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A recent report found that deaths by terrorism have risen to their highest levels in Africa, while also recording more conflict zones worldwide than at any point since the end of World War II.
Deaths by terrorism surged to an 8-year high in the West following lethal increases in frustration with Europe and North America’s conduct in global conflict zones, and social and ethnic tensions at home. The report labeled the African Sahel as the epicenter of global terrorism, with an increase in annual deaths by terrorist groups by 1,000% since 2009.
“The Sahel accounts for 51% of 2024’s terrorism deaths, with Burkina Faso, while improving overall, remained the most affected nation for a second year. Six of the ten countries in the region recorded at least one fatality,” the report read. “Togo recorded its worst year for terrorism since the inception of the Index, reflecting the spread of terrorist activity beyond the Sahel”.
Published annually by the Institute for Economics and Peace, the Global Terrorism Index (GTI) highlights how societal breakdown can allow terrorism to flourish. The Sahel has been affected by poverty, ecological stress, and political destabilization after a series of 6 regime changes: 2 in Burkina Faso, 2 in Mali, 1 in Nigeria, and 1 in Niger. Many of these coups were led by US-trained military commanders, and none have demonstrated a capability of combating the insurgencies despite their training.
These include Burkina Faso’s Captain Ibrahim Traoré and Niger’s General Abdourahamane Tiani, who both took power through a military junta, and whose countries remain some of the most heavily-affected.
The main terrorist groups are the Islamic State-Sahel, and Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM), a branch of al-Qaeda, the organization whose other remaining powerful offshoot just took power in Syria. The Sahel contains several of the poorest countries on Earth, as well as enormous populations under-25 with little employment opportunities.
This allows insurgent groups, the BBC reports, to recruit from the population relatively easily. In particular, JNIM have exploited the lack of state presence to collect taxes and provide cartel-style protection, allowing them to easily integrate into communities.
WaL has occasionally reported on America’s military footprint in Africa, and how years of training and counterinsurgency consulting haven’t led to reductions in violence across the region, and has now shrunk. France, a long time security partner in the region, also withdrew its presence following the second coup d’etat in Mali, leaving a variety of Russian paramilitary contractors as the only outside support for the Sahel.
Of the 10 worst terrorist attacks in the world in 2024, 8 occurred in the Sahel countries of Niger, Nigeria, and Burkina Faso.
The one country which has been able to buck this trend is Mali, where numbers of fatalities fell from 736 last year to 606. This, the report says, is attributable to an increase in operations by the Malian army, and a reduction in the number of operations from IS-Sahel.
South Asia, the Middle East, Europe
The number of countries that experienced a terrorist attack last year rose from 58 to 66. Even though the total number of fatalities resulting from terrorism fell, the report explains it follows a predictable return to the mean more than a year after the Hamas attack on October 7th.
In the Middle East, Syria accounted for the highest number of attacks by Islamic State-affiliated groups, the most deadly terrorist actor worldwide. Control of Syria by the al-Qaeda affiliate HTS recently led to massacres of Alawites across the northwestern coastal communities of the country, totaling 1,000 people, a three-fourths majority of whom were civilians, AP reported. These deaths weren’t included in the GTI because HTS is the main state actor in the country, but would have made Syria rank far higher.
In South Asia, Afghanistan continues its climb down the GTI, building on a reduction in terrorist attacks last year with a further reduction this year. It’s the 9th most terrorist affected country.
“Pakistan recorded the second largest increase, with deaths rising by 45 per cent to 1,081,” the report read. “Terrorism has increased significantly in Pakistan since the Taliban’s rise to power in Afghanistan, with the number of attacks increasing fivefold since 2021. The most recent surge in terrorism in Pakistan was primarily driven by increased activity from Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is aligned with the Afghan Taliban”.
The report stresses that counter to reports of the past 10 years, most terrorist attacks in Europe today are being carried out by a “Lone Wolf,” typically radicalized through online content. A near-doubling of terrorist attacks in Europe has placed Germany on the 27th most-affected, very close to Benin, which borders the Sahel.
In the Sahel, gold mining, drug trafficking, and other illicit activities are large drivers of terrorist financing.
A striking finding of the report is that the highest driver of terrorism overall is not religious or social tensions, but conflict. Since 2007, 153,000 people have been killed in terrorist violence, the report records, 98% of which occurred in a conflict zone. In 2024, 5,000 of the more than 7,000 attacks occurred in areas labeled “war zones” rather than “conflict zones” suggesting that the greater the conflict, the greater the driver of terrorism.
This, the report concludes, suggests that the first counterterrorism strategy should be to end conflicts. WaL
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PICTURED ABOVE: Nigerien Armed Forces during the US-organized Flintlock Exercises in Niger, 2018. PC: US AFRICOM, CC 2.0. Staff Sgt. Jeremiah Runser.
