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ABSTRACT
How does branding militant groups as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” (FTOs) affect them? Beyond its obvious policy importance, this question speaks to debates about counterterrorism, terrorism financing, and organizational dynamics of subnational violence. This article analyzes FTO designation, a key policy used by the U.S. government since 1997 to impose costs on foreign terrorist groups and those who might support them. Contrary to arguments that sanctions are ineffective and that terrorism is too “cheap” to be affected, it is argued that designation should weaken terrorist groups, reducing their attacks over time. However, the effect is probably conditional. FTO designation should be especially effective against groups operating in U.S.-aligned countries, given the importance of international cooperation in counterterrorism. Global quantitative analyses suggest that FTOs operating in U.S.-aligned countries carry out fewer attacks over time than other groups, taking many other factors into consideration.
Disclaimer
The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the author and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, or START.
Supplemental Material
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.
Notes
2 Some research looks at how sanctions against states affect terrorist groups (Bapat, De la Calle, Hinkkainen, and McLean Citation2016). This is a different topic than sanctions against terrorist groups.
3 The full list is available here: http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/other/des/123085.htm.
4 Differences across group types are also argued to occur because idiosyncratic political factors play a role in the designation of terrorist groups in each country or entity (Beck et al. Citation2013, Jarvis and Legrand Citation2018). This is discussed more below.
5 The State Department defines terrorism as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.” See Title 22 of the U.S. Code, Section 2656f (d). A “terrorist group” is basically any subnational political organization that uses terrorism (Phillips Citation2015: 231). This is a broad notion of terrorist groups, but it is used by many scholars (for example, Jones et al. Citation2008), and is consistent with the State Department’s understanding of the concept. For more on the concepts of terrorism and terrorist, and criticisms of the State Department’s terminology, see Tilly (Citation2004).
6 http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/other/des/123085.htm. Italics in original.
7 Interview with Jason Blazakis, Director of the Office of Counterterrorism Finance and Designations, Bureau of Counterterrorism, at the Department of State, Washington D.C., March 18, 2015.
8 The six-step process to designate groups is described in a report by the Government Accountability Office (Citation2015).
9 Initially, designations lasted only 2 years, but this was soon increased to 5 years.
10 This is relevant from a research design perspective because it further suggests FTO status is not simply a function of group attacks.
11 Terrorist groups also often cease to exist as organizations or stop using terrorism altogether, which is the subject of many studies (Carter Citation2012; Jones et al. Citation2008). However, relatively few of the FTOs no longer exist, so analysis of group failure as a possible result of designation is difficult due to little variation on the dependent variable.
12 The Taliban was sanctioned via Executive Order, but is not on the FTO list. Otherwise, there are very few individuals or groups not already covered by the FTO list. Interview with a former U.S. Department of the Treasury official, Washington D.C., March 17, 2015.
13 In 2012, a member of Egyptian FTO al Gama legally entered the United States for meetings in Washington. This caused a controversy regarding whether he received a waiver or if his admittance was a mistake (Reuters Citation2012). Regardless, the case shows that members of FTOs seek to enter the United States to lobby for their groups. The number of visa denials mentioned above suggests that most FTO “lobbyists” are not successful at legally entering.
14 One means to reduce public concern is keeping cooperation, or at least negotiations, secret (Leventoglu and Tarar Citation2005).
15 Shapiro and Siegel (Citation2007) argue that a “critical threshold” of funding restrictions must be reached for them to be effective. Perhaps in the case of FTO sanctions, that threshold is only met when the United States can effectively partner with group’s country.
16 Interview with Jason Blazakis, Director of the Office of Counterterrorism Finance and Designations, Bureau of Counterterrorism, at the Department of State, Washington D.C., March 18, 2015.
17 These years are based on the availability of the data. A robustness check is reported on the 1997–2006 sample, and primary results hold. However, using data further back in time is helpful because many of the groups started before 1997, so truncating the data loses important information on these groups. For example, it is interesting to analyze all of Hezbollah’s existence (as far back as 1982), to observe how the group changed with time, including when it went from being a non-FTO to an FTO.
18 All groups on the FTO list during the years of the Jones and Libicki data are included in my data, even though some groups might not be immediately apparent. One issue is slight changes in names, such as the FTO Islamic Jihad Union, which is in Jones and Libicki as the Islamic Jihad Group.
19 As noted, group longevity could be a dependent variable, but few FTOs have ceased to exist or given up terrorism, so there is insufficient variation for meaningful analysis.
20 If a model is estimated where the dependent variable is FTO status, neither a group’s lagged attacks nor change in attacks are statistically significant, consistent with previous work (Beck and Milner Citation2013). This should reduce concerns about reverse causality.
21 FTOs that are coded as operating primarily in a U.S. ally state, according to ATOP, during at least some years of the study are those in Chile, Colombia, Greece, Japan, Pakistan, Peru, the Philippines, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, or Uzbekistan.
22 I exclude nonaggression and neutrality pacts because they imply a lower level of security cooperation (Mattes and Vonnahme Citation2010).
23 It is also weighted by the distance between countries, as well as the type of alliance.
24 If the mean pre-2001 value is inputted for the post-2000 years, results are similar.
25 If the size variable is broken down into its size categories, the two largest categories are positively associated with attack changes, relative to the smallest category.
26 If a variable is included measuring the number of terrorist groups in the country-year, it is statistically significant and positively signed. However, other results are substantively unchanged. If the variable is included in other models, it is never statistically significant.