War on Terror, by the numbers

Posted By Mike Boyer Friday, April 28, 2006 - 1:03 PM Share

The National Counterterrorism Center released its annual report on terrorist incidents around the world this morning. Here's a few highlights:

The basics: 11,000 terrorist attacks occurred in 2005, resulting in 14,500 deaths.
Top 5 countries by fatality: Iraq, India, Columbia, Afghanistan, Thailand.
What about Iraq? It accounted for 30% of the worldwide attacks and 55% of the fatalities -- about 8,300 people died from terrorist attacks in Iraq last year. Attacks on noncombatants in Iraq increased "significantly" in 2005. "High fatality" terrorist attacks in Iraq more than doubled from 2004 to 2005.
One of the most striking features of 2005 was Muslim-on-Muslim terrorist action: Of the approximately 40,000 people worldwide who were either killed or wounded in terrorist attacks, at least 10-15,000 were Muslims, most in Iraq. In addition, 80 Mosques were attacked last year, most by Islamic terrorists.
"Technology has empowered the terrorists," the report concludes, without providing any detail on how that's happening. Fortunately, a soon-to-be-released article in FP's May/June issue, written by a great journalist named Greg Grant, explains how. I'll think we'll have it posted on Monday. Keep an eye out for it.

I'm inclined to let these numbers speak for themselves, rather than draw any conclusions here about whether America is "winning" the war on terror. The truth is that these statistics don't answer the question of whether the U.S. is winning or losing the war. Any attempt to judge progress in the Global War on Terror requires a more comprehensive and thoughtful approach. In the coming weeks, FP will try to do just that in an ambitious new index. We can't reveal any details yet, but watch for it.

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