Targeting Civilians with Indiscriminate Violence.

摘要

Terrorist violence against innocent people in Iraq continues despite the determination of Coalition and Iraqi forces to stop it. This thesis examines the relationship between a terrorist organization's strategy of using indiscriminate violence to attack the civilian population and its operational success. Specifically, the tactic to be examined is that of the al Qaeda in Iraq, which has attacked civilians with indiscriminate violence (in the context of the insurgency) since the formal termination of hostilities in Iraq in May 2003. Using the historical example of the insurgency in Algeria, 1992-1999, this thesis hopes to find the answer as to whether, and under what conditions, terrorist tactics of attacking civilians with indiscriminate use of violence applied by Iraqi Islamist insurgents may be effective in reaching their political aims. Also, this thesis will question whether this manipulation of violence can turn the population against the protagonists, rather than mobilizing it in favor of one of them. The thesis will answer the question of why Islamist insurgents from al Qaeda in Iraq kill civilians in unjustifiable ways: slaughtering, decapitating, bombing and shooting hundreds of men, women and children.