"How do terrorists cash checks, file expenses, or meet payroll, when every document reveals identities and locations? Understanding that the mundane challenges of organizing terrorism reveal vulnerabilities, Shapiro's superbly researched book combines authoritative scholarly analysis with page-turning examples, some drawn from internal documents, others populated with Bolshevik assassins, IRA bombers, and Hamas suicide attackers. I predict a month's quiet while thoughtful terrorists and counterterrorists stay up late absorbing The Terrorist's Dilemma. Compelling, required reading."--Eli Berman, author ofRadical, Religious and Violent: The New Economics of Terrorism

"The Terrorist's Dilemma expertly incorporates organizational perspectives into the study of terrorism, producing a theoretically insightful and empirically rich work that upends many conventional assumptions. Shapiro proves that differences within the chain of command, management weaknesses, and other problems common to organizations of all stripes plague terrorist groups and offer numerous opportunities to fight them better."--Daniel Byman, Georgetown University

"The Terrorist's Dilemma adds an important dimension to the study of terrorism. The book is inventive in its use of organizational theory and sources, and its argument is logically impeccable. It is an astute and useful corrective to the misperceptions of terrorism as utterly unreasoning."--Martha Crenshaw, author of Explaining Terrorism

"The overall topic of this book--the internal dynamics and dilemmas that terrorist groups face in controlling their members--has not been seriously examined, and this book makes important contributions to a timely subject. The empirical studies are well-researched and provide compelling evidence."--Michael Freeman, author of Freedom or Security

"This book offers comprehensive evidence about how the structure of terrorist organizations affects patterns of terrorist violence and how changes to the operational environment feed back into the way terrorists organize themselves. The result is a far richer and more nuanced picture of how terrorism works, and what can be done to prevent it, than that offered by the existing literature."--Ethan Bueno de Mesquita, University of Chicago

"How do terrorists cash checks, file expenses, or meet payroll, when every document reveals identities and locations? Understanding that the mundane challenges of organizing terrorism reveal vulnerabilities, Shapiro's superbly researched book combines authoritative scholarly analysis with page-turning examples, some drawn from internal documents, others populated with Bolshevik assassins, IRA bombers, and Hamas suicide attackers. I predict a month's quiet while thoughtful terrorists and counterterrorists stay up late absorbing The Terrorist's Dilemma. Compelling, required reading."--Eli Berman, author ofRadical, Religious and Violent: The New Economics of Terrorism

"The Terrorist's Dilemma expertly incorporates organizational perspectives into the study of terrorism, producing a theoretically insightful and empirically rich work that upends many conventional assumptions. Shapiro proves that differences within the chain of command, management weaknesses, and other problems common to organizations of all stripes plague terrorist groups and offer numerous opportunities to fight them better."--Daniel Byman, Georgetown University

"The Terrorist's Dilemma adds an important dimension to the study of terrorism. The book is inventive in its use of organizational theory and sources, and its argument is logically impeccable. It is an astute and useful corrective to the misperceptions of terrorism as utterly unreasoning."--Martha Crenshaw, author of Explaining Terrorism

"The overall topic of this book--the internal dynamics and dilemmas that terrorist groups face in controlling their members--has not been seriously examined, and this book makes important contributions to a timely subject. The empirical studies are well-researched and provide compelling evidence."--Michael Freeman, author of Freedom or Security

"This book offers comprehensive evidence about how the structure of terrorist organizations affects patterns of terrorist violence and how changes to the operational environment feed back into the way terrorists organize themselves. The result is a far richer and more nuanced picture of how terrorism works, and what can be done to prevent it, than that offered by the existing literature."--Ethan Bueno de Mesquita, University of Chicago

THE TERRORIST'S DILEMMA

MANAGING VIOLENT COVERT ORGANIZATIONS

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Discussions of terrorism often conjure acts conducted by shadowy, secretorganizations employing highly motivated operatives willing to kill, anddie, for their cause. The news media generally offer sensational andcompelling profiles of individual terrorists, providing details about whothey are and speculating as to what motivates them. Stories aboutterrorist organizations tend to detail angry rhetoric and the tragicconsequences of their actions. Scholarly books ponder why terrorists usecertain tactics or raise warnings about the threats from new methodsof terrorism, such as suicide bombings or so-called lone-wolf attacks.In fact, more than twenty-five books on suicide bombings alone havebeen published since 2000, pointing to the fascination with terrorism butalso highlighting a peculiar myopia that surrounds this field. Focusingso heavily on one tactic leaves us without a broader understanding ofhow and why particular groups are so lethal, just as the raft of bookson individual terrorists' motivations tell us little about why terroristorganizations behave as they do.

