{"385661":{"#nid":"385661","#data":{"type":"external_news","title":"Killing Top Terrorists Is Not Enough","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EA skeptical caution about the efficacy of targeting top leaders comes from Jenna Jordan, an assistant professor at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She first distilled her critique in a 2009 article in Security Studies titled, \u201c\u003Ca title=\u0022informationcollective.org\u0022 href=\u0022http:\/\/informationcollective.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Jordan.pdf\u0022\u003EWhen Heads Roll: Assessing the Effectiveness of Leadership Decapitation\u003C\/a\u003E.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cblockquote\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cDecapitation is not an effective counterterrorism strategy,\u201d Jordan wrote bluntly. She said killing top leaders \u201cdoes not increase the likelihood of organizational collapse,\u201d and that \u201cdecapitation is more likely to have counterproductive effects in larger, older, religious and separatist organizations.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/blockquote\u003E\u003Cp id=\u0022U900220735354a1C\u0022\u003EAnalyzing 298 incidents from 1945 to 2004, Jordan found that killing the leader of a group resulted in its collapse only 30\u0026nbsp;percent of the time. With religious organizations, less than 5 percent collapsed after the leader was killed. Overall, organizations were actually more prone to decline if their leaders survived.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EJordan updated her contrarian assessment last year in in an article titled \u201c\u003Ca title=\u0022muse.jhu.edu\u0022 href=\u0022http:\/\/muse.jhu.edu\/login?auth=0\u0026amp;type=summary\u0026amp;url=\/journals\/international_security\/v038\/38.4.jordan.pdf\u0022\u003EAttacking the Leader, Missing the Mark\u003C\/a\u003E\u201d in the journal International Security. Here, she focused on the decade-long decapitation campaign against al-Qaeda following its Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. She found that the United States launched 109 strikes on al-Qaeda leadership between 2001 and 2011. But the number of attacks by the group and its affiliates \u201crose steadily\u201d over that decade. As the lethality of attacks from al-Qaeda\u2019s core declined, that of its affiliates increased.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cblockquote\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cEssentially, al-Qaeda did not suffer a period of degradation,\u201d she warned in the 2014 study. The lesson was that, \u201ceven if organizations are weakened after the killing or arrest of their leaders, they tend to survive, regroup and continue carrying out attacks.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/blockquote\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/targeting-top-terrorists-is-not-enough\/2015\/03\/05\/8d5418f0-c35c-11e4-9ec2-b418f57a4a99_story.html\u0022\u003EContinue to full article...\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":"","uid":"27889","created_gmt":"2015-03-09 09:49:05","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 02:24:00","author":"Beth Godfrey","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","publication":"graduation 2023","field_article_url":"","publication_url":"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/targeting-top-terrorists-is-not-enough\/2015\/03\/05\/8d5418f0-c35c-11e4-9ec2-b418f57a4a99_story.html","dateline":{"date":"2015-03-05T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2015-03-05T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"385641":{"id":"385641","type":"image","title":"Jenna Jordan","body":null,"created":"1449246262","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 16:24:22","changed":"1475894398","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:39:58","alt":"Jenna Jordan","file":{"fid":"75404","name":"jennajordanweb.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/jennajordanweb.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/jennajordanweb.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":132872,"path_740":"http:\/\/tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/jennajordanweb.jpg?itok=7OdNAQjB"}}},"media_ids":["385641"],"groups":[{"id":"1281","name":"Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts"},{"id":"1285","name":"Sam Nunn School of International Affairs"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[{"id":"120721","name":"al-Quada"},{"id":"851","name":"INTA"},{"id":"2166","name":"Jordan"},{"id":"10536","name":"Nunn School"},{"id":"104081","name":"press"},{"id":"997","name":"terrorism"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}