NGO interventions: influences on terrorist activity

ABSTRACT

Terrorist organizations (TOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) often advocate for the same oppressed communities. Both TOs and NGOs require the support of these constituents and the attention of the media in order to maintain legitimacy and recruit. Public support and attention is limited and difficult to acquire, placing TOs and NGOs in competition. Within the game theoretic framework, it is hypothesized that TOs will adjust their activities when faced with an NGO competitor. This study assesses the influence that international and local NGOs have on TOs in Lebanon and Turkey between 1987 and 2011. Results indicate minimal support for the hypothesized relationships. NGOs demonstrate limited marginal influence on TO activities in Lebanon and no influence in Turkey. Overall findings suggest two conclusions: in Lebanon and Turkey, NGO activities do not appear to increase TO violence and NGO campaign activities focused on de-escalating TO violence are not particularly effective.

KEYWORDS:

• Terrorism
• political violence
• rational choice
• non-governmental organizations

Acknowledgement

A special thanks to Dr. Laura Dugan for generously sharing her wisdom and her time for this project. Additional thanks to Dr. Gary LaFree, Dr. Tom Loughran, Dr. Ray Paternoster, and Dr. Brooke Fisher Liu for their helpful suggestions and support. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the US Department of Homeland Security, or START.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Dr Omi Hodwitz is an Assistant Research Scholar at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland (UMD). She holds a Ph.D. in Criminology and Criminal Justice from UMD and her research interests include community violence, terrorism and tactics, and data collection methodologies.

Notes

1. Global Terrorism Database. start.umd.edu/gtd

2. One option not discussed in this essay is the fact that the local community may ally with both NGOs and TOs. As will be elaborated upon in later pages, it is posited here that TOs view the dynamic between themselves and NGOs as a zero-sum game. Constituent support of one organization equates to a lack of constituent support of another organization. Therefore, while citizen support of both groups may be possible, it is argued here that this potential dynamic does not play a prominent role in TO decision-making.

3. This paper draws a distinction between campaigning NGOs and service provision NGOs (Gibbs, Kuby, & Fumo, 1999; Willetts, 2011). Campaigning NGOs promote long-term change through advocacy work and lobbying efforts, while service provision NGOs provide short-term services, such as aid and community support, that are designed to offset a long-term deficiency (Spar & Dail, 2002; Willetts, 2011). The focus of this paper is on those organizations that actively advocate for a constituency.

4. An additional expectation relates to the attacks targeting NGOs. However, these attacks are so rare in the countries chosen for this study that quantitative analysis is not possible.

5. It would have been ideal to include additional countries in the analysis. However, given the time and funds required to collect the data, the decision was made to restrict the analysis to two countries for this first study. Data collection is ongoing and subsequent studies will include additional countries as the data come available.

6. Amnesty International. https://www.amnesty.org/en/. Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/

7. Global Terrorism Database. start.umd.edu/gtd

8. Middle East Watch was the region-specific name for Human Rights Watch in the late 1980s.

9. The decision to code a lead sentence as 1 for the campaign content variable is determined by the presence of several key action terms. An action term is the verb used in a sentence where the NGO is the primary subject (e.g. HRW demanded  … ). A list of all key action terms included in the articles was created and separated into two groups: neutral and advocacy/criticism. Reuters and Lexis Nexis lead sentences were reviewed and campaign content coded 1 if the sentence contained one or more of the advocacy/criticism action terms.

10. The negative binomial model produce similar results (β = −1.6325, SE = 0.542, p < .01).

11. It is interesting to note that the relationship between anti-TO campaign work and attacks targeting the state in Lebanon is positive and significant in the negative binomial model (β = 0.2183, SE = 0.054, p < .001)

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Science and Technology Directorate of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security through the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Behavior (CSTAB – Center Lead) Grant made to the START Consortium [grant # 2012-ST-61-CS0001].