On the morning of 2^nd August 2014, there was a jihadist uprising in the town of Arsal, Lebanon. Multiple armed groups—including Jabhat Al-Nusra (then an affiliate of Al-Qaeda, which later merged into Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham), Islamic State (IS, otherwise known as ISIS or Daesh), Jaysh Al-Islam, and the Free Syrian Army—attacked army and police positions in what became known as the “Battle of Arsal”. After several days of fighting, the Lebanese Army was eventually able to retake the town, but not before the jihadist groups had kidnapped over 35 soldiers from the army and gendarmerie and escaped to the town’s mountainous outskirts on the Syrian border.

Following the Battle of Arsal, a natural experiment occurred. While the hostages were kidnapped from the same place at the same time, they were divided between two groups: Nusra held 23 captives, while Islamic State kept 12. The ensuing crisis lasted three years and was punctuated by Nusra’s early release of five hostages, the executions of four others (two by Nusra and two by IS), until the negotiated release of Nusra’s remaining 16 hostages in 2015 and the discovery of the bodies of Islamic State’s final ten hostages in 2017. What explained the divergent outcomes of the Nusra and IS hostages and the militants’ calculus?

This paper presents an empirical examination of the Arsal hostage crisis, based on interviews with 30 hostages’ families and analysis of the jihadists’ propaganda.

Read the full article in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism.