Suzanne Weedon Levy

This concluding chapter synthesizes our key findings on why insurgent groups target Americans and the consequences of such actions. Our multi-method analysis reveals that anti-American violence emerges from a complex interplay of direct factors (religious ideology, US troop presence, foreign aid, etc.) and indirect factors (alliances, rivalries, economic relationships, etc.) operating across organizational, state, and international levels. Notably, groups targeting Americans demonstrate subsequent increased longevity and enhanced lethality, suggesting these attacks serve as strategic investments yielding tangible benefits for insurgent groups. Our findings suggest that although military interventions may be necessary to combat insurgency and terrorism, they are most effective when combined with robust public diplomacy designed to explain the purpose and scope of US presence to local populations. Similarly, aid programs should be designed with a keen awareness of local dynamics. The United States can also leverage its economic and cultural endowments to foster positive interactions. Finally, we discuss possibilities for future research, noting that the new era of global politics has deemphasized counterinsurgency in favor of great power competition. Exploring how insurgents may shift their targets in this new era represents both a challenge and an opportunity for future research. Ultimately, this book is not only a comprehensive analysis of a critical security issue but also a call for continued rigorous research and thoughtful policy formulation in the face of an ever-changing global security landscape.

In this chapter, we test hypotheses from our theoretical framework related to risk factors for attacks on Americans. The distinctions between direct and indirect motivations are recapitulated. The data structure—a Time-Series Cross-Sectional (TSCS) design—is elaborated. Initial tests of our hypotheses are conducted with cross-tabulations, and these show initial support for our framework. Multivariate analyses using logistic and negative binomial regressions are then conducted to estimate the likelihood that insurgent organizations will attack Americans. Because countries hosting American troops may simply provide more opportunity for insurgents to attack Americans, we conduct additional tests using variants of the dependent variable separating domestic and international attacks on Americans. We also execute a set of robustness tests that exclude the major American wars of the period—Iraq and Afghanistan—from the sample. Our analyses confirm many of our posited hypotheses: The deployment of American military forces plays a significant role. Religious ideology is also strongly associated with attacks on Americans. Cultural and economic integration are associated with reduced risk of attacks on Americans.

This chapter examines two insurgent groups that targeted Americans primarily within their home states: the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Through these comparative case studies, we analyze how different motivations and contexts drive anti-American violence within domestic territories. FARC, emerging from Colombia’s “La Violencia” conflict, conducted sixteen attacks against Americans between 1998 and 2012, with activities peaking during increased US involvement in Plan Colombia. Initially economically motivated, FARC’s attacks evolved to express more explicit anti-American sentiments as US involvement intensified. The organization’s territorial control and substantial membership facilitated operations like kidnappings of American civilians and targeting of US businesses. TTP, formed in 2007 when militant factions united to escape US occupation in Afghanistan, as well as Pakistani military operations, developed a “global jihad” outlook. The group committed five attacks against Americans from 2010 to 2012, primarily bombings against US consulates and military personnel, framing these as retaliation for American aggression in Muslim lands. Despite their ideological differences—FARC’s Marxist-Leninism versus TTP’s Deobandi religious doctrine—both groups demonstrated similar strategic calculations. US military presence, foreign aid flows, and counterinsurgency efforts provided both motivation and opportunity for anti-American attacks. These cases reveal that anti-American violence represents a calculated response to specific political conditions, serving multiple strategic functions within the insurgents’ broader campaigns against their respective governments and the American influence they perceived as threatening to those objectives.

Why do insurgent organizations attack Americans? Do organizations that do so continue to thrive, or do they tend to decline? This introductory chapter describes the book’s central thesis, the scope conditions of the thesis, key contributions, and methodology. Motivations for insurgent attacks on Americans fall into two broad categories: direct and indirect. Direct motivations are those in which insurgents seek to directly harm Americans. Indirect motivations are those in which insurgents believe they can raise their public profile by attacking Americans. Our study brings three key contributions to the literature. First, we delineate between insurgency and terrorism, noting that most analyses of anti-American violence focus on the latter at the expense of the former. Our analysis, then, is one of the first to explore anti-American violence by insurgents. Second, our level of analysis is that of the insurgent organization, rather than individual attacks or countries in which attacks occur. Third, we analyze the consequences for insurgent groups that attack Americans. Our findings show that insurgent violence against Americans is a complex phenomenon, but that organizations that commit such attacks become even more violent over time and more likely to survive. Methodologically, we pursue a mix of quantitative and qualitative techniques. Our main findings are supported by statistical analyses on a global sample of insurgent organizations. These findings are contextualized and illustrated with four case studies.

Why do some insurgent groups target Americans? What are some of the consequences for insurgent groups that engage in anti-American violence? Do such insurgent groups continue to thrive, or does attacking Americans contribute to their decline and demise? Attacking and even killing Americans is a risky strategy for most insurgents, potentially risking retaliation from the world’s foremost military power. Yet, some groups deliberately pursue this course of action. We answer the above questions by examining how various incentives shape insurgent anti-American violence. To explore the puzzle, we develop a theoretical framework that accounts for strategic-level factors, but also organizational strategic decision-making processes and the organizational consequences of anti-American violence. We find that some factors, like ideology and the deployment of American military forces, encourage attacks on Americans targets, while others tend to restrain insurgents, such as the prevalence of American cultural artifacts. Targeting Americans also seems to yield important benefits: Insurgent groups that attack Americans can raise their profile among sympathizers and gain access to new resources. Significantly, they also tend to become more lethal and more likely to survive after attacking Americans. We use data on insurgent groups (the Big Allied and Dangerous 2.0-Insurgency dataset) to assess these factors quantitatively, and discuss four case studies to illustrate the underlying mechanisms, closely examining the causes and consequences of anti-American violence for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Al-Shabaab, and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU).

