The recent deadly attacks in Mumbai, India and the apparent resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan may lead some to the conclusion that the war on terrorism is failing. But various studies, statistics, polls and experts suggest that despite some ugly flare-ups, we are making fair progress in the war on terror.
James Jay Carafano, Ph.D., writing about the significance of Mumbai for the Heritage Foundation, reminds the doomsayers, “There is a reason why the United States has not been attacked since 9/11. It is not because there is no threat or that the nation has just been lucky.
“In many respects, U.S. counterterrorism programs are working – and not just at home, either. While there has been a flare-up of terrorism in India and the Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan, as a recent report by the Human Security Project shows, globally, the trend in transnational terrorist attacks and the appeal of the radical bin Laden agenda have been declining for several years.”
A study from the Center for International Development and Conflict Management at the University of Maryland, for instance, has revealed a sharp decline over the past quarter of a century in the percentage of organizations pursuing violent strategies – including terrorism – to effect political change across the Middle East and North Africa.
A Novel Look at Terrorist Violence
The Canadian-based Human Security Research Group and its Human Security Report Project made waves recently by challenging the expert consensus that the threat of global terrorism is increasing. In fact, its latest Human Security Brief reveals – as Carafino suggests – a sharp net decline in the incidence of terrorist violence around the world.
Fatalities from terrorism have declined by some 40 percent, concludes the Group, while the loose-knit terror network associated with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida has suffered a dramatic collapse in popular support throughout the Muslim world.
The Brief suggests there are several reasons for believing that the recent decline in Islamist terrorism does in fact mean that the threat is diminishing.
Counterterrorism efforts, although they are still plagued by a multitude of problems, are more widespread, more coordinated, and more effective today than they were prior to 9/11. Part of the reason we are seeing fewer terror¬ist attacks is that a greater number are being prevented from occurring before they can even be launched.
There is growing evidence of bitter doctrinal infighting within, and defections from, the now largely decentralized global Islamist network. Such developments are a classic sign of organizational crisis and incipient breakdown.
There has been an extraordinary drop in support for Islamist terror organizations in the Muslim world over the past five years – a decline that is driven by the increasing popular rejection of the terrorists’ indiscriminate violence (that mostly targets fellow Muslims), their extremist ideology, and their harshly repressive policies.
These dramatic conclusions are backed up by some empirical polling.
A Pew poll in July 2007, for example, revealed that Muslim support for terrorist violence against civilians had declined by half or more over five years in four countries polled: Lebanon, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Indonesia.
By late 2007 in Afghanistan just 1 percent of Afghans “strongly supported” the presence of the Taliban and for¬eign jihadi fighters in their country.
Meanwhile, in Pakistan, support for Islamist political parties has collapsed – dropping by some 500 percent between the 2002 and 2008 national elections.
In the North-West Frontier Province where al-Qaida has its strongest presence in Pakistan, support for Osama bin Laden dropped from 70 percent in August 2007 to 4 percent in January 2008, note the authors of the Brief.
What’s more, a December 2007 poll in Saudi Arabia found that Osama bin Laden’s fellow countrymen had “dramatically turned against him, against al-Qaida, and against terrorism in gen¬eral.”
And in Iraq, where the Islamists have suffered their greatest recent strategic setback, a major poll also released in December 2007 found that 100 percent of Iraqis – Sunnis as well as Shia – found al-Qaida’s attacks on civilians to be “unacceptable.”
The Brief’s authors suggest, “This pattern has been repeated in country after country in the Muslim world. Its strategic implications are critically important because the historical evidence suggests that terrorist campaigns that lose public support will, sooner or later, be either abandoned or defeated.
“Without popular support, the Islamists cannot hope to create a successful political revolution – lacking any serious conventional military capacity, they cannot hope to defeat incumbent regimes by force of arms.
“As Muslim publics increasingly reject Islamist policies and terror tactics, they are more likely to cooperate with official counter-terror campaigns. This is precisely what happened in Iraq, where Sunni insurgents became so alienated from their former al-Qaida in Iraq allies that they joined with the U.S. in an anti-Islamist alliance to defeat them.”
Even where terror organizations have a modest degree of support, their campaigns are still mostly notable for their failure rate.
A study in International Security that examined 42 terrorist campaigns waged by 28 terror organizations of all types over a period of five years found that they failed to achieve their limited policy goals 93 percent of the time.
Several years after 9/11, Islamist terror groups con¬front a fundamental impasse – one largely of their own making, note the Brief’s authors. “Their indiscriminately violent terror tactics and harshly repressive policies have dramatically eroded their popular support in the Muslim world, sparked deep divisions within the global Islamist movement, and catalyzed increasingly effective counter-terror campaigns around the world.”
Bottom line espoused by the Brief: “Although the threat posed by al-Qaida and its affiliates is still serious and far from being eliminated, the prognosis for this loosely knit global terror network is now bleak.”
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