Small Wars Journal

The New State Department Report on Terrorism: Rethinking the Numbers and Coverage

Fri, 09/21/2018 - 12:05am

The New State Department Report on Terrorism: Rethinking the Numbers and Coverage by Anthony H. Cordesman – Center for Strategic and International Studies

The U.S. State Department issued its latest annual report on terrorism on August 19, 2018. The report updates its past estimates to cover 2017 and provides a separate Annex of Statistical Information that summarizes the global trends in terrorism. The report concludes that,

The total number of terrorist attacks worldwide in 2017 decreased by 23 percent and total deaths due to terrorist attacks decreased by 27 percent, compared to 2016. While numerous countries saw a decline in terrorist violence between 2016 and 2017, this overall trend was largely due to dramatically fewer attacks and deaths in Iraq. Twenty-four percent of all deaths in terrorist attacks in 2017 were perpetrator deaths, down from 26 percent in 2016. This statistic was historically much lower but began to increase in the 2000s, largely due to shifting tactics in Afghanistan and, to a lesser extent, in Iraq in the 2010s.

The Annex of Statistical Information also provides a summary graph of the trend in total incidents and deaths by month from 2012-2017 – a period that covers the failed U.S. attempts to disengage its combat forces from Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the period of worst fighting against ISIS. This graph is shown in Figure One, and the State Department statistical annex concludes that,

...the global trends in terrorist attacks observed in 2017 are the continuation of an overall pattern of decline that began in 2014 following a rapid increase in terrorist violence. This rapid increase was largely the result of violence carried out by ISIS and allied groups including Boko Haram in Nigeria, as well as the Taliban in Afghanistan. Likewise, the subsequent decline was primarily the product of decreasing levels of violence by these same groups. Despite these patterns, these groups remained several of the deadliest terrorist groups in the world in 2017.

There are good reasons to question both these conclusions and the way in which both the State Department main report and Annex of Statistical Information are structured. Reasons that raise serious questions about the way the U.S. is approaching the very nature of terrorism and its wars against extremism…

Read on.