Analyzing Core Structure and Role Transition Features of Terrorist Organizations Based on Meta-Network Take Al Qaida as an Example

With the development of global counter-terrorism, the structure of terrorist organizations has gradually changed from the traditional hierarchy to the covert network, equipping them with stronger survivability and higher attack efficiency. In recent years, a significant amount of research on terrorist incidents has been conducted worldwide by using social network analysis, which effectively revealed the structural features of terrorist organizations and helped people understand the law of their formation and activity. In this paper, we first build a meta-network model for Al Qaida and discover that the structure of Al Qaida is a cellular network composed of multiple units. Second, terrorist events are clustered by using K-means algorithm to identify the role distribution characteristics in the organization. Results reveal that logistical personnel account for a large portion of each task. Third, the role transition network is constructed by calculating the connectivity matrix, which indicates that obvious hierarchical phenomenon exists in the role transition of Al Qaida. Finally, key members in Al Qaeda are recognized by using multivariate capacity index, which is more accurate than the traditional network analysis method.