The interplay between terrorism, insurgency, and civil war in the Middle East

The Elcano Royal Institute is a think-tank for international and strategic studies that analyses world events and trends from a Spanish, European and global perspective.

The Analyses of the Elcano Royal Institute (ARI)are short pieces - of around 3,000 words - on aspects of current international affairs considered to be of relevance to Spain, its foreign policy or its security. In broad terms ARIs are intended to have a predictive bearing on events.This paper first offers some empirical support to the idea that the vast majority of contemporary terrorist groups use a combination of terrorist and guerrilla tactics.[2] It then argues that these transformations would benefit from a growing reliance on concepts drawn from the insurgency and counterinsurgency literature on the part of analysts in order to fully appreciate the evolving nature of these groups.

Finally, the study calls for increased correspondence and cross-fertilisation between terrorism studies and the scholarship on insurgency and counterinsurgency, as well as the literature on civil wars. We believe that such an interdisciplinary effort can offer a more lucid and dispassionate conceptualisation of these groups, of the full range of their activities and of the broader context in which they tend to operate. Such an approach, in turn, can improve policies to address the threat posed by these violent actors.