Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25555436-20150130030020/@comment-24891101-20150202052135

I'm not sure what you mean. It's a simple numbers game. Even if they could cow a polity into compliance with their wishes temporarily (and that is difficult in and of itself), they lack the manpower to enforce their particular brand of hegemony over any significant population that isn't already somewhat sympathetic. Uprooting a society's way of life and imposing one's own simply does not work without the might to back that up, might which a non-state actor cannot amass easily, and which would pale in comparison to the forces, both military and otherwise, that a state can bring to bear. Moreover, every state has a vested interest in preserving the status quo, or something close to it. The second a terrorist organization can bloody and humble a nation of sufficient importance to constitute anything resembling a victory, everyone will sit up and take notice. It undermines the very notion of the state's monopoly on force. They can succeed at causing terror, and that's lamentable, but few states would capitulate.

It's also a question of definitions. The moment a non-state actor has sufficient control over a region to enact their ends, they cease to be a terrorist organization and become a de facto state.