What is missing from most of the public discussion is a clear understandingof the organizational side of terrorism. This is a critical gap. Noindividual or small group acting alone, nor even a group of individualsacting under a common rhetorical banner but without any coordination,can achieve the scale of violence that makes terrorism a real threat tomodern society. Individuals can conduct assassinations to be sure, andwill occasionally kill tens or even hundreds, as Timothy McVeigh did inthe April 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.But, it is organizations that have conducted the bombing campaigns thattore through Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, and Pakistan in the last fifteenyears, and it was a competently managed hierarchical organization, al-Qa'ida,that attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September11, 2001. Although dozens of outstanding books have been written onspecific terrorist groups, few have probed how these groups are organized.

One reason terrorist groups are understudied as organizations maybe that analyzing how they are managed, and why, requires more thanstudying the sensational aspects of group actions, such as how suicidebombers are recruited or how specific attacks were planned. It alsorequires focusing in on the mundane side of terrorism; the bookkeepingrequirements, disciplinary procedures, and recruiting dilemmas. As wewill see, the core managerial challenges of terrorist organizations areactually quite similar to those faced by other, more traditional humanorganizations. This is to be expected; terrorists themselves are notthat different from individuals working in traditional institutions. Thewillingness to kill civilians as a legitimate means to a political end iscertainly radical, but, terrorists are every bit as, if not more, venal, self-important,and short-sighted as the rest of us. This is exactly why theirorganizations employ many of the same managerial tools that we find inbusiness firms and government bureaucracies.

Understanding why the managerial problems of terrorists resemblethose of other conventional groups helps make sense of how terroristgroups are organized, and is crucial for efficiently dealing with them. Policymakers who are aware of the dilemmas terrorists face are better equippedto choose counterterror policies that target group-specific vulnerabilities,while taking into account how organizations are likely to adapt tothese policies. For reasons we will discuss at length, some groups maycontinue to use e-mail, phone calls, and other highly detectable methods,despite threats of these being intercepted, simply because achieving theirpolitical goals requires regular communication. Other groups readily adaptto counterterrorism efforts by allowing operatives to exercise greaterdiscretion in choosing targets rather than micromanaging their activitiesand thereby opening up the group to security risks. Group vulnerabilitiesdepend, in predictable ways, on their political goals and the nature of theiroperatives. Counterterror policies that take this fact into account can bemore targeted, more efficient, and therefore more effective.

Terrorist groups are, for the most part, small organizations operatingsomewhat secretly without the power to take and hold territory. The needfor secrecy—which arises because such groups typically cannot excludegovernment forces from the areas where they operate, nor effectively fightback against security force efforts to capture or imprison their members—imposesa host of organizational challenges and constraints. The groupsthat eventually win political power, or even major concessions, do so noton the strength of their violence, but on the back of large-scale politicalmobilization and participation in normal politics.

The more we can see terrorist groups for what they are—ordinaryorganizations operating at a tremendous disadvantage—the easier it is toconsign them to their proper place in the range of threats to society.Seeking to understand the terrorists' dilemmas, in other words, doesnot imply sympathy for their goals or an acceptance of their means.Rather, understanding the very banality of terrorist organizations canserve as an important corrective to the natural tendency to view thesepolitical organizations as something unique and exceptionally threatening.Ultimately, they are neither. They are mundane and, while dangerous,rank quite low in the set of deadly threats against which societymust prepare. What's more, they suffer from deep and intractableorganizational dilemmas, ones that if understood can be exploited to makecounterterrorism efforts more effective.

1.1 THE CHALLENGE OF ORGANIZING TERROR

The starting point for our analysis is the recognition that terroristorganizations face a difficult task in a hostile operational setting. Thedifficult task is achieving the controlled use of violence as a means ofachieving a specified political end. Using too much violence, or hitting thewrong targets, can be just as damaging to a cause as employing too little.The Real IRA (RIRA) bombing in Omagh, Northern Ireland, in August1998 is a perfect example of counterproductive violence. The attack, whichkilled twenty-nine people, was a massive strategic blunder by a factiondissatisfied with the Northern Ireland peace process. It aroused intensepublic outrage at the RIRA, discredited Republican opposition to theGood Friday Agreement, and has been credited with spurring on the peaceprocess. Following the attack, support for the RIRA withered, and from2003 through 2008, the group conducted only three attacks.

