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OTTAWA, Canada: Terrorism has sharply declined around the world, if
attacks in Iraq are discounted, a Canadian study reported Thursday,
challenging bleak US security assessments and popular belief.
Researchers at Simon Fraser University 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 attributed the downswing to more
widespread and coordinated counter-terrorism efforts, “bitter
doctrinal infighting” within the global Islamist networks, and
Muslims’ rejection of “indiscriminate violence, extremist
ideology and harshly repressive policies [of the terrorists].”
As well, the study specifically acknowledged a
“dramatic collapse in popular support throughout the Muslim
world” for Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network.
The Simon Fraser University 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 Counter-terrorism 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.
Simon Fraser 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 wartime 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 university 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.”
-- AFP
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