V.1. Global and regional trends in terrorism (1970-2014)
V.1.2. Disaggregated terrorism trends in selected countries with low and high exposure to terrorism
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aforementioned countries exhibit heavy involvement of international stakeholders. Almost all of the corresponding terror attacks, however, were coded as domestic in the GTD.
While the number of deaths caused by terror attacks appeared to develop rather dynamically in some regions—namely in Africa, the Americas and Asia—Europe and Oceania exhibited a comparatively flat and stable trend line. This does not mean, however, that the number of terror attacks in both regions would not have developed dynamicly over time. It is merely that the respective changes in the number of terror attacks are not recognizable in Figure V-4 because their overall counts were much lower than in the other world regions.
V.1.2. Disaggregated terrorism trends in selected countries with low and high exposure to
V.1. Global and regional trends in terrorism (1970-2014) 103
When plotted, the impact of the September 11th attacks caused the problem of stretching the display range which scaled down the trend line for the remaining countries. This can be seen in Figure V-5. Variance in the development of the number of deaths was hardly visible, with the U.K. as an exception. As mentioned before, the country experienced a long running series of terror attacks throughout the second half of the 20th century. These were carried out by different factions of the IRA which was long regarded one of the world’s most notorious terrorist organizations (Horgan and Taylor 1997; English 2004).
Figure V-6 Counts of terror-related deaths in selected countries with high exposure to terrorism (1970-2014)
Elaboration by the author; Data source: UMD-START/GTD
Figure V-6 shows disaggregated data for a selected number of countries with exceptionally high exposure to terrorism. As already mentioned, the rise of terror violence from the end of the 1970s throughout the first half of the 1980s was largely attributable to the Americas. This regarded essentially three countries, namely El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua.
Following a decline in the Americas, the global development of terror attacks took a less polarized turn towards the second half of the 1980s. The respective drop depicted in Figure V-6 is somewhat misleading, however. It is not indicative of a global trend. The relative relaxation of violence in Central America had indeed a dampening effect on the global number of deaths caused by terror attacks, but not on the number of terror attacks as such. On the one hand, this arises because the lethality of terror attacks in Central America had been very high.
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At a value of more than three, the global deaths per attack ratio therefore reached a preliminary high in 1983 (see Figure V-1). The global drop in the number of deaths lasted rather shortly, however, because the number of terror attacks and deaths in regions other than the Americas—
notably in Asia and Africa—started to grow around the same time. Globally, this led to a continuous increase in the number of terror attacks which reached its preliminary peak at roughly 5,000 attacks in 1992. With around 10,000 casualties, also by then the total number of deaths caused by terror attacks had almost regained its previous high from 1984. The average number of deaths per attack, on the other hand, was lower.
The absolute numbers of terror attacks and deaths caused by these attacks gave a somewhat distorted impression of how the severity of terrorism compared between countries. If other factors are accounted for, one would naturally expect a larger number of terror attacks in regions or countries with larger populations. It turned out to be more appropriate to compare terrorism trends in terms of rates rather than counts. Therefore, the terrorism mortality rate, meaning the number of deaths caused by terror attacks per population divided by 100,000, was calculated. The transformation of these counts bore two advantages. Firstly, it made levels of terrorism more easily comparable—not only between countries but also within countries over time. Secondly, it made the impact of terror attacks comparable to other forms of lethal violence, especially homicide which is also calculated based on rates per 100,000 population.
Figure V-7 Terrorism mortality rate (per 100,000 inh.) in selected OECD countries (1970-2014)
Elaboration by the author; Data source: UMD-START/GTD
V.1. Global and regional trends in terrorism (1970-2014) 105
Figure V-7 shows the terrorism mortality rate for selected OECD countries. A comparison of Figure V-7 with Figure V-5—which depicted the counts of victims caused by terror attacks for the same selection of countries—reveals that the use of rates rather than counts did indeed put the severity of terror attacks into perspective. The spike in the number of deaths caused by terror attacks in the U.S. in 2001 confirms that the World Trade Center attacks remain the single most serious terror attacks in the developed world. They caused the highest terrorism mortality rate measured for any OECD country during the period of observation. A juxtaposition of terrorism mortality rates rather than counts, however, made the spike for the U.S. in 2001 smaller as compared to the other countries and years. The leveling of the scale made the dynamics in other countries more recognizable. This holds especially true for the terrorism mortality rate in the U.K.
The effect borne by calculating the terrorism mortality rates became even more salient when comparing the terrorism trends of the countries that were most impacted by terrorism during the observation period. The terrorism mortality rates for these countries are exhibited in Figure V-8. In comparison with Figure V-6, it became apparent that the period of terror attacks experienced in Central America during the first half of the 1980s was even more intense than what could be inferred from Figure V-6. The rate of roughly 100 measured for Nicaragua in 1984 was by far the highest measured for any country throughout the whole dataset, and the rate for El Salvador in 1980 was the highest for any country other than Nicaragua. The absolute number of terror attacks in Nicaragua in 1984 was 302, causing 3617 deaths which results in a ratio of ca. 12 deaths per attack. This compared to 2386 killed in 710 attacks in El Salvador in 1980—resulting in a terrorism mortality ratio of roughly 52 and a deaths per attack ratio of ca.
3.4.
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Figure V-8 Terrorism mortality rate (per 100,000 inh.) in selected countries with high exposure to terrorism (1970-2014)
Elaboration by the author; Data source: UMD-START/GTD
As opposed to Figure V-6, the comparison of the terrorism mortality rates depicted in Figure V-8 suggested that the period of attacks in Central America was more intense than the upsurges in terrorist violence that Western and Southern Asia have experienced over the past decade.
This is despite the fact that the absolute numbers of attacks and deaths caused by these attacks in Iraq, Syria, Pakistan and Afghanistan continue to push for globally unprecedented highs in absolute counts. Also, here it is noteworthy that the counts of attacks and victims indicated differences in terms of the terrorism mortality rate. For example, the peak in the terrorism mortality rate for 2007 for Iraq was due to 6292 deaths caused by 1047 attacks. The value for Iraq in 2013 indicated roughly the same number of victims but almost three times as many attacks. This made for a much lower ratio of deaths per attack.