2021/07/14 by Ismail Onat, Ahmet Güler, Henda Y. Hsu +1 · 3 citations
Social Sciences · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence #Political Conflict and Governance #Economic Sanctions and International Relations #Pledge #Terrorism #Allegiance #Al qaeda #Political science #Islam #Political economy #Law #Economics #Geography #Politics
paper · doi:10.1080/18335330.2021.1953115
published in Journal of Policing Intelligence and Counter Terrorism 16(3), 283-301 (Taylor & Francis)
openalex publication_date 2021/07/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
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.