Terror Group Stats

The RAND corporation, the US think-tank that I mentioned a few posts ago (Other Residencies, #3) have recently issued a report that advocates a different approach to the war on terror. Apparently the likelihood of stopping al Qa'ida with military force is less than one-in-ten.

Their analysis also found that:

religiously motivated terrorist groups took longer to eliminate than other groups but rarely achieved their objectives; no

religiously motivated group achieved victory during the period studied.

size significantly determined a group's fate. Groups exceeding 10,000 members were victorious more than 25 percent of the time, while victory was rare for groups below 1,000 members.

terrorist groups from upper-income countries are much more likely to be left-wing or nationalist and much less likely to be motivated by religion.

The full report can be read here.