Citation

Onat I, Guler A, Hsu HY, Reyes J. J. Polic. Intell. Count. Terror. 2021; 16(3): 283-301.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, Centre for Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism, Publisher Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/18335330.2021.1953115

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Pledging allegiance to a larger terrorist group is assumed to increase activities of religious terrorist groups because of cooperative relationships and further support. In a competing theory, a pledge to another group is viewed as symbolic to motivate a group's supporters. Taking Al-Shabaab terrorism as a case, the current study tests the extent to which those competing theories are valid for frequencies of bombings and relevant fatalities. Even though Al-Shabaab pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda since 2012, the literature lacks an empirical test of whether or not a significant change occurred in Al-Shabaab's attacks after the pledge. Drawing on data from the Global Terrorism Database results from our vector autoregressive (VAR) analysis indicate that the frequency and lethality of Al-Shabaab's bombing attacks and fatalities did not change significantly in the post-pledge period. The contributions of our findings to the terrorism literature are discussed and policy implications for counterterrorism efforts are considered.

Language: en

Keywords

al-Qaeda; Al-Shabaab; pledging allegiance; Terrorist Alliance