Research by Prof Monica Duffy Toft gives insight into counter insurgency tactics that could help governments facing different forms of uprising by Islamist and nationalist groups.

The central question of the study was: Are Islamist insurgencies more difficult for governments to coerce than nationalist ones? The authors approached this by examining whether Salafi-Jihadi rebels behaved differently on the battlefield and were more resilient in the face of government coercion.

With the backdrop of renewed debate in the United States over the appropriate counterinsurgency response to the world’s struggle with rising violence from both nationalist and Islamist movements, their insights are particularly valuable.