Understanding South Asian Violent Extremist Group-Group Interactions

The South Asian Violent Extremist Group (SAVE) dataset describes 500 interactions between 30 South Asian terrorist groups over a 20-year period. We analyze 4 types of interactions between these groups (financial, logistical, operational, and political) via 4 network-theoretic techniques: spectral decomposition and Simmelian ties in an undirected version of the network, and PageRank and betweenness centrality on directed versions of the network. We identify the major players in both the provision and the flows through this network for each type of support. Our analysis shows that the five entities most involved in providing and facilitating all forms of support are AI Qaeda, the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence Agency, the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan.