Terrorist attacks by region 2007-2022

From 2007 to 2022, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) suffered from the highest number of terrorist attacks, reaching over 23,000 incidents as of 2022. The region with the second highest number of attacks, South Asia, recorded nearly 18,000 attacks during the same period.

Recent developments

While Afghanistan remains the country most impacted by terrorism in the world, there has been a global shift in the patterns of terrorist attacks since 2019. After the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria was defeated, the number of deaths from terrorist attacks in Middle East and North Africa as well as South Asia has been decreasing, whereas it has been increasing in Sub-Saharan Africa, with the Sahel region especially affected.

Someone's terrorist is someone else's freedom fighter

In the Western World, much of the attention on terrorism has been on Islamist groups such as the Islamic State and Al-Qaida since 9/11. In the decades before, attacks conducted by nationalist groups such as ETA in Spain or IRA in Norther Ireland received much attention. While some saw these as brutal terrorists, other saw them as freedom fighters battling for their cause. Debate still exists over the labeling of certain groups fighting for political or religious reasons as terrorist organizations. This debate is reflected in the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, also known as the PKK, who operate in Iraq and Turkey are considered a terrorist group by NATO and the European Union, but not the United Nations and states such as China and Switzerland.