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OPINION APRIL 21, 2023 | The Indian Eye 12

Terrorism Trends:

2023 and Beyond

Terrorist tactics or terrorism have evolved as a tool for grievance groups to assert their political,

religious and ideological messages to a dominant group

NIKHIL GUVVADI Violent extremist organizations have increasingly employed new and emerging technologies establishing a relationship with local
for their influence operations and financing (Representative graphic: IDSA) conflict situations elsewhere, and not
he Global Terrorism Index just the other way around.
(GTI) published by the Insti- The pledging of allegiance to
Ttute for Economics and Peace der Ramzan Kadyrov’s leadership. a leadership crisis at the center after the legacy of these two international
(IEP) based on Dragonfly’s ‘Terror- Islamists who are upset with this and the killing of al-Qaeda leader Ayman jihadi movements by local jihadi in-
ism Tracker’ database records terror are against Russia have been fighting al-Zawahiri in a US drone strike and surgent groups is a religious/self-le-
incidents reported on open sources. for Ukraine. the neutralization of Da’esh leader gitimization tactic for their ethnic
The GTI considers deaths, incidents, At the same time, Ukraine has Abu Ibrahim in a US Special Forc- and political strife, which also gives
hostages and injuries from terrorism. also deployed the Azov Regiment, es operation. His successor, Abu access to their global jihadi network.
Terrorist attacks and deaths caused the paramilitary arm of a more ex- al-Hasan, was also killed in battle in But all the world’s major powers
by them decreased by 28 per cent tensive far-right nationalist Azov Syria, according to Da’esh. must always be perceptive of an in-
and 9 per cent respectively, but aver- Movement in Ukraine. The Azov Reportedly, the new emir of ternational sensationalist terror at-
age deaths per attack increased from Regiment was also inducted into al-Qaeda is Saif al-Adel, a former tack which can come at any given
1.3 to 1.7 from the previous year in the Ukrainian National Guard even Egyptian special forces officer and time when the situation is conducive
2022. before the war had begun. Russia’s a high-ranking al-Qaeda operative to them.
According to the GTI, deaths Wagner Group, a private military who is interestingly based out of The terrorist landscape in In-
caused by terrorism have decreased and security company (PMSC) re- Iran. Da’esh had also announced dia’s Northwest neighborhood de-
over the years, but the lethality of portedly linked to the far-right Rus- their new caliph to be Abu al-Hus- teriorated, with the Taliban sweep-
attacks has increased on average, sian Imperial Movement (RIM), has sein. Further killings of these move- ing across the country after the US
killing 26 per cent more people per a presence in Ukraine. They are also ments’ leaders may only stall the withdrawal ending their 20-year war
attack. This is primarily because of quickly filling the counter-terrorist eventual consolidation of authority on terror. IS-KP and TTP have re-
the jihadi upheaval in the Sahel and vacuum France’s withdrawal from and nothing more substantial. turned in a massive way. IS-KP is
Af-Pak region during 2022. Deaths West Africa created. African juntas This disruption of the central challenging the domestic legitimacy
in these regions have increased con- in the Sahel and other countries in command did not affect affiliate of the Taliban in Afghanistan by tar-
trary to the larger global trend. sub-Saharan Africa who are upset groups’ functioning elsewhere due geting Muslim minority communities
States have been employing with the French are now interested to their decentralized organization and Chinese interests in the country.
armed non-state actors to further in working with the Wagner Group. and structure. Instead, it allowed The TTP declared a full-blown insur-
their otherwise questionable objec- After the decade-old Syrian civil the affiliates to become indepen- gency and started working in tandem
tives. For example, violent extrem- war and the 20-year US war on ter- dent actors waging jihadi insurgen- with the militant-separatist BLA to
ists are belligerents to the ongoing rorism, al-Qaeda and Da’esh have cies against the governments in their undermine the Pakistani state with a
war in Ukraine. Chechen fighters become umbrella organizations to territories. Al-Qaeda and Da’esh 9x increase in their activity in 2022.
who once declared ‘jihad’ against their affiliates spread across Eur- figured out a way to continue their Terrorist attacks have risen by 51 per
Moscow are fighting for Russia un- asia and Africa. Both of them face ideological and political legacies by Continued on next page... >>

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