Breaking the Walls: Geospatial Patterns in the Islamic State’s Use of Strategic Soft Targeting

This project analyzes geospatial patterns in the Islamic State’s (IS) use of strategic soft targeting (SST) over time. The Islamic State and its affiliate groups are particularly well-known for using this tactic to target vulnerable communities-a term I use to describe individuals with little to no control over their own physical mobility, including prisoners, detained individuals, internally displaced persons, and refugees. This work examines how the Islamic State’s use of strategic soft targeting has changed diachronically and geographically and how that trend is affecting vulnerable communities across the Middle East and Africa. This study maps trends in the IS’s attacks on prisons, detention centers, and IDP/refugee camps over the past 16 years and contextualizes this data within larger terrorism trends. In this study, I (1) use hot spot analysis to identify trends in attack distribution and (2) conduct a geographic case study of SST activity in the Lake Chad Basin countries. Using ArcGIS Pro to analyze an original dataset constructed for this study, I found that terrorist activity is likely expanding beyond the Middle East and intensifying in sub-Saharan Africa, where groups have access to terrorist safe havens in undergoverned spaces. Most documented strategic soft targeting activity is taking place in the quadripoint border region where Cameroon, Chad, Niger, and Nigeria meet.

Slide 1: My name is Delaney Soliday and today I’ll be presenting my GLOA honor’s project, “Breaking the Walls: Geospatial Patterns in the Islamic State’s Use of Strategic Soft Targeting.” This project was also completed as a part of OSCAR’s Undergraduate Research Scholars Program.

Slide 2: In this study, I asked three primary research questions:
1. How have trends in terrorist attacks on vulnerable communities changed over time?
2. How have trends in terrorist attacks on civilians changed spatially?
3. How do patterns in terrorist attacks on detained populations compare with patterns of attacks on IDPs and refugees?

Slide 3: One of the key concepts I discuss in this study is what I call “strategic soft targeting.’ I define this term as “terrorist attacks on civilians with limited control over their own mobility.’ These types of vulnerable civilian communities include internally displaced persons, refugees, prisoners, and detained individuals.

Slide 4: These two maps compare SST activity in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. On these heat maps, the warmer a color is, the denser SST activity is in that location. It is interesting to note that much of this activity is clustered around border regions and major cities in both regions, but attack distribution in the Lake Chad Basin is much denser than it is in the Middle East.

Slide 5: This map identifies statistically significant hot spots utilizing the Getis-Ord Gi* statistic. The test revealed that most SST activity conducted by the Islamic State and its affiliate groups between 2006 and 2022 is located in the border regions where the four Lake Chad Basin countries- Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Chad- meet. That yellow bullseye we saw in the previous heat map is a statistically significant hot spot.

Slide 6: This map looks at the same cluster of four countries, but color codes local government areas or provinces with recorded SST activity by aggregate number of deaths. I found that each LGA saw an average of 32.5 deaths due to SST activity. A March 14, 2014, attack on the Giwa Military Barracks resulted in at least 622 deaths, though total casualties vary by source (BBC News 2014), which significantly skews the overall average deaths per LGA. That attack occurred in the local authority of Konduga, which is represented by the darkest shade of red on this map. When the Giwa attack is excluded, the average number of deaths drops to 18.67. This figure confirmed that the highest numbers of deaths are also occurring in the region with the highest numbers of SST attacks on civilian targets.

Slide 7: My analysis resulted in four primary findings.
• Terrorist attacks on civilians are, on average, three times deadlier in sub-Saharan Africa than they are in the Middle East and North Africa.
• Strategic soft targeting activity tends to center around 1) major population centers and 2) border regions in both the Middle East & North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.
• All statistically significant hot spots of SST activity in sub-Saharan Africa are located in the border regions where the four Lake Chad Basin countries-Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Chad-meet. Most attacks resulting in casualties occur in this region, as well.
• Attacks on detained persons and prisoners are primarily confined to Nigeria.

My findings demonstrate that security studies scholars can better understand trends in terrorist activity using GIS methodologies. My results also have potential applications in the policymaking sphere when it comes to determining U.S. counterterrorism priorities. We have historically placed a lot of emphasis on CT operations in the Middle East, but we may need to pivot our focus to sub-Saharan Africa, where groups have much more latitude to operate in ungoverned spaces.

Slide 8: I would like to thank my two project advisors, Dr. Sauls and Dr. Ashley, for their support throughout the research process, as well as the Global Affairs Department and the library’s Digital Scholarship Lab. Many thanks as well to OSCAR and the Undergraduate Research Scholars Program for providing not only funding for this project, but mentorship and community.