Al-Qaeda groups like al-Nusra in Syria have exploited the rise of ISIS to grow…
“The media really got ISIS wrong for a long time,” argues scholar Max Abrahms, a prominent terrorism expert.
Many Western media outlets “made it seem as if ISIS has a big advantage over al-Qaeda because it is even more radical; that because the group uses violence in such a brutal fashion, it will be able to out-recruit al-Qaeda, have a larger membership size, more staying power and greater capabilities.”
Yet actually, in the long term, Abrahms says, al-Qaeda is the group that has benefited the most from ISIS’ extremism, because it allows al-Qaeda to present itself as the more “moderate” alternative.
ISIS’ brutality, and the attention much of the world has paid to the extremist group, has allowed al-Qaeda to grow with much less opposition, and even with support of U.S. allies in some areas, particularly in Syria.
Max Abrahms is an assistant professor of political science at Northeastern University who has closely studied terrorism for more than a decade.
His research challenges a lot of the contemporary literature on terrorism, which fails to account for the fact that the vast majority of terrorist attacks — six out of seven — are never claimed.
Abrahms shows through data that, the question of immorality aside, terrorist attacks have a kind of internally consistent political logic to them, although they are usually ineffective, especially when directed at civilians.
“Indiscriminate violence against civilian targets is reportedly less strategic than more selective violence against military targets,” Abrahms explains in a new study. “When they attack civilians, terrorist groups have also been found to risk strengthening the resolve of the target country, lowering the odds of government concessions, eroding popular support and expediting organizational demise.”
Because of this backlash, leaders of terrorist groups frequently move toward avoiding targeting civilians over time, and only taking responsibility for attacks on military targets. This is likely the reason so few terrorist attacks are claimed.
“Like all organizations, the members have different specializations within them,” Abrahms told Salon in an interview.
“Those at the top of terrorist groups have a better understanding of how violence relates to politics.” Civilian attacks are most often led by low-level operatives, and “oftentimes the members end up acting in a way in defiance of the leadership’s preferences,” he said.
Abrahms’ past research shows that militant groups led by weaker leaders are more likely to attack civilian targets than groups led by stronger leaders.
“It should be pointed out that I’m not saying that all leaders of terrorist groups oppose civilian targeting,” he emphasized, nevertheless. “I’m looking at terrorist groups probabilistically and trying to come up with trends.”
“There are obviously cases, prominent cases, intrinsically important cases, where the leaders seem as every bit as extreme as the operatives,” Abrahms said.
ISIS is one of such examples. The relatively new extremist group is very different than most terrorist organizations. Self-proclaimed “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has essentially given his supporters free reign to attack anyone at any time, and ISIS is more than happy to take credit for it.
salon.com
