TerrorismNo consensus over whether killing terrorist leaders weakens their organizations

U.S. counterterrorism officials anticipate that killing the leader of a terrorist organization may weaken the group and begin the degradation of its capabilities. When the Pentagon confirmed that American airstrikes in Somalia last week had killed Ahmed Abdi Godane, the leader and co-founder of al-Qaeda-linked terror group al-Shabaab, Pentagon press secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby said in a statement that “removing Godane from the battlefield is a major symbolic and operational loss to al-Shabaab.” As the United States begins to target IS, including its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, officials must anticipate how decapitation will affect the group’s activities.

Targeted airstrikes or raids aimed at leaders of terrorist organizations are a main component of President Barack Obama’s counterterrorism strategy, but analysts are disagree whether decapitation weakens such organizations or lead them to be more radicalized and violent. The Atlantic notes that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party scaled back its attacks in Turkey after the 1999 capture of its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, but also notes that Israel has killed several Hamas leaders — but the Palestinian group continues to regroup and further its attacks.

Succession struggles within South American and Mexican drug cartels following the killing of kingpins by law enforcement, show that decapitation can also increase a group’s violence.

In 2009, Jenna Jordon, then-Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago, examined 298 cases of terrorist leaders being targeted between 1945 and 2002. She concluded that organizations that experienced a loss of leadership tend to remain active — as measured by their inclusion on the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations — longer than organizations that crumpled for other reasons.

“Organizations that have not had their leaders removed are more likely to fall apart than those that have undergone a loss of leadership,” Jordon wrote.

In contrast, RAND Corporation’s Patrick Johnston examined ninety insurgent campaigns from 1975 to 2003, and found that removing an insurgent group’s leadership increases a government’s chances of defeating the group.

Research from Northeastern University’s Max Abrahms and the University of Michigan’s Philip Potter found that killing a terror group’s leadership may result in increased civilian casualties. “The leadership can actually have a restraining effect on lower-level members,” Abrahms said. Al-Qaeda’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has been quoted instructing his followers to “avoid collateral damage,” and not join the Islamic State (IS). Citing his research, Abrahms speculates that decapitation could, over time, defeat a terrorist group since such organizations tend to lose popular support when they repeatedly inflict harm on civilians.

Audrey Kurth Cronin of George Mason University, in her book How Terrorism Ends, suggests that the structure of a terrorist organization determines whether decapitation will lead to its demise. “Those that have ended through decapitation have tended to be hierarchically structured, young, characterized by a cult of personality, and lacking a viable successor,” she wrote.

For al-Shabaab, Godane was its strategic planner, but the group is reported to have been decentralized since an African Union offensive began in 2011, driving out militants from Mogadishu into smaller towns. Additionally, al-Shabaab has already experienced decapitation, said Kenneth Menkhaus, a political-science professor at Davidson College who has studied the group, adding that since Godane’s killing, al-Shabaab has already named a new leader.