tarun Kabiraj1
© Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract The present work is the first to formally model inter-outfit strategic cooperation in a manner which reveals that the cooperating terror outfits may conduct more, less or the same number of attacks as in the absence of cooperation; based on whether they are resource-constrained or not a priori; and on the extent to which cooperation can serve to ease such a constraint through inter-outfit resource-transfer. In the absence of external sponsorship, the paper shows that strategic cooperation between two outfits has no impact on terror activity if neither outfit is resource-constrained a priori. If only one outfit is resource-constrained a priori, on the other hand, then inter-group cooperation increases terror activity if and only if there is sufficient resource-asymmetry between the outfits. Further, if both outfits are resource-constrained a priori, then cooperation may increase or decrease terror activity depending on parametric asymmetries. Finally, it is demonstrated that while cooperation can neutralize the impact of strategic external sponsorship on terror activity and thereby remove the incentive for its provision, minor modifications to the sponsorship mechanism can often mitigate this phenomenon. Keywords Terror outfit · Terror attacks · Non-cooperative competition · Outfit cooperation · External sponsorship · Counter-terrorism JEL Classification C71 · C72 · D74 · H79
1 Introduction Terrorists perpetrate violence to draw public attention to their objectives, and to pressurize ruling political dispensations into capitulating to their demands. Just as governments of different countries may coalesce to combat terrorism, terrorist * Aditya Bhan [email protected] Tarun Kabiraj [email protected] 1
Economic Research Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, 203 B. T. Road, Kolkata 700108, India
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groups may join forces to overwhelm the State machinery.1 For instance, consider the merger in 2012 of the Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab, with the al Qaeda.2 Alliances between terrorist groups however, are an exception rather than the rule, given that less than one percent (417 to be exact) of the 81,799 terror attacks conducted during 1970-2007 involved more than one terror outfit (Asal et al. 2016). This may be due to the inability of terror outfits, which are illegal organizations, to credibly overcome commitment issues in the absence of third-party enforcement (Bacon 2017).3 Further, a significant fraction of outfits does not exist for more than a year, thereby making it difficult for them to reliably pledge to certain behavioral patterns for the long term.4 Ackerman et al. (2017) explore the circumstances under which terror outfits with differing ideologies may align operationally, to achieve common goals. The game-theoretic framework used by the authors for this purpose gives rise to multiple equilibria, with some characterized by
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