The Bomber Who Calls Ahead: Terrorism, Insurgency, and the Politics of Pre-Attack Warnings
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The Bomber Who Calls Ahead: Terrorism, Insurgency, and the Politics of Pre-Attack Warnings Joseph M. Brown Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2015 c 2015 Joseph M. Brown All rights reserved Abstract The Bomber Who Calls Ahead: Terrorism, Insurgency, and the Politics of Pre-Attack Warnings Joseph M. Brown Terrorist and insurgent groups sometimes give pre-attack warnings, informing governments of the time and place of attacks before they occur. This dissertation explains why militant groups give these warnings. It also explains why governments believe these warnings and respond to them, mobilizing emergency resources and carrying out economically disruptive evacuations. Based on interviews and other historical research on the Irish Republican Army (IRA), Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), the Tamil Tigers, Shining Path, and Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), this dissertation argues that pre-attack warnings serve a casualty-limiting function. Militant groups give warnings when civilian casualties are politically costly for the group. Civilian casualties are especially costly for groups that depend on local populations for shelter, funding and other critical resources. These conclusions are confirmed by logit analyses of a new database of more than 3,000 bombing events. A game theoretic signaling model also predicts when governments will believe and respond to warnings. Governments respond to warnings when militants are known to warn only when attacking and the frequency of prank warnings is low. The model’s predictions are confirmed by interviews of police in Northern Ireland and Spain. A novel finding is that a high frequency of pranks (false warnings emanating from individuals outside the militant group) may force militants to warn truthfully. Militants may also work with governments to create clear channels for communication, using third party intermediaries, codes, and redundant messages to set militants’ warnings apart from the “noise” of pranks. This finding substantiates a game theoretic prediction that experimental methods have so far failed to validate: that increased noise may induce separating equilibria, increasing rather than decreasing the information in a signal. Contents List of Figures ii List of Tables iii Introduction 1 1 Scope and Relation to Existing Literature 10 2 Theory and Research Design 24 3 Pre-Attack Warnings by the Provisional IRA 32 4 Tests on Paired Case Studies 52 5 Quantitative Analysis 78 6 Warnings, Phone Chains, and Trust 120 7 Extensions to State Behavior 163 8 Conclusion 183 References 216 i List of Figures 1 Probability of Warning: Non-Maximalist, Non-Religious, Non-Suicide Attacker . 104 2 Probability of Warning: Maximalist, Religious, Non-Suicide Attacker . 104 3 Probability of Warning: Non-Maximalist, Religious, Suicide Attacker . 105 4 Probability of Warning: Maximalist, Religious, Suicide Attacker . 105 5 Probability of Warning: Maximalist, Non-Religious, Non-Suicide Attacker . 106 6 Probability of Warning: Civil Society Target . 108 7 Probability of Warning: Infrastructure Target . 109 8 Probability of Warning: Government Target . 109 9 Probability of Warning: Business Target . 110 10 Probability of Warning: Private Citizens Target . 110 11 Probability of Warning: Maximalist, Religious, Non-Suicide Attacker and Maximal- ist, Religious, Suicide Attacker . 113 12 Probability of Warning: Non-Maximalist, Religious, Non-Suicide Attacker (PTS=4) and Maximalist, Religious, Suicide Attacker . 114 13 Probability of Warning: Non-Maximalist, Religious, Non-Suicide Attacker (PTS=3) and Maximalist, Religious, Suicide Attacker . 115 14 Attacking Militant’s Signal When Government Mobilizes Selectively . 131 15 Government Response to Warnings When Militants Signal Truthfully . 135 16 Government Response to Warnings When Militants Pool On Warning . 136 17 Effect of Maximalism: Europe vs. Non-Europe Cases (PTS=2, Autonomy=0, Reli- gion/Islam=0, Suicide=0).................................... 215 18 Probability of Warning: Maximalist, Religious, Suicide Attacker and Non-Maximalist, Religious, Non-Suicide Attacker . 215 ii List of Tables 1 Logit Results . 95 2 Pearson Correlation Matrix . 97 3 Variable Means, Europe and Non-Europe . 100 4 Logit Results . 102 5 Marginal Effects . 211 6 Logit Results with Dummy Variables TerrStrong and Statespond . 212 7 Codings of Militant Groups . 213 8 Codings of Militant Groups . 