Terrorist Prison Breaks

Why would an insurgent group which employs terrorist tactics intentionally stage a quiet, nonviolent prisonbreak when it could instead carry out a violent spectacle? Insurgent targeting of prisons poses a puzzle to ourunderstanding of security in state-building environments, but it has yet to be explored. This article addresses thequestion of why terror groups choose to employ nonviolent means for a prison break with a comparative studyof prison break attempts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Nigeria. Using an original dataset consisting of allknown prison break attempts carried out by a terrorist organization between 2001 and 2015, this article discernsthe conditions under which nonviolent tactics are pursued. We argue that insurgents engage in nonviolent tacticswhen the predominant security authority signals the imminent withdrawal of military assets. This incentivizesthem to limit violent activity, thereby encouraging the completion of the withdrawal process.