And therefore, I think historically there has been a lot less interest in budgetary allocations, to really live up to the promise that this would be a war of ideas. It has therefore never been fought as such.
How do we remedy some of those missteps? HOFFMAN: The simplest, unfortunately, most cynical response is to say it is going to take another catastrophic terrorist attack, to shake us out of the notion that terrorism is not as much of a strategic priority as great power competition.
I am not saying that it has to occupy the number one position, but it must be a top-line national security priority. And I fear that the United States and many other countries, see it as an either-or choice, focus on great power competition and really denigrate or dismiss the threat of terrorism.
We have to have a much more stable, rather than sclerotic response to these threats, one that is consistent and shifts priorities as needed but that does not denigrate or dismiss threats as moribund but that still nonetheless persist. We have to be more consistent in our response. And sometimes we have to understand that dissuading someone from becoming a terrorist is enormously important, but it is immeasurable in some respects, so we have to have confidence in the fact that our non-kinetic efforts, over the long term, will also deliver effective results.
There was certainly a military stand-off, but it was a very concerted, directed, coordinated and properly resourced information operations effort by Radio Free Europe, by Radio Liberty, by the Voice of America, by the United States Information Agency. You had a prioritisation of non-kinetic tools, which was enormously consequential. Rarely is any outcome achieved through just one initiative. It is often a concatenation of a variety of policy initiatives and my point is that we have leaned overly heavily during the past twenty years on the kinetic side, and under-resourced the non-kinetic side.
That is where I believe we have gone astray and why we are still fighting this this war twenty years later, which is by no means over. But if you had to pinpoint one thing, what has remained the key challenge to having a more effective approach to counter-terrorism?
The trouble is, throughout the War on Terror, every single US President, from President Bush, President Obama, President Trump, now President Biden, has precipitously declared victory over our enemies, or declared that they had been sufficiently weakened, so we can divert resources elsewhere. And that is the cardinal mistake, because our adversaries see their cause as divinely ordained, which means that they are not going to lay down their arms.
I think if we had a more consistent response, we would see these things to the end and not be tempted to declare victory prematurely and move on. Because every time we have done that in the past, it has breathed new life not only into the terrorist organisations who have been able to regroup and reorganise, but in many places, whether it is Syria, Libya, South Asia, it has enabled our adversaries to intervene in these conflicts, in many instances, in a way that is very detrimental to Western interests.
What to you would be an indicator that we have actually achieved the desired outcome in the Global War on Terror? What would that look like? The attractiveness of their ideology and the resonance of their narrative is decreased and that leads to a diminution of both their sources of revenue and sources of recruits. Terrorism is reduced to a local or at best, a national or regional problem, rather than the global one it is today. And how should we take that lesson in moving forward as we look to the coming decade or two?
Of course, in the 20 th century, it was the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo that set alight the fuse that started World War I. So I think the lesson is an understanding of the power of terrorism to affect events. And the fact that the threat of terrorism has to be taken seriously, has to be responded to consistently, and should not be denigrated or dismissed. They are driven by a cause or belief and are convinced that their criminal acts are completely justified.
They view themselves as soldiers and act accordingly. While they are still criminals, they are criminals with calculating, military mind-sets, and they retain the initiative to strike any target, anywhere, at any time.
Terrorist actors, both international and domestic, from large groups to lone wolves, adhere to a measured operational framework. In fact, most terrorism actually happens in countries of high internal conflict, because ultimately terrorism is another form of conflict. In , an estimated 26, people died from terrorism globally. Over the previous decade the average number of annual deaths was 21, However, there can be significant year-to-year variability. Over this decade the global death toll ranged from its lowest of 7, in to the highest year of 44, in Terrorism often dominates media coverage.
We are informed about attacks as soon as they happen and many attacks claim the headlines. Whilst our attention is drawn to these events — just as the terrorists intend — such intense coverage can make it difficult to contextualize the true extent of terrorism.
This is because the availability heuristic : our perceptions are heavily influenced by the most recent examples of it. In this chart we see global terrorism deaths in the context of deaths from all causes.
The size of the big rectangle corresponds to the number of deaths in The share of deaths from terrorism are shown in red. A very small fraction. Close to 56 million people died in ; just over 26, of them from terrorism. But terrorist activity can vary a lot from year-to-year. Maybe was a particularly low or high year. When we look at the trend — also shown in chart form — over the past few decades we see it hovered from 0.
It was therefore a relatively high year for terrorist deaths, but not the peak. Globally, over 26, people died in terrorist attacks in Where in the world did terrorists kill most people?
In this chart we see the number of deaths from terrorism by region in This is also true when we look at the number of incidents , rather than the number of deaths. As we will see in the following section, not only is there a strong regional focus but this is also heavily concentrated in only a few countries within these regions. Guerrilla movements in Central and South America, for example, dominated terrorism in the s. Terrorism is often regionally-focused. The Middle East and North Africa had by far the largest number of deaths in ; but not all countries were affected.
We see the number of terrorism deaths by country in this map. This was one-in-four terrorism deaths globally.
