Historical Terrorism Analysis

Terrorism is usually understood as the use or threat of violence to further a political cause. by Max Roser, Mohamed Nagdy and Hannah Ritchie There is no universally agreed definition of terrorism making it a difficult object to quantify. While acts of terrorism across the globe have increased markedly in recent decades, in most parts of the world it continues to be a relatively rare event and is instead focused in particular countries or regions of instability.

I. Empirical View

I.1 Historical Terrorism

Terrorism is not a 21st century phenomenon and has its roots in early resistance and political movements. The Sicarii were an early Jewish terrorist organisation founded in the first century A.D. with the goal of overthrowing the Romans in

The attacks are estimated to have killed 3000 people making it the deadliest terrorist incident in human history. The subsequent War on Terror led to the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. The following table summarizes the concentration of terrorist attacks pre- and post-9/11. It reveals that terrorism pre-9/11 was concentrated in Latin America and Asia, but shifted to the Middle East post-9/11--Peru, Chile and El Salvador completely disappear from the top 10. More than a quarter of all terrorist attacks between 9/11 and 2008 took place in Iraq.The shifting concentration of global terrorist activity can be seen in the following map. Terrorism post-9/11 has been concentrated in predominantly Muslim countries as a result of radical Islamic ideologies and sectarian

In 1976 Zehdi Terzi, the first PLO representative to the United Nations, stated that the "first several hijackings aroused the consciousness of the world and awakened the media and world opinion much more--and more effectively--than 20 years of pleading at the United Nations."

I.5 Terrorism in specific countries and regions

Terrorism fatalities by region

In the chart below we see the number of fatalities from terrorist attacks aggregated by region. Over this 40-50 year time span we see that some regions have particular periods of relatively high fatality numbers - for example, Central America & the Caribbean in the 1970s & 1980s. We see that over the past decade, the number of fatalities in the Middle East & Africa has risen significantly. In 2016, approximately 75 percent of terror-related fatalities were in the Middle East & Africa, just under one-quarter in South and Southeast Asia, around one percent in Europe, and less than 0.5% in the Americas.

Terrorism in specific countries

By default the following two charts show how terrorist incidents have evolved in Afghanistan and Iraq following the War on Terror. It is possible to change the countries displayed in the visualization