Organizational Evolution and Tactical Adaptation: A Quantitative Analysis of Jihadist Group Behavior in the MENA Region and Beyond, 2015–2026

This dissertation presents a comprehensive quantitative analysis of organizational evolution and tactical adaptation among six major jihadist groups—Islamic State core (IS-core), al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Al-Shabaab, Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), Islamic State in the Sahel Province (ISSP), and Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)—operating across the Middle East and North Africa, the Sahel, and the Horn of Africa between 2015 and 2026. The study is guided by three research questions: (a) How do attack frequencies and tactical patterns change over time for each group? (b) How do major interventions, specifically the Fall of Mosul in 2017 and the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019, affect tactical behavior? (c) What are the spatial patterns of jihadist violence, and how do groups cluster tactically? Employing a multi-method quantitative design, the study integrates 45,668 events drawn from three complementary databases—the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, the Global Terrorism Database, and the Uppsala Conflict Data Program Georeferenced Event Dataset—and applies autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) modeling, interrupted time-series analysis (ITSA), Shannon entropy indices, Moran's I spatial autocorrelation, and K-means clustering. Results reveal that IS-core dominated the dataset (76.5% of events) but exhibited sustained decline, while JNIM emerged as a steadily expanding threat. ITSA demonstrated that the Fall of Mosul reduced IS-core attack frequency by 44.8% and al-Baghdadi's death produced an additional 52.1% reduction (R² = .901). Shannon entropy analysis identified IS-core as the most tactically diverse group (mean entropy = 2.005 bits), with a broad trend toward post-2021 specialization across the jihadist landscape. Spatial analysis confirmed significant geographic clustering for all groups (Moran's I, all p < .0001), and K-means clustering revealed a fundamental bifurcation between high-intensity diversified groups (IS-core, JNIM) and localized asymmetric groups (Al-Shabaab, AQAP, HTS). These findings advance a "bounded convergence" model of tactical adaptation, contribute novel applications of information-theoretic and spatial methods to terrorism studies, and provide empirically grounded recommendations for counterterrorism resource allocation and threat assessment.