Terrorist attacks and fatalities soared to a record high in 2012, says a new report by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.
The report says that more than 8,500 terrorist attacks killed nearly 15,500 people last year as violence tore through Africa, Asia and the Middle East, adding that most of the violence was committed in Muslim-majority countries.
Gary LaFree, START’s director, said that 2013 is expected to outpace even 2012’s record high, adding that there were 5,100 attacks in the first six months of 2013. In recent weeks, Al-Shabaab, a militant group based in Somalia, attacked a mall in Nairobi, Kenya, leaving 67 dead; suicide bombers killed 81 at a church in Pakistan; and the Taliban took credit for killing two police officers with a car bomb in Afghanistan. Outside of small dips in 2004 and 2009, the number of attacks has steadily increased in the past decade, according to START. The upward trend increases the likelihood that 2012’s numbers are not an aberration, LaFree said.
Sectarian attacks – such as the pitched battles between Sunni and Shia Muslims in Iraq, Syria and Pakistan – tend to be disproportionately deadly, said Martha Crenshaw, an expert at Stanford University and a START board member.
“Sadly, it seems to be increasingly acceptable in certain belief systems to kill as many members of the other religious community as possible,” she said. “Moral restraints seem to be eroding.”
Although terrorism touched 85 countries last year, just three – Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan – suffered more than half of 2012’s attacks (55%) and fatalities (62%).
Afghanistan’s Taliban was by far the deadliest group in 2012, when it launched 525 attacks that killed 1,842 people.
The second deadliest group was Nigeria’s Boko Haram, a jihadist group that orchestrated 364 attacks last year that killed 1,132 people. The next most deadly were al Qaeda in Iraq, the Communist Party of India-Maoist, Somalia’s Al-Shabaab, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Pakistan’s branch of the Taliban.
The power struggles in many Muslim countries are driven as much by political as religious concerns, according to terrorism experts. While most terrorism in 2012 was committed in Muslim-majority countries, LaFree and other experts cautioned against viewing Islam itself as inherently violent.
In September, Sunni and Shia leaders meeting in Washington announced an agreement to set aside differences and address the “dire situation of unrest, destruction, genocide and refugees” in many predominantly Muslim countries. “All Muslims are one nation, even if the schools of thought are diverse,” the scholars’ declaration said. “Such diversity is a source of intellectual enrichment and should not be the cause of accusations of disbelief, murder, and the desecration of sanctities.”
"The power struggles in many Muslim countries are driven as much by political as religious concerns, according to terrorism experts. While most terrorism in 2012 was committed in Muslim-majority countries, LaFree and other experts cautioned against viewing Islam itself as inherently violent".
IF THE ABOVE OBSERVATION CULLED FROM THE MAIN ARTICLE ABOVE IS TO GO BY, IT MEANS ISLAMIC RELIGION ACCOUNTS FOR GREATER POPULATION OF INTOLERANT HUMAN BEINGS.
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