Terrorism is not the big problem any more in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, according to the Sydney-based think tank, Institute for Economics and Peace. This is being attributed to the weakening of Daesh in the region. But terrorism is looming as a big factor in the Sahel region in Africa, where hardline forces have triggered a series of coups in many of the countries, in countries like Mali and in Burkina Faso. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has emerged as the most secure country. The assessment brings good tidings.

The United Nations Security Council has named the Houthi rebels in Yemen as a terrorist organisation. For the past few years, the Houthis had been posing a security threat in the Arab peninsula, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Daesh still operates in parts of Syria and Iraq but its area of domination is shrinking. Algeria has been an exception as terrorist-related deaths are still high.

The report says, “Fatalities in the MENA region accounted for 39 per cent of the total global deaths from terrorism between 2007 and 2021. However, since the defeat of Daesh, the region’s share of the global total has dropped substantially. It accounted for only 16 per cent of global deaths, behind South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa...” While the statistics are important because they give a clear picture of the situation, the analysis remains incomplete if the issues of terrorist financing and underground arms deals are ignored. For any terrorist organisation to flourish, and even to survive, it needs money and munitions. And if the money and munitions trail followed, it leads to a wider network, located mostly in western countries.

One of the puzzling aspects of terrorism has been the financial resources that the terrorist organisations have been managed to mobilise, and the arms purchases they are able to make in international markets. The financial transactions running into millions of dollars have been going through legitimate banking channels, and western governments have almost turned a blind eye to it. The transactions are done through the dollar denomination.

Secondly, all the lethal weapons that these outfits acquire are all from western arms manufacturers and western arms traders. Many a time the insurgencies have been fed by Western powers. For many years now, the west has been the interpreter of global terrorism, and the role of the west in indirectly supporting terrorism has not been given due attention. It is necessary then for West Asian governments and think-tanks to examine the phenomenon of terrorism in the region and its roots.

Surprisingly, western countries have not paid any price for terrorism, excepting the rare occasion of September 11, 2001 and intermittent terrorism related attacks in London, Paris, and Amsterdam. The brunt of terrorism was felt by the people in West Asia and South Asia, and now increasingly in the Sahel region of west Africa. According to the Sydney think-tank’s report, South Asia still remains an active zone of terrorism.

There is need for all the governments in Asia and Africa affected by terrorist acitivites to come together and to monitor the functioning of the terror organisations. It is now an acknowledged fact that the now decimated Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka had financial support from the Tamil expat community in Canada, and that the Irish Republican Army (IRA) at the height of its activities in the 1970s and 1980s was supported financially by Irish sources in the United States. Unless the financial and arms network of these organisations is brought on the radar, the fight against terrorism will remain incomplete.