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" Terror, Territory, and Targets: "
Hoffman, Paul J.
Ganguly, Sumit
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Latin Dissertation
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| Language of Document
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English
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| Record Number
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1105495
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| Doc. No
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TLpq2311757476
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| Main Entry
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Ganguly, Sumit
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Hoffman, Paul J.
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| Title & Author
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Terror, Territory, and Targets:\ Hoffman, Paul J.Ganguly, Sumit
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| College
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Indiana University
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| Date
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2019
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| student score
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2019
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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| Page No
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201
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| Abstract
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Why do insurgent groups that employ terrorism as a strategy attack certain types of targets? What explains a group’s target preferences, and why do these target selection preferences change throughout the group’s existence? While target selection is the product of decision-making processes which are shaped by a group's interaction with its environment, I argue that a group’s control of territory is a key predictor of its target selection preferences. Using incident data from the Global Terrorism Database, I study the Islamic State's target preferences in Iraq from January 2012 to December 2016 in five Iraqi cities: Kirkuk, Hawija, Fallujah, Ramadi, and Mosul. I examine preferences at the city level to compare how territorial control influences target selection. I find that when control is contested, groups tend to attack police targets to provide greater freedom of action. As the group gains the upper hand over the state, it attacks military targets to eliminate threats. In periods of complete terrorist control, groups attack civilians to maintain their gains and as mechanism to ensure compliance with laws. Territorial control is distributed unevenly throughout the state, and this distribution explains why a group may favor different target types in different locations in the same timeframe. These results suggest that counterterror strategies should be tailored to local conditions rather than macroscopic state-level approaches. These findings are derived from cases involving the Islamic State’s control of territory in Iraq, and should be tested in other cases to determine their generalizability.
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International relations
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Political science
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