ASPI – Australian Strategic Policy Institute
Overview: The yearbook begins with an overview of current trends and the terrorism landscape in 2020 identified in the 8th Global Terrorism Index (GTI) produced by Australia’s Institute for Economics and Peace. The GTI notes a 50% decrease in terrorism-related deaths in the past five years, from more than 33,000 in 2014 to under 14,000 in 2019. While the impact of radical jihadist terrorism has subsided in the West, there’s been a rise in politically motivated terrorism, rising from 13 deaths in 2014 to 90 deaths in 2019 (including 51 people in Christchurch in March 2019). There’s now a regional concentration of ISIL-supported activities in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
This corresponds, however, with a sharp increase in far-right terrorism in the West, concurrent with the rise of strong nationalism, civil unrest and political violence more generally. Between 2002 and 2014, far-right violence accounted for 14% of total attacks in the West; however, that grew to 40% in 2015 and to 46% in 2019 (49 far-right incidents out of 108 attacks).
Statistics in 2020 obviously don’t include examples like the 6 January riot on the Capitol in Washington D.C., for example, so 2021 seems set to continue the trend.
