Disruptive Events and Global Jihad Over Time

Years of scholarship have produced academic models to evaluate pathways to radicalization and have attempted to explain individual risk factors for radicalization. However, these studies do not consider how changes to sociopolitical conditions over time affect and drive jihad. Using data from the Western Jihadism Project (WJP), I drafted a timeline (Figure 4.1) from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to the present that overlays a polygon depicting the frequency of plots against Western targets with selected disruptive events. To conduct my analysis of each disruptive event included on the timeline, I created a chain of influence model (Figure 3.2). The model incorporates my research, Judea Pearl’s causal models (2018), and the North Carolina State University Lab for Analytic Science’s (NC State-LAS) Radicalization Working Group’s (RWG) socioecological model. The model also serves as my recommended inclusion criteria for events on the timeline. By testing my model on each disruptive event, I found the following:

1. The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan’s importance cannot be underestimated as a driving/enabling force in the formation of Al-Qaeda and the global jihad ideology.
2. The United States-led coalition’s involvement in repelling Iraqi forces from Kuwait strengthened the West versus Islam narrative.
3. The September 11, 2001 attacks were inspirational for global jihad; triggering an increase in the number of plots targeting the West.
4. The United States invasion of Iraq temporarily decreased plots targeting the West, but led to increased plots in Europe and the Islamic State’s formation in the long-term.
5. The information technology boom beginning in 2007 so effectively enables my model’s mechanism of influence, it merits inclusion on the timeline.
6. The Islamic State became its own disruptive event, though its continued influence remains to be seen. My findings and the trends identified on the timeline emphasize the need for policy makers to consider jihadi’s perception of disruptive events when deciding how to respond to such events. Finally, while my chain of influence model is used as an explanatory model in this paper, it has promise as a predictive model for analyzing global jihad’s potential responses to future disruptive events.