Report: Global Terrorism Has Tripled Since 2011, Now at an All-Time High

Patrick Poole | 9:59 AM on June 01, 2017

The Institute for Economics and Peace has released its annual “Global Peace Index” for 2017, reporting some shocking findings:

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According to the report, global terrorism has nearly tripled since 2011, and terrorism is now at an all-time high:

The Voice of America reports:

Worldwide terrorism is at an all-time high, and violence cost the global economy $14.3 trillion last year, with a $2.5 trillion impact in the United States alone.

These new figures from the latest Global Peace Index, a report on conflict and security, indicate that world peace has been deteriorating for the past decade, largely driven by terrorism and conflicts in the Middle East and Northern Africa.

The study says the decline interrupts long-term improvements the world had been making since the end of World War II.

According to the report, the annual number of terrorism incidents has almost tripled since 2011.

Deaths from terrorism have risen more than 900% since 2007 in the 35 countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Of those members, 23 nations experienced terrorism related deaths over the past year.

Those countries include Denmark, Sweden, France and Turkey.

One eye-popping graphic from the report (p. 36):

This is quite a turnaround from this time last year during the presidential campaign — when the media was trumpeting supposed major declines in terrorism:

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Only a few were willing to acknowledge the growing terrorism problem developing in the West:

As I noted here at PJ Media after the terror attack in Nice last July, attacks in the West were occurring at a rate of one every 84 hours:

That pace dropped only slightly by October:

After last month’s suicide bombing in Manchester, among other recent attacks, it appears that another “Summer of Terror” may be in the offing:

But wait — didn’t we hear from President Obama that Osama bin Laden was dead, that al-Qaeda had been decimated? That the Islamic State was the “JV team”?

Going back to April 2013, senior Obama State Department officials had been telling us that the “War on Terror” was over, and the primary reason was that Obama’s “Arab Spring” had unleashed the forces of democracy. In reality, it encouraged hardcore Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood to take power in several critical countries in the Middle East:

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Wrote Michael Hirsh at the National Journal:

In an article in the current National Journal called “The Post Al Qaida Era,” I write that the Obama administration is taking a new view of Islamist radicalism. The president realizes he has no choice but to cultivate the Muslim Brotherhood and other relatively “moderate” Islamist groups emerging as lead political players out of the Arab Spring in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere. (The Muslim Brotherhood officially renounced violence decades ago, leading then-dissident radicals such as Ayman al-Zawahiri to join al Qaida.)

It is no longer the case, in other words, that every Islamist is seen as a potential accessory to terrorists. “The war on terror is over,” one senior State Department official who works on Mideast issues told me. “Now that we have killed most of al Qaida, now that people have come to see legitimate means of expression, people who once might have gone into al Qaida see an opportunity for a legitimate Islamism.”

Aside from repeating the canard that “the Muslim Brotherhood officially renounced violence decades ago” (they didn’t), by the end of 2013 Egypt and Tunisia had thrown off their Muslim Brotherhood-led governments which were quickly deteriorating into Iran-style theocracies.

But rather than support the rejection of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Obama administration doubled down on its support. In his September 2014 Oval Office speech, Obama touted his counter-terrorism efforts in Somalia and Yemen as two of the major foreign policy successes of his administration:

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https://twitter.com/ajam/status/510518876371959809

So where are Obama’s counter-terrorism successes today?

Here are a couple headlines from the past few days:

Obama touted his role in the NATO intervention in Libya as another success:

Today, Libya is a failed state:

And terror groups operating in Libya may have played a role in last month’s Manchester bombing:

Alas, among the foreign policy “smart set” are still some true believers:

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Another one of Obama’s self-stated successes was supposedly ending the war in Iraq, which the media was quick to applaud:

In 2012, Obama vigorously campaigned on having ended the war in Iraq — but after ISIS swept across northern Iraq, capturing one-third of the country, Obama was quick to distance himself from the decision to remove American combat troops:

And then there’s Afghanistan — America’s longest war. Obama promised to end that, too:

In fact, he took credit for doing so:

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Where do things stand in Afghanistan now?

The VBIED attack in Kabul this week left damage that can be seen from space:

And do we really want to talk about Syria?

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Deaths from terrorism around the world are now nearly three times higher than at the height of the troop surge in Iraq:

The so-called Arab Spring and the Syrian War — both openly cheered and supported by the Obama administration — unleashed deadly and destructive forces whose full manifestations are only now being seen.

This new data documents the terrorism that has ripped open the Middle East, southeast Asia, and Africa. Now it is literally exploding across Europe.

And it may take more than hugs and hashtags to roll it back.

Patrick Poole
For media inquiries, please contact [email protected]

Patrick Poole is a national security and terrorism correspondent for PJMedia. Follow him on Twitter.
Category: HOMELAND SECURITY
Tags: HOMELAND SECURITY

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