Terror on the rise- Bangup job King George

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washingtonpost.com
U.S. Figures Show Sharp Global Rise In Terrorism
State Dept. Will Not Put Data in Report

By Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 27, 2005; A01

The number of serious international terrorist incidents more than tripled last year, according to U.S. government figures, a sharp upswing in deadly attacks that the State Department has decided not to make public in its annual report on terrorism due to Congress this week.

Overall, the number of what the U.S. government considers "significant" attacks grew to about 655 last year, up from the record of around 175 in 2003, according to congressional aides who were briefed on statistics covering incidents including the bloody school seizure in Russia and violence related to the disputed Indian territory of Kashmir.

Terrorist incidents in Iraq also dramatically increased, from 22 attacks to 198, or nine times the previous year's total -- a sensitive subset of the tally, given the Bush administration's assertion that the situation there had stabilized significantly after the U.S. handover of political authority to an interim Iraqi government last summer.

The State Department announced last week that it was breaking with tradition in withholding the statistics on terrorist attacks from its congressionally mandated annual report. Critics said the move was designed to shield the government from questions about the success of its effort to combat terrorism by eliminating what amounted to the only year-to-year benchmark of progress.

Although the State Department said the data would still be made public by the new National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which prepares the information, officials at the center said no decision to publish the statistics has been made.

The controversy comes a year after the State Department retracted its annual terrorism report and admitted that its initial version vastly understated the number of incidents. That became an election-year issue, as Democrats said the Bush administration tried to inflate its success in curbing global terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"Last year was bad. This year is worse. They are deliberately trying to withhold data because it shows that as far as the war on terrorism internationally, we're losing," said Larry C. Johnson, a former senior State Department counterterrorism official, who first revealed the decision not to publish the data.

After a week of complaints from Congress, top aides from the State Department and the NCTC were dispatched to the Hill on Monday for a private briefing. There they acknowledged for the first time the increase in terrorist incidents, calling it a "dramatic uptick," according to participants and a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.).

The administration aides sought to explain the rise in attacks as the result of more inclusive methodology in counting incidents, which they argued made year-to-year comparisons "increasingly problematic," sources said.

In his letter urging Rice to release the data, Waxman said that "the large increases in terrorist attacks reported in 2004 may undermine administration claims of success in the war on terror, but political inconvenience has never been a legitimate basis for withholding facts from the American people."

Both Republican and Democratic aides at the meeting criticized what a GOP attendee called the "absurd" explanation offered by the State Department's acting counterterrorism chief, Karen Aguilar, that the statistics are not relevant to the required report on trends in global terrorism. "It's absurd to issue a report without statistics," said the aide, who is not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. "This is a self-inflicted wound by the State Department."

Aguilar, according to Hill aides, told them that Rice decided to withhold the statistics on the recommendation of her counselor, Philip D. Zelikow. He was executive director of the Sept. 11 commission that investigated the terrorist attacks on the United States.

The terrorism statistics provided to the congressional aides were not classified but were stamped "for official use only." Last week, State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher said the government would publish "all the facts," but at Monday's session Aguilar told the staff members that even if the NCTC decided not to release the data, the State Department would not reconsider and publicly do so itself.

A State Department spokesman said last night that he is confident the data will be officially released. He said the government is committed to "providing the public all the information it needs to have an informed debate on this issue."

Under the standards used by the government, "significant" terrorist attacks are defined as those that cause civilian casualties or fatalities or substantial damage to property. Attacks on uniformed military personnel such as the large number of U.S. troops stationed in Iraq are not included.

The data provided to the congressional aides also showed terrorist attacks doubling over the previous year in Afghanistan, to 27 significant incidents, and in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, where attacks rose to about 45, from 19 the year before. Also occurring last year were such deadly attacks as the seizure of a school in Beslan, Russia, by Chechen militants that resulted in at least 330 dead, and the Madrid train bombings that left nearly 200 dead.

