OTTAWA (AFP) — Terrorism has sharply declined around the world, if attacks in Iraq are discounted, a Canadian study said Thursday, challenging bleak US security assessments and popular belief.
Researchers at Simon Fraser University (SFU) said in an annual Human Security Brief that terrorism fatalities were down by some 40 percent in late 2006 compared to 2001, and according to preliminary data, dropped even further in mid-2007.
The study pointed to more widespread and coordinated counterterrorism efforts, "bitter doctrinal infighting" within the global Islamist networks, and Muslims' rejection of terrorists' "indiscriminate violence, extremist ideology and harshly repressive policies" for the downswing.
As well, it specifically acknowledged a "dramatic collapse in popular support throughout the Muslim world" for Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.
The SFU analysis of three major US terrorism datasets is in stark contrast to US and British security analysts' and intelligence agencies' conclusions, based on the same data.
US and British expert consensus is that the threat of terrorism, particularly Islamic terrorism, is on the rise.
The evidence cited in both points of view was collected by the US National Counterterrorism Center, the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism in Oklahoma City, and the University of Maryland's Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.
SFU researchers argued that all three US datasets count assaults in Iraq by non-state armed groups as acts of terrorism, but omit similar death tolls from Africa's civil wars.
The killing of civilians in war time should be viewed as war crimes, not terrorism, the researchers said.
"The major concern in the West is not with local terrorist organizations fighting over local issues, but with the global campaigns of Al-Qaeda and its loosely knit affiliates around the world," the study said.
The SFU researchers also cited the number of fatalities rather than numbers of attacks in their study because fatalities were deemed to be a better indicator of the human costs of terrorism, while "definitions of what constitutes an attack vary considerably."
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