WHAT do terrorists hope to gain by targeting civilian targets? An ordinary person would presume that there is some sort of logic, no matter how perverse, to such attacks.

However, it is one of the dilemmas behind the phenomenon of terrorism that it sometimes flies in the face of facts, which makes it even more dangerous. This can be understood by referring to some of the more authoritative studies on terrorism. If terrorism is understood to be politically motivated violence, then it follows that people are part of terrorist organisations because of their commitment to some political goal.

The commonly accepted strategic model of terrorism requires that no matter what trajectory of terrorism an organisation embarks on, it cannot be said to succeed unless it attains some of its stated political goals. Any sort of terrorism which perpetuates itself without logical consideration of the consequences is thus irrational. Any activity undertaken in the pursuit of political goals such as attacking civilian targets would be deemed irrational, unless the group involved attains at least some of its political goals through its attacks.

Additionally, it has been documented that even though attacks on civilians have high-shock value, terrorists have almost never attained their policy demands by targeting soft civilian targets. A study by the Rand Corporation in the 1980s reported that “terrorists have been unable to translate the consequences of terrorism into concrete political gains. …In that sense terrorism has failed. It is a fundamental failure.”

Martha Crenshaw, renowned scholar on terrorism, remarked at the time that terrorists tended not to obtain “the long-term ideological objectives they claim to seek, and therefore one must conclude that terrorism is objectively a failure”. Thomas Schelling, another scholar, later validated this hypothesis by noting that terrorist attacks “never appear to accomplish anything politically significant”.

In a recent research involving 28 well-known terrorist campaigns, researcher Max Abrahms discovered that terrorist organisations did not accomplish their stated goals even once through civilian attacks. Even though many social and political scientists try to justify terrorism through hypothetical theoretical models on the premise that terrorising civilians is an effective way to gain political goals, their findings reveal exactly the opposite; there has never been a modern terrorist organisation which achieved its political goals by attacking civilian targets.

In fact, such strategies have hurt terrorist organisations by turning public opinion against them. Opinion polls undertaken after the Irish Republican Army's attacks revealed that the British as a nation became averse to succumbing to their demands, a trend exactly opposite to what the IRA terrorists had hoped for. Similar results were witnessed in the aftermath of terrorist attacks on civilians in Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, the Philippines and Russia, amongst many others.

It's a similar picture in Pakistan. Many surveys have indicated that when terrorist attacks, mainly suicide bombings, increased, the opinion of the populace turned against the perpetrators. Surveys conducted by the Pew Research Centre have revealed that a progressively increasing number of people started turning against the suicide bombing tactic and Osama bin Laden, considered as separate variables.

In 2004, according to Pew estimates, 41 per cent of Pakistanis had endorsed suicide bombing and terrorism as a means to protect their religion. This proved to be a knee-jerk reaction to what may very well have been anti-Americanism resulting from the war on terrorism. When suicide bombings started in earnest at home, terrorism was endorsed by only five per cent of the respondents in 2008.

Simultaneously, support for Bin Laden also plummeted from 51 per cent in 2005 to 34 per cent in 2008. This may also partly account for the fact that after the Abbottabad raid, except for protests by some religious elements, there has not been any large-scale public agitation to specifically lament his death.Pakistanis have become very averse to extremism, because they have faced it for so long. This aversion is very marked, with a 2008 survey showing that 72 per cent of polled Pakistanis shunned extremism. Not coincidentally, this was the highest level of response measurable in a cluster of eight Muslim countries surveyed simultaneously. The other countries were Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, Lebanon, Nigeria, Tanzania and Turkey.

These findings corroborate an earlier Pew survey, which revealed that 74 per cent of Pakistani respondents were anxious about extremism in 2006. This survey also measured concerns against those in other Muslim countries, and again the percentage of the Pakistani concern was higher: 69 per cent of Jordanians expressed concern, followed by 68 per cent of Egyptians, 46 per cent of Turkish and 43 per cent of surveyed Indonesians.

Given this trend, it appears illogical on the part of terrorists to continue targeting civilians even when they need a continuing supply of manpower for indoctrination, operations and sanctuary.

This is a loss of opportunity for terrorists in the sense that it alienates population clusters, who deny recruitment, operations and sanctuary to them. It translates into an 'opportunity cost' for terrorists who target civilians despite growing resentment against such attacks. It also clashes with the commonly accepted strategic models of terrorism, which assume that rational people are involved in decision-making in terrorist organisations to achieve a certain set of political goals.

However, in the case of Pakistan and other countries affected by terrorism, terrorists do not consider this as opportunity cost. Even if the cost of attacking civilians was offset by the attainment of political goals by some other means, it would have been deemed a fair bargain. For instance, if a state can be coerced through the terrorising of its civilians into giving concessions to terrorists, it would make sense for terrorists to kill innocent civilians.

However, this is not the case; nowhere in the world has any terrorist organisation achieved its goals solely by coercing the state through killing its citizens. Killing civilians does not accomplish political goals but terrorists in Pakistan and elsewhere still do it. That is why many observers of the phenomenon of terrorism and its political utility question the rationality and efficacy of its motives.

The writer is a security analyst.