(Peace and personal safety are precious attributes of advancing civilisation)
There were nearly 3,200 terrorist attacks worldwide last year, a U.S. federal counter-terrorism centre said last week, using a broader definition that increased fivefold the number of attacks the agency had been counting.
The National Counter terrorism Centres interim director, John Brennan, called a new database that was to go online Wednesday “the most comprehensive U.S. effort to date to track terrorist incidents worldwide.” But he cautioned that comparing the new tally to previous ones was like comparing apples to oranges.
Terrorism statistics have become a hot button issue in the war on terror but critics have said previous government reports did not reflect an increase in global terrorism. Brennan and other government officials blame human error and a definition of terrorism that had not been updated since the 1980s.
The new definition of terrorism includes politically motivated violence carried out by extremist groups within a country, often aimed at changing their own governments policies.
The previous definition focused on international terrorism and required that the terrorists victimise at least one citizen of another country. Also, previously, only attacks resulting in more than $10,000 damage or serious injuries were counted. The new definition includes all injuries and puts no limit on damages.
Source: Associated Press, Terror Attacks Near 3,200 in 2004 Count, Washington Post, July 5, 2005.
For text: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/05/AR2005070501034.html
For the Worldwide Incidents Tracking System database: http://tkb.org/NCTCAdvancedSearch.jsp
For more on Terrorism: http://www.ncpa.org/iss/ter/
FMF Policy Bulletin/ 12 July 2005
