Reaction: Terrorists deliberately look to provoke a chaotic response or a state overreaction. By baiting a government into heavy-handed military crackdowns, curfew restrictions, or mass arrests, the terrorists successfully radicalise the moderate local population.
Application: Counterterrorism strategies apply this by opting for measured, intelligence-led police work rather than massive military operations that risk playing directly into the group’s traps.
How they SURVIVE – Her second 3 R’s
1. Recruits: Not just poor.
When security forces crack down harshly or indiscriminately on a community, it alienates locals and generates a fresh wave of willing recruits.
2. Resources: They seek passive backing, shelter, and silence.
from local populations who share cultural, ethnic, or grievances-based ties.
3. Reward: Groups with deep ethnonationalist roots tend to
Last is the longest because their identity is fused with the survival and narrative of a specific population.
What would Richardson recommend for Nigeria?
1. Law, not just war
2. Separate them from the community.
3. Don’t give renown.
4. Intelligence over tanks
5. Patience.
In short: Boko Haram wants you to be angry, scared and overreacting. The way to beat them is to be calm, lawful and smarter.
Louise Richardson’s book, What Terrorists Want: Understanding the Enemy, Containing the Threat, was published in 2006. Because of this, she does not mention the names of later Boko Haram leaders like Abubakar Shekau or Malam Ibrahim Shekarau (the former governor of Kano State) in relation to the Nigerian terrorist crisis, as the group’s violent, global notoriety did not escalate until the 2009 uprising and subsequent years.
Researchers frequently use Richardson’s famous “Three Rs” framework—which states that secondary terrorist motives are driven by revenge, renown, and reaction—and apply it to northern Nigerian figures.
How can the most powerful country in the world feel so threatened by an enemy infinitely weaker than we are? How can loving parents and otherwise responsible citizens join terrorist movements? How can anyone possibly believe that the cause of Islam can be advanced by murdering passengers on a bus or an aeroplane? In this important new book, groundbreaking scholar Louise Richardson answers these questions and more, providing an indispensable guide to the greatest challenge of our age.
After defining–once and for all–what terrorism is, Richardson explores its origins, its goals, what’s to come, and what is to be done about it. Having grown up in rural Ireland and watched her friends join the Irish Republican Army, Richardson knows from firsthand experience how terrorism can both unite and destroy a community. As a professor at Harvard, she has devoted her career to explaining terrorist movements throughout history and around the globe. From the biblical Zealots to the medieval Islamic Assassins to the anarchists who infiltrated the cities of Europe and North America at the turn of the last century, terrorists have struck at enemies far more powerful than themselves with targeted acts of violence. Yet Richardson understands that terrorists are neither insane nor immoral. Rather, they are rational political actors who often deploy carefully calibrated tactics in a measured and reasoned way. What is more, they invariably go to great lengths to justify their actions to themselves, their followers, and, often, the world.
Richardson shows that the nature of terrorism did not change after the attacks of September 11, 2001; what changed was our response. She argues that the Bush administration’s “global war on terror” was doomed to fail because of an ignorance of history, a refusal to learn from the experience of other governments, and a fundamental misconception about how and why terrorists act. As an alternative, Richardson offers a feasible strategy for containing the terrorist threat and cutting off its grassroots support.
The most comprehensive and intellectually rigorous account of terrorism yet, What Terrorists Want is a daring intellectual tour de force that allows us, at last, to reckon fully with this major threat to today’s global order.
Abubakar Shekau: Academic papers regularly use Richardson’s concepts to explain why the former Boko Haram leader used highly unvarnished, aggressive YouTube videos to gain international renown and provoke heavy-handed government reactions.
Ibrahim Shekarau: Other political-religious analyses discuss Malam Ibrahim Shekarau’s tenure as Governor of Kano State (2003–2011) and his implementation of Sharia law alongside the socio-political climate that birthed radicalism in Northern Nigeria during the exact era Richardson’s book was published.
