Thesis Abstract and Defense Announcement

Well, the time has finally come to defend my masters thesis. I'm a bit nervous to say the least, but no more nervous than when I wonder where we'll end up after the Summer.
Anyhow, here's the abstract. I hope to see a lot of folks there.

ABSTRACT

An Investigation of the Philosophical Changes of the Abu Sayyaf Group
Using Geospatial Analysis

Thomas C. Zumbado

Political science scholars believe that the ASG’s propensity for accumulating funds through hostage ransoming and other criminal activity has caused the organization to drift away from its radical Islamic foundations and become nothing more than a gang of bandits. This research explores this claim by applying geospatial and temporal analysis to ASG terrorist activity from 1994 to 2008 to determine whether the body of ASG attack data is congruent with the political objectives put forth by the group at their inception, or more suited to criminal patterns of activity that epitomize monetary gains as the highest objective.

This is done through the pursuit of four research objectives that explore if attack data display an operational terror-to-crime shift. Objectives one, two and three compare the attack data distribution to map overlays of economic level, ethnic composition and religion to identify where the majority of attacks occur. This identifies if the ASG is prone to conducting attacks in areas predominantly populated by their constituency, which are the poor, Muslim Tausugs of the southern Philippines. The fourth objective qualitatively examines the historical timeline of the ASG by comparing it to Dishman’s (2001) theory on the ideological transformation of terrorist groups. The results of these four objectives are combined and measured in the decision rule to evaluate whether ASG attack data supports the more popular claims of a philosophical shift. Applied methods include spatio-temporal analysis and geostatistics (Getis-Ord hot spot analysis and mean center progression).

Results of analysis indicate that the majority of ASG attacks occur in the “Constituency Overlay,” a trivariate convergence area where the majority of the population are poor, Muslim Tausugs. In addition, temporal analysis displays that attacks localized and peaked around the CO in accordance with Dishman’s benchmarks for a terror-to-crime transformation. It is concluded that the majority of ASG attacks are driven towards crime due to the group’s tendency towards a high frequency of moneymaking attacks within the areas of constituency. Based on the criteria of the decision rule, the patterns of attack data indicate that ASG operations have been more inclined towards criminal goals rather than ideological goals since the death of their founder, Abdurajak Janjalani.