Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, especially the Sahel, recorded 48 percent of all extremist deaths globally in 2021, attributed to groups affiliated with the Islamic State (IS) terror group, while attacks declined by 68 percent in Western countries, where they were motivated more by political views than religious reasons.
The ninth edition of the Global Terrorism Index, released on Wednesday, indicates that deaths from terrorism fell 1.2 percent last year, to 7,142, while attacks increased 17 percent to 5,226, which shows that “attacks became less deadly in 2021.”
According to the report prepared by the Australian Institute for Economics and Peace, extremism is increasingly concentrated in conflict zones – where 97.6 percent of deaths from terrorism occurred -, with Afghanistan as the country with the highest impact from extremism, followed by Iraq, Somalia, Burkina Faso, Syria, Nigeria, Mali, Niger, Myanmar and Pakistan, out of the 163 countries included in the analysis.
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