New ASP Report Shows Declining Levels of Islamist Terrorism since July 2009
Military Pressure Shifting the Locus of the Threat to East Africa and Yemen
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Washington, DC – Today, the American Security Project released the mid-year update to their annual “Are We Winning?” Report, which showed a marked decrease in Islamist terrorism in the last two quarters of 2009 outside of the on-going conflict theaters of Iraq and Afghanistan. Even though Islamist terrorist incidents still remain at historically high levels, the decrease at the end of 2009 was the largest since 2004, when National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC) started tracking Islamist terrorist incidents. The report, authored by ASP Senior Fellow Bernard Finel and Researcher Germain Difo measures America’s progress in the fight against terrorism according to metrics that are designed to be both reproducible and objective.
According to the report, much of the decline in Islamic terrorist incidents is due to decreasing terror incidents in Pakistan. Though there have been several high profile attacks in Pakistan, Islamist terrorism in that country is down 60% from the first six months of 2009. This decline is likely due to increased military pressure by the Pakistani military on radicals within that country. In addition, the report found that Al Qaeda is increasingly marginal to the broader radical Islamist movement, and remains under significant pressure due to drone strikes and other forms of military pressure. This continues to demonstrate the tactical effectiveness of military counter-terrorism activities, though according to Senior Fellow and report author Bernard Finel, “it is unlikely that military pressure alone will provide a long-term solution to the terrorism challenge. We should be cautiously optimistic about the ability of military efforts in areas such as Pakistan and Afghanistan to dislodge some terrorist groups and keep them on the run. But there is still a significant chance that terror groups may rebound.”
The report also found that Yemen has emerged as both a potential launching pad for al Qaeda terrorist attacks and a locus of radicalization for foreigners traveling to Yemen from abroad. Report co-author and ASP Policy Analyst Germain Difo noted, “The increasing reach and capacity of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is a major source of concern, especially given disorder in Yemen and the challenge of radicalism in nearby Somalia.”
The report also noted that the number of terrorist attacks in Iraq are holding steady at between 52 and 66 incidents per quarter since the fourth quarter of 2008. Afghanistan remains, by far, the most dangerous country in the world, with over 500 Islamist terrorist incidents in the last six months of 2009.
Download the full report here.