But some countries in the region — such as Nepal — had almost none. Looking at the where in the world terrorism happens highlights an important point: it tends to be in countries with high levels of internal conflict. Here we discuss in detail the challenges of separating terrorism from other forms of conflict such as civil war or homicide.
This proves difficult because often there is a strong overlap. If we look at a recent list of terrorist incidents across the world — take June as an example — we see the majority are events that most people would understand to be terrorism: roadside bombings; car detonations; attacks on religious or political institutions. Although usually performed by one or a small group of individuals, most are affiliated with well-known terrorist groups, such as Islamic State, Taliban, Boko Haram, and Al-Shabaab.
Again, most people would clearly associate these with terrorism violence. But where the lines become blurred is that many of these groups are rebel or insurgency groups in various domestic conflicts. Islamic State, for example, is a key instigator in the Syrian civil war; Al-Shabaab in internal Somalian conflict. This means that most terrorism occurs in countries of high conflict because the internal conflict is — to a certain extent — terrorism.
The map below which shows terrorism as a share of total deaths for each country. In most countries — particularly across Europe, the Americas and Oceania — deaths from terrorism accounted for less than 0.
They are rare in most countries of the world today. This is not true everywhere. In a number of countries across the Middle East and Africa, terrorist deaths reach up to several percent. Iraq was the most affected 4. These are countries where overall conflict — of which terrorist activity is a part — is high. In fact, as we discuss here , the boundary between terrorism, conflict, one-sided violence or civil war is not always clear-cut.
This map shows an overview for The extent of terrorism in most countries is very low. But — as we mentioned in the global-level data — this can change from year to year [you can see this on the map above using the timeline on the bottom of the chart].
Attacks can be non-existent for many years before an unexpected rise or spike. What effect does this have? The United States provides an important example. Terrorism deaths in most years are very few: typically below 0. It claimed lives, accounting for 0. We should therefore be aware of this volatility: having few deaths from terrorism in one year is not a predictor for the next.
Overall we see that terrorism deaths globally — and in most parts of the world — are relatively rare. Much more common risks — often ones that we can influence — kill many more people.
An estimated 7 million deaths each year result from smoking; 4. The dominance of terrorism in the daily news cycle can mean that we lose perspective of this. But is this really true? In this visualization we shown terrorism deaths in Western Europe since Another useful resource which cross-references well with this database for Western Europe is the Wikipedia entry : you can find further context of particular events there.
Here we see annual deaths from terrorism in the order of hundreds, and reaching over deaths in some years. The United Kingdom was home to the largest share of deaths for much of the 70s, 80s, and 90s. We see quite a marked decline post with the Good Friday Agreement between British and Irish governments. Since the Millennium the annual death toll has been below 50 deaths in most years, and often below For context, compare that to how many people die on the roads : in around 70 people died every day in road incidents.
The year to year changes are nonetheless volatile. Large terrorist attacks — such as the Madrid train bombings in ; London bombings; Norway attacks; Paris attacks; the truck attacks in Nice and the Berlin Christmas market attack in ; and the Manchester and Barcelona attacks in — have occurred since the turn of the century.
This trend is also reflected when we look at the number of terrorist attacks. With exception of the s, terrorism data in Western Europe can be hard to see when bundled with other regions.
This in itself is an important point: terrorist deaths in Western Europe are very low within the global context. This has changed dramatically since then. In , only 0. Between and — over almost two decades — there were just under deaths in Western Europe from terrorism.
This is equal to the death toll of only two to three years during the s. The Global Terrorism Database GTD — the most comprehensive database of terrorist incidents to date — was founded and is currently maintained from programmes in the United States.
This, combined with the fact that terrorist incidents would have been covered extensively in the US media dating back to the s makes it likely that it has the most complete record of terrorist attacks in recent decades.
In this visualization we show the annual death toll from terrorism in the US since The September 11 attacks in New York stand out as the most fatal terrorist event in the world in recent history. In fact, claiming the lives of nearly people, the death toll in was almost four times higher than the combined deaths from terrorism in the US since Over the last five years there has been a small but steady increase in terrorist deaths in the US.
In most years terror attacks caused fewer than 50 deaths per year, and in many years no one died from attacks. With exception of , terrorism accounted for less than 0. For comparison, around people die in road accidents in the United States every day. When we look at the number of terrorist attacks we see a marked decline since the early s.
Airline hijackings are a very visible form of terrorism. But whilst hijackings can seem like a modern form of terrorism, they have a long history: in fact, hijackings today are very rare and much less frequent than the past. Most commonly, hijackers would demand the pilot fly to a specific location, or sometimes hijackers would attempt to fly the aircraft themselves. Incidents of hijacking have been around almost as long as human flight itself with suspected hijacks dating as far back as , and the first recorded hijacking in But they were still relatively rare until the s.
In this chart we see the annual number of hijacking incidents and fatalities globally from onwards. Effective protection of such targets requires not only the implementation of physical-protection measures, but also the development of strong and resilient communities and close engagement with civil society and local leadership, including religious leaders. The programme will support countries in assesing their vulnerability and needs, including in regard to touristic venues, places of worship, religious sites, major sport events and threats associated with the use of unmanned air systems.
Through this programme UNOCT will build capacities and provide mentoring to prevent and counter relevant threats.
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