The State Department did not disclose to the aides the overall number of those killed in incidents last year. Johnson said his count shows it was well over 1,000.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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Report: Global terrorism up more than 25 percent
Story Highlights
• Annual report on global terrorism says nearly half of attacks were in Iraq
• Al Qaeda and other militants reportedly find haven on Pakistan's northwest border
• Iran is the "most dangerous enabler of terrorism in that region," official says
• "Progress is mixed," report says

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Iraq's sectarian warfare fueled a sharp increase in global terrorism in 2006, the U.S. State Department reported Monday.

The total number of terrorist attacks was up more than 25 percent from the previous year, according to the State Department's annual report on global terrorism.

Incidents in Iraq accounted for nearly half of the 14,000 attacks and about two-thirds of the more than 20,000 fatalities worldwide. The number of deaths blamed on attacks increased by about 40 percent.

The spike comes from the eruption of sectarian killings and bombings that followed the February 2006 bombing of the al-Askariya mosque in the Iraqi city of Samarra, according to Frank Urbancic, the State Department's acting counterterrorism coordinator.

That attack, blamed on al Qaeda in Iraq, destroyed a revered Shiite Muslim shrine and led to a wave of reprisals between Iraq's Sunni and Shiite communities.

The number of people killed in terrorist attacks in Iraq rose from 8,262 in 2005 to 13,340 last year, said Russell Travers, deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
Militants find new safe haven

Terrorist organizations behind the violence are setting up along Pakistan's northwest frontier in safe havens created by the country's September 2006 peace agreement with tribal leaders, the report said.

Despite the presence of 80,000 Pakistani troops and border guards along Afghanistan's frontier with Pakistan, the tribal areas have become "sources of instability for Pakistan and its neighbors," Urbancic said.

Tribal leaders are not living up to their agreement to deny shelter to Islamic militants, he said. That has led to more fighters pouring into Afghanistan, where U.S. troops are battling a resurgent Taliban movement.

Meanwhile, al Qaeda and other groups, including Islamic guerrillas and Kurdish separatists fighting the Turkish government, are fighting to establish sanctuary in Iraq amid the chaos, Urbancic said.

The report accuses Iraq's neighbors Iran and Syria of fueling violence in Iraq by providing weapons and training to militant groups and allowing fighters to cross into Iraq to attack American troops.

The report also singles out their support for Lebanon's Hezbollah, the Shiite militia that fought a monthlong war with Israel in 2006. Urbancic called Iran "the most dangerous enabler of terrorism in that region."

The report found that in Africa, al Qaeda operatives remain in Somalia despite the Ethiopian invasion in December that pushed a coalition of Islamic militias out of the capital, Mogadishu. Islamic fighters continue to fight troops from Ethiopia and the Somali transitional government.

"Somalia remains a concern, as the country's unsecured borders and continued political instability provide opportunities for terrorist transit and/or organization," the report found.
Some successes noted

Despite the overall increase in international terrorism, there were some successes in the past year, the report indicated.

The plot to bomb trans-Atlantic airliners last year was foiled, and no major terrorist attacks occurred in Europe in 2006.

The total number of attacks declined in Indonesia, Pakistan and India, despite attacks on commuter trains in the Indian city of Mumbai that killed more than 200 people in July.
Reid calls for change of course

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said the new document, which comes as President Bush prepares to veto an emergency war-spending bill that calls for U.S. combat troops to leave Iraq in 2008, "dramatically demonstrates once again the unfortunate results of four years of a failed strategy."

"Congress is asking the president to change course in Iraq because it is what the American people, military experts and the Iraq Study Group know is necessary to more effectively fight terrorism," Reid said in a statement issued Monday afternoon. "We hope the president seizes this opportunity to change course instead of refusing to recognize the reality on the ground."

The report, however, declares that "progress is mixed," more than five years after al Qaeda's September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. It concludes that the nature of terrorism is shifting toward "global insurgency."

"If the battle against terrorism isn't in Iraq, it's going to be somewhere else," Urbancic said. "It started out in Afghanistan. The terrorists are looking for places where they can operate and that's what they're doing. So we can fight them in Iraq, we can fight them somewhere else. The fact is, they're there, and they're going to find other ungoverned spaces."

The 2006 report is the second year that the State Department has used a broader definition of terrorism -- "attacks against noncombatants for political reasons," as Travers put it.

