Exploring the relationship between global terrorist ideology and attack methodology

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"Overall this study highlighted the large number of deaths, injuries and properties damaged by global terrorists, according to their methodology. A statistically significant visual cluster analysis model was developed that corroborated the descriptive characteristics previously reported in the literature by Rivinius (2014) as well as by Strang and Alamieyeseigha (2015). The two-step cluster analysis model had a fair 0.3 silhouette estimate of cohesion and separation. The model indicated a pattern of six segments could be found to make sense out of the 125 087 terrorist strikes made since 1970. As anticipated, the terrorist attack methodologies of assassinations, armed assaults and bombings figured prominently in most of the segments, but national culture and ideology were also present as factors in some clusters. The first two clusters represented almost 50 per cent of the entire sample; the first segment was mediated by assassination attacks (approximately 10 per cent were in India) and the second cluster was dominated by armed assaults (almost 10 per cent were in India). The third and fourth clusters were primarily moderated by bombings concentrated in Columbia and Iraq. The fifth cluster was influenced by bombings directed at Pakistan targets. The last small cluster was unique, with only a few cases relatively speaking (around 2000) and the majority of terrorists targeted Bangladesh, resulting in extremely high death and injury rates, at an order of magnitude higher than any of the other clusters." (p. 84)

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