The previous four parts presented a detailed exposition of the content of the 11th edition of the Global Terrorism Index for 2024, published by the Institute for Economics and Peace. This edition offers a comprehensive summary of the main global trends and patterns of terrorism, analyzing several important dimensions related to it, such as the social and economic conditions in which it occurs, and its dynamic nature that changes over time. The fifth and final part offers a critical view of the Index, highlighting its strengths and identifying its main criticisms and gaps, thereby providing the reader with keys to an objective reading of the Index’s content.
Strengths
The Global Terrorism Index is an important reference for researchers and scholars interested in issues of terrorism and extremism, as well as for countries and concerned systems, due to its panoramic reading of the global terrorist scene, trends in terrorist activity in different world regions, geographical concentrations, among others. The most notable positive observations about the latest edition of the Global Terrorism Index for 2024 are as follows:
1. The Index is one of the main reports that serve as a reference in determining the dimensions of the terrorist phenomenon worldwide; it presents a wide range of statistical data on the number of terrorist attacks, deaths resulting from them, and the most used tactics by active terrorist organizations globally. This statistical data is accompanied by analytical points that explain the main characteristics of terrorist activity during the year prior to the Index’s publication, the impacts and implications associated with this activity and the degree of their variation from one geographical area to another, the most lethal terrorist groups, the list of the ten countries most affected by terrorism globally, and the features and characteristics that distinguish terrorist activity from other forms of violence such as armed conflict, murder, and suicide. These outputs are crucial for researchers and academics specialized in the study and analysis of terrorism, allowing them to have a bird’s eye view of the global terrorist landscape, understand its main characteristics, and anticipate its possible outcomes.
2. Given the phenomenon of terrorism as a globalized, cross-border threat that does not confine its danger and reach to the borders of any single state but also extends to many geographical areas, the Index provides significant material for decision-makers and security policy framers. It enables them to formulate anti-terrorism approaches at the national, regional, and international levels, assess the effectiveness of different governments’ measures to combat terrorism, identify active hotspots from which terrorist contagion could spread, and take proactive measures to confront them. The Index can serve as a compass for governments and citizens in determining their investment and tourism destinations, especially since the level and degree of terrorist risk in a country are important factors affecting whether that country is attractive or repelling for investments.
3. In light of the close connections and relationships between terrorism and organized crime in many countries, and the complexity and diversity of those relationships depending on the regions and contexts, it becomes necessary to continue identifying these links, dismantling them, and better understanding their manifestations, degrees, and regional impacts, especially through data collection and specialized research in this regard. The Global Terrorism Index is one of the main steps to support such efforts; its latest edition for 2024 highlighted the increasing relationship between terrorism and organized crime identified during 2023, the various patterns of this relationship ranging from coexistence to cooperation and convergence, and how terrorist groups, especially those active in the African Sahel region, benefit from organized crime activities to finance their operations and build relationships and companies in the region to enhance their control.
4. The Index engages with the problem of foreign terrorist fighters in the ranks of ISIS, emphasizing the importance of focusing counter-terrorism policies on the repatriation of these individuals from Al-Hol camp and other camps that house tens of thousands of ISIS women and children in northeast Syria to their countries, focusing on their rehabilitation and reintegration into their societies to ensure they do not revert to extremism. The importance of highlighting this problem in the Index is due to it being one of the main drivers for the continued threat of terrorism despite the successes achieved by national, regional, and international efforts in the fight against terrorism. The camps housing ISIS fighters represent a ticking time bomb that threatens to explode at any moment in the absence of serious regional and international moves to deal with the security threat these camps harbor, necessitating the formulation of a unified, well-considered, and implementable strategy urgently to deal with this threat, especially concerning the children residing in the camps who represent a “strategic stock” ensuring ISIS’s survival and continued threat in the future, and contributing to achieving its alleged goals of establishing an “enduring and expansive caliphate.”
5. The Index includes an evaluation of counter-terrorism efforts in the African Sahel region to show their effectiveness in encircling the threat of terrorist groups and organized crime gangs active in the region. It offers a series of important recommendations for more effectively cutting off financial and logistical supplies to these groups, including, but not limited to:
– Developing a regional strategic action plan aimed at disrupting cross-border organized crime networks in the African Sahel region, and introducing new reforms to reorganize the legislation and regulations concerning the relationship between terrorism and organized crime, to establish a more comprehensive framework that can be easily implemented.
