Global Terrorism Trends After 9/11: Facts and Analysis
This essay examines global terrorism trends following the September 11, 2001 attacks, emphasizing the importance of evidence-based analysis over emotionally driven perspectives. Drawing on RAND Corporation data compiled for the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, the paper documents a dramatic increase in terrorist incidents and fatalities in the post-9/11 period, with Iraq accounting for a disproportionate share. The essay also interrogates the conceptual boundaries of "terrorism" itself, asking whether some post-9/11 violence — particularly in Iraq — might be better understood as a reactionary defense of cultural and political autonomy rather than offensive terrorism in the conventional sense.
- Introduction: Beyond Emotion to Evidence: Call for fact-based analysis of post-9/11 terrorism
- Defining Terrorism: Conceptualizing terrorism across domestic and international scales
- Statistical Evidence of Increased Terrorism Post-9/11: RAND Corporation data showing 250% rise in incidents
- Iraq's Central Role in Post-9/11 Violence: Iraq accounts for majority of post-9/11 terrorist activity
- Reactionary Violence or Terrorism? Questioning the Framework: Questioning whether Iraq violence is offensive or reactionary
- Conclusion: Distinguishing terrorism from culturally motivated resistance
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What makes this paper effective
- The essay opens with an explicit methodological commitment — privileging facts over feelings — which lends analytical credibility and signals intellectual rigor from the outset.
- It makes productive use of quantitative data from the RAND Corporation/MIPT report, grounding qualitative arguments in concrete percentage figures and time-period comparisons.
- The paper's most interesting contribution is its conceptual challenge: it refuses to treat all post-9/11 violence as self-evidently "terrorism," instead probing the reaction/counter-reaction dynamic and the legitimacy of culturally motivated resistance.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates the technique of definitional interrogation — establishing that a contested term ("terrorism") must be carefully bounded before empirical claims about it can be evaluated. By separating domestic from international terrorism and offensive from reactionary violence, the author avoids the common fallacy of treating a heterogeneous phenomenon as monolithic.
Structure breakdown
The essay follows a clear four-part logic: (1) establish analytical ground rules and define terms; (2) present statistical evidence of increased post-9/11 terrorism; (3) isolate Iraq as the primary driver of those statistics; and (4) raise a normative question about whether the Iraq-centered violence constitutes terrorism or a form of cultural self-defense. The conclusion synthesizes these threads without resolving the normative tension, leaving it appropriately open.
Introduction: Beyond Emotion to Evidence
Any serious discussion of global terrorism since September 2001 must be grounded in hard facts. Unfortunately, September 11 was so recent and so raw that much of our perspective on global terrorism remains skewed by pain and suspicion. Any analysis must therefore be based on facts rather than feelings.
Defining Terrorism
Before proceeding, it is necessary to conceptualize "terrorism," since it is a vague term that can refer to a myriad of instances (Green et al., 2001). Terrorism, for instance, exists on both an intra-national and an international scale. On an intra-national scale, there are countries such as Britain where terrorism flourishes from within for both economic and political reasons. On an international scale, terrorism exists for reasons ranging from asserting militaristic prowess, to seeking independence, to alleged religious motivations. Some instances of terrorism may even be viewed in hindsight as legitimate — for example, situations in which citizens struggle against occupying forces.
Statistical Evidence of Increased Terrorism Post-9/11
Constraining the analysis to facts and to Middle Eastern-based terrorism, the evidence suggests that terrorism increased significantly after September 2001. The RAND Corporation, reporting for the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), demonstrated that the rate of terrorist incidents in the 59-month period following September 2001 was 250% that of the 44.5-month period preceding the attack (Conetta, 2006). Adjusted to account for the different lengths of the two periods, the data showed a monthly increase of 150%. The Corporation also found that the rate of terrorist incidents for the entire post-9/11 period through 2006 was 268% that of the incidence of terrorism before and including September 1, 2001.
Conclusion
In short, terrorism is a product of numerous and varied forces. While it is never a positive phenomenon, the different strands of terrorism must be distinguished from one another so that post-9/11 activities can be adequately assessed — whether they constitute terrorism in the conventional sense or represent a form of defense of a country's traditions and values.
References
Conetta, C. (2006). War and consequence: Global terrorism has increased since 9/11 attacks. Project on Defense Alternatives Briefing Memo #38. Retrieved from http://www.comw.org/pda/0609bm38.html
Green, D. P., McFalls, L. H., & Smith, J. K. (2001). Hate crime: An emergent research agenda. Annual Review of Sociology, 27, 479–504.
Taylor, M. (1988). The terrorist. London: Brassey's Defence Publishers.
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