The 2011 civil war in Syria attracted thousands of fighters from at least seventy countries to join the Islamic State. Al-Shabaab carried out large-scale attacks on civilian targets in Uganda and Kenya as retribution for the deployment of peacekeeping forces in Somalia. In this report, Martha Crenshaw considers the extent to which civil war and foreign military intervention function as a rationale for transnational terrorism, and how understanding the connections between terrorism, civil war, and weak governance can help the United States and its allies mount an appropriate response.
Publication Information
Crenshaw, Martha. 2020. "Rethinking Transnational Terrorism: An Integrated Approach." United States Institute of Peace (February). https://www.usip.org/publications/2020/02/rethinking-transnational-terrorism-integrated-approach