- A customized profile-like representation of a fictitious terrorist group. Religious terrorist group (Islamic) in this essay. The group may have a made up name.
- Describe potential future attack (one attack) including group’s choice of weapon and target selection, attack timing, pre-attack preparations, claim of responsibility.
Essay, 5 pages, single spaced. Magazine article-like as narrated by a journalist for example. amiliarize the group and their attack with the audience. Do not use first person. Please use end notes.
Primary elements:
Use of main internal factors and subfactors, external considerations, decision-making factors and operational objectives (all elements listed below should be addressed in this essay). Please use headers as perbelow.
- Ideology. It indicates what members of the group are ‘for’ and what they are ‘against.’ Please describe:
- World view. More or less equivalent to ideology, substantive contents of the doctrines espoused by members of the group
- Group norms. unconscious set of values and behavioral precepts that individuals absorb in the course of the process of socialization
- Grand strategy. conscious adoption of particular political, social, or religious goals and objectives. what exactly does it aim to accomplish and how does it intend to
accomplish it.
2) Organizational structure. Please describe
- Group size
- Degree of centralization
- Mechanisms of control. means by which those leader(s) ensure that their subordinates follow the instructions
- Bureaucratic sophistication.
3) Organizational Dynamics. Please describe
- Leadership Style, which refers to the personal characteristics of the leader(s)
- Social Isolation – the degree to which the group’s members (including its leader[s]) are cut off from or integrated into the larger society
- Factionalization. the extent to which competing centrifugal and centripetal pressures affect the stability of and the exercise of authority within the organization.
4) Organizational lifecycle. Please describe
It has to do with the longevity of the organization, the changes the organization has undergone over time, what its condition currently is relative to its general pattern of historical evolution
5) Demographics.
- Age
- Gender
- Education
- socioeconomic status
- Criminal history
- Family history
External Factors/considerations: Please describe the following
- Historical Context, Events, and Precedents
Decision making factors:
- Decision‐Maker Time Horizon, which refers to how much time its members believe they have before they must carry out a projected action.
- Risk Threshold, which refers to the levels of risk the group is willing to take in order to achieve its objectives
Operational Objectives. Please describe
“Operational Objectives refers to all of those results that terrorists seek to achieve by carrying out a particular attack, both in the short term and in the longer term. It is somewhat akin to the term “strategy”
Example: Casualty Levels, Psychological Impact, Political Impact etc.
Explicitly define and address/apply each factor and subfactor being considered. The reader should not have to infer which factor/subfactor is being addressed.