In the book’s appendix, we provide further details about the BAAD2-I data, regression diagnostics, and robustness tests for our main statistical models. The history of the BAAD2-I data is given, as is a short summary of prior research using the dataset. Diagnostics for the models in Chapter 6 are reported, including checks for outliers and collinearity. Although no diagnostic reports significant issues, we present additional models making various corrections designed to further allay concerns about our statistics. Similarly, we undertake robustness checks for those models reported in Chapter 7. These include tests for violations of the Proportional Hazards assumption in our Cox models of insurgent group survival, as well as zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB) models of insurgent group lethality.

This chapter examines two insurgent groups that targeted Americans beyond their home states: Al-Shabaab and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). Through these comparative case studies, we analyze how insurgent organizations develop the motivation and capability to conduct transnational anti-American attacks despite the significant logistical challenges involved. Al-Shabaab, emerging from Somalia’s civil war, conducted three attacks against Americans between 2009 and 2010, including a mortar attack on a US congressman, kidnapping aid workers in Kenya, and bombing a World Cup viewing event in Uganda. The IMU, formed in 1998 out of the turmoil of post–Soviet Uzbekistan, executed two significant anti-American operations: the 2000 kidnapping of American mountain climbers in Kyrgyzstan and the 2004 suicide bombing at the US Embassy in Tashkent. Both groups underwent similar evolutions from locally focused insurgencies to organizations with transnational capabilities. Their religious foundations provided theological frameworks that portrayed the United States as an enemy, reinforced through alliances with Al-Qaeda that served as conduits for anti-American sentiment and operational expertise. US military presence, counterterrorism operations, and financial assistance to regional governments created tangible grievances that both groups exploited in propaganda and recruitment. What distinguishes these cases from those in Chapter 3 is the cross-border nature of their attacks, requiring additional organizational resources, coordination, and strategic vision. Despite operating in different regions—East Africa and Central Asia—similar patterns emerge in how these insurgent groups responded to American involvement, demonstrating that transnational anti-American violence represents deliberate strategic calculations rather than opportunistic actions.

In this chapter, we test hypotheses on the consequences to insurgent organizations after they attack Americans. Our theoretical framework posits that organizations attack Americans in order to win credibility from within the insurgent landscape. We employ survival analysis to model the longevity of insurgent organizations, and negative binomial models are used to assess their lethality. The survival analysis shows strong support for our framework; indeed, only one insurgent organization attacking Americans actually fails to survive to the end of our study period (the Free Aceh Movement, or GAM). We explore the GAM at length, showing that its exception poses no contradiction to our theory. Insurgent group lethality also shows a strong relationship with attacks on Americans—insurgents are likely to inflict a greater number of fatalities after their first attack on Americans. Robustness checks using zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB) models support these conclusions. Our results show strong support for our theoretical framework.

This chapter develops a comprehensive theoretical framework to explain why certain insurgent groups target Americans and examines the consequences of such actions. Drawing on literature from multiple domains, we analyze the puzzle of why insurgents would attack citizens of the world’s foremost military power despite the risks of retaliation. Our multi-level framework considers direct factors such as religious ideology and US troop presence, alongside indirect factors including organizational alliances, rivalries, and economic relationships that shape insurgent decision-making. We propose ten testable hypotheses addressing motivations and outcomes of anti-American violence. At the organizational level, we posit that religious ideologies, alliance networks, and competitive rivalries increase the likelihood of insurgent targeting of Americans. At the country level, we examine how US troop deployments, foreign aid flows, trade relationships, and cultural penetration influence insurgent calculations. Beyond explaining motivations, we also theorize that groups engaging in anti-American violence subsequently exhibit increased organizational longevity and lethality. This framework advances existing scholarship by addressing crucial gaps in our understanding of international insurgent violence.

This chapter introduces the Big Allied and Dangerous 2.0-Insurgency subsample data (BAAD2-I), which contains yearly variables for 140 insurgent organizations for the period of 1998–2012. We review the precursors to BAAD2-I and its inclusion criteria, in which an insurgent organization must participate in an armed conflict with a state in which there are at least twenty-five battle-related deaths in a given year. The coding procedure is described, after which we provide the operational definitions for our dependent variables: Attacks on Americans, Attacks Within Homebase, and Attacks Outside Homebase. We also examine the consequences of target selection via Survival and Lethality. Descriptive statistics and definitions are then provided for our independent variables, including Ideology, Territorial Control, Allies, Rivals, and State Sponsorship. Additional independent variables were compiled from existing datasets, including US Troops presence, Military Aid, Imports/Exports, and GDP per capita. We also use the Time Since McDonald’s Introduced as a proxy for the United States’ soft power influence. Examples are used to illustrate these concepts throughout the chapter. This comprehensive overview provides a basis for quantitative modeling concerning insurgent attacks on American citizens and interests explored in subsequent chapters.