Terrorism: Nigeria one of five countries with highest terror fatalities Report

Terrorism: Nigeria one of five countries with highest terror fatalities Report

Source:Tribune

NIGERIA hasbeen ranked among2013 world’s most terrorised countriesin theGlobalTerrorism Index2014 reportreleased on Tuesday.

In the said report, five mostly terrorised countries, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeriaand Syria, accounted for 80 per centof thedeaths from terrorism in 2013.
Iraq alonerecorded morethan 6,000 deaths, making the countrymost affected by terrorism, thereportsaid.
India, Somalia, thePhilippines, Yemen and Thailand werethe next five, with between one per cent and 2.3 per cent ofglobaldeaths by terrorism.
Behind most of thedeathswere militant groups, Islamic Statemilitants, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and the Taliban, which the Global Terrorism Index 2014 report said were the four main groups responsiblefor 66 per cent ofall deathsfrom terrorist attacksin 2013.
The latest studyinto internationalterrorism showed that thenumber of deathsfrom terrorism increased by 61 per centbetween 2012 and 2013.
The report,which investigated terrorism trends between 2000 and 2013,used datafrom the United States (US)-based Global Terrorism Database.
Nearly10,000 terrorist attacks occured in 2013, which amounted to 44 per cent increasefrom 2012, the report indicated.
The report bythe Institutefor Economics and Peace(IEP) said nearly 18,000 peopledied from terrorist attacksin 2013.
The executive chairman, IEP, Steve Killelea,in a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) report, said the latest increase in deaths from terrorism wasprimarilydueto thecivil war in Syria, which began in 2011.
“Notonlyis the intensityofterrorism increasing, its breadth isincreasingas well,” he noted.
“Thedestabilisation in Syria, which has now overflowed into Iraq, is wherewe feelthe upsurge in terrorism,” Killeleaadded.
Hesaid thereportincluded rankings of countries by theimpactofterroristactivities, based on the number ofterrorist attacks, deaths and injuries from terrorism, and damageto property.
“Although Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries onlyexperienced fiveper cent of alldeaths from terrorism since 2000, they suffered someofthe deadliest attacks,” the report said.
Theseincluded theSeptember 11, 2001 attacks on the US, the 2004 Madrid train bombings, the 2005 London bombings,and the bombingand shootingattack in Norwayin 2012.
During2013, Turkey and Mexico werethe OECD countrieswith the highest number ofdeaths from terrorism,at57 and 40 respectively.
The report further identified religion and politics astwo main platforms under which the terror groups hid to formenttroubles.
“Allfour groupsused ‘religious ideologies’ based on extreme interpretations of WahhabiIslam.
“To counteract theriseofreligiousextremism, moderate Sunni theologies need to be cultivated by credible forces within Islam,” the report said, but it wasimportantthat“moderateSunni countriesand not outside influences” led such a response.
However, the report added thatreligious ideology wasnot theonlymotivation for terrorism,asit stated that“there aremany peacefulMuslim-majoritycountries that do not suffer from terrorism suchasQatar, the United Arab Emirate (UAE) and Kuwait, underscoring howthereare other social, political and geopolitical factors at play.”
“In many partsofthe world, terrorism isfar more likely to be driven by political or nationalistic and separatist movements,” the report said.
The report also identified the three main factors found globally to correlate with terrorism,which itsaid were: high social hostilitiesbetween different ethnic, religiousand linguistic groups; thepresenceofstate-sponsored violencesuch as extrajudicial killings and human rights abusesand high levels of overallviolence, such as deaths from organised conflict or high levels of violent crime.
IEP bos, Killelea said religiousfigures in some moderate Sunni countries were alreadyspeaking out against extremism.
“Itwasvery,veryhard for Western countries to counteract radicalreligiousideology,”he said.
Accordingto Killelea, “the Westcan certainly be supportiveintryingto createbetter mechanisms of policing...and also in terms of being ableto address someofthe underlying issues which cause group grievances.”
“I don’t want to predicttheoutcome for 2014, but it’scertainly hard to imaginethings beingany better,” Killeleaadded.
The report only included data until the end of 2013, butstressed that while terrorism was on theincrease, it was important to keep the numbersin context.