214 iii Acknowledgements I owe many thanks to many people who supported me through the long process of writing this dissertation. I can name most of them, but some must remain anonymous for their own reasons. Of those I can name, I thank my advisors, Robert Jervis and Page Fortna, as well as my dissertation defense and proposal committee members: Severine Autesserre, Stuart Gottlieb, Austin Long, and Robert Shapiro. I thank Johannes Urpelainen and Macartan Humphreys for their advice regard- ing my formal model. I also thank the Department of Political Science at Columbia University for being my base and institutional support from 2009 to 2015. For their generous financial support, I thank the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy and the Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity (AC4) at the Earth Institute at Columbia University. I also thank Professor Christopher Coker and the Department of Interna- tional Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science for hosting me as a guest researcher during my fieldwork in Ireland and Great Britain. I thank the Coiste na nIarichimí Republican ex-prisoners support group for making former IRA prisoners available for interviews. I also thank the Falls Road office of Sinn Féin, the North- ern Ireland Retired Police Officers Association (NIRPOA), the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland Policing Board, the Samaritans organization, the Department of Justice of Northern Ireland, the Irish Republican History Museum, the Royal United Services Institute, and the CAIN project at the University of Ulster. For their special assistance in Northern Ireland, I thank Seánna Walsh, Danny Morrison, Robert McClanahan, John O’Hagan, Eamon Mallie, William Mawhinney, Jonathan Blake, Joanne Mur- phy, Brendan Birt, Geraldine Mc Allister, Peter Gilleece, Kevin O’Brien, Jo Black, Leanne Donly, Tim Farrell, Patrick Thomson-McQuiston, Maura Scully, and Louise Quinn. For their assistance in iv Britain, I thank Jonathan Powell, Gordon Barrass, John Bew, Richard English, and Peter Neumann. For their assistance with my research on ETA and the government of Spain, I thank Antton Etxebeste, the Guardia Civíl, Urko Aiartza, the New York Euzko-Etxea, Brian Currin, Gorka Es- piau, Paul Rios, Joseba Zulaika, and the Lokarri organization. For their assistance with my research on the LTTE and Sri Lanka, I thank M.A. Sumanthiran, Jayantha Dhanapala, the British Tamils Forum, the Federation of Tamil Sangams of North Amer- ica, Tamils Against Genocide, John Rogers and Ira Unamboowe of the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies, Jehan Perera and National Peace Council of Sri Lanka, and Jayadeva Uyangoda. For their assistance with my research in Peru, I thank Maria Cruz-Saco, Salomón Lerner Febrés, Ri- cardo Caro, Gustavo Gorriti, Paula Muñoz, Jean Franco Olivera, Maria Rae, Eduardo Toche, Talia Castro-Pozo, Cynthia Sanborn, Orieta Pérez, the Instituto de Democracia y Derechos Humanos, and the Centro de Información para la Memoria Colectiva y los Derechos Humanos. I thank my research assistants for their tremendous help in producing the quantitative database for my research: David Ray Anderson, Fatima Dar, Katie Garcia, Gi Jae Han, Kangdi Li, Antoine Sander, Adefunke Sonaike, and Nidale Zouhir. I also thank my Basque and Spanish translator, Jon Lizarraga Díaz. I thank the many academics who assisted me in obtaining IRB approval for my research: Rebekka Friedman, Diego Navarro Bonilla, Zachariah Mampilly, Xabier Irujo, Roger Mac Ginty, Richard English, Neil DeVotta, Mark Whitaker, Roland Vazquez, and Zoe Bray. Finally, I thank my family, friends, and loved ones for the support they have given me over the past six years. v Dedication To my grandfather, Joseph M. Valloti, the original doctor in the family, who has always inspired and supported me. vi Introduction Thousands of shoppers visit the stores in the commercial center of Manchester, England on any given Saturday. The morning of June 15, 1996 was typical in that regard. Between 75,000 and 80,000 people packed the department stores, restaurants, and other businesses in the city center, unaware of the 3,300 lb ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel bomb hidden in a red and white freight truck nearby. Elite members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) had driven the truck into Manchester shortly after nine o’clock that morning, parking it outside the glass display win- dows of Marks and Spencer, one of the largest department stores in the city. The stage was set for an extraordinary bloodbath. Then, shortly after 9:40AM, the situation changed dramatically. Police rushed to the area around Marks and Spencer and began examining vehicles. They quickly identified the truck contain- ing the bomb, noting the suspicious wiring running from its cabin into the cargo compartment. The police rapidly evacuated the surrounding area, creating a protective no-go zone stretching a quarter mile from the truck in every direction. Police also notified the British Army’s elite bomb disposal