The Effectiveness of Political Assassinations

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/title-2/

Particularly ominous are Jordan's findings about groups that, like Al Qaeda and the Taliban, are religious. The chances that a religious terrorist group will collapse in the wake of a decapitation strategy are 17 percent. Of course, that’s better than zero, but it turns out that the chances of such a group fading away when there's no decapitation are 33 percent. In other words, killing leaders of a religious terrorist group seems to increase the group's chances of survival from 67 percent to 83 percent.