State Dept. Concedes Errors in Terror Data

In its 2003 report titled “Patterns of Global Terrorism”, the US State Department failed to give a true account of global terrorism, says this Washington Post article. The report stated that 2003 saw a significant decrease in terrorist activities largely due to US involvement in global counter-terrorism efforts. However, academics, a lawmaker, and others argue that the figures presented by the State Department do not match up to the reality on the ground. The report cited 190 acts of terrorism in 2003, but the actual number should have been 390, says a former deputy director of the State’s counterterrorism office. Similarly, the number of wounded was more in 2003 than cited in the report, and the number of significant incidents -- involving victims who were killed, injured or kidnapped -- rose from 60 percent in 2002 to 89 percent in 2003. The spread of terrorism has also increased, not decreased; the number of countries in which terrorist attacks occurred increased from 2 in 2002 to 10 in 2003. The discrepancy in figures might be due to omissions of entire terrorist acts in the report: the Nov 15 suicide bombing in Istanbul was omitted due to a cutoff date for printing the report in time for its release, and the 13 terrorist attacks in Russia were also omitted from the report for unknown reasons. This article says that the State Department has acknowledged the report’s errors, and that the Terrorist Threat and Integration Center is currently reviewing and revising the statistics for 2003. – YaleGlobal