Assistant Researcher - Mapping Militants: The Organizational Dynamics Of Violent Extremist Groups
Center For International Security And Coooperation (Cisac)
Used computer software to assemble, organize, and display information about violent oppositional organizations and their interactions over time. How non-state adversaries form, split, merge, collaborate, compete, shift ideological direction, adopt or renounce violence (especially terrorism), grow, shrink, and eventually decline over time is essential for explaining their behavior and gauging the impact of government interventions.Identified patterns in the evolution of organizations that practice terrorism, specified the causes and consequences of these patterns, and analyzed the development of Special Groups in Iraq, Al Qaeda and its cohort in a comprehensive comparative framework.The project analyzes the organizational structure of different families of organizations and traces their relationships over time. It will produce a series of dynamic maps illustrating the architecture of violent and non-violent opposition groups operating in the same conflict theater.http://www.stanford.edu/group/mappingmilitants/cgi-bin/groups/view/249