Global Terrorist Killings in 2023 – Burkina Faso Suffers in First Place

1- March-2024

The Institute for Economics and Peace has released its latest report on the state of terrorism around the world.

The 2023 report, dubbed the Global Terrorism Index, shows a dramatic rise in the number of terrorism-related deaths while revealing that the Sahel region of Sub-Saharan Africa witnessed more deaths from terrorism than the much-publicized Middle East.

AllAfrica’s Boakai Fofana (BF) spoke with Thom Morgan (TM), Associate Research Director at the Institute for Economics and Peace, and one of the report’s authors…

Interview edited for clarity and brevity

TM: I think there are a couple of key findings to take away from this year’s report. First and foremost, is about the increase in terrorism. And so the fact is in 2023, we had the largest number of terrorism deaths that we’ve seen since 2017.

We actually had a number of years when the level of terrorism was decreasing, but that’s reversed in 2023 And I think the important one to take away from the increase in deaths is this is not something that’s evenly distributed across the world. So the vast majority of the increase has happened in a handful of countries.

This is the first time in the history of the index that we have a country, other than Afghanistan or Iraq, being the most impacted by terrorism. So this year Burkina Faso is the country which has the most deaths from terrorism, and accounted for almost a quarter of all deaths from terrorism worldwide. And more broadly, in the Sahel region, we see that accounts for almost 50% of deaths from terrorism. So you’ve seen an increase in the sort of switch in the epicenter of terrorism out of the Middle East, and North Africa, and into Sub-Saharan Africa.

Then, of course, one of the other key findings of the report is that the Hamas-led attacks on October 7 in Israel. So that’s the largest terrorist attack since 911. And, of course, that has had, you know, severe repercussions in the Middle East, but also repercussions elsewhere. So we’re seeing a large wave of protests in the wake of the war in Gaza, an increase in the risk of terrorism in Europe, and so on. But then I think the final point to take away is that it’s, despite the overall increase in terrorism, there’s been a decrease in terrorism in a number of areas.

So if you look at the Middle East, even though the number of deaths increased, the number of attacks decreased. I think it’s something that sort of emblematic of this is, if you look at Iraq’s performance on the index, it’s had a 99% drop in deaths from terrorism since 2007.  And then if you look at Western democracies, you’ve also seen a reduction in terrorism there. So the number of incidents and the number of deaths in Western democracies are lower than they’ve been since 2007. It’s a story about an increase in terrorism but also a story about the shifts in the dynamics of terrorism, where it’s happening, and who are the people who are most impacted and affected by it.

You mentioned the French intervention, You know that created some friction with some of the countries in the Sahel. We saw something similar with a multinational force in Mali. Is the intervention of these foreign forces helping or worsening the situation?

Well, I think that there’s been a complete French withdrawal from most of the countries in the region. There are Some suggestions that the French troops are still operating (in some parts); that’s kind of difficult to know exactly what the security situation is on the ground. Again, it’s hard to say definitively whether it’s helping or hindering the situation.

I think certainly looking more broadly, and looking at trends over time, if peacekeeping missions are well-resourced, then they do have an impact on reducing conflict. So if you look at some of the evidence related to the deployment of UN peacekeeping troops, if those missions are well-resourced, they definitely have a positive impact in reducing conflict. One of the things that we have seen over time is that if you look at missions in the region now compared to previous missions, in terms of the number of peacekeeping troops deployed per capita, that number has come down. So those kinds of interventions can help as long as they’re properly resourced.

Anything you think we should know before we end this interview?

No, I think that’s kind of all the major trends from the report. But again, just to emphasize that the report on what’s happening in the central Sahel region. But in fact, if you look at the data for many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, there’s very low levels of terrorism or no terrorism. So they are certainly areas of concern, but it’s not a bad news story across the board.

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