Taxonomy of Terror

IN KANDAHAR IN 2005, SWIFT WAS woken by a group of young men pointing Kalashnikovs at him. "All I could say was, 'Good morning, brother, how are you?' " he recalls. His interpreter handled the situation. "They put their guns away, and 10 minutes later we're all sitting on the floor eating like nothing had happened."

Swift put himself in similarly tense situations for the next seven years as he conducted academic field research in combat zones across the globe, interviewing the people who lived in affected areas. He traveled to Afghanistan, Dagestan on the Chechen border, the West Bank and Yemen. The research informed a master's and Ph.D. in international studies from Cambridge University and a J.D. from Georgetown.

Today he's an adjunct professor of national security studies at Georgetown, an attorney at Foley & Lardner, a frequent media commentator on issues of national security and terrorism and a term member on the Council of Foreign Relations. Understanding what drives terror—and which groups are threats, which groups aren't—has given him a voice in policy discussions. "You can know everything in the world about a particular subject, but if you can't help a policymaker implement policy, that academic knowledge isn't terribly useful," says Swift. "On the flipside, if you're just a lawyer and all you know is process, you don't have any substance to share."

His objective: To create a predictive model of behavior for how local indigenous insurgencies interact with Al Qaeda. He wants to give the government—and the American people—the language needed to understand the parameters of a conflict. "I've had too many students get blown up or have some catastrophic injury with- out knowing who the enemy was, without knowing what the plan was and what the end game was," he says.

The national security expert examines what brings Islamic militants together—and what could drive them apart.

"I've had too many studentsget blown up without knowingwho the enemy was