Stability Analysis of the Recruitment Dynamics and Control of Terrorism

Abstract

In this paper, terrorist membership is treated as an infection that spreads through the host community by social contact. We developed and analysed a new mathematical model for the dynamics of terrorism in a population, incorporating the effect of extreme ideology, public enlightenment campaign, Reality Therapy (RT), and Aggression and Replacement Training (ART) as control measures. We obtained the effective recruitment number (Reff) which can be used to control the recruitment of terrorism and hence, established the conditions for local and global stability of the terrorist-free equilibrium. Bifurcation analysis was carried out using centre manifold theory which revealed a condition for forward bifurcation for the model. Numerical simulations validated the analytical results and further reveals that sensitisation only at any coverage rate does not have much impact on the control of terrorism. Instead, Reality Therapy (RT) should target more of the dissidents that are not yet exposed to extreme ideology.