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State Department report finds sharp rise in terror attacks, deaths in 2006
By Associated Press
Monday, April 30, 2007 - Updated: 05:13 PM EST

WASHINGTON - Terrorist attacks worldwide shot up 25 percent last year, particularly in Iraq where extremists used chemical weapons and suicide bombers to target crowds, according to a new State Department report.
Among countries, Iran remains the biggest supporter of terrorism, with elements of its government backing groups throughout the Middle East, particularly in Iraq, giving material support and guidance to Shiite insurgent groups that have attacked Sunnis, U.S. and Iraqi forces, the report said.
In its annual global survey of terrorism to be released Monday, the State Department says about 14,000 attacks took place in 2006, mainly in Iraq and Afghanistan. These strikes claimed more than 20,000 lives - two-thirds in Iraq. That is 3,000 more attacks than in 2005 and 5,800 more deaths.
Altogether, 40 percent more people were killed by increasingly lethal means around the globe.
The report partly attributes the higher casualty figures to a 25-percent jump in the number of nonvehicular suicide bombings targeting large crowds. That overwhelmed a 12-percent dip in suicide attacks involving vehicles.
In Iraq, the use of chemical weapons, seen for the first time in a November 23, 2006 attack in Sadr City, also "signaled a dangerous strategic shift in tactics," it says.
With the rise in fatalities, the number of injuries from terrorist attacks also rose, by 54 percent, between 2005 and 2006, with a doubling in the number wounded in Iraq over the period, according to the department’s Country Reports on Terrorism 2006.
The numbers were compiled by the National Counterterrorism Center and refer to deaths and injuries sustained by "noncombatants," with significant increases in attacks targeting children, educators and journalists.
"By far the largest number of reported terrorist incidents occurred in the Near East and South Asia," says the 335-page report, referring to the regions where Iraq and Afghanistan are located.
"These two regions also were the locations for 90 percent of all the 290 high-casualty attacks that killed 10 or more people," says the report, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press ahead of its official release.
The report says 6,600, or 45 percent, of the attacks took place in Iraq, killing about 13,000 people, or 65 percent of the worldwide total of terrorist-related deaths in 2006. Kidnappings by terrorists soared 300 percent in Iraq over 2005.
Afghanistan had 749 strikes in 2006, a 50-percent rise from 2005 when 491 attacks were tallied, according to the report.
However, it also details a surge in Africa, where 65 percent more attacks, 420 compared to 253 in 2005, were counted last year, largely due to turmoil in or near Sudan, including Darfur, and Nigeria where oil facilities and workers have been targeted.
As in previous years, the 2006 report identifies Iran as the "most active state sponsor" of terror, accusing the Islamic Republic of helping plan and foment attacks to destabilize Iraq and derail Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has been "linked to armor-piercing explosives that resulted in the deaths of coalition forces" and has helped, along with Lebanon’s radical Hezbollah movement, train Iraqi extremists to build bombs, the report says.
Although the designation of Iran is not new, it appears in the report that is being released as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice prepares to attend a conference of Iraq’s neighbors, at which she has not ruled out a meeting with Iran’s foreign minister.
The report says that terrorists continue to rely mainly on conventional weapons in their attacks, but noted no let up in an alarming trend toward more sophisticated and better planned and coordinated strikes.
For instance, while the number of bombings increased by 30 percent between 2005 and 2006, the death tolls from these incidents rose by 39 percent and the number of injuries rose by 45 percent, it says.
The report attributes the higher casualty figures to a 25-percent jump in the number of non-vehicular suicide bombings targeting large crowds that more than made up for a slight 12-percent dip in suicide attacks involving vehicles.
Of the 58,000 people killed or wounded in terrorist attacks around the world in 2006, more than 50 percent were Muslims, the report, says with government officials, police and security guards accounting for a large proportion, the report says.
The number of child casualties from terrorist attacks soared by more than 80 percent between 2005 and 2006 to more than 1,800, while incidents involving educators were up more than 45 percent and those involving journalists up 20 percent, the report says.
Twenty-eight U.S. citizens were killed and 27 wounded in terrorist incidents in 2006, most of them in Iraq, where eight of the 12 Americans kidnapped by terrorists last year were taken captive, it says.


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