– Finding mechanisms to enhance intelligence information exchange and cooperation in border management between the Sahel region countries. And increasing the allocation of government resources to build capacities in surveillance and information collection and exchange between law enforcement agencies to enhance the detection and prosecution of transnational organized crime cases; the cross-border nature of illicit economies and terrorist financing in the Sahel region highlights the need for a multidimensional response that relies on increased cooperation between countries in the region with support from their regional and international partners.
– Reevaluating counter-terrorism efforts in the Sahel region to include measures for monitoring informal banking systems to help cut off funding sources to terrorist groups; the specific nature of the Sahel region has shown that many of the activities of terrorist operations, cash transfers, and terrorist financing channels occur outside the formal financial and banking systems.
– Continuing to prioritize the detection and combating of terrorist financing to identify and combat links with other forms of criminality, including conducting financing risk assessments, enhancing the role of financial intelligence units, and building cooperation with counter-terrorism investigators.
– Addressing comprehensively all forms of human trafficking practiced by terrorist groups, tackling the illegal exploitation and trafficking of natural resources and other goods that such groups can benefit from. Efforts should also continue to address the illicit trafficking, manufacturing, and possession of small arms, which can financially benefit terrorist groups and facilitate their activities.
– Building capacities in border security and maritime crime to detect and prevent the illegal transit of goods and individuals that can be used to finance terrorist groups and facilitate the travel of foreign terrorist fighters through data collection tools, surveillance and control systems, and enhancing inter-agency cooperation, including between customs, investigators, and intelligence officials.
Observations and Criticisms
Despite the numerous positive points mentioned previously, some criticisms and shortcomings can be directed towards the Global Terrorism Index, which may affect the accuracy of its statistics and its adherence to standards of neutrality and credibility. These criticisms can be outlined as follows:
• Lack of a Defined Concept of Terrorism: Contrary to previous editions, such as those of 2023, 2022, and 2020, the latest 2024 edition did not adopt a specific definition of terrorism to determine the mechanism by which an act of violence can be considered terrorist or not, and whether it falls within the Index’s statistics. Moreover, the report did not specify the reference lists used to label a particular group as “terrorist.” This raises some doubts about the accuracy and neutrality of the Index’s statistics and its approach to the terrorist phenomenon without external influence, especially considering one of the main issues in dealing with terrorism is “the political utilization of the concept of terrorism,” meaning labelling certain states or groups as terrorist to align with some regional and international powers’ interests, regardless of these states’ or groups’ actual policies. This necessitates revisiting the Index’s methodology to adopt a specific concept in defining terrorism, aligning with the standards of neutrality, credibility, and objectivity required in an important international report on terrorism studies.
• Confusing Legitimate Resistance with Terrorism: Due to the lack of a specific concept of terrorism, as previously mentioned, there is confusion between acts of legitimate resistance and terrorist activity. This confusion is evident in the Index’s treatment of the Palestinian Hamas movement as a “terrorist group,” ranking it second on the list of the most deadly terrorist groups globally in 2023. However, the report overlooks the fact that armed resistance against an occupier is legitimate under international law, which affirms that “resistance in all its forms is a legitimate right for people under occupation, and that its weapon enjoys legal legitimacy and cannot be taken away.”
Several international charters, resolutions, and declarations support the right of people under occupation to defend themselves, including but not limited to: UN General Assembly Resolution 3314 of 1974 on the definition of aggression, Resolution 3246 of the same year on the protection of civilians under foreign occupation, Resolution 2625 of 1970 on the Declaration of Principles of International Law relating to friendly relations and cooperation among states according to the UN Charter, the First Protocol of the Geneva Conventions of 1977 concerning international armed conflicts, the African Union’s declaration on the right of peoples to self-determination, the Charter of the League of Arab States, and the Charter of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Furthermore, the UN General Assembly explicitly affirmed the Palestinian people’s right to resist Israeli occupation on their land, where Resolution 37/43 of 1982 stated “the inalienable right of the Palestinian people and all peoples under foreign and colonial domination to self-determination, by all means available, including armed struggle.”
