Facts & Figures

• Terrorism is the use or threat of violence, to create a climate of fear in a given population. Terrorist violence targets individuals and groups, governments, political parties, corporations, media enterprises and often ethnic or religious groups.

• Organisations that engage in acts of terror are almost always small in size and limited in resources compared to the populations and institutions they oppose. Through publicity and fear generated by their violence, they seek to magnify their influence and power to effect political change on either a local or an international scale.

• Terrorism has been practised throughout history. However it is only in modern times that the term ‘terrorism’ has been used to describe terrorist violence.

• It was not until 1795 that the terms ‘terrorism’ and ‘terrorist’ were recorded and used to describe the Reign of Terror instigated by the French revolutionary government in the period.

• A ‘terrorist’ is a person who uses violence against people not involved in combat to put across a political, religious or ideological message. They try to scare people away from doing something or a government into changing its policies or they simply want to gain power or material wealth for themselves.

• There is no absolute agreement on what a terrorist is. Some are people oppressed by a government and because they cannot fight a war using an army they fight whatever way they can. Sometimes they are individuals or groups with ideas that clash with those of the society or world they live in and seek to change it by any means. Terrorists can be people such as anti-abortionists or organised criminals.

• Terrorists come from many countries including Ireland, Spain, Germany, Sri Lanka – even from within the US – not just the Middle East. In fact, most terrorist incidents in the world happen in Latin America. The worst terrorist problem is in Columbia.

• There has been a growing fear that terrorists could use nuclear weapons, biological weapons such as anthrax, or chemical weapons such as sarin gas, which killed 12 people and injured 3800 in an attack on Tokyo subways in 1995.

• There have been many initiatives by governments around the world to combat terrorism. These initiatives include public awareness campaigns, changes to legislation limiting some freedoms and giving police and other groups greater powers to arrest and detain people, improved intelligence sharing between governments, increased defence spending, greater airport surveillance and improved disaster response plans.

• Australia is assessed as having a medium to high chance of terrorism after being ranked 38 out of 168 countries, but it lags well behind the US and Britain, which rank 4th and 10th, respectively.

• The 10 most vulnerable countries are Colombia, Israel, Pakistan, the US, The Philippines, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Iraq, India and Britain.

• The Australian Government’s response to international terrorism acknowledges that the terrorist threat to Australians and Australian interests has increased, both domestically and overseas. The problem cannot be managed by one country alone – a targeted bilateral, regional and global approach is also needed.

• The Australian Government’s contribution to the war has spanned diplomatic, legislative, police and intelligence cooperation, capacity-building, and financial and border controls, as well as direct military activities and broader Defence co-operation. This focus will be enduring and the Australian Defence Forces may well be called on to contribute to further efforts in the War on Terror.

• Australian police forces are using electronic surveillance at 27 times the per capita rate of their US counterparts. The 2514 court warrants issued for phone taps last financial year – almost double that issued in the US – was a tenfold increase in the past decade and a 16 per cent rise on the previous year.

• The warrants apply to hundreds of thousands of individual phone calls, and police inspected 733,000 telephone bills, including inward and outward calls. Civil liberties groups claim that level of surveillance makes Australians some of the West’s most monitored people.

• Although the risk to Australia is regarded as low, we need to be prepared for a bioterrorism incident. Australia’s strong public health infrastructure forms the basis for an effective response to any such incident.

• The average number of terrorist attacks in the 1981-1990 period was 537, while in the following 10 years there were 381 such attacks. The average for 2001-2002 stands at 277. (p.39)

• In 1998, 741 people died in terrorist attacks globally; 12 of them were US citizens. The following year, 233 people died in terrorist attacks globally; 6 of them were US citizens. In 2001, 3572 people died in terrorist attacks globally; 1440 of them were US citizens. Most of those killed died in the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers. In 2002, 725 people died in terrorist attacks globally; 26 of them were US citizens.

• The 3572 people who died in terrorist attacks in 2001 were three times more likely to die from being hit by lightning. While 1440 US citizens died in terrorist attacks in 2001, three times as many US citizens died of malnutrition, and almost 40 times as many people died in car accidents.

• Eighty-eight Australians died in the 2002 Bali bombing. By comparison, almost 20 times more died in 2002 in road accidents and around more than four times died in reported murders.