The history of ‘decapitation strategies’ tells us it is almost impossible to know what effect assassinating a key figure such as Yahya Sinwar will have
Israelis and others have welcomed the killing of Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas and the mastermind of the 7 October 2023 attacks, as an “Osama bin Laden moment”. This reflects how many in Israel feel about the death of a man responsible for the murder of 1,200 people, mostly civilians and their compatriots, but terrorism experts have long debated the efficacy of eliminating the leaders of violent extremist groups, with some suggesting the strategy is counter-productive.
The truth is that no one is sure.
There are some cases where the elimination of a leader has brought definitive success. When the Mossad killed Wadie Haddad, leader of a breakaway faction of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and responsible for a string of spectacular terrorist attacks in the 1970s, probably with poisoned chocolates, his group disintegrated. Hijackings and bombings continued, but were carried out by others.
Velupillai Prabhakaran, the head of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, in Sri Lanka, died in 2009 in a skirmish with government forces after a brutal campaign with many civilian casualties – though far fewer than the tens of –thousands in Gaza. This decisively closed a bloody decades-long civil war with complex social, ethnic, religious and economic roots.
Targeted killings were a mainstay of US strategy during the “war on terror” that followed the 9/11 attacks of 2001, the work of Bin Laden and his al-Qaida. The advent of drones was one reason, but so was the growing reluctance to risk western soldiers’ lives in combat.
