How Much Bang for the Buck? Exploring the Effects of Ransom Payments on Terrorist Activity in West Africa
Insight Monitor Research reads review
Hello, Insight Monitor subscribers! It’s been a while since I’ve published an Insight Monitor research reads — my apologies, I’ve been pretty swamped doing a lot of writing. But I hope to get caught up on some of the great research that has come out recently on terrorist financing. Today I’ve got a good one: quantitative analysis on the effects of ransom payments and terrorism levels. Keep reading to learn more about this important area of research, my thoughts on the research itself, and what we need to know to create better policy responses to kidnapping for ransom.
Kidnapping for ransom has increased dramatically in the Sahel in recent months. This has affected both foreigners and locals. It is one of the ways that terrorists raise money as part of their financing strategies. As such, it is critically important to understand if, and how, ransom payments contribute to terrorism. This might seem obvious, but I think it’s a lot more complicated than a straight causal relationship. Have a read of my summary of this research to understand more:
Article: Tim Lohse and Andreas Nyga, “How Much Bang for the Buck? Exploring the Effects of Ransom Payments on Terrorist Activity in West Africa,” Terrorism and Political Violence 0, no. 0 (2025): 1–22, https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2025.2565449.
This article examines the relationship between ransom payments and terrorist attacks (in terms of frequency and intensity). The authors find that, in some cases, ransom payments lead to more terrorism.
How ransoms fuel terrorism
Ransom payments are believed to finance terrorism and advance the ideological objectives of terrorist groups. This is an oft-repeated claim that I have also interrogated, and there is ample evidence of research asserting this claim. What is less well studied, however, is the claim itself: do ransom payments actually lead to more terrorism? There is, it might surprise you to learn, very little evidence to support the claim.
The authors posit that ransom payments might influence short-term (90 days) operational behaviour, essentially financing operational activity. They find that, in two instances following ransom payments to JNIM, there was a short-term increase in the number or intensity of attacks. As they are right to note, their findings have limited generalizability due to the limited number of cases and the time period. The authors also note that it is difficult to control for alternative financing methods or unobservable shocks that can influence terrorist activity (confounding and intervening variables).
BLUF: In some cases, ransom payments lead to an increase in terrorism (number of attacks and intensity). But this is not always the case.
Methods
The article uses a difference-in-differences method to assess the short-term effects of ransom payments on terrorist attacks. The method compares changes over time between a group that is exposed to the intervention and a group that is not. The study uses event data (from ACLED) between 2017 and 2023, and compares attacks by ISGS and JNIM. This builds on the basic descriptive statistics that I employed with my co-author Alex Wilner in our study on kidnapping for ransom and terrorist attacks.
Why you should care
Anyone involved in kidnapping-for-ransom negotiations, policy responses, or counterterrorist financing will find this article interesting. Many states have policies that explicitly prohibit the payment of ransoms for individuals kidnapped by terrorist groups, under the assumption that these payments will lead to more terrorism. However, this is not a proven fact. Further, there are many states that pay ransoms, as well as private actors, which undermines the effectiveness of the policy. We need to know if the policy is evidence-based in order to determine how strictly it should be enforced/advocated for.
It is important to note that while the authors find some support for kidnapping for ransom payments leading to more terrorism, this is far from the last word. There is much more work to be done to actually establish this relationship and tease out nuances in the relationship that might suggest different policy approaches depending on circumstances. (I.e. there might be some instances where a ransom payment won’t lead to more terrorism. It would be helpful to know this as ransoms are being negotiated, and other hostage release options are being considered!)
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The future of KFR research
There is much work to be done on this topic. In particular, similar methods could be employed across a greater number of cases (many terrorist groups use kidnapping for ransom to raise funds). Longer time periods should also be studied; both of these would improve the external validity of these findings. Additional methods should also be considered to control for other variables, such as exogenous fund infusions, territorial control changes (and corresponding taxation base increases or decreases), and likely many other variables. It would also be really useful to know if the payment size affects levels of terrorism.
Read along with:
Jessica Davis and Alex Wilner, “Paying Terrorist Ransoms: Frayed Consensus, Uneven Outcomes & Undue Harm,” International Journal, September 26, 2022, 00207020221130308, https://doi.org/10.1177/00207020221130308.
Anja Shortland, Kidnap: Inside the Ransom Business (Oxford University Press, 2019).
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