The measurement of terror

The sense of overwhelming fear and debilitation that is the individual experience of the phenomenon of terror is difficult to quantify objectively. Individual acts designed to inspire a sense of terror are, however, more easily enumerated and quantified via the collection, collation and analysis of data over time. The terror phenomenon is close to the surface of the national mind in terms of awareness in a broad sense, but there are often conflicting figures from a range of agencies, the media and government that fail to deliver a consistent or even credible picture. All that may be about to change with the launching of a digital database compiled by the Pakistan Institute of Conflict and Security Studies (PICSS) and the initial findings are interesting.

Despite how the terrorist ‘climate’ might feel, there has been a marked decline in terrorism nationally and according to the PICSS, the number of terrorist incidents is at their lowest since 2008. Terrorism is cyclic, and there have been five ‘phases’ in Pakistan in the years after the 9/11 attacks. Levels were low between 2001 and 2004 in the time immediately after 9/11, and then rose sharply with the assault on the tribal areas, which had the effect of proliferating terrorism nationally. Phase three began after the Lal Masjid operation in 2007, which saw incidents climb sharply and it is only since counter-terror operations commenced in the wake of the Army Public School massacre in December 2014 that the incidence has again dropped sharply. Some hard facts emerged — 47,000 have been killed in the last 15 years, and almost half of that number consists of civilians. How many of those civilian deaths are the result of collateral damage rather than being caused directly by acts of terror is not revealed. Terrorism is shown to be highly dynamic. This latest initiative is important in the understanding of terrorism at the empirical, data-driven level. It is to be hoped that it is widely referenced in future by the media across all platforms and some uniformity brought to an oft-misreported subject.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 30^th, 2015.

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