In the said report, five mostly terrorised countries, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and Syria, accounted for 80 per cent of the deaths from terrorism in 2013.
Iraq alone recorded more than 6,000 deaths, making the country most affected by terrorism, the report said.
India, Somalia, the Philippines, Yemen and Thailand were the next five, with between one per cent and 2.3 per cent of global deaths by terrorism.
Behind most of the deaths were militant groups, Islamic State militants, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and the Taliban, which the Global Terrorism Index 2014 report said were the four main groups responsible for 66 per cent of all deaths from terrorist attacks in 2013.
The latest study into international terrorism showed that the number of deaths from terrorism increased by 61 per cent between 2012 and 2013.
The report, which investigated terrorism trends between 2000 and 2013, used data from the United States (US)-based Global Terrorism Database.
Nearly 10,000 terrorist attacks occured in 2013, which amounted to 44 per cent increase from 2012, the report indicated.
The report by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) said nearly 18,000 people died from terrorist attacks in 2013.
The executive chairman, IEP, Steve Killelea, in a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) report, said the latest increase in deaths from terrorism was primarily due to the civil war in Syria, which began in 2011.
“Not only is the intensity of terrorism increasing, its breadth is increasing as well,” he noted.
“The destabilisation in Syria, which has now overflowed into Iraq, is where we feel the upsurge in terrorism,” Killelea added.
He said the report included rankings of countries by the impact of terrorist activities, based on the number of terrorist attacks, deaths and injuries from terrorism, and damage to property.
“Although Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries only experienced five per cent of all deaths from terrorism since 2000, they suffered some of the deadliest attacks,” the report said.
These included the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, the 2004 Madrid train bombings, the 2005 London bombings, and the bombing and shooting attack in Norway in 2012.
During 2013, Turkey and Mexico were the OECD countries with the highest number of deaths from terrorism, at 57 and 40 respectively.
The report further identified religion and politics as two main platforms under which the terror groups hid to forment troubles.
“All four groups used ‘religious ideologies’ based on extreme interpretations of Wahhabi Islam.
“To counteract the rise of religious extremism, moderate Sunni theologies need to be cultivated by credible forces within Islam,” the report said, but it was important that “moderate Sunni countries and not outside influences” led such a response.
However, the report added that religious ideology was not the only motivation for terrorism, as it stated that “there are many peaceful Muslim-majority countries that do not suffer from terrorism such as Qatar, the United Arab Emirate (UAE) and Kuwait, underscoring how there are other social, political and geopolitical factors at play.”
“In many parts of the world, terrorism is far more likely to be driven by political or nationalistic and separatist movements,” the report said.
The report also identified the three main factors found globally to correlate with terrorism, which it said were: high social hostilities between different ethnic, religious and linguistic groups; the presence of state-sponsored violence such as extrajudicial killings and human rights abuses and high levels of overall violence, such as deaths from organised conflict or high levels of violent crime.
IEP bos, Killelea said religious figures in some moderate Sunni countries were already speaking out against extremism.
“It was very, very hard for Western countries to counteract radical religious ideology,” he said.
According to Killelea, “the West can certainly be supportive in trying to create better mechanisms of policing... and also in terms of being able to address some of the underlying issues which cause group grievances.”
“I don’t want to predict the outcome for 2014, but it’s certainly hard to imagine things being any better,” Killelea added.
The report only included data until the end of 2013, but stressed that while terrorism was on the increase, it was important to keep the numbers in context.
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