TerrorismNumber of terrorist acts in 2014 increased 35%, fatalities increased 81%, compared to 2013
On Friday the State Department is issued the Country Reports on Terrorism 2014, an annual report mandated by Congress. The report’s statistical annex, which was prepared by the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Response to Terrorism (START), shows that the number of terrorist attacks in 2014 increased 35 percent, and total fatalities increased 81 percent compared to 2013, largely due to activity in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Nigeria. Iran continued to sponsor terrorist groups around the world, principally through its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force.
On Friday the State Department is issued the Country Reports on Terrorism 2014, an annual report mandated by Congress.
The report’s statistical annex, which was prepared by the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Response to Terrorism (START), shows that the number of terrorist attacks in 2014 increased 35 percent, and total fatalities increased 81 percent compared to 2013, largely due to activity in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Nigeria.
More than 60 percent of all attacks took place in five countries: Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, and Nigeria — and 78 percent of all fatalities due to terrorist attacks also took place in five countries: Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Syria.
The increase in total fatalities was in part a result of certain attacks which were exceptionally lethal. In 2014 there were twenty attacks that killed more than a hundred people, compared to only two such attacks in 2013.
Tina Kaidanow, the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism, noted that these statistics do not provide the full context. Aggregate totals or numbers of attacks are not a particularly useful metric for measuring the aims of the extremist groups or of U.S. progress in preventing or countering these activities. She said that more can be learned about terrorism by examining the trends which became apparent in 2014.
Among these trends:
Despite significant blows to al-Qaeda’s leadership, weak or failed governance continued to provide an enabling environment for the emergence of extremist radicalism and violence, notably in Yemen, in Syria, Libya, Nigeria, and Iraq. The United States is concerned about the continued evolution of the Islamic State; the emergence of self-proclaimed ISIS affiliates in Libya, Egypt, Nigeria, and elsewhere; and tens of thousands of foreign terrorist fighters who are exacerbating the violence in the Middle East, imposing a continued threat to their own home countries.
The ongoing civil war in Syria has been a spur to many of the worldwide terrorism events. Since the report covers only calendar year 2014, it notes that the overall flow of foreign terrorist fighter travel to Syria was estimated at more than 16,000 foreign terrorist fighters from over ninety countries as of late December 2014, which is a number that exceeds any similar flow of foreign terrorist fighters traveling to other countries in the last twenty years.
