Sunni and Shi’a Terrorism: Differences That Matter

The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point “Sunni and Shi’a Terrorism: Differences That Matter” by Colonel Thomas F. Lynch, III. Lynch was a fellow at Brookings from 2007-2008 and holds a PhD in international relations from Princeton University.

The paper discusses six key areas that impact American policy considerations and gives recommendations for addressing these issues.

Issues Identified:

Issue 1: “Sunni radicals and Shi’a extremists differ in the overall approach and main objectives for their use of terror. The former tend to operate in a continuous, mid‐to‐high intensity manner, seeing war against infidels and apostates as a perennial condition featuring overlapping waves. Outside of an ongoing and seemingly open‐ended campaign against Israel, terrorist attacks by Shi’a groups have by and large featured discrete terror campaigns tethered to state and organizational objectives.”

Issue 2: “Sunni terrorists and Shi’a extremists manifest different patterns for recruiting terrorist operatives and developing terrorist missions. Shi’a terrorists, unlike their Sunni counterparts, enjoy direct state support and for that reason are far more likely to originate from Iranian embassies, consulates and state‐run businesses.”

Issue 3: “[D]despite holding a minority viewpoint within the wider Sunni Islamic community, Sunni extremists, especially Salafi‐Jihadis, rely more extensively on the support of their coreligionist expatriate communities in facilitating terrorist activities.”

Issue 4: “[W]hile employing similar tactics and methods, Shi’a terrorist groups have shown a much greater propensity to kidnap innocents to barter, while Sunni extremists more frequently abduct to kill.”

Issue 5: “Shi’a terror groups exhibit a much higher incidence of targeted assassinations for specific political gain, rather than the high‐casualty killings featured in Sunni terrorism, and particularly of the Salafi‐Jihadist variant.”

Issue 6: “[E]ach sect’s extremists manage publicity and propaganda differently. The Sunni approach to information management tends to feature doctrine and resources geared to take immediate credit and widely amplify a terrorist event. Shi’a terrorists, while not averse to normal media publicity and amplification, by and large take a much lower‐key approach.”

Key Findings:

Over the twenty‐five year period from 1981‐2006, Sunni terrorism in noncombat zones evolved in four overlapping waves. Conducted by hundreds of ideologically similar groups, Sunni terrorism has featured continuous, mid‐to‐high intensity operations viewing war against infidels and apostates as a perpetual condition.Terrorism by Shi’a groups in non‐combat zones over the same period has been conducted in five discrete campaigns and by two main actors:

Iranian state agents from special national paramilitary and intelligence services, and Hezbollah operatives. The rationale for terrorism by Shi’a groups over that time frame was tethered tightly to Iranian state and Hezbollah organizational objectives, especially that of state/group survival.

The six significant differences between Sunni extremist terrorism and Shi’a terrorism over twenty‐five years of practice in non‐combat zones have major policy implications for the United States and its western allies in the event of overt hostilities with Iran over Tehran’s advancing nuclear program.

The intense correlation between survival aims of Iran and Hezbollah on the one hand, and the instigation of terrorism against western overseas interests on the other, suggests that there is a high likelihood that a mid-to-high intensity terrorist campaign by Shi’a groups-along the lines of three campaigns carried out by Hezbollah and Iranian agents during the 1980s-would be initiated in response to any U.S. or Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear sites or wider regime targets.

Any new campaign of terrorism by Shi’a actors of this type could have a profound, unsettling impact on overseas American diplomats, businessmen, educators and commercial agents who would likely become the focused targets of bombings, kidnappings and assassinations. Such a terror campaign would likely circumvent much of what the United States is presently doing to combat terrorism overseas, and greatly challenge America’s hostage negotiation and crisis management capability.

U.S. political leaders should carefully consider the differences in Shi’a terrorism and Sunni terrorism in non‐combat zone as part of a comprehensive assessment of all the costs involved in a crossing of military thresholds that would likely trigger an Iranian‐backed campaign of Shi’a terrorism in the first place.