Terrorist Group Analysis

The organizational structure of a terrorist group determines its strengths and weaknesses and there are two categories of organization; hierarchical and networked. Groups associated with a political activity require a more hierarchical structure in order to coordinate terrorist violence with political action. Terrorist groups using the networked structure, are organized in cells so that the loss of a cell would not compromise the identity, location or actions of other cells or the organization. Hezbollah, Palestine Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and Tamil Tigers are politically motivated and their attacks are focused on their governments. Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Boko Haram, ISIS and Lashkar E Taiba are all motivated by religion and their targets are …show more content…
They really do not want too many casualties when conducting an attack. Their main goal is to end perceived economic exploitation, social injustice and political repression. On the other hand, religiously motivated groups want to inflict as many casualties as possible since loss of life is irrelevant and more casualties are better so the use of a nuclear weapon will advance their objectives. They will conduct attacks when the opportunity arises and they will ensure that civilian casualties will be significant. The results are subjective because of the biases of the some of the authors and the terrorist groups sampled because some groups will not resort to using nuclear weapons. Nuclear terrorism is a very heated subject because everyone understands the damage that can occur based on the size of the nuclear weapon used. The consequences of a nuclear weapon detonation are estimated to have both significant loss of human life and substantial cleanup and reconstruction costs plus a high degree of outright destruction of property (buildings, public infrastructure, and productive capital equipment of all sorts) will occur due to the detonation (Reichmuth and Short et al,