These international resolutions and humanitarian rules refute the Index’s description of the Hamas movement as a terrorist group and confirm that Palestinians are people under Israeli occupation, striving for liberation using all rights sanctioned by international law, including armed resistance. Therefore, the Index’s classification of Hamas as a terrorist group—while neglecting to mention that Israeli occupation practices on Palestinian territories are the root cause of the current cycle of violence—once again raises the issue of the politicization of the concept of terrorism and the deliberate confusion between it and other concepts, such as legitimate resistance, to serve some countries’ interests. In other words, classifying Hamas as a terrorist group, in line with similar Western classifications, and neglecting relevant international law norms about the rights of peoples under occupation, demonstrates a deviation from the neutrality and accuracy required in a report as significant as this.
• Overlooking “State Terrorism”: The Index fails to address patterns of terrorism committed by governmental actors, or what is called “state terrorism,” which means “the use of power by the existing authority in a state for illegitimate violence, intended to create a state of terror and public threat against its citizens, based on political, social, racial, religious, or cultural discrimination, or against citizens in territories it has occupied or annexed, to achieve political objectives.” This oversight is evident in the Index not addressing Israeli terrorist practices against the Palestinian people since the establishment of Israel, leading up to the recent Gaza war where the occupation forces exhibit all forms of “state terrorism” against Palestinians, including killing civilians, especially children and women, refusal to distinguish between civilian and military targets in Gaza, targeting residential buildings, civil facilities including hospitals and UNRWA schools, practicing collective punishment, and cutting off all essentials for life such as water, food, medicine, and electricity, resulting in 31,645 martyrs and 73,676 injured from October 7, 2023, to March 17, 2024.
Similarly, for the second consecutive year, the Index’s statistics did not include acts of violence committed by the Taliban in Afghanistan as the state actor after their takeover of Kabul in August 2021, despite acknowledging the movement’s widespread acts of repression and violence against civilians, media, former government officials, and human rights workers. Ironically, the report does not treat the Taliban as a terrorist group despite referencing its financing operations through opium poppy cultivation and export, as an example of a terrorist group dealing with organized crime groups to fund its terrorist activities.
• Ignoring Non-Traditional Patterns of Terrorism: The Index does not include patterns of terrorism known as “environmental terrorism” or “climate terrorism,” practiced by some actors concerned with defending the environment, who sometimes resort to acts of violence and sabotage to advocate for their principles and policies on environmental protection. Although attacks driven by environmental concerns rarely result in fatalities like those motivated by religious or political reasons, they often cause significant damage to the economy, property, and infrastructure. For example, Canada experienced its largest wildfires in 2023, with over 3 million hectares burned and tens of people evacuated, with speculations that a majority of these incidents were perpetrated by “environmental terrorists.” Hence, it is crucial for the Index to monitor acts of violence falling under the pattern of environmental terrorism, considering the material and human losses they may cause, especially as the exacerbation and complexity of climate-related crises recently and the world’s failure to take necessary steps in this regard, are likely to fuel the growth of environmental terrorist activity over the next decade.
– Quantitative Overemphasis at the Expense of Qualitative Analysis: Despite the significant statistical material provided by the Index for understanding the contours and trends of global terrorist activity, a perusal of the report’s texts in recent years reveals a substantial focus on quantitative aspects at the expense of qualitative analysis. In other words, the Index does not allocate sufficient space to highlight important points such as the reasons for the varying impacts of terrorist activity from one geographical area to another, why one country shows improvement in the Index’s rankings while others deteriorate, what factors contribute to one terrorist group’s success over others, and does not deeply evaluate counter-terrorism policies at national, regional, and international levels. These points are crucial for specialists in terrorism studies and entities involved in formulating and implementing counter-terrorism policies; to understand and interpret terrorist activity and develop objective policies to prevent or combat this threat.
For example, the Index did not explain the significant improvement seen in Iraq in 2023 compared to previous years, which led to its exit from the list of the ten countries most affected by terrorism globally in the 2024 edition of the Index for the first time since its first edition after recording a 99% decrease in deaths from terrorism since its peak in 2007. Nor did it address the key factors contributing to the decline in terrorism-related impacts on Iraqi geography, such as the noticeable and sharp development in the Iraqi forces’ capabilities and responsiveness to security threats over the past two years, and the Iraqi government’s adoption of measures in 2023 that enhance its ability to combat terrorism within the country. While the report briefly mentioned Iraq’s improvement, it also neglected to mention the existing risks and challenges associated with ISIS’s activity in the country, especially the continued geopolitical instability against the backdrop of the recent Gaza war and signs of the organization’s attempts to exploit it and invest in the resulting complex regional security landscape to assert its presence and impact.
