Terrorism has been an extensively resorted tool by ethnic insurgents trying to seek political and territorial concessions from target states. Despite extensive invaluable research on ethnic conflict and terrorism separately, we surprisingly miss a systematic analysis of terrorism in the context of ethnic insurgency. Some recent research focuses on nonviolence as a more useful tool in resolving internal conflict and points out the reason why terrorism is not an effective long-term strategy in seeking conflict resolution, we do not have specific work on why and how the use of terrorism by rebel groups influence the course and outcome of ethnic conflicts. In this paper, I build a theory capturing the interaction between terrorism and ethnic conflict and test the implications on a newly collected large-N dataset. I argue that use of terrorism gives more international coverage to ethnic insurgents and helps them acquire prominence abroad. This is especially important for the potential external state supporters of ethnic rebels. External states with some stake in the internal conflict turn into actual supporters of such ethnic insurgents and they contribute to the endurance of insurgency over many years. Though the use of terrorism is not welcomed by target states and makes it hard to sit at the bargaining table with ethnic insurgents, the acquisition of external state supporters help the insurgency to continue its violent engagement against the target states. Thus, in turn, ethnic insurgencies take too long to resolve especially if insurgents are fighting strong states.
