The Momentum of Change – Short- versus Long-Term 'Learning' of Terrorist Groups as a Result of Mergers with other Terrorist Organizations

Statistical evidence reveals that over 60 percent of terrorist groups live less than a year and only about 10 percent persist for more than 10 years. Survival as the prime motivation for terrorist learning constitutes a recurring theme in the terrorism literature: “the terrorist campaign is like a shark in the water: it must keep moving forward – no matter how slowly or incrementally – or die.” In spite of the impact of learning on the longevity of terrorist movements, “surprisingly little work has been done thus far on the topic of tactical and/or technological innovation by terrorists themselves,” as Adam Dolnik notes. Yet, terrorist learning has always been an element of the terrorism literature much of which, however, has been focused on the debate whether terrorist movements are innovative or non-innovative. The literature on terrorist learning thereby shares with the general literature on organizational learning the focus on the question whether organizations are able to learn. In fact, the bias towards investigating whether terrorists learn has distracted from the more pertinent question of how terrorists learn. Thus, referring to the disagreement over terrorists’ ability to innovate, Brian Jackson observes a focus on “the results of their actions rather than the learning processes they go through to attain them.” Research has particularly been conducted on internal dynamics of learning of terrorist movements as epitomized by the studies on organizational learning led by the RAND Corporation. This project complements this focus with putting learning in context. Learning of terrorist organizations does not occur in a vacuum leading us to ask learning from whom or from what. On the meso level the relationships with other terrorist movements is decisive for terrorist learning. In this paper the introduction of new tactics and strategies as a result of mergers between terrorist organizations are scrutinized. In previous research we observed that a merger yields in a momentum of change leading to an increase of new tactics in the year of the merger. For example, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb introduced suicide bombings in the year of the merger with Al Qaeda. However, in the following years that tactic was less employed. We will build on this research and conduct an analysis of multiple mergers between terrorist organizations around the globe in this paper with the goal to establish whether mergers between terrorist organizations lead to a short-term momentum of innovation or whether long-term learning can also be observerd. We will distinguish between short- versus long-term learning as well as between tactics and strategies – an analysis that shall shed light on the difference between change and learning.