Assessing the Effectiveness of Leadership Decapitation as a Counterterrorism Strategy

The strategy of leadership decapitation continues to remain a contentious portion of counterterrorism policy even after the two-decade long War on Terror has concluded. Removing the leader from one of these organizations by either capturing, killing, or capturing and then killing them, has inevitably led to questioning how effective this strategy really is. Are we successfully reducing these group’s operational capabilities and the ability for them to harm more innocent people in the future, or are we simply perpetuating the cycle of hate, providing more motivation and reasoning for them to continue their violent tactics? While some terrorist groups are similar in their desired goals, many are quite different categorically in how they achieve means to this end. Motivated by different internal and external driving factors from one another, their strategies are uncovered over time through their attack history and in-depth analysis into their leader’s behaviors and decisions. This thesis assesses nine terrorist organization’s attack history, the role of these internal and external driving factors, and whether the direct use of this strategy was effective in thwarting future attacks