Understanding terrorism through mathematics

2014 is now passé. We look to the New Year with the threat of terrorism as real as it has ever been. Indeed, memories of terror attacks in the region remain fresh, some of the most horrid having occurred just last November. In two incidents in as many weeks during that month, al Shabaab terrorists killed 64 people in cold blood in Mandera, northern Kenya. In the first incident the terrorists stopped a bus, pulled out the passengers and gunned down 28 people. The following week 36 quarry workers were slaughtered in the same area. This was barely a year since the attack at Westgate Mall in Nairobi that claimed 71 lives. It pays to understand an enemy as sinister as the terrorist group capable of perpetrating such crazed and heinous acts. Mathematics has tried to explain the understanding, of which there is some considerable research on the subject. For some years now, physicists and mathematicians have been looking at the terrorist phenomena from an analytic perspective, shorn of any political passions. Employing probability and other theories in computer models, their data established that the behavior of insurgents and terrorists around the world is very similar in their bloody fingerprint. The computer models, based on programmes written to predict all sorts of fluctuating phenomena, from traffic flow to stock prices and natural phenomena, have been able to create equations and generate data that reflects the behavior of the individual insurgents or clusters of them. Their patterns of violence are universal across regions and conflicts. They affirm that, though the insurgents and terrorists may comprise a loose network of fighters lacking central command, they conduct “asymmetrical warfare” battling larger and better-equipped enemy. Conventional counterinsurgency thinking has previously tried to get into the heads of rebels by understanding their motivations and methods. This suggests rational thinking, where terrorist organisations organise and carry out operations in a very strategic, centralised manner. But the physicists and mathematicians do not presume any human rationality in their models. They assume people are like particles and their behavior the result of constraints beyond their control. In effect, the models suggest that the terrorists don’t have to be rational or require central command to effectively consummate their deadly attacks. This, perhaps, explains the crazed slaughter. However, since their actions are clearly coordinated towards a deadly end, the question remains about what guides them if they lack centralised command to issue orders. This assumption suggests there “must be something else behind the clustered timing of attacks.” Some researchers holding this view theorise that the “something else” must be the role played by media and other sources of information. In the well known justification for terror, a successful strike is not one that does the most damage, but one that draws the most attention. Data from the computer models suggest that terrorists and insurgents aim to stage their attacks when they will have the media’s undivided attention. But the terrorists can be caught. In other models, using probability or what is termed percolation theory, each terrorist in a cell or network can be independently detected depending on factors such as the number of law enforcement agents tasked with tracking suspects as well as on the willingness of citizens to offer information. This provides one of the justifications for the concept of Nyumba Kumi (Imidugudu in Rwanda) in fighting crime and terrorism. The other side of it is that we may not be as naïve as to think that the terrorists are not aware of ways available to beat them. Some of their leaders sport advanced academic degrees. It, nevertheless, is a game of wits and might of resources that the terrorists will never win, and which they must never be allowed to steal the initiative. The work continues with physicists and mathematicians helping in the understanding of the terrorist phenomena. But, as we are often reminded, it is as much individual as it is our collective duty to thwart terror schemes with the media jealously guarding against any possible role in aiding terrorism. Happy New Year. The writer is a commentator on local and regional issues

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Understanding terrorism through mathematics