Burkina Faso is now the most terrorised country in the world, figures from the Global Terrorism Index 3024 indicate.
Put together by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), the report said deaths caused by terrorism increased by 22% to 8,352, the highest level since 2017. It also revealed that the attacks are now more deadly, as the number of terrorist incidents fell by 22% to 3,350 from 4,321, and the number of countries reporting an incident fell to 50.
In 2023, the report said the US accounted for 76% of terrorism-related deaths in Western democracies, amid a 15-year low in incidents.
It observed that the epicentre of terrorism has shifted out of the Middle East and into the Central Sahel region of sub-Saharan Africa, which now accounts for over half of all deaths from terrorism.
In its 13-year coverage, this is the first time that a country, other than Afghanistan or Iraq, has been top of the index. Almost 2,000 people were killed in terrorist attacks in Burkina Faso from 258 incidents, accounting for nearly a quarter of all terrorist deaths globally.
The GTI 2024 reported that Burkina Faso suffered the worst impact from terrorism, with deaths increasing by 68% despite attacks decreasing by 17%.
Also, it said Iraq recorded the largest improvement in the last decade with deaths from terrorism falling by 99% since the 2007 peak, to 69 in 2023.
Meanwhile, it indicated that the impact of terrorism has become increasingly concentrated, with ten countries accounting for 87% of total terrorism-related deaths.
It adds that over 90% of terrorist attacks and 98% of terrorism deaths in 2023 occurred in conflict zones, underscoring the strong link between conflict and terrorism.
At theCouncil on Foreign Relations-Ghana’s recent fifth anniversary lecture series at the Accra International Conference Centre in Ghana on Friday, 15 March 2024, on the theme: ‘ECOWAS at the crossroads: Emerging threats, challenges, and the way forward’, Ambassador Dr Abdel-Fatau Musah, Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security of the Economic Community for West African States (ECOWAS), said the terrorism situation was worsening in the Sahel region, even though the military juntas of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger rode on a pledge to stem the tide to seize power in their respective countries.
Ambassador Dr Musah said terrorism, “which all these regimes said was one of the main reasons why they took over”, is still festering in those countries. “Terrorism is becoming worse and worse in the countries”, he insisted, noting: “So, we have to look at all these situations”.
“If you are going to look at the figures, in 2023 alone, 3,500 terrorist attacks occurred in West Africa and even that is a lower number than previously, but what is interesting is that there are fewer attacks but greater fatalities because the state is withdrawing from the periphery, leaving people to their fate and the terrorist groups have got more lethal weapons and, so, with fewer attacks, they are causing more and more casualties among the population”, Ambassador Dr Musah noted.
“So, we have the 3,500 attacks in 2023 and about 2,000 of them were in Burkina Faso alone, and then out of all these, 9,000 fatalities emerged from it”, he quoted from the Global Terrorist Index of 2024.
He said there were about “7,000 fatalities in the Alliance of Sahelian States alone out of the 9,000 in the region. Burkina Faso, today, has overtaken Afghanistan as the most terrorised country on earth. That is the reality that we are living there”.
In contrast, he said: “When the democratically elected government was there, about 30 per cent of the territory was under terrorist occupation, you had about 700,ooo internally displaced people; today, there about two million internally displaced people in Burkina Faso and most of them are spilling over their border into Benin, Togo, Northern Ghana and then into Cote d’Ivoire”.
“So, we have a situation in that area and if this countries are to withdraw from ECOWAS, then how do you effectively combat terrorism in those areas? And how do we protect the coastal countries when terrorism is festering just on the northern border?” he asked, reiterating: “These are some of the critical questions that people have to ask themselves”.
He said once terrorism festers, other crimes would, too. “… There is also the correlation between the terrorist attacks ad transnational organised crime”.
The Global Terrorism Index
According to Vision of Humanity, the Global Terrorism Index (GTI) is a comprehensive study analysing the impact of terrorism for 163 countries covering 99.7 per cent of the world’s population.
The GTI report is produced using data from Terrorism Tracker and other sources. It produces a composite score so as to provide an ordinal ranking of countries on the impact of terrorism. The GTI scores each country on a scale from 0 to 10; where 0 represents no impact from terrorism and 10 represents the highest measurable impact of terrorism.
One of the key aims of the GTI is to examine terrorism trends. It also aims to help inform a positive, practical debate about the future of terrorism and the required policy responses.
Key findings from the Global Terrorism Index 2023 report
• Attacks were more deadly with the lethality rising by 26%.
• Terrorism deaths were down 9%, although this was attributed to the Taliban’s transition from a terror group to a state actor.
• Outside Afghanistan, terrorism deaths rose 4% in the rest of the world.
• Islamic State (IS) and its affiliates remained the world’s deadliest terrorist group in 2022 for the eighth consecutive year, with attacks in 21 countries.
• Deaths from attacks by unknown Jihadists globally were eight times higher than in 2017, representing 32% of all terrorism deaths and 18 times higher in the Sahel.
• The Sahel was the most impacted region, representing 43% of global terrorism deaths, 7% more than the year prior.
• Declining terrorism in the West was met with intensified attacks in other regions.
• Terrorism thrived in countries with poor ecologies and climate-induced shocks. • Drone technology and its use continued to rapidly evolve, especially with groups such as IS, Boko Haram and Houthis.