The operational setting for terrorists is unusually hostile in that theseorganizations, unlike rebel groups that fight primarily by holding territory,rely on stealth and secrecy to complete their missions. They must, inother words, maintain that calibrated use of force in an environmentwhere becoming known to government leads to operational failure andcan cause further security compromises as government forces arrest theknown associates of captured individuals.

The organizational challenge in precisely calibrating violence stemsfrom the fact that political and ideological leaders, or the principals,must delegate certain duties—such as planning attacks, soliciting funds,and recruiting—to middlemen or low-level operatives, their agents. Suchdelegation is problematic as agents in terrorist organizations often see theworld differently than their leaders and tend to disagree with them onboth how best to serve the cause and how to carry out specific missions.Strategies to control the resulting agency problems all entail securitycosts. Ultimately, groups cannot remain highly secure and simultaneouslywell-controlled. This is what makes terrorist groups unique; the toolsthat would bring more control, management, and insight are the verytools that put these groups at risk. Of course, all organizations pay acost for managing their people, but the tradeoffs are unusually starkfor terrorist groups. The weekly report is no longer merely a nuisancethat takes away time from more productive activities; it also becomes apotential ticket to arrest, detention, death, or an entire operation beingfoiled.

1.2 THE TERRORIST'S DILEMMA: CONTROLLINGVIOLENCE AND FINANCES WHILE REMAINING COVERT

The terrorist's dilemma is simple: leaders need to control how violenceis executed and how finances are managed, but the tools to do so createsome measure of operational vulnerabilities and therefore increase thelikelihood of operatives being caught and a group compromised. Theintensity of this dilemma is captured by the fact that certain themessurface repeatedly in terrorists' own organizational writings. There is aconsistent focus on how to achieve the appropriate use of violence whenthe rank and file often clamor for more violence than is useful from theleader's perspective or seek to make a profit for themselves in the course oftheir duties. Groups routinely struggle with the problem of staying covertwhile also maintaining situational awareness about political developmentsso that members understand which actions will advance the broader causeand which will exceed the public's tolerance for violence and thereforebe politically counterproductive. Finally, there is consistent concern withbalancing the need to control operational elements with the need to evadegovernment attention and limit the consequences of any compromise.

White supremacist intellectual Louis Beam, for example, advocatesminimizing the risk of compromises by making no efforts whatsoeverto coordinate actions. His "leaderless resistance" concept entails a fewideologues providing guidance on the need for a struggle to defend thewhite race in America and on what types of actions should be taken, whilemaking no efforts to conduct operations themselves. The actual operationsare left to the initiative of individual "patriots." While this approachproved useful in keeping Beam out of prison—he has been able to leada de facto terrorist movement for many years without being successfullyprosecuted—it has been a near total failure as a method of fomentingwidespread armed resistance against the U.S. government.

The difficulties of controlling violence feature prominently in theorganizational writings of early Russian Marxists. Groups such as theParty of the Socialist Revolutionaries (PSR) and the Russian SocialDemocratic Labor Party (RSDLP) had regular problems with local cellsconducting revenge attacks that could not be justified by Marxist theory.More recently, a 1977 "Staff Report" for the Provisional Irish RepublicanArmy (PIRA) General Headquarters (GHQ) detailed reorganization plansintended to minimize security vulnerabilities while maintaining sufficientoperational control. One PIRA member reflecting on the use of carbombs argued against their use because "it was too difficult to controland therefore you ended up with civilian casualties which no one wanted,which was (a) a tragedy for the people who were killed and (b) it was apolitical disaster for the aims of the struggle."

