February 19, 2010:
Risk management (measuring and dealing with various risks) has become a major industry in the last half century. Most of the work is not very newsworthy, so the general public knows little of it. But one aspect of Risk Management, the lists of the most risky countries, does have popular appeal. One Risk Management firm (Maplecroft Risk Consultancy) issues some of their lists to the media, and their take on terrorism risk, says much about the state of terrorism worldwide.
The top ten nations (in terms of their "Terrorism Risk") should not be a surprise. These are; Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Lebanon, India, Algeria, Colombia, and Thailand. The major factor for the ranking is the amount of terrorism mayhem going on in the nation. Iraq, despite the 90 percent reduction in terror deaths in the last two years, still suffered nearly 5,000 such deaths last year. Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia suffered terrorist deaths in the same range (totaling over 10,000 between the three countries last year.) Lebanon didn't suffer that many deaths, but it's potential for large scale terrorism grew because of the thousands of rockets, and other weapons, Iran has shipped in to its proxy; Hezbollah. India has several terrorist groups operating, most of them non-Moslem, but causing several thousand deaths last year. Then again, that's in a nation of over a billion people (Iraq has 25 million). Algeria, Colombia and Thailand will probably slip in the standings next year, because the terrorist violence in all three has been declining.
Israel, for example, is rated 17, mainly because of all the terror groups trying to attack, them, but failing. There were no terrorist attacks inside Israel last year, but there were dozens of rockets fired in from Lebanon and Gaza. These caused few casualties, but because of the many Islamic radical groups dedicated to the destruction of Israel, the potential is large.
Western nations, who can afford large scale counter-terror efforts, are much further down on the list (Spain is 34, Britain 41, America 46, France 56 and Germany 81.) Most of the terrorist activity in the planet is concentrated in the top ten nations, and most are of the Moslem persuasion.