Pakistan, Afghanistan and India were the worst-affected victims of terrorism during 2011, while terrorist strikes increased four times since the start of Iraq war in 2003, according to a new global study.
The inaugural Global Terrorism Index (GTI) said that Pakistan, India and Afghanistan accounted for 12 percent, 11 percent and 10 percent of global terrorist incidents from 2002 to 2009. In 2011, Middle East, India, Pakistan and Russia were the worst-impacted victims of terrorism, the report said, adding that overall, there were 7,473 fatalities in 2011 due to terrorism, which were 25 percent less than those in 2007.
The report said that the number of terrorist incidents had increased every year since the 9/11 attacks in the US, with most terror strikes occurring in a wider conflict situation. The index showed that global terrorism had only started to increase after the escalation of the Iraq war.
This was subsequently followed by further increasing waves of terrorism in Afghanistan and then in Pakistan 18 months later. While terrorism fatalities fell by 25 percent since 2007, coinciding with the wind-down of the Iraq war, Iraq still remained the country that had suffered the most from terrorism in 2011.
According to a report, US, Algeria and Colombia had seen the biggest improvement over the last ten years. “Terrorism is one of the most emotive subjects of our time. The impact of terrorism does seem to have plateaued over the last three years but is still unacceptably high,” said Steve Killelea, executive chairman of the Institute for Economics and Peace, which produced the index.
In the decade since 9/11, fatalities from terrorist attacks have increased by 195 percent, incidents by 460 percent and injuries by 224 percent.