Islamist groups are not immune to these concerns either, and maintainingsituational awareness seems particularly problematic for them.Rich evidence of this fact is found in internal documents captured fromal-Qa'ida and other groups that were originally contained in the U.S.Department of Defense's Harmony Database. The database contains morethan one million documents picked up during operations in Afghanistan,Iraq, and elsewhere. Roughly a quarter of the documents have beentranslated and a large number have been released. We will use thedocuments throughout the book to provide a rich view inside modernIslamist terrorist groups. Documents from the Harmony database arereferenced by their document number. The problem of becomingdetached from the masses because of the exigencies of maintainingsecurity features prominently in Abu Musab al-Suri's "lessons-learned"document describing the failed jihad waged against the Assad regimein Syria from 1976 to 1982. Abu Musab discusses emulating theItalian Red Brigades to better compartmentalize information whilemaintaining operational effectiveness. As well, captured letters betweenal-Qa'ida members discuss how planning and conducting too manyattacks can become counterproductive, leading to unwanted governmentattention. For example, in a June 2002 letter, Saif al-Adel, a member ofal-Qa'ida, criticized Osama bin Laden's leadership. He argued that thegroup needed to take an operational pause to regroup following setbacksin East Asia, Europe, America, the Horn of Africa, Yemen, the Gulf,and Morocco. Continuing to engage in "foreign actions" is described asbringing excessive pressure to bear on the organization. Such views arenot unique, and similar concerns have been voiced in the Arabic press bythose concerned with the broader Islamist agenda. For many terroristgroups, conducting too many attacks can be as damaging as conductingtoo few.

A particularly telling example of a terrorist group having problemscontrolling violence comes from al-Qa'ida in Iraq (AQI) in 2007. On May28 of that year the local branch of the Islamic Army of Iraq (IAI), anindigenous Sunni militant organization, posted a notice at a mosque inBaghdad's Amiriyah district criticizing AQI for killing Sunnis withoutsufficient evidence that they had done anything wrong. The next day,a group of AQI fighters trying to erase anti-AQI graffiti were attacked,leading to several days of fighting between AQI and IAI. Early in theviolence, on May 31, 2007, the local AQI leader Abu al-Hasan Safir wroteto his leadership trying to justify the violence by claiming that only heand his fighters "... are aware of the true nature of the Islamic Armyand its leadership ..." A few days later though, when it became clearthat the fighting was a public relations disaster for AQI (and perhapsa military one as they seemed to get the worst of the fighting with theIAI), AQI's overall leader issued a pamphlet ordering his fighters to stayhome and avoid further conflict while he rectified the situation with theIAI leadership. Two facts about this incident are informative. First,the communication from AQI's leadership to the local cell was made viaa public pamphlet, suggesting direct communications within the groupwere not especially reliable at that time. Second, it was not until June2, four days into the fighting, that the Abu al-Hasan wrote to his superiorsto ask what "the big picture [general policy] of dealing with the IslamicArmy" should be, suggesting the AQI leadership had failed to effectivelycommunicate how specific actions would contribute to the cause.

This conflict between AQI and the IAI was not an isolated incident.AQI repeatedly had problems with local units taking actions thatled to conflicts with other insurgent organizations and alienated noncombatants,or at least captured documents suggesting that they did.In January 2007, for example, AQI leader Abu Hamza received a seriesof letters from Abu Abdullah al Shafi'i, the leader of Ansar al-Sunnah(an indigenous Sunni insurgent group), about a range of conflicts betweentheir organizations' fighters. Abu Hamza responded to these critiquesby suggesting that the fault lies with his operatives, hinting that theywere not acting under orders, and stating that he is "willing to hand overany person [who has] committed a crime of blood or took your money."While Abu Hamza may have been disavowing his operatives' activitiesfor political reasons in this particular instance, and not because theywere actually acting contrary to his direction, there is plenty of evidencethat AQI frequently had problems managing its fighters. AQI internalmemos also criticize operational cells for taking actions that alienatedlocal populations. And, in a 2008 interview with Al-Arab, the leader ofthe ISI in Samaraa discussed his concerns with excess violence "drivenby young men who were not controlled ... [because of] the difficulty incommunications between the cells and factions."

The terrorist's organizational dilemma, maintaining control whilestaying covert, creates two fundamental tradeoffs that will frame muchof this discussion. The first is between operational security and financialefficiency. Here problems of trust and control—agency problems—leadto wasteful, inefficient resource allocation from a leader's perspective.Auditing and other strategies to mitigate these problems all entail theirown security costs. The second tradeoff is between operational securityand tactical control. Here agency problems and other group dynamicslead to counterproductive violence. Strategies to mitigate these problemsthrough greater control entail security costs for groups as a whole.
(Continues...)Excerpted from THE TERRORIST'S DILEMMA by Jacob N. Shapiro. Copyright © 2013 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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