Fourth year Nunn School International Affairs and Modern Languages major, Lucia Bird, was selected as a finalist in the 23rd Annual SAIC Student Paper Competition. Bird was selected from over 100 applicants as one of the ten finalists for her work on “Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Pursuit of WMD Terrorism.” She was also the only undergraduate student among eight Doctoral and one Masters students selected.

An awards reception and dinner was held on 15 November at the Grand Ballroom of the Georgia Tech Hotel to honor all 10 finalists. At the awards banquet, 5 first prize winners each received a $1,000 award for the student or student team. The remaining 5 second prize winners each received a $500 award.

Advised by Dr. Margaret E. Kosal, assistant professor in the Sam Nunn School for International Affairs, Bird explored acquisition and use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by non-state actors in the Middle East. The work challenges traditional thoughts on the relationship between WMD terrorism and state support, and improved understanding of terrorist organizations’ WMD motivations and capabilities. Bird empirically chronicled the acquisition, attempts, and use of WMD by Hamas and Hezbollah from available literature and media sources. Bird and Kosal further studied existing evidence on the suspected relationships between these two organizations and potential state supporters (Iran and Syria). Comparing the different success rates of the two organizations and taking into account the different levels of state support, the research probes the extent to which state support of terrorist groups seriously impacts WMD acquisition, development, and use.

Conventional theories suggest that non-state actors do benefit from state assistance in the pursuit of chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear agents. Bird and Kosal, however, found that an unanticipated trend appears: Hamas, which lacks significant state support, seems freer to pursue WMD activity; while there are limited attempts to attain or employ WMD by Hezbollah, which may be restricted because of its relationship with Iran and Syria. The broader impact of the research relates to the strategy and policies of the U.S. to deter pursuit of and prevent acquisition or use of WMD by non-state actors.

The work was supported under a project, “Multidisciplinary modeling of socio-economic influence on adversarial intent to acquire, proliferate and use chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons” in collaboration with Prof. Chaitanya Deo of Georgia Tech’s Mechanical Engineering department and Prof. Shatakshee Dhongde of the Rochester Institute of Technology that was funded by the DoD’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) Basic Research program.

SAIC:  http://www.saic.com/